The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever!

From Single Mom to International Developer: How Panama Changed Everything

• Dwan Bent-Twyford • Season 7 • Episode 403

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Anne Michelle Wand shares her journey from single mother and salon owner to international real estate developer in Panama, where she's creating innovative housing communities for seniors at half the price of equivalent U.S. options. Panama's beautiful Caribbean setting offers both investment opportunities and lifestyle advantages with its perfect year-round climate, friendly people, and growing middle-class economy.

• Started in real estate by subdividing a Boulder property into four lots after her divorce
• Owned and operated London Hair salon in Boulder while building her real estate portfolio
• Traveled through Central America before discovering Bocas del Toro, Panama's colorful archipelago
• Developed properties on multiple Panamanian islands, combining beach and mountain living
• Currently creating "Active Agers" communities for seniors through Passive Profit Partners
• Raising $7 million from investors to build senior housing that addresses a critical market gap
• Believes strongly in diversification - across countries, asset classes, and investment types
• Panama offers perfect 82° water, beautiful beaches, and easy access to mountain living

Connect with Anne Michelle Wand on LinkedIn or learn more about investment opportunities with Passive Profit Partners. Remember that diversification is key to building wealth and security for your future.


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Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Hey everybody, Welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan Bent Twyford, and I took my name Dwan and Wonderful and I made a new name which is Dwan-derful, so you are now part of the Dwanderful real estate investing world. I'm at Dwanderful. com world, I'm at dwanderful. com, and our motto at Dwanderful is people before profits. So if that's something that resonates with you, stay, listen, watch, have some fun and then subscribe, follow me and let's be friends. So I have a great guest today, Ann Michelle, and so we just jump right in. Yeah, I don't need this long 10-minute intro, we just jump straight in. So, Ms Ann Michelle, how are you today? I?

Ann Michelle:

am absolutely wonderful, and yourself.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Perfect, and I love your background. We were just talking. You live in Panama.

Ann Michelle:

I do. I live in a place called Bocas del Toro, panama, which is an archipelago of islands off the Caribbean side, right. So what time is it there? It is 1.23. In the afternoon. In the afternoon, yes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, so we're only an hour off on our time. Yeah, you're in Florida, right? So we're right now.

Ann Michelle:

I'm in Colorado right now. Oh, you're in Colorado, right. Right, so we're right now. I'm in Colorado right now. Oh, you're in Colorado right now, so you're an hour the other way. Yes, we don't change times. So during the summer we are an hour from we're in central time, and then during the winter, we're on Florida time.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I know I wish we would stop changing time. Yeah, honestly, it is so annoying and you know like I get why they do it. But it's like, honestly, states don't, the states that don't do it, countries don't do it Like why do we change time?

Ann Michelle:

Yeah, I think we don't need it anymore and maybe someday they'll quit doing it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

We don't need it anymore and maybe someday they'll quit doing it. I don't know Trump talks about he's going to undo it and I'm like, yeah, but the person before that said that and the person before that said that and the person before that said that, like, just change it and just leave it Because it is. It's just, I don't know. It's weird. Like Arizona doesn't do it. It's like you know what, if they can do not do it, why does the rest of the country have to do it? It's annoying. I do like the summer months, though, because it's late, really dark. I mean it's light, really late, so I do like that. But, gosh, especially in the mountains, it starts getting dark at four. It's like it's four. Why is the sun setting right now? Why is it dark up here?

Ann Michelle:

here in panama. Um, it's the same 12 hours light and 12 hours night all the time, because we we're so close to the equator, so it get the sun rises at 6 30 and the sun sets at 630. Nice, all the time, that would be really nice.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That late night light Nice, I love that. So I like to just start my guests off. Tell us what you do and tell us how to find you on social media. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions and find out how you came to be Miss Anne Michelle.

Ann Michelle:

Okay, well, I'm Anne Michelle Wand and I have a company called Passive Profit Partners, so that's my current company, where I it's like a family office where I gather investors and we do projects that I feel are important to produce in this day's world, because, especially in Panama, but worldwide, there's a shortage of housing for seniors, and I can get more into that later, but I'm a developer these days, evolving through my real estate career, I'm now a developer and I build homes and multifamily projects, so people can reach me. I have a profile on LinkedIn with my name and Michelle Wand and also a page for my company, passive Profit Partners. That's probably the best way.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, is Passive Profits on Instagram or Facebook or?

Ann Michelle:

anything. I do have an Instagram and Facebook profile, but I don't post on it as much as I do on LinkedIn. Yeah, I get you.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, so I like the fact. Okay, so you started off investing in the States.

Ann Michelle:

I did. I did. I started my real estate career, similar to you, as a single mom. Yeah, I got divorced and needed to figure out a way to support my kids and myself and I got a job to start with but discovered real estate and the way I discovered real estate, because I knew it was going to create a retirement account for me. I was smart enough to know that, but I had to figure out how. So I studied from people that were experts in the field and learned how to do fix and flips and subject to's and buy and holds and rental property and all of that stuff. Just, you know, very similar to you.

Ann Michelle:

But my first deal was an excess land deal. I found a house on the edge of Boulder, colorado. It was in an area they called Dog Patch because the houses were kind of run down and they were on bigger lots one acre and I was able to buy that house on the acre and I found out that if you subdivided it into four lots you had to annex to the city. Then you could hook up to the city services. You could subdivide it into four lots, one with the house. So my kids and I lived in the house and fixed it up and I divided it up into the four lots, sold three lots I had borrowed the down payment for it. Didn't have the down payment, paid that back and bought two other properties and I said wow, I'm sold on real estate.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yay, I know it's so crazy how, like going through divorce, like for me to get into real estate, and then it turns into like such a giant career. It's like I never would have imagined that this would be my life.

Ann Michelle:

Well, I didn't either. In the beginning, I started out actually putting myself through beauty school and becoming a hairdresser and then starting my own salons. So while I was doing the real estate on the side, I was running these two salons, and very successfully, and that's a really another great story of my beginning. Very close to when I bought the house, I found a little shop called London Hair. I don't know if you've ever been in this position, but when I had my job as a hairdresser, my boss didn't appreciate me. Have you ever had a job where your boss didn't appreciate you?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So many. That's why I have to work for myself now exactly so many.

Ann Michelle:

So my boss didn't appreciate me and I went looking for a better opportunity and I found this lady that owned London hair and she'd owned it for 17 years and it was in a little house on the main street of Boulder and it was really unique because she had brought a London phone booth from London and planted it in the front yard. Oh, so fun. And the house itself was a historic house that the CU's first woman faculty member had lived and died in.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Wow.

Ann Michelle:

Yeah, it was really interesting and it was a duplex and she had her little salon and half of it and the little old lady that then lived in the house had a life estate on the other side. So I bought the business from her. I had just sold one of the lots, so I had a down payment for the business. I paid her off in about three years and then she also owned the house, but I had to continue with the life estate for the little old lady and then she also owned the house, but I had to continue with the life estate for the little old lady and I did that happily. So I bought the building from her too and she financed it because she was of an age of wanting to retire and she was willing to own her finance. And it took me 10 years to pay that one off. In the meantime the little old lady died and I expanded the salon and added nails and massage and later in my career, when I decided to go full time into real estate, sold that whole thing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That was a good start, though, because you were doing here what you liked. You built a little business and had some property and sold that, and then when I love that story and then went full time into real estate. That's amazing.

Ann Michelle:

Yeah, that was in Boulder right, that was in Boulder, colorado. Yes, it's good for you Good for you.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I mean it's not easy, you know, as a single mom, buying a salon and running that and taking care of the kids. How many kids did you have?

Ann Michelle:

I had two boys. They were nine and ten when I got divorced.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, yeah. So I mean my daughter was eight months old, so I guess you know not that divorce doesn't so affect kids. She just always grew up with just me, so she doesn't know any other way. But you know you still don't have a father in the home and you know divorce is an ugly thing.

Ann Michelle:

But sometimes out of the ashes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You know the phoenix rises Exactly All right. So when you were doing your as I want to talk about your developing and stuff like that so then you were into real estate for how many years Before you said, hey, I'm going to move to Panama and I'm going to start building and doing things.

Ann Michelle:

Right. Well, I always had this dream about living on the Caribbean Ocean since I was a kid. I wanted to live on the Caribbean, and when I went to college, I chose colleges that were on the ocean, and ended up going to the University of Miami, in Florida, oddly enough, but ended up in Colorado with my kids and my marriage.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So, um, uh-oh, I lost my train of thought, that's okay, we're talking about getting from the real estate to starting, to the selling and the developing.

Ann Michelle:

So after I sold the salons, I went full-time into real estate and I got my real estate license and I became an agent, mainly because I wanted to be able to find properties as soon as they, you know, on the MLS, or before they got on the MLS. And I did, and I did, and I continued to do, to invest in single family homes. At one point I owned five single family homes. At one point I owned five single family homes in Boulder. I had a duplex in Longmont and a 44 unit apartment building in Denver, and so at that point I decided to sell some of those things and try my hand at vacation homes.

Ann Michelle:

And I bought a vacation home with my sister in Hawaii, on the island of Hawaii, yeah, and it was a little cottage on a hill, not on the ocean, but really sweet, with two smaller cottages that we could rent out. So spent the next five years visiting there with my sister and sometimes without my sister, renting out the cottages, and ended up enjoying Hawaii. But it wasn't the right place for me my place in the sun. Right Now I love Hawaii though. It's great there, it's great, it's great to visit, but I didn't end up staying there. It um, but I didn't end up staying there, sold that and then started looking at. What hawaii made me realize was that I wanted to be closer to the, to the us mainland, you know, because I want to be visit my family easily. I wanted it to be a less expensive place to live, but still on the caribbean, with friendly people. I didn't find find the Hawaiians terribly friendly.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

The people that are born and raised there are not that funny to outsiders.

Ann Michelle:

Exactly I saw that too, with a little bit warmer temperatures, because the ocean temperature in Hawaii is 78 and my favorite is about 82.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You can relate. Oh yeah, no, I'm a beach girl, so I am a beach girl. Sometimes I go to Florida, to our house, in like July and August, but it's so hot I'm like it's baking, it's perfect. I can paddleboard on the lake Because in the winter I mean, I love it in the winter too, but the water is too cold.

Ann Michelle:

Yeah, word on the lake, because in the winter I mean, I love it in the winter too, but the water is too cold. Yeah, yeah, here in Panama you can swim year-round in 82 degree water. It's just beautiful. So I could dream I next traveled by. You know, I was single for a long time.

Ann Michelle:

After my marriage and my, I traveled with my girlfriend and we decided to travel all through Central America seeing if there was a place where we wanted to be. And we went to Puerto Rico, we went to Nicaragua, we went to Guatemala, we went to Belize, we went to Costa Rica three times. It was really hot in the 90s and we thought it was going to be it, but somehow every time we went to Costa Rica we either didn't find what we were looking for. It was either too remote or too expensive for our budget at the time. So I saw this little ad in a newspaper I used to subscribe to and it said cheapest land in the Caribbean. And it happened to be in Panama, bocas del Toro, panama. And we were in Costa Rica at the time. So we decided to take a side trip, go to Panama and see what happened.

Ann Michelle:

And the rest is history. We arrived there on the little plane, those puddle jumpers I don't know if you've traveled like that, you probably have and get it. Go in at this small airport, get off the plane and look around, and it already looked inviting. The temperature was perfect, there was breeze, these little shacks were everywhere, um, colorful, you know, very colorful. Reminded me so much of key west in the old days. Like people don't know what are you, they don't, they don't know you know how old you are, how old am I you?

Ann Michelle:

How old are you I'm?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

74. Okay, so I'm 66. So we remember Key West when it was like Key West, yes, you'd go, and it was like shorts and flip-flops and it was casual and everybody was amazing and it was so it was my favorite. At one point I was living in Fort Lauderdale and I thought, you know, I'm going to move to Key West Because the people and then I don't know what happened over the last decade. It just got fancier and fancier and they got rid of all the old things. And now you go there and I mean I drive the whole place. I don't recognize anything. Yeah, but in the day it was like I know what you mean? It was just. It was like just the greatest place. Everybody loved everybody and everybody just hung out and you just make friends everywhere and those conk houses, it's like oh.

Ann Michelle:

I used to love Key West in the old days and so I liked it right away and ended up buying some land, two pieces of land one on a little island called Salarte because there are nine islands here where people inhabit and you get everywhere by boat and it was so exciting and adventurous to think about and to want to do. And then I bought a little piece of commercial land in the town of Bocas, called Bocas Town. For several years after that I went back and forth from Boulder to Panama, visiting whenever I could and just enjoying it, you know, on every vacation. And the vacations got longer and longer and I still was operating my business, which was real estate in Boulder. And lo and behold, a year after I bought those two properties, somebody convinced me to go to the mountains of Panama. And I didn't want to go because I said, you know, I lived in the mountains, I'm from Colorado, I've had enough mountains. But they said you've got to go, it's just absolutely stunning. So I went and I went to a place.

Ann Michelle:

A guy who had moved there an American expat who moved there and married a Panamanian was from moved from Breckenridge. I think he was originally from California but he moved from Breckenridge, a tech guy, and he had bought an 80 acre coffee farm up there and he was developing it into a gated community with about I don't know 20, 30 homes and a river running through it and coffee it was a coffee plantation and he left a lot of the coffee on the hillsides, so it's just gorgeous. And he put a nine hole golf course along the river. That sounds fabulous. Just platting the roads at the time and I couldn't resist. The prices were so incredible. I bought a three bedroom villa to be built. They build it for you on the third hole of the golf course. Even though I don't play golf, it didn't matter. And it was beautiful up there. It looks just like the Rocky Mountains, but in tropical foliage.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no I love the tropics. So is that how you decided to get into being a developer?

Ann Michelle:

Well, no, I didn't develop for many years after that. For a while we just we would split our time three ways. Now we'd be in Boulder and then go to Boquete, which is where this little mountain town is, and then down to Bocas three months, three months and six months in Colorado. Well, gradually, we decided that we wanted to be, because by this time I was remarried. So my husband and I, and our kids are all grown. My mom passed away and all that, and I was waiting for a lot of that to happen to be able to make a move full time, and so my mom passed away in 2006. And then the crash happened in 2008,. Right, and that was the catalyst that said you know what We've been waiting to move to Panama. This is the sign.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Let's do it Good for you we did?

Ann Michelle:

We moved to Panama 2009-10 and started building on the lands that we had purchased.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So you had said that some of your interest was housing for elderly. Tell me about that.

Ann Michelle:

Well, as I've developed my career in here in Bocas del Toro, Panama, I get to see what goes on and keep tabs on the market right, Much like you probably do in Florida and maybe Colorado and for a long time I kept tabs on Colorado too. But I actually ended up. When I first moved here there was I could see a boom happening and I couldn't resist. I opened a real estate franchise here and ran it for 10 years and had a lot of fun showing property in a boat to everybody. So I still wasn't a developer, except I was developing my own properties the little commercial property where we had offices and my girlfriend, who was my partner, had a spa and we had some rental cabins and things like that. And then my husband and I built a house our own house on about an acre of ground that we have on the island of Salarte.

Ann Michelle:

So after 10 years of running the franchise I decided, OK, it's time for me to try to retire again. You know I see time to be able to do that. And I sold the franchise to a nice young couple who want to take it to the next level. They're doing very well and they rent from me. So that worked out perfect and I started building one house a year to sell just to have fun, keep myself busy, and there was a shortage of houses in the $200,000 to $400,000 range. So with me just building one house and selling it per year, I did pretty well. I'm on my third house right now.

Ann Michelle:

I just put it for sale, I think a couple months ago, and watching the market change and watching all the people that came here 20 years ago age and start to need services and there is no assisted living here whatsoever, really nothing, it's even. It's not. There is some in panama city, which is an eight hour drive from here or a one hour flight, but in our little town and in the other little towns, like boquete, there's nothing said. What if I built a little community for elders in this area and offered those services, both independent living and mildly assisted, to get started and people could have a higher standard of living, they could thrive in their elder years, at half the price? You can live in the States or buy this kind of thing in the States. And that's my next project is I'm gathering investors and I'm going to be building this little community here in Bocas.

Ann Michelle:

And in Boquete as well, if it goes well.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So the Passive Partner Profits. What is that? Is that people that are looking to invest with?

Ann Michelle:

you. Yeah, that's the company that I formed to be able to accept investors. It's an LLC, with me as the general partner and the investor partners would be the limited partners.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So are you going to be doing syndications with that?

Ann Michelle:

I don't call it a syndication, it's, you know, it's not because I'm not in the US, it's more like a family office. These partners are going to be more like my family, where we're going to group together and build, do a property together, except I'll take the lead on it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Nice, yeah, you know I that is so neat that you're doing that in Panama. I didn't realize in some of those countries that they don't have places. What did the seniors do?

Ann Michelle:

Yeah, well, the Panamanian culture in the past has always taken care of their elderly at home, and maybe it was that way in the United States 100 years ago too right. And maybe it was that way in the United States 100 years ago too Right. But as the people get more educated and they start traveling and becoming because the middle class here in Panama is developing, unlike the United States where it's dwindling Right here it's developing and there's a lot of businesses that need to open and that are opening, and the middle class is growing and they are just demanding certain services, and I think that elder housing is going to be one of them in the future. So it will be not only for expats but for the educated business owners of Panama as well.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I love it. My husband and I have talked about somewhere down the road. It's like we should. We should open up some senior living where everyone and like instead of like you know how they play, like the quiet music. It needs to be like Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and let them all smoke pot like they did when they were, you know, in the 60s, and have like a rock and roll senior living, like here's your weed, here's your wine, here's your whatever we're playing, here's your whatever we're playing, you know.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Uh, yeah, the that's a good idea the rolling stones and like just like all the people in their 60s that are, you know, in the 60s that were like in their 20s. I'd let them relive that in their older age absolutely I, I.

Ann Michelle:

That's a great idea. That's a great idea. I don's a great idea. I don't know that I'm going to do the theme with weed and everything. It isn't legal here yet I graduated high school in 77.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So my 20s were really in the 80s and it was disco and that was my 20s. People that were in their 20s, like in the 60s, they just partied. They were like hippies and flower children. They went to Woodstock. It's like how much fun would that be to let them live their elder years.

Ann Michelle:

That was me, that was me. That was me. I graduated in 1969 and Woodstock was 30 minutes from my house where I grew up. Did you go to Woodstock?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Uh-huh, you went to Woodstock, did I went to Woodstock? Oh man, I tell you, I look at that and I'm just like that had to have been such a once in a lifetime thing. It was.

Ann Michelle:

It was absolutely a once in a lifetime thing. I didn't stay the whole time, but I did enjoy myself.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh yeah, no, no, no, yeah, no. I can imagine I have some friends that used to go like oh yeah, we dropped acid, we hung out, we did this, we did that. And again, I'm not like pro drugs, I don't smoke weed, all that stuff's legal, I don't do any of that. But it's like you know, if you could like relive those years and at the other end I feel like people would be so much happier.

Ann Michelle:

I think that some people want to do that. My community is going to be called active agers because I want people to thrive in their elder years, you know, and create the next blue zone. You know, eating healthy food and doing great activities and immersing yourself in the culture and stuff like that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah I think that I mean my mom's 88, so she lives in, uh, assisted living and like, see, I guess it's a, she lives in a senior building and they have like a nurse on staff. But you know you live independent and but I see her not not being as active and not going to the. They have activities every day. She doesn't do as much stuff as you and she's like, oh, maybe I'm tired, not like my 98 year old aunt. And my aunt she lives at her house and she goes walking every day for a mile, every day. 98 years old. Just you know, wow, like it's. And if you don't really put people in a situation to really stay active, they decline so much. Exactly.

Ann Michelle:

Exactly so. No, I don't want to make it like a big apartment building or anything like that. It wouldn't fit here. It'll be a little tiny home so people can have privacy, but it'll have a big central area for activities and lots of activities for people to do, including alternative therapies and pickleball, and a nice library and, you know, a game room and all kinds of fun stuff and great food.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That sounds like that'd be really fun. After you get a couple of those built, let me know. Maybe Bill and I will invest in a couple of those over there.

Ann Michelle:

Well, you never know, I will let you know once I get started. I have some investors coming down in a couple of months six to eight weeks that were and I've already got the land picked out to show them.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So I think that sounds like a really super fun thing to do, and you know you're at that age too where you want to retire. But so you're building and developing as you want to stay active.

Ann Michelle:

I want to stay active, that's what keeps me. And you know, I may end up living there in my 90s, who knows, you might.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

You might you never know you might be like, hey, this is amazing, I'm going to live over there just because it's fun.

Ann Michelle:

Well, right now, yeah, our house is over on Pierpost, over the sea. You know, we have a house that we built right over the ocean, so I get to look at the ocean every day and wake up to it, and it's built a story up. So you go up 13 stairs and it's great. For now it keeps me fit and healthy, but maybe not forever.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I don't know. You seem pretty healthy to me. I am very healthy. I feel like you're thriving away.

Ann Michelle:

I am, I am. I take no medications and I'm very active every day.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So Nice, I love it. I love it and I think what you're doing is amazing. So how can people at the wonderful universe, how can we help you reach your next goal?

Ann Michelle:

Reach my next goal. Oh, my goodness. Well, I'm at the stage where I'm open for, you know, people who are interested in investing at this stage, being part of the company and the founders of it company and the founders of it. You know I do have people interested, but I'm. You know I need to raise a $7 million, so Okay.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

No, I mean, I always. That's one of the things that I tell you. I like to ask everyone I interview is what can we do to help you reach your next goal? And if you need people to invest and invest in Panama, you need to raise $7 million. Come on, guys, I'm always up and around with money. Right there you go.

Ann Michelle:

I believe it's a great diversification for people living in the United States who want to diversify their real estate investments. You know, you might, you're diversified and I have a little booklet that I wrote seven signs that you're over-invested in the United States. You know so that you should diversify more. And why not in Panama, where it's up and coming and the economy is good and the canal, you know, holds it all together.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, yeah, I've been to Panama. Well, just on cruises. I think I've been there twice, and one time I was, I took my dad on a cruise and we went through on the cruise ship, went through the whole canal. It's like, yeah, that was such, that's such a neat thing, and we got off and went shopping and I don't know where we went thing. We got off and went shopping. I don't know where we went, but they took us to some like a giant mansion that had a giant pool and people were serving food and everything. I don't even know where this place is, so beautiful.

Ann Michelle:

Yeah, it's a stunning country. I think everyone should at least come and visit because there's so many places you can go and enjoy different types of living City living in Panama City, where two of the four million people live, country living on either of those farms or the mountains, and coastal living on either of the two oceans, the Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean Ocean. So you've got a lot of diversification just in what people may want. If it's too hot for you on the beach, you just go three hours into the mountains and you've got the 75 degree weather instead of the 85.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Now I'm a beach girl. I'll be visiting you at the beach, yeah, yeah. So let me ask you some personal questions. What's your favorite band of all time? Oh, that's easy the.

Ann Michelle:

Beatles. I love the Beatles. They are the best band of all time. I really.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I, I, I agree, my husband and I, we have four grandkids, so they're not, they're 10, nine, five and three. So we are the ones teaching them about music, and I, so we. So we started off like two years ago. Now we buy them, like they have a little cd player, they have like 50 cds each, but you know they're kids and we don't want them like on their phone and using, you know, the internet and stuff, and uh. So we started off with music from the 70s, because that was like the last decade where there was no cursing in all the music, because by the 80s they were cursing and now they just say like, oh, the music is so vile, I'm just like ugh.

Ann Michelle:

It's so different. Everything then was about love and peace.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

We just bought them all Beatles CDs and they are in love with the Beatles and so we do the Beatles. We got him some John Denver stuff, any band from the seventies, but not not like the stones and Aerosmith. Because they're kids, that's like a little bit too hard, I feel like, for them. But I told my husband the Beatles is safe, every song. They were unbelievably amazing. They changed the world. And my grandkids wear beetles t-shirts and they go to school and they talk to the teachers about music. My 10 year old and she loves queen. So she talks to her teachers about queen, tom petty and the beetles and they're like how old are you? She's like oh, it's my papi, mimi, it's the best music ever. That that's who they love. They love it. I don't know. It's like and it's innocent music. It's like things were just so simple. Then, yeah, what's your favorite food? What do you love to eat?

Ann Michelle:

my favorite food watermelon. I love fruit. We have such wonderful tropical fruits here, and so I eat watermelon, mango and pineapple every day.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Every day. Okay, so now do you salt your watermelon? Salt or no?

Ann Michelle:

salt, no salt, I don't have to. It's really sweet. Oh it is.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love, I have always. We, I, we, oh it is, I have always. We grew up in the country so we raised watermelons and pumpkins and cantaloupe and all that I don't know. My dad or something was like hey, put some salt on that. So I have eaten watermelon with salt on it my whole life.

Ann Michelle:

I have eaten it that way and my understanding was that the salt was to make it taste sweeter.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I know my grandkids I only have one grandkid that likes it that way. The rest are like no, it's good like it is. No, it is good like it is. It is good like it is From childhood. I just said that I'm like this is so yummy this way. What's your favorite time of day? When are you at home?

Ann Michelle:

Sunrise is my favorite time of day. I am a morning person all the way and I have my morning routine that I mostly don't let anything interrupt. You know, I wake up at sunrise and first thing I do is meditate to get my day started right, yeah Well it's beautiful where you're at.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So the last question for you, Ms Ann. Michelle, I always like my guests to leave us with a word of wisdom, but just one single word oh my goodness.

Ann Michelle:

Well, diversify. Okay, don't put all your eggs in one basket okay.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So what we do in the dwandaful universe is every week I have a, you know, I do one podcast a week and I tell everyone, take that word, write it down, stick it on your mirror and every day for that week say diversify, diversify, diversify. So that's our official word of the week in Dwan-Diful. And so what is diversify? Because you kind of said it, but what does it mean to you, what it?

Ann Michelle:

means to me.

Ann Michelle:

I think of it in the world of real estate and investment, because everyone wants to have a good retirement right Everyone but they don't always know how to get there and so many people get to retirement age and don't have enough saved.

Ann Michelle:

But if you follow very simple principles with financial education which I'm sure you teach and I don't teach formally, but I teach people within my sphere that kind of thing and you have your buckets for saving and investments and emergency funds and all that stuff Vacation fund very important too, right and then you begin investing, first maybe in your backyard where you're learning about everything, and then maybe diversifying out into other cities in your state and then maybe even out of state in other states in the point in my career, and then for me the next logical step was to go out of the country, abroad, and I could have invested in Italy, I could have invested lots of Portugal, lots of places, but I happened to choose Panama and I think that people should consider investing outside the United States, whether it's Panama or another foreign country that they think is really great.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah, I have to work so hard with investors now to get them just to invest outside of their state. Exactly, I'm like we live in Colorado. So, like up here where I live, my son just bought a house in my subdivision. They're $850,000. So it's like if you want to buy that and you have it for a rental, you know if someone, if it's empty for two months can you even afford to keep up with it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And my husband is from clinton, iowa, which is right on the mississippi river and it's very, very midwest. You can buy a really nice three-bed, two-bath house for like 60 grand. They rent for 1,200. So I'm like tell me, listen, you can't always invest where you live. Like California is expensive, colorado is so expensive, phoenix, some of these places. I'm like go to the Midwest, just go like to Iowa and Ohio and go to the Midwest where you can buy cheaper things and get in a good area, good neighborhood and do that. So it's like pulling teeth to get people just to invest out of their own state. We can send them your way. Like Zayla said, I have someone in Panama that will hook you up all the way and put some money down there.

Ann Michelle:

Exactly. And so if you put your eggs in all the different baskets, like we're saying, choose places other than, if you especially if your backyard is expensive, like you were saying totally agree with you, then when a downturn does happen, you still have something that's probably going to be OK. Yeah, and a little bit in the stock market too. You've got to have a little bit everywhere A little crypto.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I like crypto. A little bit, a little bit, a little crypto I like crypto a little bit.

Ann Michelle:

So a little crypto, a little bit of crypto yep, a little of everything, a little bit of gold yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one thing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

We have so much gold and silver and so, and not at my house for any listing, so right, but you gotta have you.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

just you just need to have a lot of stuff, because you never know what's happening. Everything the power grid goes down, your crypto and your dollar bills aren't going to be worth anything. You need to have some gold and silver. So you just got to diversify into many things. So I really love getting to know you, ms Anne. Michelle, I would consider coming down in a couple of years and maybe helping you with some investing down in Panama. It sounds amazing.

Ann Michelle:

Oh, I think we'll be well on our way by then and you'll be very welcome.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yes, I want to be in that beach air all the time yeah we've got five beautiful beaches.

Ann Michelle:

You know there's, there's it's incredible, there's nine islands and every island has a windward side and a leeward side, and on the leeward sides of the islands is all mangrove that, you know, supports the environment, and on the windward sides of the island is where the beaches are. So they're not everywhere.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

If you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know exactly. It sounds like you found a beautiful spot for yourself. We found a great spot All right, everyone.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

We'll be back next week. Don't forget dwonderfulcom. And don't forget Passive Partner Profits. Also, look for Anne, michelle, it's A-N-N-E, m-i-c-a-g-l-l-e, wand, w-a-n-d on LinkedIn and think about doing some investing outside of the country. I know many, many, many people that are my age right now that are moving to Panama and Puerto Rico and places like that. So keep it in mind, everybody, and thank you, my darling, for being on. You're just so great, and the fact that you went to Woodstock, I was like ugh, we're going to sit down one day and you have to tell me all about it. It sounds amazing and we'll be back next week. Same one day, and you have to tell me all about it. It sounds amazing and we'll be back next week. Same time, same channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters. All right, everybody. Have a good week. My name is Michelle, thank you, and we'll be back next week.