Aileen (00:01):

Thank you, everyone for joining today’s episode of the, how did they do it? Real estate podcasts. We are your hosts Seyla and Aileen and today’s guest is Angel Williams. Angel has been involved in real estate, investing her whole life, but began her personal real estate investing journey in 2003. She’s a co-founder of the Academy Presents and the managing partner of Lorren Capital LLC. Angel has experienced in single family, home rentals, small mouth multifamily, home rentals, and passive investing in multifamily syndication deals. Angel graduated from Baylor University in 2000 with a BBA in economics and in 2002 with an MS in economics. Angel, grateful to have you on. How are you doing?

Angel Williams (00:39):

Hi guys. How are you all?

Aileen (00:41):

Great. Thank you so much for joining us.

Angel Williams (00:44):

I’m super excited.

Aileen (00:47):

So we’d love to get started with you starting off by telling us a little bit more about your background and just how you got started in real estate.

Angel Williams (00:55):

So my grandparents got into real estate, late seventies, and early eighties. It was kind of similar to what’s going on now, maybe similar to what happened in Oh seven ish. It was actually when Paul Volcker, I want to say it was Paul Volcker had just, he was the federal chairman and he had just combat a stagflation by increasing, you know, the fed rates by like almost a full percentage point. Maybe it was a full percentage point either way. It was like total shocker. And so people were able, if they had anything in reserves, they were able to get into real estate without, without a lot of barriers entry. So like my grandmother actually only made it through eighth grade because she’s she was Mexican and her family would migrant farm, so they would pick cotton. So she actually only made it through the eighth grade because they were gone every season when it was time to go and harvest.

Angel Williams (01:49):

My grandfather, Lettieri worked very, very hard for his grades and was a C student and worked hard for the seas. And so when you kind of consider that and then consider the fact that in the late seventies, early eighties, they were able to get a quadplex, which was actually a half a mansion. So Megan was cut in half and they turned that into four efficiency apartments, and then they had a small trailer park and they had, let’s see one, two or three single family homes as well. And so those eventually were all paid off. And so it was just bringing in cash flow. So it turned out to be a really nice car for them until my grandmother passed away. And then my grandfather at, you know, 70 is trying to shuffle around and collect rent and I’m like, grandpa, no, we’re getting you a property manager.

Angel Williams (02:39):

So that’s kind of, that was my experience with it. It was watching them, they self-manage, and they would go property to property to pick up rents. And the one thing that I got out of that was I never want to self-manage my properties ever. So that was what I took away from that. And then on my husband’s side of things, his family was in residential multifamily. So over the years they amassed, I think its 62 units of residential multifamily. So those are your, you know, duplexes, triplexes, quads. So that’s where Jason came into this. And so that was kind of our background. And then in Oh three, we bought our first house knowing that when Jason finished his doctorate that would become our first rental and that’s what happened. So,

Aileen (03:26):

Oh, wow. So you both, you and your husband have a lot of experience and your family have a lot experienced in real estate. So that’s great that you’ve been able to follow in their footsteps and learn from all their experience and realize what you like and what you don’t like.

Angel Williams (03:38):

Absolutely. It was a really natural progression for us. So,

Aileen (03:42):

So when you were looking for your property manager for your grandpa how did you find his property manager and where did you know? Where did you look?

Angel Williams (03:52):

So there was a couple of houses in the clean area, which if anyone listening is military, they know that’s Fort hood. So we try to manage her there and it didn’t work out. So grandpa had a bad taste in his mouth after that. And he’s like, no, I’ll just keep managing. I’m like, nah, we’re going to find you someone grandpa. And we wound up going word of mouth and our neighbours or his neighbours, friend’s daughter, something was referred to us. And I wound up talking to Alyssa and she seemed great. And I mean, I still send her a Christmas gift every Christmas because she really came in and took care of my grandfather. She would help him go through his mail. She would make sure all of his deposits were going into his bank. She was, she really cared for him. And so I feel very strongly about referrals and really using that word of mouth when I’m trying to find a management agency or a property manager, or just anybody that I’m going to be using to help us make our money work for us. So that was that was how we came across that property manager.

Aileen (05:00):

That makes sense. I mean having your property managers, being referrals to you guys, I mean that will be the best way is the word of mouth. And you mentioned that you bought your first house and knowing that your first house going to be your rental, what happened after then?

Angel Williams (05:19):

So I’m going to back up just a little bit. So at this point I’ve got, you know, I finished my bachelor’s degree. I got my master’s, there are no jobs in to none. And I took a job teaching at a private school in a very small town outside of Lubbock. I was making $15,000 a year. That’s just under a thousand dollars a month. And actually when Aflac came to the school, I was able to switch into an Aflac program. So then all of my deductions were pre-tax, which took me to like $1,001 and some change every month. So with that kind of in mind, I was also week I was working weekends at Sutherland’s, which is like a big lumber store. And I was working on the lumber side as a cashier. So I was working all week teaching and then working at Southern ones on the weekends.

Angel Williams (06:11):

And my husband was in grad school and his dad comes down and helps us find a house. And the house we wound up buying he’d actually been a rental previously. So we were able to buy it for $65,000. Oh, wow. Yeah, it appraises, I think at about 110 hundred and 20 now, so awesome purchase. And that was in, even though it had been a rental previously, that wasn’t the reason why we bought it. We bought it because it was a good deal and we knew it would eventually be a rental again. So that was how we got into the very first one

Aileen (06:48):

Tent was to purchase that first property to live in for you and your husband. Was that correct?

Angel Williams (06:54):

Yeah, we intended to live in, to live in it until he finished his doctorate and we moved elsewhere.

Aileen (07:00):

Okay. And so then after you guys purchased that first rental what did you guys do after that?

Angel Williams (07:07):

Right. So after, yeah, after Jason finished his doctorate, we wound up moving to Wichita Falls and we got here and we were settled in, things were going pretty good. And we were like, Hey, let’s get another house. So we actually did a cash out, refi on the house in Lubbock to buy the house here. Then a few months later we found another house and it was a HUD home and we were actually the highest bid, but we didn’t get it because we were I guess, placed by an owner occupy because we were buying it as investors. And so somebody that bid lower actually got it because they were going to owner occupied, then that fell through for whatever reason. And we had already appropriated the funds that we were going to use as the down payment elsewhere. So when it came available again, we were like, oh crap. And so we called up Jason’s parents and we were like, Hey so that house came up available again. And can we get a loan for the down payment? So we were able to take a loan from them for the down payment on the second one. So then we’re in a situation where we’ve got two houses here with really no out-of-pocket money. So that, that was kind of neat. And that was how we wound up with the first two single families here in Wichita Falls. So

Aileen (08:24):

You mentioned that it was a HUD home. Can you elaborate on that?

Angel Williams (08:27):

So I don’t really know all the ins and outs of it, but I think it’s like it follows special rules. So like with the head home in the bathroom, it has to have a certain kind of sheet rock. When I was younger I was in college yet. I think I was still in high school and my parents bought a home that they were rehabbing and the guy that bought it, bought it under HUD and it had to have green rock in the bathroom and in the kitchen and it had to be so many feet from electrical plugs had to be green. And then you had to have your like GFC eyes and all of those technicalities. So that’s kind of my understanding. The other thing I’ve heard about the head homes is a lot of times government assistance goes into those. And so again, they have to follow specific requirements for how they are for how they’re built and their safety requirements. But I really, that’s kind of just what I remember. I don’t know other than, hey, it was a HUD home.

Seyla (09:32):

You also own a small multifamily home rentals at what point that you transitions to that or type family homes rental.

Angel Williams (09:43):

So Jason’s dad had a general partnership and inside were some of those residential multi-families. And so those came to us when Jason’s dad passed away and we had always known we were going to hit multifamily. And that was when we decided, you know, we can single family and it’s very comfortable to me. I liked doing single family. I can walk into a home, I can look at the tax value. I can look at the ask. I know what to offer. I’m just single family, really easy to me, but we knew that it was very difficult to scale. And so we were already making that transition into multifamily and multifamily syndication when those came across our plate and the mitigation of vacancy in any level of multifamily, whether it’s a big syndication or a residential is way better than single family because single family home, when it’s empty is a hundred percent empty. At least if it was a duplex, it might’ve only been 50% of empty. So that was that’s what pushed us over into the multifamily direction.

Seyla (10:52):

How did you feel about after you got into the multifamily space? How’s that compared to the single family space in terms of comparable and the abilities to manage them how how’s that compared to the single homes?

Angel Williams (11:10):

So as far as like the residential, multi-families, it’s really very, very similar. So like we have a property manager for all of our single families and actually on the portfolio we just bought, when we were sitting at title, we took the keys from the lady at title and hated them directly to our realtor who was right there beside us. We will probably never step foot in those houses. They’ll do the make readies and they’ll just put people in them and then we’ll just get checks. And the residential multi-family is very much the same. If there’s something big, we get a phone call like there was a plumbing mishap, and it was going to be more than $300. And that’s kind of our cut-off if it’s, if it’s less than 300, just do it. If it’s than 300, let us know.

Angel Williams (11:54):

So like when the roof had to be replaced, you know, we had to, we had to make those insurance phone calls to get that taken care of. And then with the plumbing mishap, we had to be called cause they, it was a slab house. So it had to be rerouted through the attic. So, I mean, it could have been more expensive, but its residential multifamily and single home, I think are very similar as far as how involved you have to be with the property manager. Now when you talk like large multifamily, we’re passive in those. And I came to this realization that passive, like a passive investor and a multifamily syndication is way different than a passive investor in a single family home. Passive in a multifamily syndication is like for real mailbox money, you do nothing. You just get money. Whereas in what we believed was passive with the single family and the residential multifamily really isn’t that passive you’re, you’re more involved than you think you are. So that’s yeah, that’s kind of where we’re at that my husband is he’s ready to go active side and multifamily syndication. And it’s probably my own limiting belief, but I’m, I’m very, very comfortable in single family. And so I don’t know, we’ll have to, we’ll have to see where that goes. It’s got to get out of that comfort zone.

Angel Williams (13:15):

I know, but there’s so many moving parts in a, in a large multifamily syndication. I mean, it’s like, Oh, and you’re responsible for like all of those residents and for the safety of those residents. And because I mean in my heart of hearts, like you, you’re giving someone a place to live. You are promising to them that this is going to be safe and you’re going to have hot and cold water, and you’re going to have a roof over your head and there’s not going to be water pouring in your house every time it rains. And you’re going to have a heater. You’re not going to have to find 20 blankets to cover up with in the winter because there’s no heat. It’s just a lot of responsibility. I mean, I’m up for the job, but single family homes are just so much easier.

Aileen (14:02):

And so angel can you walk us through so fast forward to today, what is your portfolio currently look like?

Angel Williams (14:10):

All right. So we’ve now got five single family homes a quad, two duplexes we’re passive in four large multi-family syndications. And then I’ve got a piece of land back home that I am looking to build a quad on at a minimum. What I’d really like to see happen is do a lot split. And do I wanted to do two quads that I was told that it’s not large enough that if I did two quads, there’d be no parking. So now I’m kind of like, can I duplex with a lot split? So we’ll see, I may have another little parcel of land behind the lot that I have so that I can go ahead and get those two quads, because even if I do a lot, split two quads would basically be a small multifamily. So we’ll see, that’s kind of what I’m hoping to do, but anyone that tells you that a ground up development is fast is absolutely lying. I’ve been trying to get this thing built for probably four years now. It’s, it’s a small town it’s you got to know the right people. And even though I grew up there, the people I know that can build it for me are not from there. And so the permitting and all of those things where you get to know the right people just isn’t happening. So I need to figure out what the heck I’m going to do with that piece of land, because I really want to build on it. So

Seyla (15:30):

Awesome. So, and Joe’s you also running the real estate investing education or with a virtual summits will you be able to talk a little bit about that?

Angel Williams (15:44):

Sure. So we did our first three-day virtual summit in March of this past year and March is women’s history month. So we did have only female speakers. So that was that was actually, it was really fun. It’s probably the most fun I had ever had professionally up to that point. Was it crazy? Absolutely. I was told, you know, it’s just coordinating people, Dan. It was not just coordinating people. It was like crazy but fun. And it was just, it was just the most fun I’d ever had up to that point. And then we had our second one here in September at the end of September, and I didn’t think I could have had more fun and I had more fun it’s when I left teaching my husband and I had a big discussion of, you know, what are we going to do?

Angel Williams (16:43):

And I was like, well, I can talk. He’s like, okay. And I was like, what else can I do? I can talk to anybody. It was just kind of natural for me. Whether I’m, you know, teaching elementary or middle school or college, I still have that teacher heart and I want to help people. And by sharing what I know and what, what I can gather from other experts in the field in real estate, investing fills my educator heart because I’m still able to share information and I’m able to share it with people that want to know it and want to grow from it. And so that’s, that’s where we went with that and swab, we got into it and it’s just, it’s just fun. Dang it. Especially now with everything that’s going on with COVID, it’s people don’t get to meet up all that much anymore, and there’s not a lot of live events. And so getting to do those virtual summits is it kind of fills that cup because I need those. I need to talk to people. I can’t talk to my kids all day long. It it’s cold.

Aileen (17:53):

No, definitely. It’s a great way to be able to connect with people.

Angel Williams (17:57):

I love the babies seriously. Like, so when you do a summit, it’s like, it’s like almost a one-on-one with these huge names in the industry, this huge names in the space. And it’s like, it’s seriously like a one-on-one conversation. And so you get to really know so many people and the same is true. Like with a podcast or a YouTube channel, you get to actually meet people and you get to build these relationships that are more than just a, Hey, when you see them later on or a handshake, you know, it’s, it’s more substantial than that. And I think that that’s part of what I really love about it is those substantial relationships to build by having a platform like this, or like a platform, like what you all are building. I mean, it’s just awesome. The way that you get to build those relationships and you get to become like, when you surround yourself with people that are where you want to be one day, you’re going to be there and you get to like really embrace that and be like, Holy crap, I’m going to be there one day.

Angel Williams (19:04):

Because like, I remember let’s see when we first met or when we first saw Joe, this would have been, let’s see, I hadn’t started teaching yet. So I think it was 2017 or 18. And we were at an event and Joe was one of the speakers and it was the Clothier family that was doing it. I remember walking up to, I think it was the youngest son and I looked at him, I looked him straight in the eyes. I was like, I want to have your friends someday. And now I look back on Facebook at my friends list and I got some of his friends now. And it was just super cool to think that by surrounding yourself with people that are where you want to be, you’re eventually going to be there now. They probably won’t be there when you reach there because they’re going to keep advancing.

Angel Williams (19:49):

But it’s still really cool to know that I said, I want your friends and visualized what it would be like once we got there and now we’re kind of there at, to where they were at that point. Do we have further to go? Of course, do, does anybody ever really stop? But it’s, it’s just really neat to see that if you really surround yourself with people that are where you want to be, they’re going to keep pulling you up and pulling you along, unless you’re a jerk. But it’s, it’s just super neat and dang, it’s just so much fun. I’ve never been around more supportive people than I have been in this space.

Aileen (20:30):

Absolutely. I think we would fully agree with that. So do you have any other plans to have hosted any more virtual summit events later this year? Well, we only have like November and December,

Angel Williams (20:43):

Actually in March, I think March 24, 25th and 26. But let me look on my calendar real quick and make sure I get those dates, right. Let’s see. Oh, that’s November, December, January, February, and March. Am I there? Yeah, so actually it’s March 25th, 26th, 27th. So that’s our next one. And so we’ll have our next summit. I’ve actually already got my first speaker. Anna Myers is the first speaker to say yes. So yay. And depending on whether we do an all-female line-up again, or we do a mix I’ll be asking other people I’m kind of, I don’t know, thinking maybe just a heavy female lean and to do a little bit of a mix. Just because I think it appeals to people that way, but I have always worked really hard to make sure that I represent a lot of different groups of people whenever I’m putting a summit together, because as an educator, I know that we’re not all one kind.

Angel Williams (21:51):

And so I try to include as many different kinds of people as I can, because again, educator, heart, I want to appeal to as many people as possible. So we’ll, we’ll see where it goes. But yeah, the next one is in March and I can’t imagine going backwards. So it’s probably going to have, you know, 25 plus speakers panels. I will say that our production company has a new, like summit software that we’re looking at. And so the way it works is some of it’s pre-recorded, some of its live session and you basically, you get your access and you decide where you want to be at what times. So it’s, it’s a very new, different kind of idea. And we’re pretty excited to try it. I’m not sharing too much because I don’t want someone to be like, oh man, that’s a great idea. Let me hop on that before she can.

Angel Williams (22:46):

So I try and be a little bit more, but I’m really excited. And then I’ve got another, I’m working on another thing. I talked about a little bit at Todd’s event too, you know, about wanting to help teachers. And so I’m working on that right now. I’m, I’m working on my first email out to educators to try and help them get some financial freedom. Because as a teacher, I feel like so many of us have had our voices stolen from us basically? We don’t get to stand up for what we feel because testing or administrator wants this, or you need to do this. You need to do this. So that voice and the power to do what needs to be done in the classroom has kind of been stripped away. And so I want to offer to my, to my colleagues, to teachers, an opportunity to get some freedom, get some financial freedom.

Angel Williams (23:44):

So there’s not that dependency on the pay check to help pay your bills. Because when you’ve got a little bit of wiggle room, you get to teach from your heart and soul and you get to be a different teacher in the classroom because you’ve got some of that power back and it’s just very free flowing and you get to, you get to teach differently. And when, when maybe things don’t go so well, there’s options because I have so many friends that teach. And even when things are going horribly, they don’t feel like they have any options. And that is just soul crushing to not have any options and not be able to detach from that pay check because you have to have that pay check to pay your bills. You don’t have a choice and it’s just, I mean, it’s full crushing. And so I want to eliminate some of that crush and give them the opportunity to buy into some real estate, buy into some stream of income that will help you out.

Angel Williams (24:48):

So you don’t feel so just oppressed it’s. I mean, I don’t know how to explain the feelings that you feel, but it’s, its run when I didn’t have to feel that way anymore. It, it was awesome. And it just changed a lot of things for me. It, it helped me to focus more on the relationship versus the content, which is another reason why I didn’t always get along with certain people in power. Because I just, I look at my own daughter, my 12 year old and she’s remote schooling. And I can tell who her favourite teachers are because she actually does their assignments. And that was something that I always said to him. If you listen to different Ted talks, there’s teachers on there, that’ll tell you the same thing. A kid’s not going to learn from you if they don’t like you.

Angel Williams (25:43):

So I feel like the relationship is more important than the content is the content important. Yes, the content is important, but if the, if the student doesn’t like you, they’re not going to learn the content. If a kid likes you, they’re going to work their tail off to get that content down. And so it’s a little bit of a different viewpoint, but I know that there’s other educators out there that feel the same way. And if I can give them some financial freedom so that they don’t have to constantly do exactly and precisely what they’re being yelled at to do then teachers could form together and stand up for the values that we all go into teaching for, you know, to make a difference and to do what we feel is right. And that isn’t always teaching to a test or creamy content down a kid’s throat because it’s just not it’s. I don’t know. I think there’s better ways to do it. Absolutely. You know, that’s a really great passion that you’re to pursue right now

Aileen (26:44):

Because you’re not only just trying to change a teacher’s life, but at the same time the teachers are going to be impacting the students’ lives. And so that’s really, really a really great passion that you guys are you’re pursuing right now. So great job.

Angel Williams (26:57):

Yeah. It’s just scary. Everything else we’ve ever done, like whether it’s you know, the YouTube episodes or doing the sound comes kind of like, yeah, let’s just do it. And I don’t think much about it. And this is so on my heart that it’s taken me forever to do it and it’s, it doesn’t need to be perfect. But when I send out that first email, I don’t want somebody to go, Oh, this isn’t for me. This can’t help me. I’m different. This can’t help me. She’s never going to be able to help me. I want them to look at it and be like, Hey, this is another teacher that figured out a different way to get this done. And so I’m trying to get the wording not perfect, but I want to make sure that I can help as many people as I can in that first email, because I don’t want to just get blown off because I just, I really, really, really want to help my team, my fellow teachers, my colleagues be able to be the kind of teacher that they went into teaching to be. Because I think people go into teaching with this idea that you’re going to be a certain kind of teacher, and then you get there and you’re told no, no, no, do it this way. Not this way, no, this, no that in you don’t get to do what you thought you were going to be able to do. And I feel like by offering that ability to have some financial freedom teachers get to gain back that idea of this is what I went into teaching for. And that’s my hope

Seyla (28:26):

Probably really like your passion and your vision. So I really liked the message out there. So Angela, how has real estate impacted your life so far?

Angel Williams (28:39):

Well, real estate gave us freedom. Yes, my husband still has a W2, but real estate gave us a way to make ma make our money work for us. And that was one of the cool things with doing this last portfolio purchase is we went commercial side and our commercial banker said, you can do a single phone, a single family home commercial. And I was like, what? Because I thought you could only do, you know, traditional lending on single family helps. This is not true. And so we were able to do our little portfolio as a commercial loan is the interest rate higher. Yes, but it was quick. And the other thing that happened was we had the two investment properties here. So they did a loan assumption. So those two houses were pulled out of traditional lending and pulled into a commercial line.

Angel Williams (29:39):

What that did was that opened up the avail, the ability to have a line of credit based on the, it was an equity line of credit based on the equity in the investment properties. And so even though the equity is still in those houses, we’re kind of getting to use it because it’s a lot of credit. So there’s not too many times that you can use the same dollar more than once we’re doing it in infinite banking. And now we’re doing it with a line of credit based on the equity in those houses. And so just we’ve learned massive amounts of information by using a different kind of loan. And it’s, it’s been a really cool experience it’s and when we decided upfront, we were like, even if we only break even in these houses, what, what kind of value can we put on what we’re going to learn?

Angel Williams (30:31):

Because the houses that we’ve bought and even the residential multifamily are pretty solid. B’s the multifamily syndications we’ve got into pretty solid bees. There may be one that sit in C plus, but pretty much, you know, seventies, eighties builds mostly eighties built in that, you know, the B class neighbourhoods. So that’s kind of what we knew. And these houses are built in the sixties, C ish C minus, maybe it’s different, but we’re hoping that by learning something about a new class, we’ll be able to extrapolate that into multifamily so that when we go active side, we’ll have a wider range of experience in asset classes and in the grade of asset too. So

Seyla (31:20):

Thank you for sharing that. So what is one thing that, you know now about real estate that you wish you knew when you first started?

Angel Williams (31:30):

Get into it sooner? It’s not that hard. I’m really hoping that our daughters see that and hop in way earlier than we did. I mean, we got in, in our twenties, you know, mid, mid to late twenties, but I would love to see our daughters get in, you know, when they’re 18, because you can, you can technically buy a house before you’re 18, but your parent has to also be on the loan. And that would be fine as an experience too. But I would love to see them owning some homes at 18, 1920, because it’s just not that hard. I thought it was, it’s very intimidating. And you think, oh, well, I can’t, I’ll never be as good as my parents. I’ll never be as good as my grandparents, you know, they’ve had so much more experience and blah, blah, blah, and you talk yourself out of it.

Angel Williams (32:24):

And I just wish that I wish we’d gotten in sooner. And I hope that I can take away some of that fear, especially when it comes to reaching out to my fellow teachers, because it’s not that hard. And if don’t know it, you’re going to learn along the way and then you’re going to remember it better. Anyhow. So when it, when it’s your own experience in your own learning experience, you hold onto it. Can you learn from other people’s experiences? Absolutely. You know, why we don’t get mentors to cut down on alert, learning curve, right. So we can learn from other people’s experiences, but when you learn them on your own too, it’s like Palm pounding when you’re learning.

Seyla (33:03):

Wow. Spot on what is one thing that sets successful people apart in the real estate investing business?

Angel Williams (33:18):

Probably just fear of jumping in. When we started investing passively, if I had known what I know now, we probably never would have done it. So I’m very glad that we were, you know, it was, they say ignorance is bliss. I’m very happy. We were ignorant because we’re in four deals and they’re all doing fine. You know, every, every deal has its own issues. Every deal has its pros and cons. And you know, some of them are doing better than others, but we haven’t gone full cycle yet. I don’t think that you can really judge a deal until its gone full cycle. And maybe that again is my own ignorance. But I just feel like if we had known more, we wouldn’t have done it. And so I’m really glad that we didn’t, or we might’ve never gotten in, especially on like the passive side of things.

Angel Williams (34:16):

And the other thing too, is had, had we waited and not done the deals we did when this oil and gas deal came across our plates. A few weeks ago, we wouldn’t have jumped on it because we would have, we wouldn’t be used to that, you know, JV LP II situation and environment relationship, we would have, and we wouldn’t have had those relationships already. And we wouldn’t have had those experiences in those four other syndications if we hadn’t done it. And if we hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have done the oil and gas. And so it’s, I think everything happens for a reason. Yes. And I don’t know, we’re excited about the diversification. So that’s, that’s going to be kind of neat. It’s a little scary, but it didn’t dry hole. So that’s a plus. Now if oil prices could just go up a little bit everything would be great, but I think, I guess like their proforma I don’t really know if that’s what you call it in oil and gas, but theirs was based on like a $50 a barrel price.

Angel Williams (35:10):

And in my mind, when I was looking at it, I was thinking 25 and we’re above 25. So, and it was still not a bad deal at 25. So we just have to see where it goes. But again, I mean, if we hadn’t, if I had been more knowledgeable, I probably never would have gotten into those first four or we never would’ve gotten into the search for which meant we would have never gotten into an oil and gas deal. So everything happens for a reason. Good, bad, whatever, but you know, the universe is out there. It has your back and things happen for a reason, so,

Aileen (35:44):

Yep. Totally agree. Yeah. Things happens for a reason. So Angel, what tools or techniques have you used to improve the efficiency of your business or personal life?

Angel Williams (35:56):

Well, I tried time-blocking but remote schooling kind of tore that apart. It worked for a little while and then again, like just remote schooling was wow. I thought my 12 year old could do it. I’m like, Oh, she can do it on her own. Because like, so I, I teach, I used to teach at the school she’s at now. And so I’m still friends with those guys and every now and then I’ll get a text. It be like, Hey, I think Julianne could turn in some assignments. And I’m like, what? And so then we’ll wind up like staying up all night and I’m sitting there making sure she’s actually doing her assignments. And that means the next day is just a total waste. So then I’m trying to work with my kindergartner and I’m just like falling asleep. And so the block scheduling kind of went out the window, but block scheduling is actually very effective.

Angel Williams (36:52):

And the other thing that’s helping too is we did 75 hard and yeah, so it actually took me 95 days to get my 75 because I forgot the progress picture twice and each time it was on day 10. We have the app now that we’re in phase one and I wish I would’ve had the app when I was doing the other one because it makes things way easier. But there’s a part of phase one where you complete, I think it’s three additional powerless task items that is a game changer. You know, we’re, we’re only seven days in, but it’s like having that task list and getting those things done. Wow. I feel super productive like today. My husband had me write everything out because he knows I have ADHD. I’m going to mess it up. I’m going to forget something. And then I’m going to come down to my cell and it’s going to get ugly.

Angel Williams (37:43):

So he was like, write it down and send it to me. Cause he’s out of town right now on business. So on this note card around, write out the whole day six 30 coffee program to start seven o’clock angel get up seven 30. I had everything written down, but that was my task list. And after this I’ve gotten it all done. And that means that, you know, at what 5:00 PM central, all of my tasks are complete. Anything I don’t anything I do above and beyond that it’s just extra. And so having that task list and being able to plow through those tasks list items, that’s that is for real away to be more productive and efficient and effective. And I will probably always have a task list from now on not just a, to do list, but something that I update every evening for the following day.

Angel Williams (38:35):

And my husband even added in that he writes his down and he, one of his task list items is go back and look at what you wrote down because kind of like in college, you know, you take notes and you never look at them again. He writes down those task list items and then he tells himself I have to go back and look at that list to make sure that he is attacked everything. He said he was going to attack. So I texted my list to him. He texts his list to me. And by texting it, I can go back and look at it. But for him it was handwriting it and looking back on it. And that’s what we’re doing to, I guess, move the needle forward so that we can really tackle what we need to tackle to move forward.

Aileen (39:12):

That’s great. It sounds like you guys are each other’s accountability partner as well.

Angel Williams (39:16):

We’re a team. We’re a good team. That’s a great,

Aileen (39:19):

So thank you so much, angel. And so if our listeners wanted to find out more about you, where can they go?

Angel Williams (39:25):

We have a Facebook community. We are the, what is it? The Academy presents REI rocks community, and a Facebook group. It’s like, I don’t know. I might have 500 people in it now. So we’re there. We have some different things that we post throughout the week. Like we do. What is it? We do promo Monday and tactical Tuesday where people share their tips and techniques for being more tactical about your week and getting more done and be more efficient and effective. And then on Wednesdays we do a wellness Wednesday. Like where are you at mentally? You know, what you are doing for self-care.

Angel Williams (40:00):

And then on Thursday, let me think. Thursday’s is thriving Thursday, give us your wins, whether they’re big or whether they’re small. And we celebrate those wins with our, with our community members and then Friday and Saturday and Sunday, it’s just kind of a, let’s see where it goes, freeform it. And so that’s what we do there. We also have our podcast, which comes out three times a week and it’s across platforms. It’s the Academy presents. I’ve only seen it on Spotify because that’s all I use and you can’t even leave reviews there. But that’s our podcast. And then we also have a YouTube channel, which is the Academy presents as well. And we do weekly episodes there. And the cool thing about that is we do our weekly episodes there, but that’s what goes over to our production team to become our podcasts.

Angel Williams (40:48):

So if you are wanting to podcast and you’re starting out in a YouTube channel, just know you can repurpose that content. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you know, three, four, five times a week. You can reinvent it once and then turn it into multipurpose content. And like we use streamlined. And one of the things they do is they look at 10, second segments in your podcast to see what’s hitting the hardest and what people are looking at the most. And then you can do like a mini, like a mini feed or a mini gram, and use that little snippet and put it in newsletters. You can put it on Instagram, you can use that snippet and put it in other places. So it looks like you’re putting out even more content when really you just pulled a little piece out of content you’ve already done and you’re sharing it again so that what you’re doing can have the most impact possible. Awesome.

Aileen (41:39):

Thank you so much for sharing angel. I really enjoyed having you on.

Angel Williams (41:43):

Thanks. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you so much.

Seyla (41:47):

Angel you had some times I meant to ask questions. So what, what does it take to run a successful virtual summit and what tips or tricks can you give us?

Angel Williams (42:02):

So honestly we are so bare bones when it comes to that. We have help with like the ads and the funnel and getting stuff ready up to, but on the days of the event, it is literally I’m in one room. I run all of the Zam. My husband is in the living room and he does the warning calls and he’s like, hey, you’re on in 30. Hey, you’re on a 15 five minutes. Where are you? So it’s the two of us and I run all the zoom. He does the backside of everything and we just do it. So if anyone’s interested in doing a summit, let me know, I will help you all that I can. Because we we’ve done it with just the two of us and been successful. At least I feel like we’ve been successful. So

Seyla (42:50):

That’s amazing. And what, what is your recommendation of how to get the speaker to agree to be on your summit?

Angel Williams (42:57):

You just ask and I mean, if you don’t want to ask, I’ll ask for you. I don’t mind. I love making introductions. I love talking to people. I like to talk a lot. And it’s honestly though, it’s the very first time I decided after talking to Dan and I was like, okay, I’m going to do this. By the time I talked to him, I already had 14 speakers within 24 hours. And you get a few crickets, which is a no. But not as many as you think the cool thing about this space is people will want to share their knowledge. People want to help you. So when you ask most of the time, they’re going to say yes, because they want to help others and they want to lift you up and they want to support you. And so really it’s just about asking because most of the times they’re going to say yes.

Seyla (43:48):

Awesome. And my last question is once a speaker agrees to, to be on the summit, is there any, like a mutual agreement between the hosts and the speakers or like sharing the list or sharing the email address or contact or something like that?

Angel Williams (44:06):

So we didn’t share ours just because we didn’t, we didn’t even know how successful it was going to be. And after to our list is like 500. I know that like other people that have done virtual events have had anywhere between 1600 to 10,000 email captures we weren’t there, but that’s okay. We’ll get there. And part of that is just the idea of, you know, if you do an email capture, is that like a bait and switch? Are you saying you’ll put your email here and then somebody says, oh, if I put my email there, I get free access? Well, not necessarily. I’ve seen it all sorts of ways. We did not do an email capture on our first one. I’m not sure if we did this time or not. I think we might have, I know for sure next time we are, and there are plenty of advocates out there that are like all over the email capture because that’s your email list.

Angel Williams (45:04):

And so it’s, I don’t know, it’s kind of, it’s half and half, I guess, people that will do it. People that won’t do it, we’re going to do it next time. It’s a, I think it’s just a way to build that email list again. And you want to have that list of that. You can run those drip campaigns or blast later on, which if anybody’s listening to that turns you off and you never want to put your email address. And again, you can unsubscribe, it’s only a little click. You’re fine. It’s just as easy to unsubscribe as it is to put your email address in there one time to see what you’re going to get. So

Seyla (45:37):

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all that information Angel.

Angel Williams (45:40):

For sure.