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So the big question is this: how are real estate investors who don't have a ton of free time, don't have access to off-market deals, and didn't start a life on third base we grow a real estate business conservatively to support our families, finally leave the corporate rat race and build a legacy.

That is the question. And this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Ed Mathews. And this is real estate underground. This is the real estate underground podcast show. Number 40. Matthew's here with the real estate underground podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I am excited about this. This guest, Margaret Kozlark. I'm going to introduce her in a second, but the reason I'm so excited about this is not only so the new relationship for me, to be honest, in full disclosure, we met a couple of months ago and I tend to be a stalker when it comes to meeting new people.

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And so I got on her website and checked out her social media and realized She's really smart, and so not only is she really smart, but I've actually, and in full disclosure, we're creating our website right now, and I may have modeled mine after yours just a little bit. Anyway, Margaret, thank you so much for joining us today.

Margaret is with Noble Investments, and I am so excited to meet you. actually, in the background also, we've joined the same mastermind, so that's another. That's true. We have, yeah. So great to the show, ed? Yes. Yeah. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me on. Yeah. So you and I got to meet each other at Brendan Chisholm's meet-up over in Fairfield County here in Connecticut.

And we got to shoot the breeze a bit and talk about our various businesses. One of the things that I've learned is that when it comes to my business and looking at your business, I always say on the show that we're all reading the same book, but some people are a few chapters ahead of others, right?

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I feel like I'm on about chapter five, and you're on 26. So I'm also really excited to meet you because you've accomplished a lot in a relatively short period of time. Congratulations on that. For those out there who don't know who you are and who your firm is, who is Noble Vest? Then, let's go from there.

Sure. I would love to, but before I tell you a little bit about Noble Vest, I just want to say that I took the traditional route that we've all been told to do. I went to school, I got good grades, I got a college degree, got a corporate job, worked myself up to the corner office, and was making great money, but had zero Work life balance was really unhappy, really out of shape, was like not even moving and I just realized there has to be another way, and so I started investing passively, and I'll tell you in a second how I found out about that about six years ago now and At the time, I had never heard of syndication and full disclosure, I've never even been a landlord.

I went straight from a corporate job to passive investing. I skipped over [00:03:00] the active landlord part that I know many people do. But yeah, exactly. And it's a great way to go, but I have no time. I had that corporate job. I had three kids. Life was pretty busy. I needed more time. That's something to like to occupy more of it.

But I did that passively for several years, and I realized what an amazing vehicle it was for getting me a great passive income. But also just giving me my time back. And so what happened was I did that for several years, and then my friends and family started hearing about it. What is this you're doing?

You're buying apartments. Wait in Texas. Wait, what, what is this? And so they started saying, I want to know more about this. I want to do this. And so I had a smaller company called. MGH investments are named after my kids, Grace Henry, because those were my big why. And I was doing just kind of small projects where I was kind of helping friends and family get access to these.

But then, as always happens, I am also, by the way, a residential real estate agent. And so, as anybody [00:04:00] knows, the last couple of years were a crazy time for real estate. So I met a partner that my now partner two years ago, and we had been talking all through the pandemic. And we just realized that our interests aligned.

To make a long story short, we decided to form Nobly Vest. We are basically a boutique private equity firm, and we work with high-net-worth and busy W2 professionals, helping to match them with opportunities so that they can earn passive income, save on taxes, and, more importantly, gain freedom.

For their time to spend doing whatever else they'd like to do. Thank you for that. And I'm curious, how do you define passive? The term passive gets thrown around the real estate world a bit, right? I mean, technically, I'm a passive investor, but I'm also an active landlord, right? So, for the folks out there, how do you define a passive investor versus an active investor?

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Absolutely. So I would consider a landlord, an active investor, right? So if you own a property, you are essentially responsible for the property management, right? So you're getting those calls at 10 o'clock. My plumbing broke, or something was wrong with my dryer. We have to collect and chase the tenants down to collect the rent.

Any of that, to me, is definite active owners. Oh, yeah, versus on the flip side with a passive investor, it doesn't just have to be in large apartments. Of course, you could have a passive investor for a duplex. It's essentially somebody who helps provide the capital for the investment but then doesn't do any of the heavy lifting and pretty much sits back, and we either have a property manager or, if it was something smaller, someone else is basically managing the day-to-day operations.

Their role is strictly limited to a capital investment. So a true passive investment. Okay, so I'd like to slice that a little further then. So then there is the concept within our world, the syndication and investment world, of general partner and limited partner in the roles, right? And so I'm assuming a lot of, in [00:06:00] fact, I'm pretty sure I know, the investments that you have been making over the years, were they as a limited partner?

Right. And a general partner, both a little bit more of both. I definitely started as a limited partner, and I would encourage anybody, especially if you're looking to get into syndication, not to try to jump right into being a GP because you really want to start as a limited partner for a couple of reasons.

Number one, you can literally get that front-row seat to watch and see how it works, but you can also work with a bunch of different operators to determine who you like, whose communication style, maybe they're very conservative with their underwriting, and who could be a potential partner when you decide to go the more active GP route.

So, I started as an LP, and since then, I have been a co-GP on several deals. I've also been a fund manager, and we can talk about the fund-to-fund model on several deals as well. Okay. Wow. You've worn a lot of hats. Let's take it a little higher for the [00:07:00] moment, and then I want to get into the details.

So as far as the asset class real estate, right? And multifamily within real estate, obviously, you were a market researcher, correct? As a career. Yes. Yes. It was a data geek. Yeah. Yes. So, I'm a techie geek. So yeah, let the corporate geeks unite. Um, you know, in terms of asset classes, right? You accomplished a lot in your corporate America career, and I assume you were making very good money. You probably could have done a lot of different things with that capital.

You could have gone into venture capital. You could have invested in it. Stock market or bonds or anything else, right? Art. So what drew you to real estate as an asset class and then multifamily beyond that? A couple of things. Ever since I was a kid, I have been interested in real estate. Even though I didn't come from a real estate family, we used to play this game.

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My mom and I would drive around town and point out houses with possibilities. That house has possibilities. Possibly somebody should fix that up. But I just always, and the irony is I could have seen myself as a fix and flipper. I just didn't have the time to do it, but I always liked the idea.

And a lot of the syndications that we do are value-added syndication. So it's almost sort of like fixing and flipping on a bionic kind of scale, essentially. So I liked it, but I also felt like as an asset class, everybody needs a place to live. At the end of the day, we were providing one of the necessities: life.

If I can take a property that's a little bit tired, maybe run down and neglected, and fix it up and make it a nicer living experience, then everybody wins. It's really important for me that it's not just me and the investors who win. I want the tenants to win by getting a nicer place.

I want the community to win by having the home values rise because now we've got this nicer asset in the midst. So to me, I liked the win-win situation. And it's one of the things I came to admire about you as I learned more about you because, you know, you and I [00:09:00] think similarly in that respect and that our job number one is to create a clean and safe place for people to live.

And then to, you know, Upgrade it and enhance it. So they're proud to live there. And one of the things you and I talked about at Brendan's meetup was the idea of vacancy, right? The better experience your residents have, the longer they stay in vacancy is one of our biggest expenses.

So if you can defer that, yeah, it's so much easier to keep an existing tenant happy than to try to find a new one and keep repeating that process every year. 100 percent. So true. So true. And I learned that just from past property management experiences, having other property managers manage and turn, turn, turn, turn.

They were doing great regarding their apartment terms and the fees they were charging us. But one of the things that I realized is that laying your head on the pillow with a clear conscience every night is really important, right? I'm so glad you said that 100%. Yeah, I feel very strongly about that.

And I know affordable [00:10:00] housing is becoming a big issue. So we're even looking at some housing funds to try to help our investors who are interested in making a difference, kind of impact investing that way as well. Yeah. What's interesting, you know, in 2008, everybody talked about home prices and how they dropped. One of the other devastating effects of that economic crisis was the general contractors that disappeared.

Of all those GCs who were building affordable houses, whether it's single-family homes or multifamily communities, a huge percentage of those GCs just went and did something else for a living. Yeah. And that's what I keep telling people. Yes, we have inflation, and yes, rents are rising, but at the heart of it.

The problem is there's just not enough supply. And to your point, that's exactly right. We are so behind in terms of the number of houses that should have been built over the past several years to provide enough supply. Homes for everyone. Yeah. And honestly, that's why multifamily is doing so well, right?

There's not enough housing. So what do people do? They rent, right? Yeah. I mean, the state of Connecticut alone has 20 [00:11:00] affordable housing units, which is about 26,000 behind the U.S. as a whole. Yeah. I saw in the journal that the U.S. total is probably 3. 8 million units within the last month.

I heard some, and I'm probably going to misquote it, but some insane stat that said something like we would have to be building homes like 36 hours a day, which obviously doesn't exist, to catch up for the next five years to be able to even catch up to where we should be. So yeah. Yeah, so we all have a lot of work to do, and there are a lot of states out there, and I'm sure I don't know if this is something that you've looked at, but, like, the state of Connecticut has an 830 G program.

And basically, what that does is it allows you to work with the state at the state level. You can acquire a residential property, like a farm or something like that. You can work with the state to have the state rezone that as a commercial zone. So then you can add instead of buying 20 acres and putting.

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For houses on it, you can buy those 20 acres and put 40 affordable units at the rub with the 30 G you must commit to. I think it's a 40 year commitment where you have to provide affordable housing. The 3 levels of affordable housing over to, I think it's 30 percent of the units must be affordable.

Some categories of affordable housing. I think that's smart. I think it's smart for them to look at and develop programs like that. Because, yeah, we know the need is there. Yeah, the idea of being able to incent folks like you and folks like me to come out and not only. By value-added properties and making at least a portion of them affordable, but also developers to come in and build ground up.

Yeah, absolutely. So, let's talk about your focus on multifamily. So obviously, you could flip, have gone into multifamily, and manage yourself. You chose the passive route, at least in the early stages. What drew you to the multifamily part of this business as opposed to the single-family? Yeah, absolutely.

I think just because I was so fascinated by the thought [00:13:00] of somebody like me, who is so solidly middle class, even able to own an apartment. And I think that apartment complex, I should say. And I think it's a mindset thing, right? Because a lot of times when I talk to people about it, it's getting a little bit better now.

But I think everybody assumed it was some shadowy corporation or big giant conglomerate owning apartments. And they're really just people like you and me. So I just found it so interesting. Again, having that corporate job for several years before I finally was able to stop and then having three kids that I had to run around and take to all sorts of school events and practices, I just didn't think I had the bandwidth.

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To be an active landlord. So this really appealed to me, And it was just a way to make an impact on a big level again. But the other thing I also wanted to mention is how I got started, which is, you know, okay. I had the mindset. Okay, this sounds great. A colleague of mine had told me about this. She had a friend named Joe Fairless, Which, if anybody's in syndication, we'll know that name.

Joe is very big in syndication, and Joe was starting out and wanted to do this thing with apartments. And so she said, you should really get in on it. And I was like, I don't know, that sounds really complex. So I just sort of watched and saw that they were making great returns. And I was like, okay, this sounds amazing.

I'm going to jump in. So now, mindset, I'm there, but again, I have three kids now, and I'm a single mom. I don't have 50,000 lying around, and that's why many people don't do syndication initially; it is a pretty high barrier to entry dollars. But what I did have was I hit the 401k from that corporate job.

So here's this pool of money that so many of us have that we're really not doing anything with. And if you think about it, I'll just do a quick aside here. Here's your retirement savings, right? So, for those of us who went the corporate route, go in, and you pretty much just say, I want high risk, low risk, medium, usually depending on how old you are.

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And that's it. And then you put this huge responsibility for your retirement, your ability, quality of life, and retirement into somebody's hands, right at Fidelity. And you're just like, please, God, I hope they know what they're doing. And sometimes they'll put them in mutual funds, right? Oh, mutual funds are so safe.

If you look at your mutual fund, Statement Ed, there are so many fees in there. Half the time, they're getting transaction fees just for moving your money around. So your mutual fund guy is making out great, but you might be losing anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of your returns to these fees. So I knew there had to be a better way.

I had this money just sitting there, so I converted it to a self-directed IRA, and that's how I started investing. Okay. And so your first investment was with Joe, or was it? It was with Joe. Yeah. My first several ones were with Joe. Yeah. It was a 297-unit complex outside of Dallas, and I put in 50 000 of my retirement money and then 2.

5 years later, [00:16:00] I've gotten quarterly distributions. We had refinanced. We sold the property, and in that 2. 5 years, my initial 50,000 had grown by another 28,000. So I came in at 52 and a half years later at 78. I'm like, I like this. I wanted to do this again. So I just took that money and rolled it right into the next deal and then just kept doing that.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more with your approach. The fact is that when you buy a dollar's worth of stock or a mutual fund, you're praying that the manager or the CEO of that company knows what they're doing, and sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't, but real estate is tangible, right?

I mean, there are so many things you can touch and you can affect the value of it in real ways very easily. Yeah, and it's very transparent. You know, I love that there are webinars and all the pro formas. You can see the rent rolls and you can dig into the data as much as you want. I mean, it's very. All out there.

Maybe because it is regulated by the SEC. [00:17:00] And so you really have to be very careful in making sure you're reviewing everything, of course, prior to making an investment. Ultimately, it's your own choice. But yeah, let's fast-forward a little bit. So you've invested in their lists. That's gone well.

I assume you did it again. Did you diversify, or did you stay with that one syndicator? How did that work? No, I also worked with passive investing. com. Dan Hanford's another guy I invested with a company called CV Capital out of Louisville. I'm in a short-term rental fund now. So I did diversify, but I would say probably for the first five years, I didn't diversify in the sense that I just stayed in the multifamily lane.

Yep. It was usually like, that's what I want. I want at least a hundred units, value add Sunbell. Landlord-friendly state population growth, the whole thing, and it's served me. Well, only recently, I started diverting into other asset classes. Okay. So let's talk about the progression from limited partner to co and full-on general partner.

How'd you make that transition? It [00:18:00] was. It's both scary and super exciting, too. So I had wanted to really get into really being more of an active management role. And as I mentioned, I had a lot of friends who were interested in this. And so I had another colleague, ironically, I've mentioned a colleague of mine told me about this.

So she told a company. We were a small company of maybe 20 people at the time, and only myself and one other guy took her up on it. And we both loved it so much that we ended up both going into it full-time. So this guy, his name is Iqbal, ended up having a property. He moved to Texas for family reasons, but now he's boots on the ground.

So he found this great property and was looking for general partners to help. You know, I've got a marketing background, so we can help with asset management, which I'll just take a quick aside just to make sure that your listeners know, but when you are a co-GP. You cannot just raise capital. You have to do something else.

You have to actively be involved in the asset [00:19:00] management. Now, not being on-site, I can't really walk the property, but we could do newsletters. We could do investor relations, help with website design, marketing, and things like that. But if the SEC ever comes calling, you have to make sure that they see that you are also an active member of the management team.

Anyway, that was my quick aside. So I went into this deal, and it was really such a learning experience because it was right before COVID. We bought the property. So fall of 2019. Okay. Now, here comes March 2020. The world literally shuts down. Right. And I don't care how conservative you are in your underwriting.

No one had that on the line. Okay. Nobody had a pandemic boom. So, that happened for six weeks. No, I did not plan for that. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, okay. Now COVID happens. Then there was a freak ice storm in Dallas. And so we had some damage from. Pipes bursting. Okay. That was a problem. Then there was like a tornado, and like, I think part of a roof got [00:20:00] damaged, and what the heck else is going to happen for this crazy property?

But here's the silver lining in the story. First of all, it was a great one to start with because I learned a ton, but the really cool thing was that despite the pandemic, the pipes bursting, the roof damage—all of this stuff—we were still able to exit early after three years, and our investors still made a 37 percent return.

It was lower than our projections, but for us to make a profit, especially during a pandemic and all the other crazy stuff, we were just Thrilled. Yeah. But that was a factor because we underwrote it so conservatively, right? So we couldn't have predicted the pandemic, but because we were conservative in our estimates, we didn't, nobody lost money on the deal and we still made a decent return on it.

Which is the single most important thing, right? This is to ensure that you are not only providing a clean and safe place for your residents but also protecting your investor money. You have to. It's a [00:21:00] very. Serious responsibility to be a fiduciary for someone else's money. And we take that very seriously, as we should.

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Go to CTREIAfunding. com or call us at 8 6 0 8 7 6 0 5 7 2. I know that you and your partner have been very active. First, you want to tell me how you connected with your partner and how that is, sure. So this is kind of a crazy story, too. As I mentioned, or you may have mentioned, I started kind of growing up in the market research space.

My partner is a little younger than I, and her kids are a little younger. She was feeling just the pinch. She had that corporate job, again, making great money, but just was not happy. So she thought about doing real estate and went to LinkedIn and typed, you know, real estate investor. And because I was in the same industry, we had so many common connections even though I didn't know her.

I popped To the top of the list. And she's in White Plains, New York, and I'm in Fairfield County. So she said, Oh, we're [00:23:00] close and reached out, you know, and I said, Yeah, let's get some coffee. And then that was shortly before the pandemic. So we talked for two years and met a couple of times outside. There's social distance and everything.

And so we kind of got to know each other through that. And we decided, you know what, let's go into business together. I had introduced her to a couple of syndications. She had invested passively and liked it. And so it is true that when you have two sets of people work, two sets of feet, or whatever the expression is, you can go so much farther than just one.

And I feel like the growth has been phenomenal just this past year. We've done a lot of really cool things together. Excellent. And she's a food scientist, correct? Yeah. Yes. So she was a food scientist at Unilever and she could probably, I'll have her come on your show. She can tell you a bit more about it than I can.

But I know it had to do with everything from the tactile sensation of the food, as well as, of course, the smell, the taste, the variance of how much sugar, salt, whatever it is, sometimes the color, there's so much [00:24:00] more to even just like making a Dorito chip than you would even imagine. Part of me doesn't even want to know because I just, it's like the magician telling you how they do the trick.

Exactly. Sometimes I don't want to look by the curtains. Right. Right. Right. So I'm sure, you know, over the years, you've had many parts or mentors and folks that have given you some guidance along the way. And what was the best advice you ever got? And frankly, who gave it to you? So, okay, there are a couple of things.

First of all, I would have to start with my dad. He was just such a good, ethical guy. And he was just always like, you're only as good as your word. So, live life ethically, and make the right decisions better if you're not sure about something to walk away. But once you lose respect or someone loses respect for you, it's very difficult to get it back.

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So just carry yourself like a good person. And that has always stayed with me. I really, whether it's home life. I want to be somebody out doing good in the world. So that was one thing. From a business standpoint, it was just focused. Don't be the ADD of, I can do this, and I can do that.

Oh my gosh, this looks amazing. That's why it was purposeful as an LP. And even as GPs, we will stay in our lane initially. You know, we are very busy. Yeah. Specific specs of what we were looking for, who our target markets were, the type of building, and how old it would be because it's very easy in syndication to get dazzled, right?

Someone, Oh, this guy's got a car wash. He's doing golf courses. Oh my gosh, it was built for the short term. You could be everywhere and stay with your asset class. At least to begin, really feel like you can go deep, and you know it, and then you can venture out. So that would be the biggest advice: narrow it down and focus.

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And then before you broke. Yeah, you meet these people. And I'm sure you also have where they've run three, four, or five-plus companies. And the thing that people, when they're just starting, don't realize is that person didn't start five companies at the same time started one company.

Perfect. I gave it to somebody else to manage and then went to the next company, and so on. Rinse and repeat. Yeah, exactly. And I also think that, in general, with syndication, I feel it's important to let the investors know I've been an LP for years. Christine and I usually invest in every project with our investors.

So we have skin in the game with them, and we are very protective of that investor experience because we've been there and want to make sure we communicate clearly. We're explaining the business plan. Everybody's getting their distributions on time because I think that makes for a good relationship, which will hopefully be a long-term relationship because of that, and that goes back to your tenants, right?

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It is easy to stay with a group of investors and keep working with them versus getting new ones. Yeah. And going back to your father's exceptionally good advice, you know, integrity matters, right? Do what you say you will do, then communicate and follow up, right? Yeah. It sounds so simple when you say it like that, but a lot of people don't do it.

Almost all of them, right? And it's not their fault. I mean, life happens, but what the fact is that, especially when you're dealing with someone's shelter or money, you look them in the eye, tell them what you're going to do, and then you deliver, right? In relation to that, A lot of people love the idea, but it's not uncommon that during our conversation, for whatever reason, maybe they love the idea, but they might need the money in 2 years because their daughter is getting married or something.

It's not uncommon that I'll say, I don't know that this is the right investment for you now. Right. And I think that's important, too, because I want people to understand the parameters, and there are a lot of upsides, but there are some considerations. There's the high entry cost, but it can also be a five-year hold.

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It's not like a stock market where you put something in and can get it out the next day if needed. So I want to make sure that people are going in with eyes open, and I'm not afraid to say, maybe this isn't the right time for you, but let's keep in touch. And then. Down the road. And I think people appreciate that.

I never sell. I don't think we have to agree wholeheartedly. I mean, sometimes selling people know for whatever reason, right? But you know, when you're trying to do right by somebody, and you tell them no or not yet from a credibility perspective, it is probably one of the most powerful things you can do because instantly they know.

Okay. Margaret has my best interests at heart here, and that's a huge trust builder in terms of how I look at potential partners and folks I work with. It's funny. I'll talk to so many people, even here at Keller, because my personal goal is to get more realtors investing in real estate.

It's crazy that more realtors don't invest. But many of them will say, well, I like this idea, but I don't know. I can't invest right away. And I'm like, listen, it took me two years to jump in. Just get your education. Just watch. Let me help you by giving you access to this. And I'd love to work with you if you want to.

And if you don't, that's okay. At least you know what it's all about. Yeah, the folks I [00:29:00] meet along the way, I tell them that if you give me 20 minutes and buy me a cup of coffee, I'll tell you everything I know. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Why not? Cause I had people that did that for me. Right. So, it sounds like you did as well.

So you mentioned education, and I'd like to talk with you about this. Cause I know that you had similar personalities in this respect. Leaders are readers, right? And reading per se has changed over the years, right? You can consume audio books and real books, as well as YouTube and podcasts, and go to seminars, conferences, and whatnot.

So, how do you consume information? How do you sharpen that saw of yours? And I'm curious what you're paying attention to these days. All of the above. Part of it is that life does, for whatever reason, just run faster. It does. I think that when we were all young and pre-internet if you're of a certain age as I am.

But when I'm in the car, my son goes to school in Easton, so it's about a 20 to 25 drive there every morning and back. [00:30:00] I will, on the way there, I don't subject him to this. We do a little bit, but mostly, we chat about his day and what will happen. But as soon as I drop him off, it's usually.

I've cast on the way back, some streaming thing. I'll do YouTube videos, just all sorts of things, because here's a block of time, and I'm in the car. I want to make the best of it at the gym. Same thing, right? I'll be watching videos, podcasts, or presentations. The good news is it's overwhelming, but there's so much out there that's available, and it's free.

So, you have to figure out where you want to focus. But I will admit I am a little old-fashioned in that I have a pile of paper books. Card copy books right there on my news. There you go. The one I'm reading right now is that I'm always reading a couple at the same time, but the one I'm reading right now that I love is Who Not How by Dan Sullivan.

That's a great one. Really good one. I also like Never Split the Difference. Think and Grow Rich is probably my ultimate favorite. I love that one. Of course, [00:31:00] Rich Dad, Poor Dad, everybody. The purple Bible, of course, is purple. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, there are a lot of really great books out there. And so I would always say, even if you meet somebody and you like, and you like what they're doing, Hey, Ed, what's on your nightstand?

What are you reading? What do you recommend? I think you can learn a lot from people that way, too. And I always love book recommendations for people. Absolutely. I have this rule, which is called the three-foot rule. So if I'm consuming oxygen within three feet of another human being who also consumes oxygen, I will do a couple of different things with them.

First, I'm going to introduce myself. Second, I will talk to them: " Hey, what are you reading? I'm just curious. What are you excited about? Chris Morin, I stole that from Chris, our mutual friend. I love that. I may have stolen it from both of you. And the third thing, obviously, is I talk about real estate.

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And it's amazing what you find out about people when you stand in line at Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, or whatever. And you strike up a conversation with them for two minutes. Yeah. Right? Exactly. It's amazing. Yeah. I tend to get a little bit smarter every time. And the thing is, like you were saying, it can be overwhelming to consume all that information.

But I am a classic entrepreneurial ADD person, right? We all are a little bit. I'm always looking for the next shiny thing. And what I look for in the things I consume, podcasts, books, whatever, is that one gold nugget, right? Make me smarter by one thing. One, let me give you one thing, and sometimes I, it's great.

And I find a whole bunch of them, but I at least find one and everything that I'm doing; maybe it's what not to do, but I'm still getting smarter, right? That's the idea. Yeah, and I will say we try to practice what we preach at nobly best, too. So, we've been doing a monthly educational series of free webinars.

Anything from depreciation. Earlier this week, we had somebody talk about the difference between tax prep and tax planning. It's huge. We'll have things about different asset classes and what we see. You know, we did one on how COVID affected the market. I mean, just information because again, [00:33:00] people need to just kind of make an informed decision.

So we can provide information. That's the best way to go. Yeah. And the thing is, you're adding to that whole vast array of free information out there. And I think you're also creating awareness that you are an operator. And I always tend to judge people by the questions they ask and the information they provide.

Right. And so when I see a webinar like yours, I get curious, and that tells me that that's something that you pay attention to, which adds to your credibility. Right. And over time, as I pay attention to the other webinars you do and the talks like this one, you start to realize, wow, Margaret and Christine, they know what they're doing.

They pay attention to the details. It turns out they operate with integrity,, too. I think I want to learn more. Right. Right. That's the idea. Well, that's the hope. And also, we are always still learning ourselves. It's not so much advice that anybody directly gave me, but I know it's been out there, and I definitely subscribe to the always-learning.

[00:34:00] I don't think I will ever have all the answers. You know, you said I'm on chapter 27. I think it's like a 200-chapter book, right? Like there's a lot more. I still have to learn. Yeah. So yeah, we always want to keep educating ourselves as well. I think it's, what's the old techie term? Adapt or die. Right.

And yeah. Yeah. I, I, I don't. Somebody asked me, uh, a while ago, you know, when you think you'll retire? And I said, never, never. I, I bore so easily that if I'm sitting there watching TV four hours a day, I'm cooked. So, as my grandfather always used to say, always present a moving target. Yeah, you know, it's funny related to that.

I suspect you're similar to me. I was having this conversation with my son. I cannot tell you the last time I was Bored. There's always something to read, there's always something to do. I don't even know what it's like to be bored. That sounds strange, but I'm always looking at it and curious.

And so, if you were right, it's curiosity. I think you're [00:35:00] people like you, and I hope he is eternally curious, right? They're fascinated by different things. And whether it's real estate or human beings, what makes somebody tick, right? And I will say I got that from my dad as well. And my mom was also lovely, but my dad was such a reader.

We were read. I feel like I was born with a book in my hand, and I appreciate that so much more as a parent when I realized how important and what a gift that was of curiosity and learning. I think it's also interesting that not only have you gone into an industry that is hard to do and hard to do well for, but also, before we got on, we were talking about this is a man's world, which we both immediately reject, right?

[00:36:00]

But the fact is that you and your partner have done extremely well. And I'm sitting here, and I'm listening to your stories. And one of the things that keeps repeating in my head is. If you want something done and done well, ask a busy mom to do it. It's true. It's interesting, too. And you're right.

Although it is getting better, getting back to the realtor thing, it's so crazy that if you think about your typical real estate agent, they are more likely to be female. There is, of course, a higher percentage of women. And yet, when you get to real estate investing, it flips. And then it's a higher percentage of men.

And I never really understood that. And a funny story is Joe Fairless, who's huge now, but he does a conference every year. I've gone to his conferences two out of the seven years or six out of the seven years. I only missed the first one, but it was in Denver in year two. And, there were maybe, I don't know, like counting 10 women, maybe out of 200.

I think I was the only redhead. So, I remember they called a break, And again, you being a guy, you probably know this, but you won't come up with the answer as quickly as a woman would, which is when you have a break normally, and you're a woman, you are trained, you move fast, you get to that lady's room because there's going to be that line, your book, right?

[00:37:00]

There were 10 of us, and there was a line for the men's room snaking around the corner. I was just like, wow. Good times, good times. Welcome to our world, right? Like that never happens, right? So, I will say, but anyway, that was year two. And then when I just went back to year seven, just this past February, it's more women.

I would even say as much as 30 to 40%. So a lot more women are getting into the space, which is great, you know, which is necessary. As a gender, you are 52 plus percent of the world's population. So it would stand to reason, right? I don't even know why it is. I know it was an old boys club for years, but I also think part of it is that there's so much math involved, and people get freaked out about math, and I was always a numbers nerd.

[00:38:00]

I never understood the math phobia. I love math, right? We do math games at home. That's how geeky we all are. You are geeky, yeah. But I get it. But I think not having that fear and, again, coming from a research background,  what's research? It's all statistics. It's all math, right?

I think that's a big barrier for people. And yet, how many guys do you meet who were in construction, maybe weren't great at math at all, but knew how to build a house and weren't afraid to jump in? So I think it's all about a mindset and just whatever your skill is. Taking action and trying.

It's got to be 37 different factors, right? Risk tolerance, comfort with math, not caring what people think about you, but 34 other things. So, Margaret, I've enjoyed the conversation today. What else do you like to do when you're not talking about real estate? So, I usually do something outside when I am not talking about real estate.

I'm such an outdoor junkie. I love to hike. I like to kayak. I ride my bike. I ski when it's winter. To me, being out in nature is so grounding. If I could like to live out in the woods somewhere and with great [00:39:00] wifi and do this, I would be so happy. Exactly. So yeah, definitely doing something outside.

Okay. Excellent. And if people want to learn more about you, get in touch with you, learn more about NobliVest, or find out anything else you're working on, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you? They can email me. My email is on the screen right here. It's Margaret at noblest, N O B L I V E S T dot com.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Noblyvest also has a great Facebook page and an Instagram page. We post a lot of content there, usually four to five times a week, whether blogs, posts, reels, or other educational materials. So definitely go ahead and follow us there as well.

Excellent. Well, Margaret, as always, a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today. I'm eternally grateful and look forward to seeing you soon. We have another meeting in about a week and a half on Halloween. Yeah, right. Yes, no, it was great fun. And thank you so much for having me on. This has been the [00:40:00] Real Estate Underground podcast, a Clark Street Capital presentation.

Thanks for joining us. If you enjoy the show, please like it and share it with your friends. Also, comment if there's a topic you want us to cover. We read every comment. If you'd like to learn more about Clark Street Capital and our upcoming projects, don't hesitate to contact us and join our investor club at Clark St.com/join or the Underground Insights newsletter at Clarkst.com/newsletter. Until next time, happy investing.