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Aug 22, 2018

About Tamar

Tamar Mar is a full-time business, a real estate investor, and a superstar at raising money fast. In this episode, we will discuss her journey into real estate investing and her decision to jump from the corporate world into multifamily syndication, shifting her focus to the acquisition of underperforming commercial and multifamily. She will tell us her strategies and how she significantly improved the operating income of a property within months of taking it over. Tamar is based out of Seattle, Washington.

Contact her:

Investing for Life podcast

www.marotagroup.com

Transcripts (Automated)

Hi Tamar. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Agostino, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for joining. I appreciate it. Appreciate it very much. Well, maybe you can give us a brief introduction before we get going here.

Yeah, you bet. So I'm Tamar Mar and yes, that I'm not stuttering. That's totally my name. I married somebody with the last name Mar. I am Tamar Mar and I hope that made you laugh. A business and real estate investor. I have been investing in real estate for over 15 years and going back even farther than that. And I purchased my first house when I was 19, believe it or not. We fell into real estate investing because we had bought a house and, I got a promotion that took us across the country. So we decided to rent it out for four years while we were across the country working and going to Grad school. And a little bit later I decided that I really wanted to have my own business. I had been an operations executive for about five years for some startup companies. I have a startup background for 20 years and I just knew that at whatever I could do to help other people succeed in their businesses I could do in my own business and maybe even better.

And so I decided I was going to create a real estate company. Originally we started doing houses on auction site unseen and we would renovate those and turn them into rentals. And then about four years later I realized, you know, this is gonna take a really long time to reach our passive income goals because that's what we were doing it for, to build up an empire to live off of essentially. And so I started a syndication business surrounding multifamily about a year and a half ago. And I've been crushing it, purchasing apartment buildings with, uh, my investor partners ever since.

So that was super exciting because it was something like the month of March where I said, okay, by the end of this year I'm going to have my first deal and I'm going to start looking around September because I think we had needed to refinance one of our single-family houses and pull out some liquidity and whatnot. Well, I got my first property under contract two months later in May. Because I just started taking massive action. I found it on Loopnet, believe it or not. And I ran the numbers. I started underwriting and I thought, holy junk, this actually really works. And I heard that nothing works on Loopnet. So I called my broker friend, had him take a look at it and we both thought, oh my gosh, this is too good to be true. So it was actually my very first offer that I had ever put in on a multifamily property.

I won the bid and I think there was five offers total. And it was 15 units and the rents, it, it was kind of a mom and pop sort of a thing. It was owned by a family and the grandpa had a big, huge key ring and he was there all the time and he did all the maintenance and whatnot and uh, and so they had an affinity for all of their tenants and just didn't want to take advantage of them, so they had had rents way under market. We're talking almost $300 a door under market, so there was an opportunity for me to go in and not only have value-add from a rental increase perspective to bring it to market rents but also there's a lot of deferred maintenance. The units were very dated. It was a c class property in a c class neighborhood. So we didn't want to make it something, you know, extremely beautiful. But we definitely knew that there was an opportunity to do some cosmetic rehab and get some more rents out of it. So, uh, that's the first property that I landed. I can tell you as much about that as you want. It was super exciting.

I thought you stopped the project now, right?

I do, yeah. So on that particular one, this is the kind of stuff that I love hearing from other people as they go once you bought it. And so just to give you an idea, we thought that we would go in, raise the rents and at the worst case scenario we would have five tenants leave, right? Because they probably wouldn't be able to afford the new rent, but we're talking, we went from about 460 a door to maybe like 675 was the first bump that we did because we wanted to see who would stay if the units were not renovated. So we had five leave for sure, but that was five in the first month. And then the second month came and there were two more that left. And then the third month came and guess how many more left, 3. than we had about 15 units vacant.

And we were not, it's not like we were prepared for it or anything, but, um, I, I made the decision that we could either at that moment fill those vacant units or we could go ahead and take the additional capital that we had raised and work as hard as we could to renovate those so that we could realize the gains on improved operating revenue after those renovations were done. So we went ahead and spent about five months renovating each one of those 10 units and we got finished up with that about three, four months ago. So now I have a stabilized property there and we improved the operating income by $45,000 on a 15 building within nine months. So we're getting ready to refinance that one here, right around the one year mark of ownership and cash out hopefully, if not all of the original capital contributions than, than most them.

Very nice. Very nice. I just love hearing about this awesome deals that go right. And it's great.

That's great. So well too,

would you say that's part of the most complex, most, uh, most hairy deal you have so far?

No, not at all. Do you want to hear about a hairy one? So I acquired a couple other under contracts that we decided not go through with for some various reasons. We can dig into that if you want later. But there's one that I acquired about four or five months ago is a 16 unit. There used to be 20 units, one of the buildings burned to the ground before we purchased it. And so the owners wanted, I think they probably just wanted to take their insurance money and run their old military barracks from the forties and they are not pretty at all. And when I say that I've been through a lot of pretty icky stuff because I've bought a bunch of houses on auctions. So we've seen some pretty horrendous conditions and this was by far probably the worst building that I've ever stepped foot in.

So we're talking some rotting ceilings, holes in the walls, holes in the sink, like sinks that were arrested out black mold like windows that didn't work to clearly a bunch of heating units that weren't working and it was just, it was living conditions that I kind of felt like shouldn't exist in the United States and maybe I'm just spoiled and I have always lived in something that's clean and doesn't have mold in it. I don't know, but I personally think that those shouldn't exist so I wasn't scared of it because I can see through that kind of stuff and we just negotiated the price back down a little bit after the contract. We were under contract and got some seller financing on it and I had a contractor lined up so I had kind of a verbal agreement with a contractor when we were looking at purchasing this and so we closed in the middle of December and he said, oh, it'll be ready on February first to start work.

Okay. Are you sure? February first checked in with them a couple times? Yep. February first. Okay. Well, so we've vacated a whole building. The plan was to vacate one building at a time, go in, renovate all the units, lease them up and move on to the next building. So we were going to do that systematically. February first rolled around, the contractor wasn't available and he said, I'm finishing up another project. Fine, it'll take a couple of weeks. Long story short, about six weeks later when I had six units that were originally vacant and then other people were getting nervous because they kind of saw what was going on in the community. I had two more people pull out, say at eight out of 16 that are vacant because by what time that he said that he was ready. I talked to him again and you wanted $200,000 more for the rehab projects that originally it was going to be 275,000.

So I was like thank you, but no thank you. We are not going to move forward with that. And there was one of those oh shoot moments that what am I going to do now? Because I have vacant units and I need to pay a mortgage and there's no way I'm putting tenants in these substandard living conditions, so luckily my property manager came to the rescue and he had done my renovations and one of my other apartment buildings and so it's taking longer than expected, but I'm happy because I was just over there last week. I flew out there and we have our first unit being rented up right now. I can't believe the transformation. It's incredible. I mean it's. What I think is really cool is when you have a vision and people think that vision is totally insane and then you realize that vision and it just sets fire to the flame of like, I can do this. I know that my vision isn't immediate, is insane, but I don't care because I know that I can do it and I know that not only am I doing good for the community and providing better housing conditions, but I'm also in the money in the, in the long term, like make more money doing this and isn't that a great thing?

It is a hard degree of belief in yourself.

Yes, totally unreasonable and I feel like I'm mostly reasonable, but every once in a while I just feel a little bit out there.

How would you have handled that? A contractor bouncing and what would you think you would have handled it a little differently?

What do you mean? If I would've handled it?

Meaning if I'm a, how would you be able to lock him in?

Yep. We didn't have a written agreement so that, that hadn't been sealed down. It was just a verbal. So I think I've actually given a lot of thought to this so I would have had a couple of people come through with bids and, you know, in this business referrals are really important and I have a really good friend that referred this person to me and I'm so thankful because all referrals that this person has ever sent me, I've been phenomenal and I don't doubt that that contractor does a great job that just didn't work out. But, um, sometimes, you know, we go based off of trust of the people that we're working with and that we trust the referrals they send our way. And so, I think it just is a message that even if it comes from a trusted source, you have to do your additional due diligence and make sure you have all your t's crossed and i's dotted and get things signed around that it's in writing.

Well, my last question here is how, how's your buying actually changed since that, since that last deal? I'm sure it's changed quite a bit.

The only thing that's changed is that I don't want another project like that right now. I'll do cosmetic rehabs in my sleep. That's no problem. I'll go in and put $3,500-4,000 a door into something that's so easy if you have the right property management company to help you out with. It's like lipstick. It was some paint, put some vinyl plank flooring in it, put in new appliances, low flow shower heads, maybe resurface the countertops and cabinets or something. But the only way that it's really changed my purchasing right now is I don't want 2 of those projects simultaneously. So I'm looking for something that has less, less massive amounts deferred maintenance to take care of.

I'll totally do it again. I know I will, but I just don't want to do them at the same time. That can be a little bit stressful because then also you're like, okay, I do need to pay a mortgage payment. So how's that going to happen? As first underwriting is concerned, what do you consider? What are your considerations for underwriting? What is your typical exit strategy then? So a couple things there. I always underwrite for a 10 year hold period. And why do I do that? A couple of reasons. Number one is I'm in this for the long term. I'm looking for long-term passive income sources that will support my family for years to come. And number two is because I want to underwrite something and make sure that I'm safe in any sort of real estate cycle that decides to go down and then comes back up again.

So I don't want to look at necessarily a five-year hold because everybody, I mean I know every market around the country is different, but the general consensus in May 2018 is that there is no way we're going to be riding this wave for an additional five more years at the top. Right. So I always look at it since the average cycle is what, 12 years or something like that for real estate cycle. Well, if I plan on holding it for 10 years, at least I'll be on the way back up. If it does go, go down that that's the hope. So I also look at having longterm money so I will not get three year, five-year money right now. I'm looking at 10 year money to make sure the same thing, like I don't want a balloon and coming due in five years if the market has gone down and the cap rates have changed and I either cannot sell my property or can't refinance because it's not going to appraise the same.

So I'm, I'm looking for longterm money as well. Um, as far as other underwriting principles are concerned, I'm, I try to be as conservative as possible while still writing in some upside. So year one I always use actuals for revenues, so even those beautiful marketing packages that we get from our broker friends, I will not use those figures. I will look at the pictures and think they will create beautiful properties, but I always use current rents and then I increased my expenses on year one because usually the first year or your operating expenses are going to be much higher than they will be in subsequent years as you're improving the performance of the property. And then in year two, I start putting in pro forma numbers and I actually use this year's rents like current market rents for year twos, pro forma, so that I'm always trailing a year behind. And then I only do like three percent rent appreciation, three percent property appreciation. And then I have all of my expenses go up, you know, at least according to inflation for each traditionally.

for each. Traditionally in the market you're in, you're in Seattle, correct?

Well, I live in the greater Seattle area, but I refuse to invest in Seattle, so I invest currently I'm at least two counties away from Seattle or at least one in secondary or tertiary markets are even farther away. I'll do stuff in eastern Washington as well, so may be 5 or 6 hours aw

So maybe five or six hours away because I was just thinking about the rent appreciation. I know that out here, out here in Cleveland right now, people are using the average about two and a half, three percent, something like that in that range. And I just don't know how sustainable that is out here. You know, in a place like New York possibly, but not. Not a place at Cleveland. Anyway.

Yeah. Rent appreciation in Seattle right now is about 15 percent annually. Wow. It's the third hottest real estate market, second or third in the nation right now. And it has been for about three years. Running our inventory is only point eight months for a single-family housing, which, that is nowhere near a balanced market. And there are a number of factors in Seattle that are going to continue to make it climb and eventually maybe stabilize, I don't see a downturn coming anytime soon in Seattle because we have so many major employers out here that are all tech-based. Of course, Amazon is one of them. We have almost 3000 people a week moving into the Seattle area right now and we have not enough housing starts to support all of them. So because of those different factors, there is going to continue to be high rent appreciation and low inventory for housing. And so it's just gonna continue to climb up and even though it's an appreciation game for a lot of people and they feel comfortable with that, I don't, I'd rather just go the steady cash flow of my property's cash flow in and it's "cashflow-ing" and quite well according to the metrics that I'm looking for.

any appreciations, this extra money, that's all it is.

Another the thing about underwriting that, of course I've picked up all these tips from the hundreds of people that I have learned from either through podcasts or books or seminars or whatever, but you know, doing things like using a higher cap rate for your refinance event or your liquidity event whenever you work those into your underwriting because chances are the cap rates are not going to be the same as you purchase them versus when you sell. So that's a conservative underwriting factor as well. And then, you know, writing in maybe $250 a door for cap ex expenditures every year. You might not use them, but you at least want to underwrite and set that money aside in case something crazy happens. Um, so those are two other things that I really liked. I like that. Excellent. I actually heard about a deal that you actually walked away from.

Can you describe what happened with that one? Yes. I've walked away from a couple of them and I'll just share briefly about both of them because I think these things are really important to also understand because some people can be scared to walk away from deals because our reputation is really important as investors, right? So when you're working with commercial brokers, if you're in the commercial side, multifamily, they want to know that you're serious. They want to know that you're not going to retrade, they want to make sure that you're reliable and you're going to do what you say you're going to do. So if I am to walk away from deals, I weigh it very heavily, it sits on my heart because, you know, my, my integrity and my reputation are really, really important to me. So it has to be some things that are significant. Um, so one of them was that I had something under contract and it was in C to C minus area.

The property was fine. It probably had a bunch of work that needed to be done. I didn't do an inspection on it because I also always do my financial due diligence. And all my contractual due diligence before I outlay cash on an inspection, so I was in the middle of my financial due diligence and I uncovered some additional expenses that couldn't be recuperated, namely, it was that there was an additional about $25,000 worth of electrical expenses that hadn't been disclosed previously. And I've implemented RUBS or Ratio Utility Bill-back System and some of my properties to help make up for those expenses and improved the NOI. But on this particular property I couldn't, I called around to like five different property managers. I checked out rents at all of the surrounding communities and nobody was doing RUBS. So the price that was available for the market rents, I could not raise it enough to make up for those additional $25,000 worth of expenses.

So it ended up taking a pretty decent property from a return standpoint to something that was maybe like seven percent returns and nobody's gonna hop on board with you to do something like that. So that was one of them. The other one was I had a property under contract and we were probably about two weeks out from closing and luckily I still had my financing contingency in place. I don't always use the financing contingency. It depends on the building, but on this particular one, I did because it was, you know, 1920's building. So there was, I just wanted some extra protection there and I'm glad that I did because the bank came back to us and said, Hey, tomorrow 8 of these units out of the 37 are nonconforming units and so what that means is the permitting hadn't been done and they weren't right. Like they just didn't adhere to all of the construction standards and so they said they wouldn't lend on it. They would only lend on basically like 29 units. And I thought okay, do I try to figure this out on my own and go through all the hassle with the city and the county or do I back out? Because then you weigh things like, okay, if you're doing syndication, and I have to, let's just say 10 people investing $50,000 with me as an example, $50,000 per person for most average Americans, that's a fair sum of money, right? Would I lose sleep with when I have a fiduciary responsibility to protect my investors' money, would I lose sleep if five years down the road we wanted to sell the property and we weren't able to because of that nonconforming issue, you know? Or if we wanted to refinance, would it, would it make our whole plan blow up? And ultimately I decided that it wasn't worth it to me to put that much money on the line for something that was unresolved and was really not my fault at all. I mean, nobody, the broker didn't even know. Apparently, the owner didn't know. I don't know. So that's another reason I walked away and it turns out that the owner after that got it taken care of with the city and the county supposedly the other lawyers step in. And then they came back to me on three separate occasions asking if I'd still love to buy it.

There are so many learning opportunities that can take place, uh, when you're under contract because every single deal is so different from one another. It depends on the geographic area, like what are the building materials that are being used and what sort of ramifications if you're building with brick versus a stucco or with wood. What if there's an elevator in the property? So that particular property, there was an elevator ends, there was a massive amount of expenses related to elevator maintenance that it's 100 percent mandatory. You can't get around. Um, what you know, what about if you're buying a 1920's building or a 1905 building, how is the electric or the plumbing, what am I going to have to put in for Opex to repair those sorts of things. Versus a 70's building that has asbestos in it or lead paint. I don't know. There are all these issues that always come up and then you're forced to ask the question, what next? What do you do now?

What do you see as some of the biggest mistakes that other investors make?

Well, I'm not inside all of their brains, so I'm not sure about that. I think people overthink things too much and a lot of people are risk averse and that I think that the real money can, can be made the less risk averse you are. Like if you go after deals that people are shying away from because it seems like there's something in there that could be a little shaky. Well, sometimes we just over-analyze these things. And really all you need to do to solve those problems is finding the resources to help you. And all that means is that you need to talk to people, you need to call people, you need to not be shy and you put yourself out there. Admit you don't know everything. Like I so don't know everything. There's so much that I don't know, but I love learning and I have a spirit of always wanting to learn. And, I think that it's easy to say no to something because we don't have all the answers, but it's really easy to find the answers, especially in today's Day and age with the Internet and other entrepreneurs. I think that is a really tight group of people to exchange ideas. So that's what I discovered anyway. So, yeah, but, uh, you know, your, um, when it comes to raising capital, you know, you touched on that a minute ago. How do you actually, how do you actually find the funding for those multifamily deals?

Oh, I was asking that question really big time about six months ago when I was trying to raise capital for one of my deals and I was struggling with it and it turns out that it was just a really bad time to do it during the middle of Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's like nobody wants a. unfortunately, that was bad timing and I was so exhausted. My answer to that question is it takes time and it takes a lot of relationship building, and it's not easy. It's, it's a longterm play of getting people to trust you and like you as a person and see that you know what you're doing, right? Nobody's going to meet you on the first day and say, yeah, I want to invest something $100,000 with you. No, they either need to see that you have credibility or good reputation or a track record or all of those combined things.

But, I think for me at first it started with friends and family and then from there then I always to networking events and just continue talking to people all the time. But then honestly this strategy that's worked out for me really well that was unintended because I never meant for this to be is that people started asking me to be on their podcast like you, Agostino. So I've been interviewed on like, I don't know, I lost track like 10 or 12 different podcasts and every time there's something that clicks between me and other people and the people that are interested in talking to me, they call me and I just foster those relationships over time and keep them abreast of what I'm working on. And then I also have a podcast myself too. And so that was part of the building credibility factor and learning and all of this. And so, there's no one right way to do it, but everybody will tell you that it's a slow game and that it takes a time and trust in order to be successful at raising capital from others. And I would have to agree with that.

It does take a high degree of trust, a high degree of networking and really demonstrating that you do know what you're talking about in the multifamily game. So extremely important.

I think hand in hand with that also comes the whole concept of having confidence in oneself and believing in oneself. And I think actually those are two different things. They can seem like they're the same thing, but if I tell, if I walk into a room and I'm, you know, walking, they're confident that I say I'm going to do something. That's actually, I was listening to a podcast yesterday morning. I don't know which one, I listen to so many. The woman was saying that some people think that confidence is something that's born into us and innate, in certain people when in fact it's something that's a learned skill because you have to teach yourself to try things that you are comfortable in doing and only as we repeatedly do that and we're successful in our endeavors, it builds that confidence muscle in us.

And so if I were to go talk to somebody and say, oh, well, you know, there's this thing that I've been working on and I don't know, do you think it's a good idea? Well, no. Versus if I go into a room and I say, dude, I'm pumped. I'm working on this. I'm so excited. Here's why I've seen this change my family's financial future. It's done things for us that we never thought possible and I've had successes on these different ones and this is how it's similar and I show my energy and I believe in myself because I've done this. I've exercised my confidence muscle. People are going to believe me if I believe in myself, wouldn't you agree?

One hundred percent to be excited about the deal, excited in your team, and really, of course, demonstrate what the value that investors going to have. It's huge. It's huge. Yeah, absolutely. So now tell me about some of the resources you use, like what do you use that makes people just stop and say, oh my God, what did she just say? I got to write that down.

Oh, like how am I supposed to start. I know that happens. That does happen frequently. I've been. Okay. So just to give you a background of a little bit more about me, I came out of the womb a hyper-responsible person. I skipped two grades in elementary school, was in gifted and talented education all growing up and did a bunch of college before I graduated from high school. And then when I started my first corporate gig, the very first day that I started college. And then when I went to Grad School my dissertation was on in defensive, gifted and talented education. So I'm in a super avid learner. I'm always trying to soak up information. And so, I think I read more than the average human being. Well, I think the average American maybe read two books a year. that I was going to say that, but I wanted the feel generous so I probably need to read about 56, 60 books a year.

So I do that and most of them are nonfiction and I try to read a lot from people that have done way more than me but that I want to be like, like books have always been my mentors. And so it's not, it's often actually not real estate related. Often times it's biographies of leaders that I want to be like, or business books, business practices. I read a lot about, bettering ourselves and how we can go about doing that mindset set shifts and things like that. And then I also happened to talk to a lot of people. I talked to a lot of people through my podcast and through networking and listening to, I know a lot of, I've, I've narrowed my focus when it comes to the real estate stuff that I actually do pay attention to versus you know, the business or biographies or whatever. For real estate. I just really zone in on the multifamily aspect now. And because I always, I always hear that those who are really successful usually go really deep in one subject and not wide with a whole bunch of them. So I'm trying to become the best subject matter expert that I can possibly be so that I can make the best decisions in my business.

You did touch on something that's near and dear to my heart is mindset. That's where it all begins. It's more important than just putting up a vision board is actually believing that you can achieve and having that positive mental attitude that, that makes all the difference. The world without that, people are bound to fail in my opinion. That's, that's, that's ultimately what it is. That a positive mental attitude is so important to any type of success, especially in this game as well.

Yeah. In any game. And I just want to share a little story with you if I may. It's very relevant to this, but not related to real estate. So I set big goals for my life and I'm turning 40 this summer and my dream for the summer was for me to hike the Wonderland Trail, which is the 93-mile trail around the base of Mount Rainier. And I'm just in love with Mount Rainier. It's in our backyard, not literally, that'd be weird. So in order to do this, you have to apply for a permit and it's a lottery system and only a certain amount of people get selected for it. The permit applications are on March 15th, so that was when we can turn them in and they don't start looking at them until April first and they knew, we knew that it could take six weeks before we would receive our information back from the National Park Service.

Well, meanwhile, I'm like out there training, I'm, I tell everybody I'm going to take this thing, it's my dream. I can't wait. It's going to be amazing. And um, last night when I get finally get the email, I've just been waiting to get this email from the park service and I gathered the kids around like, okay, kids, you're going to use the email. And I clicked on it and I essentially said, I didn't get my permit and I'm not gonna lie. I started crying because I was so it's so important to me like the mountains and the ocean are so ingrained in my soul. It's where I'm the most alive and I didn't get that permit. And I, so I was, I was feeling really down for a little bit. And then I had this moment last night where I was like, okay, I'm super frustrated, why am I frustrated, I'm frustrated, and I was trying to have like, okay, I'm going to be self-aware.

And then he said I could be down or I can start asking how and not how did this happen to me? How did this happen to me? Or why is this happening? Why did I get what I want? No, it was how am I going to make this happen? And I believe that when we ask ourselves the question how, it enables our brain to work in a completely different methodology than it would otherwise do so. So, the quality of the questions that we ask ourselves determines the quality of our life. And so once I started asking myself that question last night when I was feeling so upset, then I started getting fired up. I was like, I'm determined to make this happen. And I was going through all these alternative scenarios like maybe I can do a drop in here and like Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh. So I won't bore you with all those details, but I woke up this morning and I immediately went to that place of I went out in the woods, I started walking with my dog and I was like, how, how, how, how, and my brain was searching for ways to make it happen what I wanted to make happen. I think we can do that. We can apply that to any area of life. It's how to make something happen. Mindset is way more important than we even believe it.

Absolutely. And I think that that's a key. That's a key indicator right there is that with

when people, people often forget or they just don't do that. I think people actually get 'em we looked for the easy way or our brains are designed to keep us safe. They're not really designed to, to have us venture off into the woods to try to figure out how to do, how to do those sorts of things. Uh, but the same thing with when you're dealing with, with a big project or a big multifamily deal, uh, we are, we are trained to take it easy, play it safe, you know, don't take more risk and in order to make those big things happened in your life. I'm not saying you have to take an element of gigantic risk, but it has to really think it through it. But then you execute. That's what it is. You execute and it's, it's so important and people don't do enough of that in my opinion. No, it's part of what, uh, what I want this podcast to be an I, I do want our listeners to take a hold and really hold on, embrace it in their heart that, that without massive action. So it's very difficult to make anything positive happen in your life.

Now, what advice would you give to these aspiring

investors? Promoted I'm always a proponent of massive action as well. But, I think that there's, that book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, I believe, and he talks about how the little things that we do consistently over time define who we are and they build upon one another. So as an example, one day I might decide to just do like three phone calls a day. Well, if I do three more phone calls a day than anybody else, then that's a lot more and it's going to build up my network. Or if I decided to write thank you cards to everybody that I meet with or if I evaluate two deals every day or whatever it is. If we do these small things every day that, that turns out to be consistent, massive action because it's building our knowledge base, it's building our network, it's building our confidence in ourselves. And ultimately it's gonna enable us to do more, more deals. If we are talking about real estate, then, then we wouldn't be able to do otherwise. And so there are some days where I feel like, how do I fit this into my schedule? Meaning this other thing that I need to do to make the deal happen, because I do own a couple of businesses and I'm a mom of three kids and a wife and all and I homeschool one of my three kids and, and so then I just think what are, what is the next best thing that I can do? And I, if it means that I'm going to make five phone calls, then I make five phone calls and I just try to be consistent with taking at least some action every day.

Excellent. Now, what are you excited about these days?

I'm excited about life.

I can hear in your voice. You know, it's great. It's amazing. I love it.

I think life is so fun. It is. Every day I get to live and I'm really grateful for that and, but beyond that, I'm super pumped to go to Ireland with my husband this summer. Just the two of us while our kids are away at summer camp and, I don't know. I'm in the middle of baseball season. I'm a baseball mom with three kids and I get to see my kids with smiles out there every day on their faces when they're on the ball fields and we've got lots of fun summer plans coming up, camping trips and road trips and just going and being adventurous as a family together. I love spending time with my family more than anything else.

The great thing about real estate really helps afford that. I mean, aside from your other great businesses and real estate, as I imagine it's one of those key things as well, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. I'm super digging this business. I'm having a blast with it, but mostly it's just because of all the people that I get to meet. I like people. And this is totally a people business. If there are no people, if you take away the people, there's no business in this business.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well speaking to people, how can they reach you?

Yeah, you bet. So I have a podcast called the Investing for Life podcast and that's, and investing for life podcast.com or on iTunes or Stitcher. I'm on Linkedin and I also have my company website, Marotagroup.com, which is marotagroup.com.

Excellent. I'm going to put those in the show notes as well. Well, thank you very much for being on the show are truly appreciate it.

It is my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.