brian: 0:00

Rachel Richards, what is going on? How are you? I'm

rachel: 0:03

good, Brian. Thank you. How are

brian: 0:04

you?. I'm excited to have you . So in the context of the online space you see a lot of people popping up now that have these financial freedom profiles. They have these real estate accounts. It's becoming sexy. It's becoming cool to become like a creator or an influencer. But, as I've gone through them and in the space now, it's pretty easy to sniff out, who's completely full of it and who's actually about it. And you are completely. You are 1000% the real deal. And so I'm excited. So excited to get into your story and your backstory. You are a bestselling author. I saw the book. You've got an amazing brand and I want to actually just open up to you to introduce yourself to the audience and we can go in the backstory to how you got, $20,000 a passive monthly income at 26?

rachel: 0:50

Yeah, 27. I think you have something similar.. But thank you. I am a lot of things. I'm a former financial advisor. I built a rental portfolio of 38 doors by the age of 26, and then I was able to quit my job and retire, which I say in air quotes cuz people get mad at me for using that word., I became financially independent at 27, quit my job and I'm now living off $20,000 a month in passive income. So that is the high.

brian: 1:17

Okay, so thank you for coming on. It's been a great interview. Thanks, Rachel.. Bye. But no. So before we get into the backstory, before we get into how you acquired the rental units, which is freaking impressive, and I tell people, everyone gives themselves like this 10, 20, 30, 40 year window to accomplish these big hair audacious goals. And I'm like, Not really. You really only need three years of really intense, concentrated effort, which obviously you proved. But I wanna hit on a couple different topics there that you just said. So the first off is people being angry at you for saying you're retired. Because that happened to me and I did not anticipate that. I thought people would celebrate with me when I was like, Hey, I left corporate America. Financial independence, retire early. I thought we were all supposed to celebrate together. And then everyone was like, you're still generating income. You're a phony. What are you talking about? And I didn't expect that. So like why do you think that is what's been your relationship?

rachel: 2:10

I just think people define retirement differently, and that's totally valid. A lot of people will say if you're still working, you're not retired. So that's one definition. Totally get that. I will never stop working, so that's the thing. Thank you. To me, retirement is not, it's about working if I want to, not because I have to, and that's what my life is like now. I get bored very easily. Yes, I could go sit on a beach for a couple weeks, but then I would get bored and I would be like, okay, what's next? I wish I could, I wish I could just retire and then do nothing, but that's not how I am. So I wanna keep making an impact and helping people and growing my businesses. I love being challenged. I'm always looking for, okay what's next? Not to make more money necessarily, but just to grow. And be challenged as a person. I love building businesses. I love creating things, and I love making an impact, so I'll never stop. That's why I keep going.

brian: 3:08

All right, everyone listening, don't listen to. Don't listen to me. Listen to every other guest that comes on. And that just reinforces what I talk about because it's insane. What I tell people is that if you have made it to the point where you're able to do nothing, you don't want to do nothing. Exactly. Let's take a step back and let's walk through Rachel Richards as a financial advisor, going from that world, which is pretty tame, how do you go from that person to the person where you're. No, screw this. I'm gonna YOLO and I'm gonna make this happen like now, because that's a pretty big frame shift between a financial advisor and an investor, so I'm curious about that.

rachel: 3:49

I became a financial advisor because I was good at sales, so I. Paid my way through college selling Cutco knives. Have you heard of that

brian: 3:59

tells me everything I need to know right there.

rachel: 4:01

Hustle. What does it tell you? Hustle. You're

brian: 4:03

the grinder., rachel: yes. So my parents can not afford to help me pay for school. So I paid my way through selling knives and I was able to graduate without debt. And I had this passion for helping people with money. I majored in financial economics, so I thought that becoming a financial advisor was the perfect career for. But it turns out just because you're good at something doesn't mean you should do it. And that's how sales was for me. It did not come naturally to me. I'm actually very introverted, which people find surprising, but I did not wanna be a salesperson, and that's what being a financial advisor is. So I only lasted in that role for nine months, but the passion for helping people with investing in money didn't go away. I just had to figure out a different way to. And it was a couple years later that I realized I wanted to write a book, and that was the way that I decided to help people with money. 2017 is really the year things began to change for me. So that was the year I wrote and self-published my first book, money Honey, that's where the name came from. Money Honey, Rachel.. And then that was also the year that my ex-husband and I started investing in real estate. So we bought our first duplex in Louisville, Kentucky. So we had these two passive income streams, rental income and royalty income, and we focused on growing those as much as we possibly could over the next few years to the point where we were able to become financially independent. And that's how it all began. So I'm curious about your journey in writing the book, because now you've sold over 50,000 copies. You're an Amazon best. You're killing it. I'm over here singing your praises at the point of your career. So you wrote the book when you were buying your first duplex? Yes. All right. So I'm curious about your battles with imposter syndrome and everything going through that. Because even me to this day, I'm like, I can't write a book until. This point and everyone's I can't write a book until that point. So I'm curious about your perspective in the writing process and did you expect that this was going to become what it is today or is this all just taking you by storm still?

rachel: 6:09

I did not expect. It would have ever performed that and that it continues to perform this well. So this is one of the most intense experiences with imposter syndrome I ever had is when I was writing that book. And I've dealt with imposter syndrome ever since then. But especially when you're writing a book, I think any artist or creative or entrepreneur when you're putting a product out there for people to see and judge, it's incredibly vulner. When I first wrote Money, honey, I wrote it because I was a former financial advisor and all my family and friends came to me for financial advice, which I loved. At the same time, I began to wonder why aren't they learning on their own or reading books or looking up websites? And then I realized, oh yeah, that's because personal finance is boring, right? It's intimidating and it's complex and it's overwhelming, and no wonder people don't like to learn. So I thought to myself, how can I make this topic sassy and fun and simple? And that's where the idea for Money Honey came from. So I was really excited. The words came pouring out of me. It was just something I very much felt compelled to do, not something I wanted to do for the money. I truly didn't think it was going to make any money. It was just a passion project for me. So I was excited to write. and then about four months into writing, I quit writing it completely. By then, I had done the a complete mental 180, and I was telling myself things like, who do you think you are, Rachel, to write a book about finance.. You're a young woman who's gonna listen to you. Your writing is crap. It's gonna be embarrassing if you go through. Those were the things I was telling myself. Clearly not being very nice, but I literally quit writing the book and I had no intention of ever picking it back up again. And it wasn't until I sat down with a good friend and confessed to her what I had been doing, and she told me, Rachel, you are really onto something here. You have to finish what you set out. And so she gave me just enough encouragement to pick it back up. And at the end of the day, the only reason I went through with it is because I told myself, if I can just help one person, that is all I care about, it'll be worth it to me. If I can just help one person, it will be worth it to me. Wow. So I went through publishing it. I spent $560 on mostly an editor and some other things. That's all I spent because I was like, I'm not even gonna see this money back. So this is a total loss. But I was able to go through with publishing it and to my shock it took off and it just started selling and it was spreading word of mouth and it was. Selling so many copies and I made 600 in the first month and then I was making a thousand a month and then 1500 a month. And at first I still didn't believe I had written a good book because it was my family and friends telling me like, this is great.. And of course they're gonna say that cuz they're gonna be supportive. But finally, six months later I started getting emails from. Strangers and just readers from around the country that didn't know who I was, and they were saying, Rachel, thank you for writing this book. I've paid off my student loans. I've paid off my credit card debt. You've changed my life, thank you so much. And then I was like, wow I think I actually wrote a good book. I think I've done something that's changed some people's lives. And so it wasn't until then that I actually got over the imposter. So what I wanna really tell people, if you're thinking about doing something, writing a book, taking on a challenge, doing anything, I got so caught up in what if I fail? What if I embarrass myself? What if I do this and regret it? And it was just the wrong question to ask. It was the wrong what if question to ask, because what I should have been asking myself is, what if I don't do this? And people continue to suffer because I gave into my fear. Wow. Like people continue to suffer because I was too afraid to put my work out there because I was too afraid to be vulnerable and who, who needs to hear this message and who might, whose lives might be impacted? Because I can help them with their finances. So don't give into your fear because you might help somebody and they need. You really, you might have a unique gift to share with the world and people need you. So please don't give into your fear. You really have to put yourself out there.

brian: 10:38

Yeah, so I think we share a brain. But yeah, I thought the podcast was gonna be, it's until I have a thousand doors, like who cares what I have to say. And then I talked to a friend and a mentor who's been on the show multiple times and he said, wow. So you not wanting to start the show because of your fear of the judgment of others is the most selfish thing that I've ever heard you say. Yeah. I was like, me being selfish. And he goes, yeah, because you are denying other people's access to information purely based off of your own ego.

rachel: 11:07

That's a great way of putting.

brian: 11:09

Yeah. Why do you think we'll get into the finances and stuff? There's a million podcasts on how to invest in real estate. We'll blow people away with numbers in a second. But this is a very particular topic that I wanna stick on here. I think there's a lot of value here. Why do you think that our own internal voices default to the negative? Why is that? Why don't our internal voices and the voices in our head tell us all the reasons we can do stuff? Why?

rachel: 11:33

It's really, it's insecurity, I think, because even myself as an author, I ha I, I don't even look at my book reviews., because I have 1400 book reviews on money, honey, and most of them are positive. I might, maybe I have 1305, 4 and five story reviews, but I will still go on and believe the one or two. One star reviews and those will impact me more. And why do we do that? It's ridiculous. Like we can't even believe the own data objectively ourselves. It's because we have our own securities, and then if somebody speaks to those insecurities, we'll just believe those. But I don't know why. Why do you think,

brian: 12:14

I think that all of life is a giant race. To get back to who you were as a child, as fast as. Internally, because I think that when you're a kid, it's just you're just like, you have your natural strength and natural areas of opportunity that you gravitate towards. And anything is possible as you're a kid.. then your parents, your teachers, your friends start telling you the reasons why you can't do stuff. And it may be consciously or subconsciously, but eventually you start to believe. And then that's something that you and I both had to overcome as we were going through our financial freedom journey. I'm sure your parents were like, what are you doing? Because my mom, when I was buying my first house hack, she was like, you're gonna go bankrupt, obviously. Like this is the worst idea ever. And that was back in 2018. So we've seen what happened with the real estate market there. But I want to go, I wanna move to the real estate here in a second, but two key points that Rachel brought up for people that are listening, because I know a lot of. Are either in the process of reading a book or writing a book in the process of trying to start a podcast, and the two points that you said that I think were the differentiator where you said that you didn't do it for the money and that money wasn't a byproduct. You just did it just to help and your heart was in the right place. You had the good intentions and so I love that. So let's walk through. The real estate journey because you bought the first duplex. Walk us through, how the heck that you came to 38 units within

rachel: 13:42

two years? Yeah. A little under three.

brian: 13:45

Okay, so what brought you to that number? Was that something that you were aiming for or did you just stumble into it?

rachel: 13:51

We, when I say we, my ex-husband and I were aiming for a cash number. Okay. We wanted to, yeah, so we wanted to get to $10,000 a month in profits from our rental properties, and we came up with that number because I think our expenses at the time were 6,000 a. And so that was plenty of income to both cover our expenses and then have a bunch extra for buffer and to keep saving money. So that was really our fat fire number. That was our financial independence number, and then all of my self-publishing income was just extra on top of that. But we really wanted to achieve fire through real estate. So once we got to 38 doors, that just happened to be what got us there. We invested in our first duplex. 2017 and a couple clarifications too, because people always make assumptions when they hear this massive real estate success story. So first of all, I'm not a trust fund baby. That

brian: 14:48

ruins the episode. That was gonna be title the episode. rachel: Yeah. Trust fund baby acquires massive portfolios. No. Here's how I turn 5 million into 4 million of real estate Yeah.

rachel: 15:01

And then secondly, I never made six figures from a job or career. So I was, yeah, I started off making 36,000 and then 32,000 and then 42,000. So by no means was I raking it. That's insane. Yeah, so I was on a low income now in 2017. My ex had just started making six figures. So combined we were making a lot and we were living very frugally. Neither of us had student loan debt because he used his military benefits to pay for his college. So we were able to save 50% of our combined income, and that certainly was an advantage. It was an advantage that we were working together. I wasn't doing it alone. And so I do give him credit for we, we did this together. So those were the advantages I didn't have, those were the advantages. I did have we found a duplex in 2017. It was a hundred thousand dollars in Louisville, Kentucky. Now I know. That there are people in California listening to this being like, I can't even buy a parking spot for that amount of money. So then get

brian: 16:01

over it,

rachel: 16:01

then get over it. Keep going. Yeah. But I encourage anyone listening to do two things because it is harder in this market. I realize we are in 20 22, 20 23, and it's harder in this market to find that kind of deal, but it's still do. You really have to do two things. Number one, you have to be willing to invest out of state. I was very lucky to both live and invest in the same city, but quite often it does not work out that way. You need to find an affordable city, A city that is cash flowing, a city that is landlord friendly. And if you live in a place like Southern California, Northern California, Chicago, New York City, That might be a difficult, if not impossible, place to invest and find good deals. So don't be afraid to look out of state. I think Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio are fantastic places to invest. So that's where I invested. The second thing I encourage you to do is look off market for deals. A lot of new investors are looking on the mls, and you can certainly find good deals on the mls, the multiple listing. It's just going to be harder in my opinion. I have found a deal on the MLS, cuz I had my real estate license, but it was harder to do that. So you have to be creative. You have to do things like driving for dollars and putting up bandit signs and getting probate leads and pre foreclosure leads and going to auctions and networking, those kinds of things. And it's harder and it takes work. But if you have to be willing to do the things that others are not, if you wanna find a great deal in this market. So those are my two biggest pieces of advice if you're trying to invest in real estate right now. So that's my little tangent.. brian: Yeah, no. And people listening. Remember we talk about the deal triangle. So you need one or two parts of a triangle in order to be successful in real estate. You need the money, you need the knowledge, or you need the hustle. So when I talk about you needing the hustle, What Rachel just talked about is literally that. So when I say hustle, that means that you are saying, okay, I do not have the money. I don't have the capital to take the deal down. I don't have the balance sheet to take this apartment complex down, and I don't have the knowledge because I'm just now getting started. So then what role are you gonna play in this? What part of the value exchange are you gonna provide? You're gonna be the person that goes to the people that have the money and have the knowledge and have the experience, and you say, I see that you are looking to buy more real estate in this specific market. Tell me what to go do and I'm gonna go Bird dog for you. I'm gonna go drive for dollars. I'm gonna go door knock. Cold mailers, I'm gonna do the band that sounds like Rachel said. I'm gonna find you the deals and I'm gonna get them for you, and then we'll take it down together. So that's why I try to tell people over and over again is just be part of that equation. So thank you for providing some tangible examples there. I like also that you had a cash flow goal, because that's what I pivoted to. Before I had a unit goal and I realized that the unit goal was just a vanity metric, just to say I own X amount of doors. So when it comes to the cash flow and focusing on that instead of your unit counts and like your property counts, how did that differentiate your approach when you were going through? Okay, so I had a couple minimum requirements. I focused really heavily on cash return on investment, love it. And then cash flow per door. So cash on cash roi, I aimed. And if I can define that too. Do you want me to break that down? You can go for it, yeah, sure. Why. Okay. So cash on cash ROI is your annual profit divided by your initial investment. Your initial investment being your down payment, closing costs, any make ready costs. So if you have to renovate it, so anything you're putting into the property out of pocket. Yep. Yeah, so it's not the purchase price of the property, it's just your investment to buy the property. So that's cash. On cash roi. I aimed for 12% and the reason I aim for 12% is because I figured if I can make eight to 10% in the stock market in the long. Because that is what the s and p 500, for example, has returned over the long run in the stock market.. Then I wanna make at least a little more than that from my rental properties. Otherwise, to me, what was the point?, because I know I'm gonna be putting more work into the rental properties. A lot of people who teach real estate talk about. Rental properties being passive, and I talk about the being passive, but I always give the clarification of it's not 100% passive. It's a business. Yeah. This is not a, the 100% passive income stream, it is way more passive than the nine to five job. And when we talk about it being passive, we are always talking about having a property manager.. when you own 38 doors and you're self-managing, it's a job. And I'm guessing that everyone listening does not wanna quit their full-time job to become a full-time landlord. So not only do you really need to have a property manager in place, but you need to understand there's always gonna be an aspect of manage the manager. And it's not gonna be a hundred percent passive. It is gonna be something where to maintain these income streams, you're gonna have to put in a couple hours a week or a few hours a month to maintain. But to me that's way better than a 40 hour per week job. So that's what I mean when I call it a passive income stream.

brian: 21:14

And I agree, like there's degrees of passivity, right? And Yes, you you can, and there's levers that you. Pull. It's, it is all a control game because if you have a nine to five job, like there is no lever that you can pull to fluctuate how involved you are. You can't be better at your job and be more passive. But you can be better as an investor and as a business owner, you can acquire skill sets. You can't acquire systems, you can't acquire processes that allow you to increase your passivity. So it's a winnable game.

rachel: 21:44

Totally. And within real estate, there's levels of passivity. Syndications to me, are a hundred percent passive. Long-term rentals are way more passive than owning Airbnbs. So you can, I, I always tell people, pick and choose your strategy based on whether you value your time or your money more. And in the beginning I was willing to hustle more because I wanted the cash flow more. And then once I built my wealth up, I valued my time more, so I was willing to take less cash. In return for having more time freedom, if that makes sense.

brian: 22:15

So thousand percent. And that's what you do with your brand too. So for people listening, if we haven't mentioned it yet, she's at Money, honey, Rachel, on Instagram, so you need to go follow her. Thank you. But so walk us through the transition from going from , those first couple small MALS to jump into the 38. So what is that comprised of? Is that mixed up, like four units, eight units? How did that go? Okay,

rachel: 22:39

so with the first duplex in 2017, It was a hundred grand. My ex and I each had 10 grand saved by that time that we pooled together to get to the $20,000 down payment. And then we had already had two single family houses that he purchased with his VA loan, so we didn't have to put money into those. Okay. I don't really count those in our overall portfolio, cuz we lived in those as primary residences and later rented those out. It was guess really it was just a house hack situation and. We purchased a three boarding houses, so these were much bigger properties that we, it was a pretty unique model because these were quadplexes, triplexes converted duplexes that we rented out by the room. So they were really large buildings. Yeah. Co-living. really large buildings and they had 10, 11, 12 tenants in each property.

brian: 23:33

Nice. Okay, so was this something that you were aiming for or was this something where you're just like, oh, this is a good deal. Let's look into

rachel: 23:40

this? Yeah, we found the deal. We found the initial deal on the mls, and it blew my mind because it was a building that was listed for 430,000. It was a fourplex, and then the rent that was listed that it was bringing in the rent revenue was, it was either 7,200 or 7,600. And I was like, this can't be something wrong, . Yeah, this must be an error. So I called the seller and I was like, is what's going on here? And they were like come down, take a look. We'll explain it to you. And they explained to us this boarding house model and it just blew our minds. It was such a win-win because not only are these. Buildings, a cash cow, but they are providing affordable housing to the community.. So instead of renting out one unit to a tenant, they're renting out each bedroom to a tenant.. So you have 12 tenants in this one building. Each tenant was only paying like $600 a month to get a fully furnished private bedroom. And that included utilities and wifi. So it was just the most affordable living situation. Every city needs this and once we bought this property we just had a wait list of people. I've never had a property stay so occupied ever that I've ever owned. People just begged to have a place to stay here, and it worked so well and I just felt like I was doing a good thing for the community and I was making a ton of money. So overall, win-win, I loved owning. The downside is that was a pain in the butt for sure. You talk, you have these people living in a confined space, sharing kitchens and bathrooms., I felt like I had 33 adult children.. . brian: I was about to say. Yeah. They'd be like, oh, this guy stole my food. Or can you, this person's using the laundry light at night and making a bunch of noise. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, guys, please, And so we did actually sell those boarding houses last year, which was really great timing cuz 2021 was a great year to sell and we profited a lot and we made out really well. But they served us well in the years that we owned them and we made a ton of money. I

brian: 25:49

love that. Okay. That's freaking awesome. But yeah, I was gonna ask you like what processes did you come up with to manage that? Because for me, I do like a hybrid co-living situation with my properties. I do a three, two, so I buy five bed, four bath split levels. So I do a three, two upstairs, and then I just rent that. That's my HGTV unit. So I just rent it as just Hey, here's the three, two, and then the downstairs I do rent by the room. Oh, nice. So yeah, so it's like a hybrid model and yeah. So there are different times where you're like, okay come on guys, be adults, but yeah, so that's awesome. Between those, you had two of the boarding properties.

rachel: 26:25

I had three of. One was a converted quad, a converted triplex, and a converted duplex. But between the three of the, I forget if there was 10 or 11 or 12 tenants in each of them. But that's, that was most of our units. Yeah.

brian: 26:38

Okay. So then what did you do once we sold these, how did we transition this into the new portfolio?

rachel: 26:44

So I did not do a 10 31 exchange, and all the real estate investors are like gasping in horror that I did not do. A 10 31 exchange just made my heart. You just made my heart jump. Oh my gosh. It's, it's, I think that investors look at that as a given when you sell real estate. Sure. But once I really researched it and looked into it, I don't think it's always a given because my ex and I were not trying to, Build out our real estate portfolio. We weren't selling them to try to acquire more real estate anyways. So that was part of the reason. Another part of the reason is that a 10 31 exchange defers capital gains taxes. It doesn't get rid of them.. So unless you're going to buy a property and keep it until you die, it's not solving any problems for you. And I wasn't sure if I was going to make that commitment. Another thing is that I had so much going on last year. And the 10 31 exchange rules are very specific. You have to identify a replacement property within days, five days. Yeah. I think then you have 180 days to close. The replacement property needs to be as big as or worth more than the one that you sold. Something like that. It's very specific and I did not have. To find a property. And then in that market too, the market was going crazy and appreciating, and I didn't wanna feel pressure to buy a property that might not have been a good deal and just buy it just to, to, for a tax purpose. And really maybe it wasn't a good investment. I didn't wanna feel that pressure. So there was a lot of reasons, but ultimately, We were at a place where we could sell, we could pay the taxes, and I wanted to transition the money into syndications. And yes, you can do a 10 31, you can do a DST into a syndication, and there's a whole I could get into that. Yeah,

brian: 28:31

but It's a lot.

rachel: 28:33

Yes, exactly. And I could get into why I didn't wanna pursue that either. But at the end of the day, it's not a bad thing to pay taxes. That means you made a lot of. And so I was fine with it. I was fine with taking the tax hit. And then I've been working on transitioning all the profits into syndications, which is ultimately what I really love because it's so passive and I don't have to do anything. And it's my favorite thing now is investing in syndications. So that's a high level of why I didn't do a 10 31.

brian: 29:05

No, personal finance is personal. We say that all the time and it's just really? Why are we doing any of this? And it's for peace of mind. It's for relaxation. It's for freedom. So it's if it's gonna be a situation where you're forced to scramble, especially in this market, to find a 10 31 exchange in that 45 day window, that's a lot of stress. And that's a lot of that will completely consume you to be able to do that. So yeah, you. Sometimes you just gotta, you just gotta bite the bullet and do what you gotta do. So now you're an lp or are you trying to GP any syndications or? No, I wanna just purely be

rachel: 29:40

passive. Yeah. I'm an lp. The whole thing was I wanted to have more and more passive income streams. Sure. So that's also why I was like, I don't wanna own these boarding house style rental properties anymore. I just wanted, and that's also why I was like, I'm not trying to buy another rental property. I wanna get into syndications. So I'm an lp. I've invested in nine syndications so far. It has been great. I don't have to do anything. I'm making good money. I just had my first syndication sell from one that I invested in three years ago. I invested 25 K and I got 38 K back. So I'm really happy with how it performed.

brian: 30:15

So what are the distributions looking like for people that are maybe looking into getting into syndications? First off, did you do the 5 0 6 C or the 5 0 6? I've done both.

rachel: 30:26

Okay. One is one only allows accredited investors to invest. That's C, right? I don't remember which is which, to be honest with you., I think

brian: 30:35

that one. I think that one's the C and then the B is just like you have to know them personally or some provision

rachel: 30:40

like that. Yeah. The other one will allow both accredited and non-accredited investors. Okay, perfect.

brian: 30:47

Then your capital stacks were 25 50.

rachel: 30:50

I've done mostly 25 K and I've done 50 K in a few of them. And I always get asked what are the returns? Like? How much are you making? And it's a hard question to answer because part of the return you're gonna make overall is based on the cash flow throughout. And then part of the return is gonna be based on whatever happens when it sells.. So I've only had one cell and that performed really. The other ones, I don't know what the overall return's gonna be until the whole syndication is done and it sells. Also most syndications, the cash flow ramps up. So the cash flow that they might promise you or project in the early years might be 5% in year one and 7% in year two and 9% in year three. And ramps up over time. That's pretty standard and pretty common from what I've seen. I get that question. It's hard to just be like, oh 10% or it's 15% cuz it really depends. And every one of them is structured differently. And there's so many different types of syndications you can invest in. Multi-family apartment complexes, you can invest in self storage, laundromats, mobile home parks. You can really syndicate anything. Some of them don't cash up front because it's literally a new development, it's new construction. So you're just investing for appreciation. I don't invest in those cuz I think they're too risky. Sorry to give you an answer of It depends. That's so annoying. But

brian: 32:08

that's the truth. Interviews canceled. Interviews deleted . No, it's okay. No, that makes a 1000% sense. And I yeah. And also it's gonna depend on the individual operator. It's gonna depend on the deal structure. It's gonna depend on when they're exiting and having their capital event. There's a bunch. Different variables and factors. The reason I was asking was your original goal was this cash flow of like $10,000 a month, and so that's why I was asking was since your original goal was that, and you were making like $20,000 a month, then with these distributions of the syndications, they're not necessarily giving you that much cash flow. Anymore. So like where is that coming from and how have you pivoted with your cash flow goals? Or has your book just taken off so much and your own other stuff replaced that so you can take a more backseat role in the syndications?

rachel: 32:54

No, it's changed a lot over time and my. Passive income and cash has been impacted a lot because of the divorce., so what I wanna do is build back up my rental portfolio next year. But yeah, back in 2019 when I quit my job, we had 10 K a months just from rental properties., now we sold last year most of our rental portfolio, so that obviously went down. But my goal is with syndications to get that back up to 10. So I haven't honestly calculate it cuz this year has just been crazy with everything that happened with my divorce. Sure. I would guess that my passive income from my real estate, meaning my rental properties plus my syndications is somewhere between five and 10 K. And then the other, cuz I know I'm still making 20 k a month in passive income., I think a lot of it now is from the books and then my one passive course that's pre-recorded. And I do have active income streams as well. I just don't include them in that number.

brian: 33:55

How dare you have active? How

rachel: 33:56

dare you Dirty? I wanna get back up to 10 k a month from real estate though. Okay.

brian: 34:02

No, that's awesome. That was my assumption because and that's why I tell people, I'm like, Hey, look like. Do a thing, do cool stuff, document it, grow a brand, build an audience. Attention is the new oil. Attention is the new, most valuable currency. So if you have attention, then you can create community, you can create course, and then you can literally build a very substantial lifestyle. Off of that. And so I think as we're coming to the end of the interview here, I think that may be a good point to talk about what you and I talked about in the beginning, which is your brand. And like I said, for people you need to go follow Rachel on Instagram. Her Instagram's amazing and it's a lot of great information for getting started in your financial journey. But you did something recently that really stood out to me and it stood out to a lot of other people and it really resonated. And that was posting about your personal life and sharing a vulner. Moment and sharing a moment where you had to overcome weakness and become strong. And it was insane to see how it resonated with people and how it impacted people. And I told you at the beginning of this episode, I said, I told you how it impacted me, and I'm just curious about all of the love and support that you've received. And if you wanna, A little bit about that. Maybe for other people that are struggling, if they have a brand or if they don't have a brand, if they're going through something that's really huge in their life and they're struggling to share it for fear of appearing weak, can you give them some words of encouragement to share their journey to see what the reaction will be?

rachel: 35:35

Yes. And thank you for saying all that. That means a lot. You're welcome. Yeah, this year was really difficult because, I have this platform, my IG has a hundred K followers now. Then I have TikTok and other stuff too, and I was going through this really awful dark time of going through this divorce, which is the hardest thing I've ever had to go through.. And legally I just made the decision with my attorney to not speak about it. And obviously there were, even if I could speak about it, I might not have wanted to share that anyways. But my divorce was finalized on October 21st, and then I finally felt like I could talk about it. Cuz one of my things is I just always wanna be transparent with my. Audience and followers. And I've always been very transparent about numbers and income and where does the money come from and whatever, and just try to be authentic. So it has literally bothered me all year that I couldn't share what was going on.. So it was a relief in a way to finally put it out there, but it was also like the scariest thing ever. Not because I was afraid of appearing weak. But I was, just afraid of what people were gonna say or if they were gonna judge or just be mean. Yeah. Because, there's a lot of trolls online,, and I'm obviously just still in a really like sensitive place with everything. And I was like, one person being mean. Like I just can't handle it. So I just needed kindness and that's all. So that's why I was scared to post it. And the real that I made just showed the reality of. I was so depressed and crying every day for seven months, but then I had to show up for my business and for my clients and like giving speeches like during this time in October, for example, I gave the biggest speech I'd ever given. At the Bigger Pockets conference, let's go. And then , thank you. And I crushed it. I'm like really proud of myself. It seriously was one of the best things I ever did and I got so much positive feedback and I truly feel like I crushed it. But I was, I was still giving podcasts and I was still putting out like funny social media content and doing other things, workshops, whatever. And then the whole thing on the reel was like behind the scenes I was just severely depressed and crying. Yeah. And even the day after I got back from the Bigger Pockets conference, I was just literally, there was a day that I was in bed for 12 hours on and off crying and just no one would have known that or known what was going on. I'm even like getting anxiety just talking about this right now. It's okay. Take your

brian: 38:06

time. But

rachel: 38:07

I got, that's you . Thanks. Putting that real out. I just remember like my hand was literally shaking that morning when I pushed post cuz I was so terrified of what people were going say. But I've never had such an outpouring of love and support. Ever in my life. And like my phone was blowing up, not just on Instagram, but messages, like people were calling me, FaceTiming me, texting me, and I just spent the whole day responding to everything and I couldn't even keep up. I and I, my social media manager, I was like, I wanna handle this. Cuz normally she responded to a lot of my comments and messages. But I personally responded to every single comment and message that came through that week and it meant so much to me. Like the things that people said were. Absolutely nice and supportive. I just was, I was completely blown away. Yeah. So anyone listening that was supportive of me that week, thank you because I just can't even describe how much it meant to me. Yeah.

brian: 39:06

And thank you for sharing. Seriously, like you and I talked before this cuz we just met, we haven't been like buddy-buddy forever. So I was just like, hey, straight up. I wanna take it in this direction. I was like, do you wanna take it in this direction? And then we made the both made the decision to do it at the end here. So I wanna say thank you and I appreciate you for the strength that you have in sharing. With us today because for everyone listening to this that doesn't follow you, A lot of them are going through stuff and they're afraid. To talk about it and they're afraid to share it. And even myself, it's like people listening, like very obviously haven't been posting Bella for months and months because we ended it. I wanted marriage and kids and she did not. So now it's been a weird transition for me because I'm the guy posting monkeys in Brazil and traveling around the world and going to Greece and they're like, how did you lose your relationship while you're doing. And I'm like, cause that's life. Yeah. And that's how it goes. So thank you for sharing that. That was really awesome. And thank you for talking about it. Yeah,

rachel: 40:06

for sure. I think it's just important to realize that, the people on social media who are financially independent and traveling the world, like it's problems. It's not . Yeah. They just look different. I know. And that's why it's another reason I'm glad I put it out there cause it's not. Cause I also, when I first separated from my ex in April, I like fled to Italy,, and I went to Italy, Tisha for two months. Natural progress, natural progression., I know I had my eat, pray love moment. Although in the movie Julia Roberts made it look way more fun than it was, although it was a lot of fun. There was just more crying involved. But yeah, I think it was just, it looked like this amazing trip, but then people didn't realize that I would go on these adventures and then I would cry, and then it was like I would eat pasta and then I would be like on a therapy call. The past will probably help though. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

brian: 40:55

It's a pregame. It's a pregame

rachel: 40:57

therapy. Crying with gelato in Italy is better than crying in the US without gelato for sure. That's why we do

brian: 41:04

financial freedom folks, because depression will come at some point, but what it does, it's helpful if you can buy a plane ticket to go to Brazil,

rachel: 41:14

Honestly, it really is.

brian: 41:17

So on that note, where can people. Find you. Where can people follow you? Where can they get the book?

rachel: 41:24

Yes. Thank you. So my Instagram is Money Honey, Rachel, and both of my books are on Amazon in paperback ebook audiobook. Money, honey. They're called money Honey and passive income. Aggressive retirement. And what I would love to do for your followers, Brian, is if anyone would like to download my Passive Income Starter kit, I would love to give that for free. So you can go to money honey rachel.com/passive income to download that.

brian: 41:55

All right guys, you heard it here first. Go to the website and Rachel and I were talking off. And she said that the 27th person that downloads that gets their own free emotional support ticket to Italy Wow. For themselves. So go and download the book. It's gonna be amazing. But Rachel, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a pleasure. You dropped some financial bombs, you dropped some self-worth bombs, some transparency and authenticity bombs. So thank you for coming on to Sharon.

rachel: 42:23

Thanks, Brian for having me.

brian: 42:25

All right. Appreciate it. This is Ben, Brian and Rachel with. Action Academy Podcast signing off.