Aileen: [00:00:00] Thank you for joining today’s episode of the, How Did They Do It? Real estate podcast. We are your hosts, Seyla and Aileen and today’s guests, we have Monick Halm. Monick is a real estate investor, syndicator and developer with over 14 years of real estate investing experience in multifamily, mobile home parks, RV parks, flipping commercial, vacation rentals, syndication, and ground up development. Together with her husband, Peter and her investors, she owns over 1300 rental units across six States. Monick is also the founder of Real Estate Investor Goddesses, where her mission is to assist 1 million women to achieve financial freedom through real estate. She’s also the number one best selling author of The Real Estate Investor Goddess Handbook and Wealth for Women: Conversations With the Team That Creates the Dream, and host of the Real Estate Investor Goddesses podcast.  We’re very excited to have you on today.

Monique, welcome to the show.

Monick: [00:00:51] Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Aileen: [00:00:54] Could you please tell our listeners a little bit more about your background and how you got started in real estate?

Monick: [00:00:58] I got started in real estate totally by accident. So I know no one ever taught me about real estate. It was one of those things growing up. I have great parents. I’m a first generation American. My parents are from Haiti and I was always told, to be successful,  you got, you have to be a doctor, lawyer, professor engineer. That was a success. And that was the most like what you went to achieve. And of those four, I pick a law that wasn’t as into the math and science became a lawyer.

I hated being a lawyer, but that’s a whole other, the discussion, but they never taught me anything about investing. Nothing about finances. All I learned was firehouse and you live in Los Angeles like I do. So you guys understand that right? In LA, it’s really expensive to buy a house. And even though I was working, this is back in 2005 towards the top of the last bubble.

And I, as a lawyer, I had a six figure salary, but low six figures and LA is a starter home fuck upwards of 600, $700,000. So if people come in different markets, they hear that. It’s like, how can you have a six figure income and not buy a house? I was like, when not, when houses are so expensive and we’re not talking about the Beverly Hills palaces are talking about in a neighborhood where there aren’t drive by shootings and things like that. So in order to be able to buy my house, I ended up buying a multifamily and I had, it was like a duplex has really a triplex covered a garage in the back that we were able to rent out.

And so we rent out or are like a two bedroom unit. We ended up at our back house, we rented out our basement and started the house hack before I knew that was the thing. It was just was happy accident. Oh my God, these people are paying our mortgage. This is awesome. And then when I met my husband, he had a Duplex and then we got a single family rental.

After the market crash, we flipped houses until about 2015. And then I learned about syndication bringing groups of investors together. That’s when things really took off and I was able to scale a lot. And that’s when I learned about syndication. I started that 2016 in that year, we went from 2 doors, to over a thousand in life that 12 month period.

That really helped me to get to where I am today.

Aileen: [00:03:18] So let me, can we go back to a little bit when you first heard about syndications from that first fix and flip to syndication, can you walk us through a little bit, like, how did that process happen for you?

Monick: [00:03:30] Again, it was a happy accident, so I was flipping houses and we started when houses were unsafe.

The sale right after the market crashed. And my listening houses are about to go on sale again very soon. So this is a good, another good time to be getting into real estate. But we got in, we started actually, it was 2010 when we started. And so we were flipping houses and by 2015 houses were definitely not so on sale.

There’s a lot more competitive. And the thing about flipping is it’s really a job. It’s a short term job. You get the house, you fix it out, very active, you sell it, hopefully it at a profit knock on wood. We have always made a profit. We always made a profit and then you sell it. You have to start over. And it was getting really hard and I wanted to have something more passive.

And so we started looking for a fourplex, which was the biggest thing I could imagine in LA that, and nothing made any financial sense. Nothing cashflows here. And then also, God forbid you have ones with tenants already in place and with the rent control, like you just, it’s positive. It’s so expensive.

It’s very hard to cashflow. So, a friend of mine was in a mastermind, with a friend, Kyle and Kyle is saying you should meet my friend, Robert Helms. He’s coming to LA tomorrow to speak at this event I’m doing. And Robert is the host of the Real Estate Guys, radio podcasts. He’s done hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate.

Maybe he could give you some ideas. And I was like, sure. So I went, I remember October 15 and, I went out and had his 10 minute conversation with Robert Helms that changed everything. So he’s the nicest guy. So he was just asking what was doing. And I was telling him about my frustrations with the flipping and the duplex.

And he goes, I always say, LA is a tough market. Live where you want to live, invest where the numbers make sense. And I went. Oh, cause until you said that, I always thought you had to invest where you could drive to your property, touch it, manage it yourself. Like it just never had crossed my mind that you could invest outside of where you live in.

So that literally opened up the world to me. And the next thing he said was. And you can buy a fourplex by yourself, but you’re limited to your own capital and credit. So it, alternatively could bring a group of investors together and you could get 100 or 200 units. And he started talking to me about the benefits of that.

I felt like you needed to be a billionaire to do that. I literally thought you’d need a Donald Trump’s bank account. I didn’t realize that regular people could do that. I like to learn how to do this stuff there. That sounds amazing. There’s already quite challenging. That was already challenged by credit and by getting access to the credit, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but at the time I really just knew hanging all cash, which is mostly what we were doing for houses or getting a traditional loan.

And as an investor, as when you own a business, You get a lot of deductions, it looks like you’re making very little money on paper, that your taxes, you have very little income that you’re going to pay taxes on your bank. Live very little income to show. Even though I had hundreds of thousand dollars in the bank, we could buy this house as cash, but we couldn’t get, I couldn’t refinance my house because I didn’t, I couldn’t show, I couldn’t show the income.

And what the syndication allowed me to do is be able to, I could, it was crazy. Like I was able to get loans for millions of dollars through syndication, but it couldn’t fully finance my house. So it really learning that I was not limited by my own capital or credit was game changing for me.

And then also that I could leverage, I could help other people. And then also that they could leverage my time and everyone else’s money. And I was able to leverage, the group so that we can all get into something much bigger than we could by ourselves.

Seyla: [00:07:38] Incredible story. Thank you.

Could you please walk us through, where did you find your first deal and how did you find it and how did you get the finance for it?

Monick: [00:07:48] Oh, that’s a good one. So I feel like I, it was just all sorts of luck.  Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. So first syndication that I did was with a friend who was. He’d been doing mobile home parks can be very lucrative. And he had an investor that was coming from Korea with $400,000. And that investor, all this I could not bring in the money could not bring the money into the U S and he said, I know you’re interested in syndicating.

Would you want to just do this little, this chunk, this piece of it and raise that last bit of money. And we’re like, Sure that sounds that’s a great way to get started. There was already a deal in place with an experience operator. So we just went and started dialing for dollars, calling friends and family raise the money.

And that was our first deal that we did. That was how we got started. And then at the same time, we had a next door neighbor who was a vice president of operations for a real estate investment trust. So she, at this point, when we started talking, we were just telling her what we were doing. And she goes, Oh, that’s what I do, except for this trust.

And she had done almost a billion with a B a billion dollars worth of transactions, but all under the account for the, for her. Fit for work, not on her own account. And so she wanted to be able to do smaller deals on her own account and start building her own personal portfolio and we have time.

We can find the deals and we can partner together. Our business is called Vineyard, Investment Partners that cause we invest in vineyards. We live on fears, your next door neighbors on vineyards. So we live next door and we set up a website and. It looks amazing and our team had an over or so experience, although all of that came from her, but that’s really good.

So just having her on the about us page opened a lot of doors because we had this baller that was our partner. And then I had been working at work that big law firm. So I had my big law firm credit and my husband had been a he’s from Australia. He had been an urban planners, and then we had this one deal that we’d syndicated the mobile home park.

So we had a little bit that we could contribute but mostly the doors are open because of her. And in the end, she couldn’t even, we didn’t even end up ever doing a deal together. Cause she was so busy that she didn’t even have a moment to look at anything, but it opened the doors. And from just being able to send this out, brokers took us seriously.

We were able to get something under contract and then closed two more deals. .

Seyla: [00:10:40] Incredible.  Will you be able to walk us through and share any tips or tricks of how do you go about from two units to a thousand units in one year? That’s incredible.

Monick: [00:10:54] The mobile home park that was 109 units. And then we did two more deals in Albuquerque that was 128 together.

And then we would passively invested. And then I think we did a fourth deal that year. then I think we started, but it closed maybe the next year, but between all of the deals that we were able to get over a thousand, 1,012 doors. Or we got a 1,010 at the end. So once it was through leverage, it was, that was how we were able to do it.

Aileen: [00:11:27] You said on the first deal you had called your family and friends to get them to invest. How did that conversation go? Because I’m assuming that they probably didn’t have too much of understanding of what syndication was so how did that conversation go? How did you educate them to show them that it was a good opportunity?

Monick: [00:11:45] Now I’ll be honest. The people for the most part, that people that invested with us, they were people that we’ve met through real estate. And then we had one that knew me outside, but she was, she’d done plenty of real estate. So she understood real estate. So a lot of people think. What I’ve found is that it’s actually hardest to get your friends and family to invest.

At least initially. They don’t know you that way. So they have a very, Robert Helms says it’s hard to get people to take you seriously when they’ve seen you drunk and in your underwear. And they have a very different sense of who you are. So my family, at that point, they knew me as an attorney, or they knew me as the entrepreneur, because I had a different business. I was doing at the time, either an app business, but I, they did not know. And they knew that I was flipping, but like to go from that to, okay, let’s buy like a hundred, that was a change. And they were like, wait, what? And for them to invest, that was, that felt really different. Now there after four years of doing it and success. So tell me more, tell me what you’re doing. Tell me more about this. And now they’re starting to open up to it, but at the time they just did not, they were not seeing me that way. Whereas if I went to an event and a real estate event, so first of all, everyone there already understands the value of real estate.

So I didn’t have to explain that to them. And oftentimes they would then also understand syndications. So all that they were getting though that their, what they needed to get over their hurdles was is this the right deal for them? And were we the right operators? But once it’s like, could they trust us?

And they like the deal. I didn’t have to explain to the real estate. They already got that. And that’s a lot easier to do. Then to have to first get some ego. Okay. Real estate investing is something that could work for you really. So then they had to get over that hurdle and then you have to explain what syndication is and they have to get over to that.

And then you are you and then the deal. So all you have to get them over a lot more hoops, go through a lot more hoops then or hurdles. Then otherwise it’s easier to get real estate people who are already real estate people. To invest with you is what I’ve what I’ve found 

Seyla: [00:14:14] Monick, through out your real estate journey so far. What has been the most difficult challenge that you have faced and how did you deal with it?

Monick: [00:14:22] That’s a good question.

I think the most difficult challenge that I have faced, it’s been team member challenges. So real estate is very much a team sport and you can’t do it alone. And you’re very much dependent on the other people that you’re working with. Whether that is having a property manager of bad property managers have been challenged property with good.

How many managers are worth their weight in gold, because they are, they’re running your business. They’re managing your business. They manage everything. So when they are great, you don’t have toxic things working as off, like when things are smooth, they’re working great. That’s awesome. But when it’s not great, it’s a very bad, I have found that having the wrong people on the bus can make or break your deal pretty quickly.

So you really want to have the best people you can. And when it’s not working fixing quick, because they can, that can take down the shit. Roll really fast. So those have been the biggest, yeah, that’s the, that’s been the biggest challenge. So making sure that you have the right people and then there’s not change them out very quickly.

Aileen: [00:15:34] So what do you look for in a good partner?

Monick: [00:15:38] Yeah, that’s a great question from one of my mentors. I learned the three CS and it’s a way of searching for partners that has made a huge difference in our experience. So the first C and these are an order of importance. So the first C is character. What kind of character is this person for me, it’s really important that they be high integrity.

They say what they’re going to do. And then they do it when they say they’re going to do it. They’re honest. They treat people well. So I observed, and I find it just observing them. How do they, are they showing out? How are they treating all the people they’re dealing with? It’s one day they were like, nice to me, but then we’re at lunch.

And then they like to out the waiter or what I’m like. Yeah, no, that’s not going to work for me. So they have to really treat everyone well. So those are the character traits that I look for. That’s the first thing. And then the after that it’s commitment. So I think of commitment in two ways.

First is a commitment to our shared mission, vision and values. There are certain values that are very important to me when it comes to real estate investing and commitment. So one of my commitments is to invest. Only where I can leave the property and the community better than I found it. Not about being, or taking every dollar out of a deal.

It really is. It’s very important to me that we are improving the lives for our tenants and the com in the surrounding community. So it’s important for me that the people I work with feel the same way and have that same commitment to improving the people, the lives, where we’re investing.

And then I also have a commitment to relationships for life. So I’m not transactional in how I think about people. I want to treat people really well so that we don’t want to keep working with me forever. Like we just won’t keep doing deals together cause we love each other and we, but I want them to do that too.

I don’t want to be with somebody who doesn’t have that same commitment. I’m going to try to take advantage. Of me or my investors. And then on the other side, commitment, it’s important that they commit to the actual project that we’re doing. So if you hire them, the contractor and they have 10 other jobs are doing, they’re not showing up when they’re meant to show up, they don’t have that commitment then screw you. Same with partners. Same with anybody. You want them to be fully committed to the project and give it the attention it deserves. So that’s commitment. And the last C is capacity, which is something that, are they able to do the job that you need them to do?

And that is something that would in certain roles you can teach. But what I have learned is that I actually do not want to have to teach that. Not only do I know when I have to teach that, but I, somebody I’ve learned work with the best they won’t cost you money, they’ll make you money. So with the capacity piece, I want to, and I’ve made this mistake of hiring the cheapest.

Thinking that would make the most sense for the, for what I was saying. it’s like dollars and cents. If you spend less for the overall budget, Except hiring these contractors in Albuquerque, they were the cheapest did not know what they’re doing, took twice as long as they needed to.

And then I had to get in the good person. Who came and had to fix all the stuff that the cheap guy messed up. And so it ended up costing us a lot time, costing us a lot more money in the end because I went with the cheapest instead of the best. And what I’ve found with the, if you try to work with, if you work with the best, they not only do they know what they’re doing, they often don’t shortcuts.

They know people and A players, and to work with other A players. So then they introduce you to other brave people. And so then you have, now you have a true 18. So that’s what I look for when I either, when I’m putting together a team, whether that’s my partners or. Vendors, contractors, whatever.

I look for those three Cs. And when all of those lineup, I have great results.

Aileen: [00:19:44] Now that’s a really great way to put it because you can apply it not only to real estate, but to all areas in life as well. So that’s really great advice.

Monick: [00:19:51] It’s served me very well.

Seyla: [00:19:54] And Monick, will you be able to talk to us a little bit about The Real Estate Investor Goddesses?

What was your inspiration and what made you so passionate about it?

Monick: [00:20:04] Sure. It came as this divine download to create real estate investor goddesses. I went to my first syndication seminar, January, 2016, and it was in Phoenix. So we stayed at a hotel.  I remember the Friday and Saturday night, there was a social thing  happening.

Sowet was stayed through that. And I left, we were going to leave Sunday morning. I was at the hotel gym. I was on the elliptical and I was processing the weekend and thinking about one of the things they were talking about, they’re saying, think about who do you want to work with?

Build a brand built a network. Do you want to work with? And I was thinking back on that room for about 120 people there that weekend and. Maybe nine women in the room. I think two of which were working in the back. It was, there was just no women, very few women there. And there are no women in there and in between being a lawyer full time.

And I actually became a coach and I was coaching women around money and abundance. So the money mastery coach for women. So it just came like download, bring women into this room. This is how you build wealth. This is really the way to build wealth. This is great for women who are busy, this is creates passive income streams.

Give them freedom. For instance, wealth gap bring women here. And it just came in this mission to help 1 million women create finance freedom that came to me, not the, how I had no idea the how of it, but the what of it came to me and it just, it felt so right. And I went home and I started Googling. I was there for women and real estate, and there was a lot on women, real estate agents and brokers.

Nothing for investors about one other company, but they were just focused on helping women with wholesaling. And I was just, there was nothing. And so I was like, okay, that’s like the mission. All right, God, I’ll do it. You just show me the way. Show me the next steps and I’ll just show up. So that’s how it was born.

And little by little I’ve been getting out there and. Women are coming and it’s been great.

Aileen: [00:22:18] No, that’s great to have a strong woman to pave the path for everybody else. And so it’s really great that you started this investor goddesses. So we really appreciate that.

Monick: [00:22:27] Thank you. And I’m definitely not alone in it.

There was very, it was very deliberate. That the name is plural because sometimes people go, Oh, you’re the real estate investor goddess. I was like, no, I’m not the real, the founder, a real estate investor goddesses, because it’s really, this is, it’s a sisterhood. I feel like we’re all goddesses. We all have at least a drop the divine within us.

And there are incredible women within the community that are doing amazing things. and so I bring them out and highlight them to my, to the rest of the audience. and we’re in this together, like my antidote to the old boys network.

Seyla: [00:23:04] Since you jumped from being a lawyer to real estate investing.

How has real estate investing impacted your life?

Monick: [00:23:13] Oh my gosh.

So many ways I was really unhappy. Like I just, at one point my, I remember it was a Tuesday morning and my appendix ruptured and I ended up in the ER. And, and when the doctor told me that, and then I’d have to be in the hospital for several days, ended up being in the hospital for nine days, and then I’d have at least 30 days afterwards to recover.

I remember sitting there and just flooded with this overwhelming sense of relief, Oh, thank God. I don’t have to go to work for at least 30 days. And then my next thought was, Oh, that’s how unhappy I was until that moment, when you’d rather be in the hospital, but life threatening, excruciating illness than be at work. That’s not a good place to work. And I knew, they don’t know what caused it, but I knew that it was stress from my job. Like I knew that my job literally was killing me, but I had done everything right. I just I’ve been on the path that I was told to be on. And I had gone to college and the Ivy league law school, and I was a big law firm, partnership, track, six figures, done everything I was supposed to do. And I was that unhappy. So with real estate, what real estate has allowed me to do is it’s allowed me to be me.

So I felt like I had these golden handcuffs when I was working as a lawyer because I had law school loans and I had a lifestyle specific costumes here. I liked being at my Santa Monica apartment, overlooking the ocean and like Audi in the garage and all that stuff.

Although I would’ve given it up to be happy and I love to travel. And. Real estate helped me be able to still live the lifestyle I loved while having freedom. And it’s been able to help me to the actually I feel like live my purpose. So with all of these, I get to do what I love. I get to, and I just am like obsessed with real estate and love.

I love learning about real estate. I love real estate. So all of that, and I can, I think I can appreciate it so much because it’s such a contrast to how miserable I was when I wasn’t doing it. So that’s a long way of answering your question. Probably I answered to it.

Seyla: [00:25:43] Yes, you did. You answered my question so money, you have so much experience in real estate. You invested in multifamily, mobile home parks, RV parks, flipping commercial, vacation rentals, syndications, and all that. And now owning over 1,300 units. what’s next for you?

Monick: [00:26:04] What is next is, I’m still on my mission to help millions.

So one of the things that I’m working on is something called the goddess fund, but I’m working on a fund that will be, that will help that democratize investing a bit because syndications at a very, a typical minimum investment is $50,000. I know a lot of people did not have access to, but I want to help.

More women at different from wherever they are. So this fund will have a thousand minimum, and it will be geared towards female investors and we’ll be investing in majority, female run real estate projects. So female operators. And so I’m really excited by that as a way to help a lot more women get in the game.

So that’s one of the things that I’m doing. And it’s going to continue to put it out there. I love my life. Like I don’t feel like I personally need to continue to do it, but I just, I’m still on my mission. I, I’m in the thousands and I have a lot of a long way to go still.

Seyla: [00:27:13] Wishing you all the best on that. What is one thing that sets those successful people apart in the real estate investing business, especially for someone who just started out?

Monick: [00:27:23] That is such a good question. I think that the most successful people have a couple of things. The most successful people take action. That’s really, so you get educated, you know what you’re doing, but you take, you get educated.

For effective action. So a lot of people will either not get educated and those sort of like jump and bumble and, what does, what you don’t know can hurt you with real estate? Unfortunately, it is the most expensive thing most people ever buy. And so mistakes can be costly. So you do want to get an education.

Do you want to know what you’re doing? You do want to ideally have mentors that can help support you and Keep you on track, but then you want to take action. So the people that are successful, I think a lots of action. They’re not there. There’s always some level of risks with anything with life, but they will move.

And that’s what I found has been the biggest differentiator. Yeah,

Aileen: [00:28:26] Absolutely. The education part is very important, especially when you’re doing the syndications and using other people’s money. you wanna make sure that you’re preserving that and putting that as the, as a priority.

Monick: [00:28:37] Oh yeah. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was talking about your own money when you other people’s money, you’ll really like you really need an education. You also need securities attorneys, make sure you’re doing things right, because yeah. It’s like as much as you don’t want to lose your own money, you should, a hundred times more and don’t want to lose anyone else’s money. And so really keep it at the, like the highest standard. So yes, do not just go out not knowing what you’re doing and take other people’s money and mess it up. Do that with your own money, if you’d like, but don’t do that with anyone else.

Seyla: [00:29:11] Monick, you mentioned about taking actions. What tools or techniques have you used that actually helping you with taking those actions to the next level or improve the efficiency of your business or personal life?

Monick: [00:29:25] I think one of the biggest things that has helped me was from the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller so doing the one thing.

So I’m going to give you the secret to the whole book, which is like this one question. It’s a good book, I guess it’s really great. But basically it all boils out to this one question that you ask yourself, which is what’s the one thing I can do that will make everything else easier and necessary.

So most people have very long to do lists and it’s not prioritized at all in terms of importance. Because a lot of people, they might even think they’re taking a lot of action, but they’re just being busy and not being effective. And the actions that they’re taking, don’t actually move the ball forward at all.

And so doing the one thing question, and that’s something that I do ask myself every morning. And so I’ve focused on taking the action that will most move me forward. Not just taking any action because I spent plenty of time doing lots of actions that were not like, you’d be like, okay, I need to make my website more beautiful.

Or write another blog post that no one will read or like that. It was like a lot of like busy stuff. That’d be, will think that, Oh, I need to do all of this stuff. Whereas it’s not necessarily the thing that’s going to. Actually move the needle, but asking the one thing and then having mentorship and people that around that I could talk to, who’ve done it before and whom I could trust that does that’s really been the biggest things for me.

Aileen: [00:31:01] Awesome.

Thank you so much, Monique. W really enjoyed learning about the real estate investor goddesses and your story and how you got to where you are today. And so I know our listeners are really curious too, and if they wanted to learn more about you, where can they go?

Monick: [00:31:15] The best place to go is my website, REI goddesses.com.

I’m also at REI goddesses on all the socials.

Aileen: [00:31:24] Awesome. we really appreciate your time when he could really had a lot of fun today with you.

Monick: [00:31:29] Thanks for having me. This was lots of fun.