What do you think about an AI agent answering incoming calls? And is that something you’re planning on implementing within Salesforce and Left Main?

So far on the objectionproof AI thing, we are setting way more appointments. The customers are experiencing a way better interaction with our company because they’re not falling through the cracks and we’re able to be really fast, but still also leverage humans.

What are some moves or some things that you would do right now to make sure that they’re still in business 10 to 15 years from now?

Number one, get ahold of your systems and your data. It is your gold. That’s what makes your company valuable right now, is your data and your system. So don’t underestimate.

So Stephanie, it is hard enough to create one successful business. 90% of businesses typically go out of business within their first five years. You’ve created two successful businesses. You have a high level flipping and building operation and you also have Left Main, which is a CRM that a lot of real estate investors are going to, including us. That’s how we reconnected. What do you think it takes to create a successful business? And do you think it’s even further? Is there something else that helps to create multiple successful businesses?

Ooh, starting off with a heavy hitter, I’ll say it takes vision for sure. You got to know where you want to end up and being obsessed with that vision and then just freaking tenacity. Just refusal to give up. You just get punched in the face however many times, right? Infinite number of times. And it’s such a rollercoaster that I think so much of the success just comes from refusal to give up and finding a way. And the cheese is always moving. There’s always something happening, personnel issues, economic headwinds or tailwinds. There’s always something going on, but pretty much everything is figuratable. And if you refuse to stop, then you generally can win.

Yeah. I’ve heard that before where it seems like success isn’t necessarily failing. It’s just getting up and pushing through those times because there have … I don’t know if you’ve had this. I’ve been in business 24 years and there was at least two, if not three times where I’m like, am I doing the right thing? I feel like I almost need to go work for someone else. Luckily, I stuck through it and I could imagine being anywhere else. Have you ever been in that situation where you were just like, “I don’t know if this is going to work?”

Countless times. I stopped counting, truly. In the very beginning when we first … So my husband and I started our investment company, I don’t know, almost 15 years ago. And we had really great W2 jobs. My background is in medicine. He’s a physician assistant. I’m a nurse practitioner. We both had great jobs paying well. I think when you have a lot to lose too, it makes it easier to reevaluate if you should do this. Yeah, we got all these degrees. We had this money and invested in our education. Why are we working so hard over here? And so I actually counted in the beginning how many times I really, really wanted to quit. And I made a commitment to myself, I will not actually quit until I’ve really wanted to quit a hundred times. And I got to 60 something. I was like, I freaked out and wanted to quit.

It was too hard. It’s too much. It’s too hard with the kids. It’s all the things. We’re just like, I can’t go on. And by the time you get into the double digits of the times you want to quit, I was like, you know what? Even though I felt like this fever pitch of stress and silly things, the more that I got through it and wasn’t allowed yet to quit, the more I was like, “I’m actually just never going to quit. I think we’ll actually figure this out. ” So I stopped counting, but many breakdown moments. I like to cry in my bathroom and that’s like my crying zone. And I had many moments like that in the beginning.

So tell us that transition from being a nurse practitioner to an entrepreneur. Tell us about how that transition was. I had that transition from my job into real estate. I was just waiting tables because I was in college, but nonetheless, I just remember how excited I was being able to quit my job and go full-time. Tell us how that was for you.

It was a journey. My husband actually was willing to quit before I was. I had a hard time with it. A lot of my identity was tied up in what my job was, and I loved it so much that it was very challenging. But kind of the way it went was we started in the investment space for just probably like most people to buy rentals and to build wealth, and then it went well. We’re like, okay, well, it takes a lot of capital to buy rentals, so we’re going to flip and we’re going to wholesale and we’ll be able to buy more rentals. And quickly found out that doing that level of transaction requires lots of systems and operations and setting up teams and things like that, which I completely fell in love with and kind of had this epiphany of like, oh, this could be a business.

I can see how this will work out. And then I started finding mastermind communities and got a lot of encouragement and great network around me. And then our business was doing really well. We were making good money. As soon as we had any financial freedom, my husband left medicine and I was like, “Oh God, am I going to leave? I actually really do love my job. What are we going to do here?” And what the kind of tipping point for me was that I had a choice and timely value is extremely valuable. And I was working in heart surgery, cardiothoracic surgery and surgery call and weekends and holidays. And the commitment to doing that job was really substantial. And it’s a blessing to be able to do it. It’s a true honor to take care of people. I don’t want to minimize that in any way, but it’s a huge time sacrifice and personal sacrifice to do it.

And I felt really blessed to have a choice. Maybe I don’t have to do that. Maybe I could help people a different way, take care of people and just make it a little bit different, especially with left main success and things like that. This is a once in a lifetime. People don’t get this opportunity to build their own life and to build their own security and I think I just need to take it and go. So the way I rectified it in my mind is like, I can always go back. I’m always going to be a nurse practitioner. I’m always going to be taking care of people. People are always going to be sending me rash pictures or asking me about their heart or whatever. And I can still do mission work and I can do all those things and I can still keep in touch with my colleagues.

They’re not going to vanish. Those are friends I’m going to keep in touch with. So I kind of went through this whole identity process of peeling myself out of it and that clarity that this is a once in a lifetime and I’m going to take this thing to the finish line. So that only happened three years ago, three and a half years ago.

Oh, wow. It’s only been three and a half years you”ve been out of that.

Yeah, it has not been very long. I really struggled. I stayed in way too long. I mean, it was the worst return on my time across anything else. It was really silly, but it was more of a function of my identity than anything else.

So we are both very similar. We have real estate investment companies, and then we had something that was working for us that we decided to present to other real estate investors. For me, it was TV commercials. And for you, you built out LeftMaine, which helped your business and then you launched it out. So tell us about that. Did you know when you created that that you would give that to other investors or did you more create it for yourself and then realize, wait a second, I have something here that other people can use?

Absolutely not. It was only for me and for us. What ended up happening was Salesforce actually approached me. Left Maine is built on the Salesforce platform. So when you buy Left Main, you get our stuff plus all of Salesforce combined, which is really cool and powerful. And Salesforce actually approached me and said, “What did you build?” There’s a very long story behind that where I tried to figure out who could build this for me at Salesforce and long discovery process. And I freaked out and built it myself essentially. And then Salesforce asked to see what it is that I built. And I showed them, I showed my account executive and she was like, “This is something. Do you know that? ” And I was like, “No, I don’t. What do you mean? I don’t know what that … ” And she’s like, “I think you need to talk to our partner team.” She told me that every real estate professional that comes through the Salesforce ecosystem has the same reaction that I did, which was basically being flabbergasted as to how hard it is to adapt and how expensive it is and that they need a tool, but it’s inaccessible because of price to not only to buy per user, but to develop.

And then I really stubbornly built it myself and that’s why she was interested in seeing what it was that I built. And very long story short, she introduced me to the partner team in January 2020 and I submitted what I built to their security team and it passed security review. We got a great contract and we launched. And I was like, okay, well, let’s see what happens with this. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what this is going to turn into. And 2020 obviously sounded like a great year to start anything. And then a couple months later the world shut down and then all of a sudden the real estate market exploded. So it was a little bit of a rollercoaster that year as it was for everybody. And my friends were the ones that first started asking about Left Main and wanting to buy it.

They’re like, “What is that? What are you building? How are you running your company?” And we had been known to be good operators in Charlotte and part of the communities that we were in. And they were like, “Well, what are you doing? I want to do what you’re doing. Teach me your tricks.” Just kind of like all of us, we all share our little tips and tricks and they wanted to use it. So they started using it. And then we had this great grassroots organic growth story. And here we are nearly six years later.

Have You had to spend any money on marketing? Is it more referral base?

It’s a lot of referrals, but I would say in the last year or two, maybe year and a half, we’ve actually started marketing, but very referral basis. You know how this industry is. If you help people and you do a good job, they tell others and that creates a nice lead source.

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So I’ve heard nothing but good things except I think a few years ago you were growing pretty fast and had some onboarding issues from what I understand, but I haven’t heard that in a few years. So it seems like based on the experience we’ve had so far, we just signed up for LeftMain. We’ve got, my team’s doing multiple calls per week. It seems like you’ve kind of got that figured out. What other kinks have you had to work out with launching a SaaS product without having never

Done it before? Yeah, onboarding was challenging. I think fulfillment is challenging because everybody has different ways of learning, right? And I had to learn relatively quickly, especially when you have 50 new people onboarding in a month.That creates a challenge, a good one, but still a challenge. And everybody learned differently. Some people like to be on calls. Some people want to read, some people want to watch videos, some people want to do nothing, some people want you to do it for them. So we had to iterate our onboarding process and we also had to develop best practices. And when you’re first getting together, when you’re first launching, all you really have is you and a handful of people’s best practices. And now we have over a thousand people, companies that have onboarded. So we have best practices now. So I had to learn a lot about what that onboarding process looks like and who on my team and what proper team members to bring on to help do that, different experience levels and expertise levels.

And then ongoing support after someone’s implemented as people’s companies’ priorities change, they have different needs and they want to try other tools. And that kind of introduced the next opportunity, which was how do we closely integrate with other providers? There’s always somebody cool inventing something in their garage and different phone systems and different, especially now with different AI tools. So the next set of interesting circumstances was how do we work really well with other really wonderful providers and have a good experience for the customer who’s the one trying to use all the tools well together. So that was another kind of interesting thing to figure out. And what else? The Salesforce relationship has been interesting and really fruitful, but learning that ecosystem, the trillion dollar company, you’re just like a little fish in the sea and growing to be a dominant partner in that space has been an adventure.

Now we’re their only real estate partner and we’re like top three partners in their whole ecosystem, which is wild. But that was a crazy thing to navigate, a big corporate world and lots of introductions and networking there to get a foothold and get really great referrals from the Salesforce ecosystem too, if people come in that way instead of knowing our name first.

And you service just real estate investors through that platform, right?

Yep. We do have some adjacents with commercial real estate investors and some property managers, or we have some really large real estate firms, like traditional real estate firms that have investment arm where people are kind of taking a page from Zillow and OfferPad where they have listed or buy it type of strategy. So those brokerage groups do also do really well with us.

Cool. Yeah, we had a good CRM before. I’d say it did probably 90% of what we needed it to do. There’s a couple things that we had issues with. Number one is we couldn’t customize it. So when we were locked into their platform, we could give them suggestions and they were pretty good about taking suggestions and implementing them, but sometimes it would take six to 12 months to do that because software takes time. And the second thing was that the reporting wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be. And so I think those are the two big factors that kind of led us to come over to LeftMain. So my question to you is, where do you see the future of this? Are there things that you’re adding on that are AI-based? I was actually talking to Steve Trang a few days ago,

And he said that he feels like by the middle of next year, he sees transactions being done from A to Z, pretty much all by AI. We’re literally, you can do marketing, they call in or fill out a form, AI talks to the client, negotiates the contract, that contract is sent off or not sent off, but the property is marketed as a wholesale deal and that whole thing will be done mostly by AI. There might be a little bit of human interaction. So I’m just curious where you are with that. Or is there anything you guys are doing adding AI to left main to prepare for something like that?

Yeah. So we’ve taken, and I agree directionally with what Steve said. I don’t know about the full cycle by next summer, but more and more of the cycle without a doubt, without a doubt. It’s happening. And if you’re not adapting it, you’re already way behind. But what we’re doing on the AI side, we’ve started with data, so data analytics and data predictions on who’s the most likely to sell. So our kind of personal spin on that is you as a CRM operator, you have proprietary data in your CRM.You’ve been in business for 20 years, everyone kind of runs the gamut of how long they’ve been in business. But the longer you’re in business, the more data that you have that nobody else has. You’ve talked to people, you’ve had these notes, right? Yeah, people can pull a list and see who owns a vacant house, but you not only know that, but you know all the things about their sister and their relatives and the problems and the reason why they’re delaying or whatever else.

But the longer you’re in business, the more data you have, the more difficult it is to ingest it. So we’ve introduced a lot of really cool AI features that constantly update your entire database for new events that happen and essentially take your data plus a lot of publicly available data and then predict who in your database is the most likely to sell and essentially give you a hot list. These are the people that you go after. They’re the most likely to sell right now. So you can focus your efforts. So if you’re like, you’re a human being, you can make 20 phone calls right now between appointments. These are the 20 people you should call because they’re the most likely. So that’s one that’s live, that’s really awesome. And the flip side of that is property sales. So when people sell a property, it can just automatically cleans your database and tells you who bought it and for how much and who was that investor and how far off were you from your offer versus what they sold for and add them to your buyer’s list, create a relationship with them.

So in summary, it’s enrichment. So your CRM becomes alive and that has been really revolutionary for humans that need to interact with your database. And then where we’re going is now bringing in additional insights onto who is transacting in your area and predicting who’s going to buy that property from you in a wholesale deal and how much they’re going to pay and essentially bring a lot of the adjacent operations closer to your actual deal. And the idea with that is if I know that this opportunity is predicted to sell between 300 and $320,000, and these are the 30 people who are the most likely to buy it, I’m more likely to actually get it under contract because I feel more confident in what I can sell it for. And that psychology and then also access to that data is going to continue to transform how many transactions we can do and can help inform some of these AI agents that are having conversations with people.

So we’ve really started with the data side and trying to take your gold that only you own and make it even more valuable.

So with the 30 people you said that could potentially buy it, those are already in the database that the client has, or are you saying you’re going out and finding people in that area outside of their database that could potentially buy that property?

Yes, both. So we’re going to give you these people. And then if you have folks in your systems already that have logged interest or have bought things from you before, of course that’s proprietary to you. You know that, only you know that. Let’s continue to enrich that with buyers that you don’t have. So that’s releasing Q1 next

Year. Nice.

Pretty exciting stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I did like was you being able to take the properties that are in our database and scrape and see if they were sold, when they were sold and for how much, because then that can tell our team like, “Hey, we just had that deal last week,” or whatever it was 30 days ago and it sold and it sold for pretty much what we could have bought it for. Why did we not make that deal? So it

Keeps your team accountable. And then the metrics I like as far as how long did it take for someone to answer the call, how many people have not been followed up with. I mean, back in the day, you could throw out a direct mail piece, screw up and get a bunch of deals under contract. Now it’s way different. You have to be dialed in. You have to know your numbers, you have to be good with marketing, you have to be good at sales, you have to check your metrics. We just started recording our in- person meetings. So we now have data from our in- person acquisitions appointments where we can listen to them and be like, “Oh my gosh, why did he not ask this question or why did he not sign the contract there?” And those types of things. So that’s been our thing the last six months of like, okay, we need to really start getting things dialed in because it’s getting way more competitive.

And those that are going to get their numbers dialed in and add AI to make it even more efficient are the ones that are going to survive and the ones that don’t are probably going to go away in the next 12 to 14 months or 12 to 24 months.

100%. And really the core foundation for being able to leverage AI is having good, clean data. You can’t just plug something into a mess. You have to have good structured data in one place and have data that actually informs humans and AI. So step one is just getting your arms around that and having a reliable place to put all that. Obviously, I believe that’s your CRM, that’s the heart of your business. So once you have that all settled and it’s auto-enriching and auto-cleaning, think people you can’t help anymore, now not only are your humans better, but now you can use AI. So you kind of have to have that one step first in order to inform the next. And then just like you said, the game has changed to be way more data oriented because it’s more competitive, which means that you then have to be able to make better decisions.

And building companies for the last decade plus, that’s what it comes down to. How can I make better decisions and make less wrong ones? And there’s this transition from being a hustler and just throwing some stuff on the wall and not having a ton to lose and just taking shots at stuff to then professionalizing and like, all right, I have team members now. Now I’m all in on this thing. A couple bad deals can put me out of business. So I’ve got to be able to make really good decisions and then empower my team to do the same thing. Otherwise, I could never step away or I’d never get out of the hustle. So that’s where I get really fired up and excited is like, let’s just make data-driven decisions and then it feels like there’s less risk. And then I can train people around that instead of this gut instinct, payoff feeling all the time.

Yep. The AI. So there’s AI agents now. They become way more prevalent in the last 12 months, I feel like, and it’s going to get even more … What do you think about an AI agent answering incoming calls? And is that something you’re planning on implementing within Salesforce and Left Main?

So my personal philosophy is it’s better than voicemail. So the way we are implementing it and ObjectionProof AI with Steve Chang, we use it. It’s awesome. It’s especially awesome for after hours and weekends when people can’t pick it up or when we miss a call or when a lead comes in and it’s been 30 minutes and we haven’t called them yet. Super awesome for this fail safe. And that’s how we’ve started with it. I’m a little conservative. I like data. I want to try things. I believe in people, especially people who’ve worked for me for five, eight years that are really good at their job. So we’ve instituted that first for this fail safe and smartphones coming out with AI agents too that basically you can put into your workflow, the call workflow. And so the way we’re going, we’re using that on the Better Path side than my investment side is instead of voicemail.

So it’ll essentially ring everybody first. If nobody picks it up, then it goes to the AI agent instead of voicemail. And I think that is the super low hanging fruit.That’s a no-brainer. No one even leaves freaking voicemails anymore. It’s stupid to even have something go to voicemail, right? I just hang up. I can’t remember the last time I left somebody a voicemail. I’m going to text you instead. So I think that’s a really great place to start for live answer is if nobody picks it up, talk to the AI agent. And that’s the experience that I would want on the other side too, because like I said, I don’t like to leave voicemail. So that’s our first foray with it to see how that goes. And so far on the objectionproof AI thing, we are setting way more appointments. The customers are experiencing a way better interaction with our company because they’re not falling through the cracks and we’re able to be really fast, but still also leverage humans.

So it’s going really well and I’m excited to keep doubling down with it and finding just incrementally introducing them into the process.

Yeah, we’re this close to pulling the trigger on an AI agent, which Steve would most likely be the one we go with. Have you found that some people do not like that? My concern, as you know, we could make 20, 30, 40, $50,000 on one deal, and if that client wanted to talk to a human and all of a sudden they get an AI agent and they hang up and they’re upset or whatever, we potentially lose that deal. Have you seen anything close to that where you might be losing deals potentially?

Surprisingly, no. Credit to Steve and his team, people generally can’t tell that it’s an AI agent.

So you don’t even say it’s … Because I feel like I would want ours to say, “This is an AI agent. We are faster than humans, but if you do want to talk to human, press one at any time, but we’re going to prompt it to let it know just in case.” So you don’t even tell them it’s an AI agent.

No, if they ask, it says, “I’m an AI. Yes, I am an agent.” But it doesn’t disclose that. I think that’s probably only for a little bit before we’re required to disclose it, just like we’re required to disclose if a call’s being recorded. I’m sure regulation is coming and I don’t disagree with it. I do think that’s nice to disclose that right out of the gate. And I was really curious because the way ObjectionProof AI is built, it doesn’t disclose that as a script. And I was like, “Well, how’s that going to go? Are people going to get pissed? Same questions.” But then it literally didn’t come up. There’s only a handful or two of calls that have actually asked, “Are you an agent?” Because there’s a little bit of crossover with natural conversation where people talk over each other or say, “mm-hmm, there’s a little bit of a delay.” And I think that’s occasionally there’s a delay like that.

And I think that’s where people are like, wait a minute. But most of the time people have no idea. So they talk to them just like a normal

Person. Cool. Awesome. So high level, you have two companies that have grown pretty substantially. Where do you spend most of your time? Do you feel … Are you more of a visionary? Are you more of an integrator? I’m just kind of curious what your day-to-day looks like.

Yeah, I’m a little bit of both now, which is kind of fun. So most of my time is with Left Main. I probably spend three or four hours a week on Better Path. And I’m there on the L10 meetings and I do finance and exec meetings essentially every week managing our portfolio. We have, I don’t know, 80 active builds right now. So it’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of financials, and I like to keep a very close eye on that. So yeah, three or four hours a week on the Better Path Home side, and then essentially everything else on the left main side.

Awesome. So tell us about the new builds and where you see the future going, because it seems like wholesaling is going to get a little bit disrupted. There’s a lot of things going on with regulations in different states, and then just the fact that AI agents can come in and compete with you and that type of thing. So you’re doing new builds. So tell us why you’re doing new builds and is there anything else looking forward the next year or two that you feel like are opportunities in the real estate investment space?

Yeah, so new builds. We started scaling new builds in about 2018, and we were doing new build construction flips and wholesaling at the time. And about a year, year and a half into it, we found that it was easier to be profitable on the new build side because there was less variables. We’ve all been there with the flips. They go over budget and over timeline. There’s surprises once you get into a project, there’s just a lot of variables and then like, oh, an inspection period comes and now you got to replace a roof you didn’t think you had to replace. And it’s a lot of chaos with the flips at scale specifically. And we found at scale it was easier to control new builds and we can have a ton going on at the same time. And there’s generally not a lot of surprises. And once you pass due diligence, which is like testing the soil and the surveys and making sure we have the proper zoning and things like that, then we actually close on the property and we own it and take on the risk.

So in general, compared to Flips, it was less liability from a budget and timeline perspective, but still challenging, just challenging in a different way. So timelines are way longer. You bank on a year. If you buy the land, get it prepped, the permits, all that whole process, getting it vertical and then going through listing it and getting it sold, bank on a year. If it’s less than that, great. But the sales cycle or the cash conversion cycle is a lot longer. So what that means when you’re getting started is you got to be prepared to not make any money for a while. So you got to be properly funded. You have to be properly liquid in order to get your whole pipeline going where you have stuff closing regularly and then reading to the coffers. So it’s not for the faint to heart, just like nothing is.

It’s like any part of this business is, you just have to really make sure you’ve got a hold of your funding and your finances so you can weather that timeline. But the good news is you can do it, you can have high numbers with low headcount, especially if you’re leveraging other GCs that are building it for you and you’re not building in- house, which is what we are doing. We have multiple GCs that we work with here in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County and surrounding areas. So we don’t manage the physical construction in- house. We have project managers that do that and QA and do all of our due diligence. Again, we’ve argued back and forth, especially when lumber prices were really high in 21, should we take this in- house and can we save more money? And we’ve gone round around about what to do with that too.

Where we are now is very interesting because our initial product that we did for, and what we’ve done for years for new bills has been first-time home buyer houses. So sub median sales price. In Charlotte, median sales price is like 360 to 380 depending on where you are and climbing. There’s some areas that are 425 now. So we’ve always priced our product 50 to 100K less than average sales price, which is what’s really appealing to first-time homebuyers. And they’ve always sold hotcakes, especially in 22, 21, 22. They blew off the market. We would have a billion offers, overpriced, bidding wars, all the things because there’s not a lot of inventory like that in Charlotte. Now, fast forward to where we are here, end of 2025, there’s still not a lot of inventory for that product, but first time home buyers aren’t buying because they can’t afford the house they could afford a few years ago because of interest rates.

So for the very first time we’ve had trouble selling first time home buyer houses. Now they’re sitting on the market for 60 days, where before it was like 30 because that’s how long … Oh, it would sell right away, then take 30 days to close just like anything else. But now things are sitting for 60 days before they go under contract and then 30 days to close. So now 90 days after completion, which kind of goes back to my previous statement of like, you got to have a year ready to sit on these things. So we’ve just now started transitioning to a little bit of a higher end product, which sells for cash

Annoying. So that house that is perfect for the people that can’t afford things that are renting, the first time home buyers that you want to, that feels really good to serve, those folks are renting for longer and longer and they’re waiting until they’re … Now we’re seeing the average first time home buyers 40 years old. They’re not 25 years old anymore and getting married and having babies. Now This is second home or professionals that have gone a little further in their career. So the product that’s doing well right now in Charlotte is 700 plus. It’s like we’re touching on the luxury market now, not quite luxury million plus, but this 700-ish house sells for cash right away, which is crazy.

Is it because they’re coming from California, let’s say, and their property just appreciated over a million dollars, they sell that house and then they end up buying something cash with you guys?

100%. So a lot of migration to Charlotte from New England, from California, from Florida too. We get some half backers, we call them. So a lot of really great migration in Charlotte for jobs and retirement and other things like that. So the people that are buying that product, it’s the second time home buyer or the third home buyer where they’re cashing something out and then just super excited to buy a new house for great price. So that part has been really interesting to watch the market in general and see the trends there. So we’ve got a lot of our current portfolio that’s under construction or finishing construction or on market is the first time home buyer products that we’ve made an adjustment a year ago, but is now coming to market and finishing. So we’ve got some goose eggs on our balance sheet that we’re going to get on those because we’ve held them for so long.

And then now we’ve have some starts that we’re getting some momentum on activity on the higher end product. So it’s been very interesting. All that to say, it’s very sexy to do new builds and it’s fun and it’s land and making offers on land sounds like it’s going to be a little easier. It’s a little bit of a different game and we can be competitive in a different way as everybody else, but it also comes with its challenges too, just like anything.

Yep. So let’s start wrapping up with market talks. So it’s kind of funny you say, “Man, it used to take 30 days. Now it takes 60.” But pre- COVID, 60 days was normal, 90 days

Was even kind of normal. And then all of a sudden we’re selling stuff within a week. I’m having that, I don’t want to say issue, but even three or four months ago, literally every property we put on the market, I would say 90 to 95% of what we would put on the market would be sold within 48 to 72 hours, literally just fly off the shelf. And a lot of the times over asking price. And so now we’re having more of our product. I would say 50% of it take 30, 60, 90 days. And I think so we’re investing in Wichita, Kansas, which I feel like we’re a little bit more behind some of the bigger markets, but there’s a lot of things coming into play. There’s politics, there’s interest rates, they’re trying to make a bunch of changes in how you can get mortgages, even the, what did they just come up with?

The transferable mortgage they’re talking about.

And I heard, and the 50-year mortgage.

And the 50-year mortgage, and then AI is a big thing. So I listened to podcasts and I should probably stop listening to some of these because some people say 90% of the jobs are going to be taken over by AI in the next 12 months and the economy’s going to go crazy and stuff’s going to crash. And then some people are like, hold on, that’s going to be probably 10 years from now and we’ll be able to adjust fine. I’m kind of curious where you think the market’s going to go in the next 12 months. Do you feel like we’re … Obviously it’s a crapshoot and you may not have a crystal ball, but I’m just kind of curious what you think and if there’s any changes you’re making based on what you think’s going to happen next year.

I’m banking on more of the same. I think there’s a lot of headwinds and tailwinds, some wins and some challenges. Having 50-year mortgages and some transferrable mortgages coming to market now, I think that might help a little bit, right? Interest rates are still a thing. Affordability is still a thing. Job market is still a thing. So I think we have some wins and we have some things that are getting harder, like you said, with finding jobs and people reducing headcount, especially in major tech areas like California and New York, where you have these large tech firms that are also trying to reduce their overhead and those are very high paying jobs. So I think it’s going to be probably a net even for next year. And there’s always a way to make money here. I think it’s just a matter of remaining solvent and keeping control of your cashflow is just super critical.

I’m not making any gigantic risk. There’s always some risks you’re taking, which you need to do and need to find the opportunity. But I’m kind of a realist in the sense that if I plan on it being about the same, which is difficult, I will call this market difficult. Definitely not as easy as it was a couple years ago, but also probably about what it was 15 years ago. So I still classify as difficult and I’m planning on it to continue to be difficult and having to be really nimble, but we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes. I’d love to be pleasantly surprised and have it be better. But I think what’s also influencing the overall market that not many people are talking about are these rates that are playing a hundred year game, the build to rent model, essentially what they’re playing with the BlackRock and even America’s Homes for Rent and the more and more build to rent communities that have popped up over the last five years.

I think what’s happening more and more with home ownership is that it is going to be delayed until later in life. So people are going to rent longer and longer and they can rent a great house and not have the worry about fixing stuff up and capital expenditures are just choosing to rent longer. And now that there’s more of these built to rent communities, they don’t have to live in an apartment. So they can have a dog and they can have room for their kids and they can be near a decent school. So because of those communities that are now more and more established, I think home ownership is getting delayed, which obviously affects us because that’s the product that we’re selling and we’re buying from people who are retiring and exiting, but who are we filling these flip houses with or who’s buying that end product?

So I think what that means for us as investors is we better have a play to sell portfolios to other investors and to work with those REITs if we’re turning these properties fast. I think it’s going to be harder to sell our typical product to a homeowner. It needs to be marketed properly for the second, third time home buyer instead of the first time home buyer. The other thing I’ll say is the folks that are buying houses like the first time home buyer, they’re more willing to put sweat equity into the house. So we ran some analytics at Better Path, and I’ve kind of done this incidentally with other friends across the country, your current condition value for the house or the whole tail ability of the house is maybe more appealing than the ARV of the house because that’s the only way people can get in and justify spending money on that house now.

So they’re like, “Oh, we’ll fix it up over the next 10 years. Who cares?” So that sentiment has changed also. So long story short, I think there’s a lot of long game happening with home ownership that you need to pay attention to and consider that in each individual market and how those trends are playing out.

Yeah. I was listening to a podcast or a interview, I think it was yesterday, and this guy interviews billionaires and he said, all the billionaires think in decades or even sometimes 30-year periods. So don’t just think about what’s happening today, but also what’s going to happen over the next decade. I’m stacking up on rentals and have been for the last few years since COVID started driving prices up. And I’m glad I did because I mean, a lot of my properties have gone up 30, 50,000 just in the last … And this is Wichita, Kansas. These are like $150,000 properties. And

So I don’t think that trend will continue. But like you said, I mean, it seems like these companies are realizing that people are going to be renting longer. There’s always going to be a need for rentals. And so to me, I think that’s the safe bet. And down the road, if flipping just ends up not being a thing anymore or for some reason the numbers don’t work, then I’ve got a bunch of properties that I’m sitting on that I can either sell or refinance or just have that nest egg to kind of carry me along.

Yep,

Cool.

100%.

So last question, I think is from a high level, what do you think, and I kind of asked this in the beginning a little bit, but I’ll try and word it a little bit differently. What do you think would be the advice you would give to investors right now? So a lot of, I think experienced investors are more going to be watching this. For the experienced investor right now that are doing deals, things are going well, what are some moves or some things that you would do right now to make sure that they’re still in business 10 to 15 years from now?

Number one, get ahold of your systems and your data. It is your gold.That’s what makes your company valuable right now is your data and your system. So don’t underestimate how incredible that is, especially if you’re an experienced investor, you’ve been spending marketing dollars, you’re generating amazing leads, and you’re fostering relationships with people. That means something. So when you talk about building a valuable business, not just about the transactional funds that you’re bringing in, which obviously make it valuable, but what makes your business sellable is, and which therefore is valuable, is your data and your processes that you’re using that are reliable and can help people reproduce those great decisions that you’re making. So don’t underestimate that. And then to your point, think about the real estate market the way these large institutions are, and they’re thinking in 100-year games. So what does that translate for you in your career?

We’re not going to live a hundred more years. I’d love to say we are, but we’ll probably be doing this another 30. So what does this look like 30 years from now? And how can you back figure out how to continue to be in business 30 years from now? Because the same question as 10 years from now. And my personal opinion is that means holding assets and being able to have enough cash flow to be able to do that well. I think a lot of people chase that first and buy too many rentals first and they’re cash poor and house rich and they get stuck and have to sell and get in a cycle. But think about building your portfolio and your overall net worth alongside of your transactional business that you’re making more and more valuable and get into that 30-year game, that 100-year game, because that’s long-term what’s going to give you the most options.

Awesome. Yeah. I think just to add onto that systems, your business being more valuable, the data you have, the systems you have in place, and the less likely it is to have to depend on you. That’s my big thing these days is I don’t really want to start businesses that I have to be in all the time. I want to either start businesses that I know that I can put people in place that don’t need me, and I’m actually in the process of starting to buy businesses that already have operations in place where I can just come in and put better systems in place and operations and marketing and sales and things of that nature.

Exactly. That’s what makes it valuable to buy, right? You’re not going to buy a company that has me as a linchpin in it. And as soon as I sell, it just falls apart. You’re not going to pay anything for that kind of company. So yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Awesome. Good stuff. Love it, Stephanie. It was good to connect. Where can people find you if they want to look into Leftmaine?

Okay. We can go to leftmainri.com or you can find me on Instagram. It’s @stephbetters.

Awesome. Thanks, Stephanie. I appreciate it. I love interviewing people that, again, not only have one successful business, but are able to do it with multiple businesses because obviously it takes a different mindset. It takes the hard work, the dedication, all that kind of stuff to make multiple things work. So I appreciate your time and thanks for the value you added.

Thanks so much for having me.