Real Estate Investing for Social Good with Richelle Delia

In this episode, Akeiva interviews real estate investor Richelle Delia, PhD. We discuss her journey to becoming a real estate millionaire, the powerful lessons learned along the way, and the values she considers when assembling her team of financial professionals.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:46 - Richelle's upbringing & critical financial experiences
08:13 - Her real estate investing journey & setting wealth building goals
18:56 - Building wealth with a spouse
22:19 - Investing in asset classes outside of real estate
24:09 - Lessons learned on her wealth building journey
26:20 - Challenges faced on her wealth building journey
31:37 - Experiences working with financial professionals & the values she considers when hiring
41:50 - Advice for FinServ professionals
45:59 - What FinServ can do help close the racial wealth gap

Connect with Richelle:
Website: https://housingjv.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richellethomasdelia

Connect with Ballentine Partners:
Website: www.ballentinepartners.com
E-mail: info@ballentinepartners.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ballentine-partners-llc/

Transcript

0:00

i think that real estate more so than probably any of the other asset classes has a direct impact on people's lives and the quality of life that they're able to live and that certainly has where has been where real estate investing has gone from just numbers on a balance sheet to really a tool where we can not only have financial returns but social returns as well you're listening to the valentine broadcast conversations on black wealth on this podcast you're gonna hear from black millionaires and seven plus figure business owners on their wealth building journeys their experiences working with financial services professionals and their thoughts on what the financial services industry can do to help close the racial wealth gap please be sure to listen to important disclosure information at the end of this episode hello everyone and welcome to the show i am your host Akeiva ellis and today i am thrilled to have dr richelle delia on the show dr richelle delia is the co-founder of housing joint venture housing joint venture is a real estate development and executive training firm helping professionals explore income property ownership as a safety net to diversify or create wealth she and her co-founder grew hundred thousand dollars into a real estate portfolio worth over three million dollars in the span of three years by focusing on bringing renewal but not gentrification to blighted communities dr delia is a fulbright scholar expert in building materials and advocate for sustainable urban development dr delia received her phd in chemical engineering from the university of texas at austin and lives in columbus ohio with her husband john richelle welcome to the show thank you so much for having me very happy to be here of course i'm so excited to have you and i'd love for you to take us along your wealth building journey starting with your back story so tell us about your upbringing and how that affected your view on finances absolutely um well i i would say that my view on money in terms of an upbringing is probably a little bit different than most um in the sense that i grew up with a very entrepreneurial mother and an engineering-minded dad and so i i've kind of blended the two of them with a very analytical type brain as well as that more entrepreneurial you know i can make i can make my dreams come true type of mindset which i think is so helpful and i don't think a lot of people necessarily grow up with that type of positivity towards make money and making money and things like that um but that being said i will say that i was very um i don't know if the word is jaded but definitely influenced by my dad's professional experiences so very briefly he's an immigrant to the united states and he came here to study petroleum engineering and started his career in the oil and gas industry and i was born in the 80s and unfortunately in the 80s there was also an oil embargo so he ended up getting laid off uh just before i was born and so that caused him to pivot careers and he became an educator a teacher a high school teacher and so you know one of the main things that i grew up with was you know definitely study hard definitely learn as much as you can and gain as much education as you can but at the same time don't rely on someone else to provide income for you because they can pull the word out from underneath you at any time whatsoever so do whatever you can to create your own wealth and your own income streams separate from anybody else so basically protect your own two cheeks and so that definitely is where my initial idea and affinity towards real estate investing came in because it was something that i felt that i could do starting out as an engineer like as a professional and then something i could do that would allow my money to work for me while still uh you know having a traditional quote-unquote day job so that's awesome that's my origin story awesome yeah and your dad is from barbados right if i'm not mistaken correct correct yeah awesome my folks from trinidad and tobago so we're right next door in tobago exactly i'm stealing your flying fish you know that's my fish i love it i love it and so were you having intentional conversations about money at home or were these just lessons that you picked up just looking at your parents life experiences no i think my parents were very good about having intentional conversations about money so funny story one of my most cherished memories and i'll call it a toy as a girl i remember being probably about five or six years old and as i mentioned my mother was very entrepreneurial so she was an interior decorator so i kind of grew up in the business of housing i'll say um but anyway she was an interior decorator and i remember when i again i had to be maybe five or six years old i don't think i was yet school age but i remember her doing i'm gonna call it a display home so it was a house where she was doing a display where people could come in kind of like a museum or two of homes type of thing anyway outside of this event there was i'm gonna call it the original version of a food truck but they had toys so kind of like the ice cream man but it was full of toys anyway on this truck there was a checkbook like a checkbook for kids so they were fake checks but it had a little calculator it had checks that you could write and a whole checkbook and everything and i wanted it so so bad i i begged my parents i'm like i have to have this checkbook i have to have this checkbook and they bought it for me which was fantastic and so i remember really so very young having conversations about money and writing my little fake checks and you know i'd have my little bit of savings and if i let my parents borrow something then i would write them an iou like you owe me money plus interest i had no idea what interest was but i knew that you should pay it to me that's not all right yeah exactly exactly and actually funny enough i went to visit my uh my childhood home a couple of weeks ago and so and i saw this this little stack of you know you owe me x number of dollars plus interest and i made my parents sign it it was so sweet uh so basically yes i i think i had a very uh positive idea about money very uh very much like yes you can make it it's a healthy thing uh we would go to i guess costco and buy the big bag of chips and then i would sell them for my backpack individually as a school girl so no i didn't have any negative connotations money was a tool it was something fun more like a game and i i i like i would like to think that i carry a lot of that with me today obviously as you mature and grow everyone has their own money blocks and mindsets that they kind of have run up against and need to overcome um but i would say just the general idea that you as an individual can make money and in a variety of ways that definitely was encouraged fostered for sure awesome that is awesome i am glad to to hear that and that is so interesting that you were having those conversations and that exposure just from such a young age i'm sure that it's something that has served you and helped set you up for where you are today so really there was no true wake-up call really around money was just something you were always exposed exposed to yeah it was i would say i i'll never i leveraged my parents wake-up call as i mentioned you know my my dad got laid off and i think that was very damaging i guess i'm gonna call it to his soul in the sense that you know you come from another country and you work very hard to get a you know master's degree and you go into this career that is meant to be lucrative and really provide a certain lifestyle and then you know through no fault of your own i mean the oil embargo that's a you know that's a whole global crisis then because of that you're not able to expand and extend your career in the the length and the depth that you wanted to even though you still have the expertise and everything so i i didn't necessarily need to have the lesson myself to realize that hey you can't necessarily rely on other people um so i i'm an only child and very was very very close to my parents and so i i really tried to leverage their experiences as much as possible um so i didn't necessarily have this huge wake-up call or anything like that it was more of a hey you know more than i do my parents did have me a little bit older in life so they had some life experiences that i absolutely was able to leverage um and i guess take advantage of or just you know leverage their expertise going forward yeah that is amazing i'm sure your parents are very proud of you yeah super grateful for that yeah that is awesome and so along your journey did you ever have a conscious moment where you said i am deciding today that i want to become a millionaire someday did you have a concrete goal in mind when you started all of this um i had there i think as you go along there are more goals that you your goals can change over time so my original goal when it came to real estate investing was hey i want to be able to replace my income separate from my day job so my thought was hey if by the time i retire i have 10 single family houses and each of those houses rent for a thousand dollars per month that's 10 000 per month in income that is amazing that's impeccable and at that point i can retire right quote-unquote retire and so that was my goal um and when i i would say my original wake-up call was when i was an undergrad um there was a show on hgtv at the time there was a gentleman called scott mcgilvery and at this well i finished school in 2008 so the economy you know it had it had some hiccups going on let's say that and a little bit exactly exactly and the concept of the show was that people would purchase a home that had an income suite or an income property within it so it would have a basement or be a duplex or a triplex or something like that and i was like wow this is something that i can do you know like this is something that is not completely outside the realm of possibility this is what i absolutely can do and so i would say in terms of a wake-up moment certainly there were few this certainly was one of them in the sense that it's very possible for me to leave the dorm like my university dorm and go to my own home that's incredibly possible and not only that it's something where it it doesn't have to be a liability it can be a source of income for me as well um unfortunately i was not able to afford a multi-family but i did purchase something that had multiple bedrooms and had a roommate instead and so that was definitely one of my first wake up calls i would say prior to that so as i mentioned i studied engineering and in one of my summer internships there was a gentleman who was offering short-term summer housing to interns and i actually don't talk about this a lot but this was actually really a uh a wake-up call in your mind and to use your phrasing this gentleman he had to be probably about 25 or 26 at the time and of course i'm in undergrad so maybe like a sophomore or something so i'm 18 19 years old anyway he rented out the bedrooms uh by the room he rented out the it was a it was a triplex so two units of a duplex and a full basement so three levels top to bottom and each level had a three bedroom apartment and he rented out each of them all bills paid by the room including utilities down to the forks knives plates everything so this is airbnb before airbnb was a thing okay right and i thought it was absolutely brilliant because he was unmarried he was a single guy and he lived in one of the rooms in the basement of a duplex and he owned not just the duplex that i lived in but the one next door as well so basically he had two duplexes next door to each other and they were effectively triplex's so she had converted the basements as well and he lived in the basement of one of them with a roommate so i was doing the math and i'm like he's making a killing over the summer over just some interns and it was it was so shocking because it just i was like this is something that i can absolutely do it's so simple it's just so simple it just might work and that's really what i started you know doing readings and things like that but it wasn't until um watching the hgtv show with that gentleman scott mcgilvery i i really started to put the you know the the rubber to the road so to speak because at that point i was actually leaving going to have a proper income and things like that when purchasing a first property actually was within the realm of possibility yeah that that is amazing so you say those are really the seeds that really got you started on your real estate journey yeah right because yeah it's interesting and did you have other people in your sphere and you mentioned you know your dad had some experience but did you have other people in your sphere that were also doing real estate investing or things of that nature maybe tangentially i think most ladies are tend to be very partial to their dads and so i'm definitely one of them and so i would say in terms of influences my dad would definitely be up there is one of the top ones you know just because you look up to look up to them and before he left barbados he had purchased the next door neighbor's home um and then basically allowed use that income from that property to help my grandmother with her additional expenses and things like that so the person that put the first seat in was absolutely him um i'm not sure if there were other people around i mean obviously i was a little girl so i i can't speak to other people that may have had income property um but i can tell you that just that seat or the concept that hey this is something that you can do regardless of what kind of career you pursue that that's really where it started awesome so you mentioned you started out buying just a single family home and renting out rooms and having roommates that was how you got your start right so walk us through a little bit of that that three-year journey or if you know even if there was stuff prior to that where you started with that and now you have a real estate portfolio worth over three million so tell us how how you got there what were the steps yeah all the details all the details no problem at all so so i left so i went straight to grad school from undergrad uh so that meant that i was undergraduate student stipend so i was not making you know buku dollars by by no rights right yeah now you know i'll be honest in terms of graduate student stipends engineering is one of the more lucrative ones um but you know i again i wasn't making it right by any student's imagination um so anyway uh one of the things that i because i knew that that's exactly what i wanted to do was to have real estate a part of my portfolio uh and and my wealth building i guess journey from young you know you read all these stories that say hey you know you you need to build wealth you're going to you have a long life ahead of you and you want to start investing as soon as possible and as early as possible and i really took a lot of those articles to heart as much as i could certainly especially while i was in undergrad i was like hey you know i don't want to be poor i really want to leverage time as much as possible and real estate is just one of the most historically proven asset classes and so and i wanted a little bit more control than i could get from just index funds and things like that and i hadn't really studied options trading or any of those other more i call it aggressive trading strategies so i'm thinking well i can either build a huge lump sum like you know i need million dollars or more so i can get the four percent rule on the index funds or i can use real estate where i have a lower amount that i've invested but i can still get that income coming in and so that that that was really the impetus behind that so anyway long story short about the first place um it was a actually it was not a full single family house it was a condo so i was in austin texas so it was half half of a house half of a duplex for my this is what the structure looked like standpoint two bedroom one bath nothing crazy at all um and you know i obviously was on a budget because i again was a graduate student at the time and so i wanted to have a place where i could have at least a portion of not all of my housing expenses covered um because that would make it just a lot easier to obviously own a house and have a little bit more wiggle room in the budget so i i had a couple of different roommates most of them were people in my similar department so other graduate students from my roommates because it just made sense right and so those are people that i had as roommates throughout my entire graduate journey um i ended up getting a fulbright as you mentioned in the intro and so i went overseas for a little bit and i just you know like when you're really thinking about what it is you want and how you want your life to grow you're like okay i i feel like this was a really good move and because i ended up going overseas i needed to rent my place while i was away and so i had a property manager in the meantime and the property manager would send me notices every month that hey you got paid you got paid you got paid well fast forward to when i was graduating i decided to go on a eat pray love elizabeth gilbert style graduation trip and at this point i was in a hostel so still low budget right i was in a hostel in lisbon in portugal and i got the same email i'd always gotten but this time it just hit me a little bit differently because i was actually on vacation and it said hi you've gotten paid you know the money will be deposited and available in two or three days and i was like let me get this straight i am literally on the other side of the world i have not quote-unquote done anything and yet i'm getting paid this is impeccable i must have more of this like this i have wanted life how can i do more of this and so that's really where real estate went from okay i own a little house you know i have roommates that sort of thing to like no this is something that i really should put some effort and energy into into learning more mastering more and really having a significant part of my you know wolf building journey going forward so that's that that would be the i guess the inflection point moment there um after that moved to columbus ohio my first big girl job and was certainly hot under the collar to get more rental properties as much as possible and you know ohio again from that 2008 recession was a little bit was hit very hard from 2008 and certainly was a little bit slower on the uptake so by the time i came to ohio in 2014 there was still lots of lots and lots and lots of opportunities available and i ended up networking with some other folks and some other ladies and they were like there's a guy you should meet and that guy was a syndicator real estate developer so forth and so on and his name is john and we ended up not just hitting it off we decided to have a life together so we ended up getting married and so with that you know we really decided to really focus on growing our portfolio in those urban neighborhoods because that's where the most opportunity is and certainly was at the time and you know it's really about the overall impact that you can have and yes obviously real estate investing is certainly it needs to be profitable and it needs to in order for you to it to be a viable investment opportunity for you but even more so than that i think that real estate more so than probably any of the other asset classes has a direct impact on people's lives and the quality of life that they're able to live and that certainly has where has been where real estate investing has gone from just numbers on a balance sheet to really a tool where we can not only have financial returns but social returns as well and so that is the whole back story and the impetus for the firm that we have today so you mentioned that you met your husband kind of on this real estate journey he was someone that was also interested and involved in the same industry which is very interesting something i'd like to dig into just a little bit more you know having a partner or a spouse that is like-minded and along with you on your wealth building journey so how would you say that your your partnership your marriage has served you in your wealth building journey i think that having someone who has similar goals if not bigger goals than you it makes it that much easier you need to be on a similar mindset or similar accord um i actually read something the other day that i thought was actually pretty impactful and it was basically saying that people select they're like i like this person they're really cool and i'm gonna make you my life partner and then now i'm gonna try and incorporate you into all the things that i like versus other people and maybe a less popular you know round is to say these are things that i want who else has similar goals and then let me let i don't want to say let the love come later but let the relationship grow around your common interests and common uh destination and so we were in option two in that we each had this goal and these interests already so he didn't i when i met him he was already a property owner when he met me i was already a property owner so this was not something that we needed to convince the other of we were already independently on the path and then now you know one plus one equals more than two does that make sense yeah yeah yeah i i'm a fan of that i am a big supporter of that too it's people underestimate sometimes the the real impact that you know the views of your life partner has on your trajectory and many different angles of life you know your career and well-building and impact on the world included so yeah i love that you know it's not something where i i think a lot of people are like oh i have this idea and now i i need to almost drag my spouse or drag my person of interest along with it and that's not necessarily fair to either one of you because they didn't you know like if i i don't know i'm trying to think of something if i don't if i don't like ice hockey you know just because you decided one day that you want to play ice hockey that doesn't mean that i'm all of a sudden about to go get on the ice and put on shoulder pads and here we go like that's that's not necessarily fair to the other person it doesn't mean that you shouldn't explore it but to expect them to jump in with both feet especially you know in situations with money people have a lot of fear and anxiety around money and investing and so that that's a big ask it's a really big ass yeah um versus when you find someone who even if they're not already actively doing it at least they have the interest you know what i mean at least if they have a series of books about whatever you know let's say you want to do i'm just going to go with index ones again let's at least they have you know the boggleheads book and you know all these other kind of you know they have warren buffet letters to shareholders some they have something to show that they already have an innate interest and then now together you could grow and you may not know exactly what asset classes you want to explore or what that um investment strategy is but you're not it's like motivation you can't give someone motivation you can only amplify what is already there does that make sense yes absolutely absolutely absolutely and then so speaking of investment strategy and other asset classes now that you both have grown your real estate portfolio have you also entered into other types of investments along the way or are you still primarily just real estate focused at this point in your journey yeah i'll say yes and no so i i think that at a certain point as you really dive deep into something the level of knowledge you have becomes an unfair advantage and so it would be not wise to divert that your attention to another asset class just because it's a shiny object you know what i mean um yeah so it's like you've spent so much time becoming an expert in this why abandon what you already know instead dive deeper so what that means for us is so not necessarily moving away from real estate but real estate is such a vast asset class in industry that you don't necessarily have to stay in the single family house game or in the duplex game or the residential game you can certainly move into commercial and commercial is apartment complexes self storage facilities there's ground up development there's a lot of things so for us in our personal portfolios we're moving much more towards instead of redevelopment of individual properties larger ground up opportunities and syndication deals and things like that so much large larger scale um because again for us it's really about how can our efforts and energy get the greatest return the roe so there's roi which is financial return but return on energy so for the effort that i need to expend what is going to give me the greatest return from an overall standpoint and so that's really where our portfolio has been positioning and repositioning in recent years that being said i think people should invest in lots of things right right absolutely so what would you say are some lessons that you've learned along this wealth building journey that you can share with listeners yeah um i would say one of the first ones we've touched on it before is you don't have to know everything from the beginning it's okay to get started and learn more as you go you know one of the things that i like to say is when you're standing at the bottom of a rug upstairs you know if you're on the bottom rung you can see maybe stairs you know one through four and you're like i can see you up to stair number four and that's good and you know i'm a little nervous about stair number four but i can see it but once you take that first step and you're on wrong number one now you could see two through five and the next round you can see three through six and so forth and so on and allow yourself the grace to learn more as you go your perspective is going to change the things that are good investments versus quote-unquote bad investments they will alter and mature over time some deals that i would have done five years ago i may not be interested in today but that's okay it's my perspective has changed and so because of that you know you don't have to stay stuck you're not a tree you you can evolve and change over time and that's the beautiful part about investing and just growing as a human being you know what i mean yeah so i would say that would probably be number one the second thing i would say is to i like to say invest for the long tail so not necessarily just financial investing but i am a big advocate that you as an individual are the absolute best investment that you can make so investing in your education financial or otherwise i think is the highest return activity that you can do so thinking about actions and investments that you can make in yourself that have a long residual outcome so learning about money learning about investing and financial education that that breeds long a long tail of returns you know i started when i was 21 i had a milestone birthday yesterday and so i've been investing for quite some time now and you know the things that i learned back in 21 i'm still benefiting from that today and i will continue to benefit from that and so there's nothing better than in furthering your education very specifically so that it can reap you benefits for years and years and years to come awesome awesome i love that so i want to pivot a little bit okay so now that you have grown your welted level that it is today would you say that you have faced any unique challenges specifically as a black wealth holder is that black wealth holder yes for sure um here's why here's why i'm a little bit hesitant to say more on the one hand real estate is both a business and an investment so a lot of the chat so it's not just you know clicking some buttons and you know money just goes up it doesn't quite work that way it's definitely both so there's a lot of um active management the designation of passive income is just a taxi designation that is not a real of what it is and what it entails so i will say that um and because of the nature of real estate you know it's an equity game right it's a tax game it's not necessarily a i'm making it rain on the internet type of game so one of some of the biggest challenges and i would probably say probably more of a challenge as a woman even more so than a person of color um in in the realm of real estate specifically and being uh customer facing tenant facing however you want to say it contractor facing so forth and so on and that i find it a lot easier a lot of times to place the responsibility on a quote-unquote fictitious male so i am not the person in charge i am here on behalf of my dad i am here on behalf of my husband i'm here on behalf of my random uncle you know what i mean and so it just makes it a lot it takes the pressure off and so if i have a rule for example i may get pressed on it but if i say hey i'm just i'm just acting on behalf of then it's not my rule so you can't actually get mad at me so those are some of the challenges um i i think the beautiful part about building wealth is that it's your business not necessarily anybody else's business so you don't necessarily get challenges in the sense that you may in the same way you will in trying to grow your career uh the challenges that you experience are much more in the banking and finance side so getting financing for properties um and things like that and that really is one of the reasons not one of like reasons one through 15 as to why we started housing jv is there was a property that my husband and i wanted to purchase it was in a transitional neighborhood it was about 15 units or so across the street from a hospital and it would have made really great um patient housing you know when people travel to get medical care so patient housing or staff there's everyone that works at a hospital is not necessarily a doctor there are janitors there are service staff cafeteria workers people like that so it would have been a really great working class service to hospital employee housing facility okay and the numbers worked numbers were great we reached out to our bank who had financed this other property that we have and you know all of our financials are great blah blah blah and the response that we got back was you know you're a great borrower totally you know you're good uh the finance financials look great that's great uh and and then it said i don't want to redline but and they went on to list all these reasons why they would not lend on this particular property and it was basically based on its location and you know blah blah blah blah and so that hurt because you're basically telling me that i cannot grow my wealth because you don't want to land in this area or on this particular property tomato tomato and i'm limited based on your decision not based on my own vision and what i can see that this property could potentially be and so that was a real in your words wake up call or challenge it like oh my goodness as much as you feel that you're in control of growing your wealth as long as you're relying on banks or third parties and you know this is not an anti-bank grant but as long as you're relying on entities outside of yourself to grow and scale then you'll always be limited and so that really is what led us to to found housing jv and say hey not only are we going to take these matters to our own hands and allow people in our network and other persons to invest if they have a similar ethos and a similar investing mindset and they can invest with us as well right and then from the pandemic in 2020 a lot of people really i think got a a jolt of recognizing how fragile their financial situations were and so that's when we added in the educational component to help other people learn how they could use real estate as a tool to build their wealth so that would be the biggest challenge being a person of color common woman building wealth wow wow yeah you know we talk about redlining and all of these things and you know you kind of talk about it in historical context a lot of times but when you really think about the present day effects that these these issues still have you know it's never ceases to amaze me right so yeah yeah yeah so okay so another question that i have for you is what kinds of financial professionals have you worked with in the past whether that's a financial advisor an accountant an attorney insurance agent etc and how have those experiences been for you all of the above actively all the time um i think with anything it's important about having a strong team right and i we don't choose our financial professionals or advisors based on their skin color we choose them based on their competence and their willingness to help us execute the vision that we have and so with that in mind uh we seek out the best that we can afford and sometimes we can't necessarily afford them but we know that they are going to give us the guidance that we need especially when we're navigating waters where we may not have expertise today um and so we spent a lot of time in the diligence phase so you don't necessarily just open up google and say hello i need attorney you know in insert city name here it really focusing on what is the outcome that you're seeking and trying to get as much specialized advice as possible but like anything else specialists do cost more right you can go to a digital general practitioner or you can go to a cardiologist the cardiologist is going to cost a little bit more but you'll also be more confident that they can actually help solve your problems right right awesome so what what was that like i guess hiring each of these people you said you worked with all of these professionals so it was a process like hiring them what were the values you looked for when you were hiring these people and yeah just tell me what are some important things that you all looked for okay and it's not looked it's look currently so as we grow so we have a myriad of attorneys we have a myriad of insurance agents we have a myriad of real estate agents so just because of the nature of our business and i should kind of back up and just give you a little bit more context so we're in two two states we're in four cities um and again our portfolio has evolved from just single family redevelopment to now ground up and of course fundraising as well so that means that people can invest with us so whenever you allow other people to invest with you whenever you um edit or improve or expand the the scope of things that you do then there are levels of expertise that you need so i think a lot of people feel like i'm gonna get my one attorney not necessarily you're gonna need attorneys for a variety of things so just as an example we have an eviction attorney for when if slash when we have to do an eviction we have another attorney because uh we own a hoa so you know you have condominiums and have an hoa that manages that so we had an attorney specifically for that you have a general business attorney that was setting up your entities and structures and things like that if you're much working in multiple states you're going to have an attorney representing you in each of those states and so on our team i would say we probably have have active relationships with about seven to ten attorneys at any given time depending on what it is that we're working on and what we're doing um we rely very heavily on referrals and we rely very heavily on again that interview process and heavily vetting so one of the things that we like to teach our students to do when they're filling out their team for the first time is think about people that you have worked with in the past that you've had really good working relationships with so that could be previous co-workers previous managers previous people that you've worked with as in that you've hired it could be a contractor it could be a painter an artist it doesn't really matter god you know does your lawn landscaping it doesn't matter but there are certain types of people that you like to work with and certain types of people that you don't like to work with and so think about what those common threads are between them so do they just do business on a handshake or are they much more i'll call it digital and professionally savvy in that everything is going to be via email correspondence uh do they pick up the phone call and call you do you prefer that or are you know are you like most millennials and gen zeros and like no no phone call text message only you know so really thinking about logistically how much communication do you want and how you want that communication to occur what level of transparency do you want or do you not do you want to be involved in every single step or do you want them to just quote unquote fix it make the problem go away and so all those things are going to determine what in your mind makes a good attorney insurance agent whatever you versus a bad one and so it's really about choosing professionals that work with your working style as opposed to this blanket this is a good one versus a bad one right and so what would you say were some of those preferences for you and what you were seeking or what you continue to seek as you can hire new professionals as well it honestly depends on on what it is this is i wouldn't say that this is something you can give blanket advice on some some roles require much more uh person-to-person interaction so for example in my real estate agent i may want someone who is a little bit more casual because they're gonna make the buying experience more comfortable for that if i'm the seller then i'm going to want my agent to be a little bit more casual because they're going to have a lot of friends in the industry where i can get the deal done very quickly versus for my attorney i want to be represented for the most cost effective yet uh knowledgeable ways possible so for that person i certainly need as much documentation as possible i want all my t's crossed and my eyes dotted versus my real estate agent they don't necessarily have to be that buttoned up if you know what i mean my insurance professional i want them to be much more consultative because at this point they are really advising me in my risk management so i don't necessarily need you to be you do need to drop the eyes and cross the t's but what i really want you to do is be much more forward-thinking and so the reason why i'm hesitant is because this is something that we literally with our with our students we spend multiple weeks going back and forth with them to find to build out that team so this isn't something you can just oh yeah let me just google this and you know hi you know that sort of thing no literally for each of these we have a full questionnaire that we share with our students to help them one figure out what it is that they want in each of these roles and then have interviews for each of the potential i'm gonna call it candidates for persons in their in their team so this is a really big question and your team is really if not the most certainly one of the largest aspects that leads to success or failure especially in a field like real estate right okay and then so specifically drilling down a little bit more into uh one professional that we didn't talk that much about is a financial advisor which you said you worked with as well so are there specific things that you think financial professionals should know when seeking to work with wealthy black clients are there certain things that you look for when you're hiring an advi a financial advisor specifically well i should preface this that i i do have an insurance license and my husband has one as well so technically we are financial professionals in that regard and so we do offer that kind of financial needs assessment to people that we work with so and so hopefully that's helpful in that regard um most of the times when we work with financial advisors it's not necessarily for our own portfolio it's much more that financial advisors are limited traditional people that are the broker-dealer side um that are putting their their you know that are having assets under management most of the time doing investments in alternative assets like real estate is beyond the scope of what they do so majority of times when i'm working with a financial advisor it's much more on a how can we find an investment opportunity that is appropriate for their client where they would feel comfortable investing in one of our projects if that makes sense okay but on a personal level have you worked with someone with a financial plan or advisor who's helping you more comprehensively on you know your estate planning or your philanthropy or you know other areas of your finance your financial picture more comprehensively for for our own personal portfolio we use a family office so it's a little bit different than a financial advisor so yes very comprehensive but family office awesome and so what was that like you know going through that process of you know how did you know you even needed a family office like what were the things that you were looking for how'd that all happen certainly um so much more on a referral basis um and at a certain level you just don't know what you don't know and so um at a certain level of building wealth the risk and risk management becomes i don't say more important but equally as important as growing so you can grow but you're like i should probably do some things to kind of protect my downside so to speak um and so a lot of that comes from referrals right so hi who do i know so my husband's from new york and so a lot of our network from the financial sense is there um and so similar to what i mentioned before it's about interviewing persons you have to make sure that they have uh a similar you tell them what your goals are and typically they're that financial professional is going to give you a series of suggestions on how they can bring your idea to reality so for example uh someone may say hey you need to have a irrevocable trust well that might sound good but you know i'm still in my 30s so i may not want an irrevocable trust i still might want to have some flexibility there right i may not necessarily want to retitle assets in the name of a trust at this age unless it's something i'm planning to hold on for a really long time um you know someone else may say oh hey um we're going to take your life insurance policies and put them in the name of a trust which okay that can make a lot of sense you know especially as we start and grow a family uh so it it again these are i think very nuanced based on each individual and what it is they want um the things that are very important to us are longevity uh generational wealth resiliency and things that can stand the test of time and really are separate from individual short-term emotions and decision-making what would you say what advice would you give what would you tell financial professionals whether those are you know family office professionals financial advisors financial planners insurance agents etc what would you tell them about working or seeking to work with wealthy black clients are there specific things that you think are important for the industry to know i don't know if i don't know if my i'm not sure the level that my blackness comes in to the conversation because ultimately i want the same thing that everyone else wants i want to know that you care i want to know that you have my best interest in mind and i want to know that you're going to build the most resilient and flexible plan for me and my family's future so that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the fact that i'm black that has more to do the fact that i'm a person and i'm trusting this other person to give me proper guidance and so if there's any point where i would feel that i'm not being heard or not being listened to um and that what i'm trying to accomplish is being pooed that that's when we would have an issue the whole reason why i originally got an insurance license is because i wanted an index universal life policy and you know i'm not sure how i guess uh financially in the weeds your audience is but i i really wanted one of these policies that had a lot of cash value accumulating potential and i was not able to find a life insurance agent that would design the policy in the way that i wanted so it would be as efficient as possible so i wanted even my first year's premium to give me anywhere from 70 to 80 you know from year one you know in my cash value for my initial premium and everybody everybody that i talked to basically just gave me a pat on the head there there little lady that's so cute this is what you really need and that was so frustrating disheartening because you're like i know what i want i know what a good one looks like and this is what i want you to do for me and yes when you design a policy that way it does reduce the commissions that the insurance professional can receive so i do understand that but that's exactly what i i i was not trying to remove commissions from the agent i was trying to get the best policy for what i wanted right and for right what my goals were and so i was so frustrated that yeah i ended up getting my own insurance license and i you know and i was able to dive into the weeds and really so you know if anybody wants one of these i'm probably the super nerdiest person when it comes to these types of policies whole life and all that just because i you know i was so frustrated with it that i right and in my opinion it's a very large investment it's a it's a large decision because you're literally not that you can only have one whole life policy you can have many of them but each one that you purchase you want to make sure that it's going to be good because you're literally having it in place for your whole life at least you should so i was very frustrated that in my opinion this is something that's a significant purchase again not necessarily that it has to be a huge dollar amount but for the longevity that i'm going to have this product i thought that it deserved a level of diligence and care that i was not receiving and so those are the things that i think drive people to switch perfect financial professionals get their own licenses things like that yeah that's helpful that's really interesting that you know you find you come up against a roadblock and the solution is always kind of like i'm going to figure out how to do it myself then if nobody else is going to do it for me yeah i love that and i i mean my goal was not necessarily to be i'm you know it's very helpful in our business now to have it but my goal was not to become a licensed insurance professional that was that was not what i was out here i just i just wanted to buy one i just wanted to buy one in the way that i wanted it and sorry a little bit clumsy there uh i just want to buy one and i was not able and i did seek out people that had that were given great marks lots of excellent recommendations um but when the rubber hit the road and the proposal you know head-to-head proposal came down to the ink pen i i was less than impressed right right okay so i have one final question for you before we go yeah the details i promise no it's great it's great so in your opinion what do you think the financial services industry can do to help close the racial wealth gap it's a loaded question i know it is it is it is um i you know i feel like the financial services industry in general can be scary to persons of color wealthy or not and it's my opinion and i think there's a lot of data to back this up that even wealthy persons of color wealthy black people tend to come from not necessarily the wealthiest of backgrounds so even if they are wealthy today they may be carrying some fear doubt um hesitation from their background and just a general lack of trust and so with that in mind i think that going from going with an educational approach i think is very helpful um i think starting slow and a lot of times it's not necessarily showing off how much you know you know of course you're going to have crazy engineer people like me that are going to want proposals that are you know lamborghinis but everybody's not like that most people want to know again that you care they want to know that you are taking the time and the diligence to do so um the reason why we've hesitated to to go to financial professionals in a in a huge holistic sense kind of like you're talking about and i guess i would even though i am in the financial services industry to a certain extent right um we have been hesitant to have our own personal wealth managed by other professionals that focus on you know they have assets under management and they're going to do much more active stock portfolio management right and the reason why we steer more towards real estate where we have more control is because again we just felt blanketed i kid you not my husband and i went to a financial professional um when we i think we might have been engaged at the time i don't know if we're engaged or married as yet but early and early in our relationship and we were just telling them you know this is our goals blah blah blah blah and instead of preparing an individualized proposal they gave us a print off from from another client and the previous person's name was just write it out and photocopied and you know i'm telling i'm when you when you tell someone your financial history and and where you are right now you're bearing it all you are literally bearing it all and that is a very vulnerable state for everybody especially a person of color when you again we tend to come from from backgrounds that are not that wealthy we can't we don't necessarily have money to lose you know what i mean like this is the wealth that i have and i i don't really have any extra wealth to lose like all i got i need it all right every penny right versus other people they've been like ah you know it's not that big of a deal i don't need all of it no no no no like i'm still the point where i need all of it in order to actually grow and scale if we're ever gonna have a chance you know i think as a as a society and as a group of people i don't think we can really catch up but if we're even gonna still be a blimp on the radar i really need to mine all the pennies even today and so when you bare it all to someone and they give you a whited out copy of someone else's portfolio proposal that doesn't feel good you know when you when you ask someone for a very particular product because you've done your research and they patch you on the head and say they're there this is actually what you need and it's nothing like what you asked for that doesn't feel good when you tell someone that this is what i can comfortably afford given all the other responsibilities that i have and they say no i think you can pay more that means you're not listening so what do i think that the financial professional industry can do as a whole i think listen more i think focus on an educational type of mindset be more consultative and just be open to hearing what it is that the client wants um i think that certainly wealthy persons of color have have done more research than most um so they i in my opinion i think they come in with a higher level of knowledge than a quote-unquote general layperson because again they they need every dollar so i think they've done more research so in that regard i think it's even more important to listen it's even more important to make sure that you are matching them with the most appropriate investment for them not necessarily with you just because you think it's okay but and you may need to guide them to show them where not necessarily they're wrong but how your thought process would lead to an even better outcome most people are really really open to listening and hearing but the approach has to be right a lot of times it's not what you say it's how you say it and how you present it and i think that people want to be treated with care they will be treated with concern and they want to know that they have your utmost attention and that you're going to give them the highest quality and in the financial services industry that means you're giving them customized service and customized advice awesome well michelle this has been wonderful and please before we go tell our listeners where they can keep up with you absolutely i think linkedin is probably the easiest of all the social media platforms to keep keep up with uh me and what we have going on um certainly go to our website housingjv.com and there you can hear about all the things we got going on from development opportunities and educational things and all the all the things going on there also thank you so much for joining me today richelle it's been a pleasure my pleasure thanks for having me again i really appreciate it it's been so fun having this conversation with you