In today's episode we focus in on the challenges of being a real estate broker and investor and dive into how to leave your day job and turn full time even in the face of adversity! Brittney is a fulltime broker and owns BK Real Estate, LLC. A brokerage going through rapid growth currently! Join us and hear the story of Brittney and her transition from teach to Broker/Investor!
In today's episode we focus in on the challenges of being a real estate broker and investor and dive into how to leave your day job and turn full time even in the face of adversity! Brittney is a fulltime broker and owns BK Real Estate, LLC. A brokerage going through rapid growth currently! Join us and hear the story of Brittney and her transition from teach to Broker/Investor!
Working a job they don't know it and maybe have a small side hustle or a small business they don't know. When is that perfect opportunity to?
Speaker 2:get out of it the perfect time. I feel like timing it too.
Speaker 1:There's no perfect time, Ryan.
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of disagree, because. So, Brittany, maybe you can weigh in a little bit.
Speaker 3:It's hard. I have agents that come to me now that have full-time jobs and they're hesitant to quit, and I understand that fear. But then they'll ask me like, should I quit? I'm like, yes, you should, because I do think that if I would have started sooner I would have been further ahead. If I would have done all of this 10 years ago, even imagine how much further I would have been.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with Ryan Greenberg and Nick Calvis. All right guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Everyday Millionaire Show. We are here with Brittany Kosiff. How are you doing, brittany? I'm doing well.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming.
Speaker 2:We're here in Orlando, florida, for BPCon 2023. Brittany, thanks for coming. So where are you from? Give us a little background. Who is Brittany Kosiff?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I am from the DFW area closer to the Fort Worth side. You always start off with like to DFW and then if you gauge what they say and then you're like, okay, you know DFW Well, I live in North Richland Hills it's on the Fort Worth side and I have been in real estate for about six years and before that I was a school librarian.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So what did that transition look like? From being a school teacher, to librarian, to getting into real estate?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it was hard.
Speaker 2:And what was the overlap Like? How many years of overlap did you do both?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good question. So I got my license. So I started selling real estate first. I got my license six years ago, right about the time I was getting a divorce and kind of figured quickly like, oh shit, how am I going to feed these kids, put them in cheer football, all the things on a $60,000 a year salary. So I got my license and I would teach during the day, sell real estate at night, drag the kids along with me, be quiet, mommy's showing a house, don't touch anything. And did that for about two years, and after two years I started making more selling than librarianing and so I was able to quit.
Speaker 2:So so one of the things that that I did. I was a teacher as well and transitioned, and I often think about this and it's like an interesting question for people like us that what it did when you were thinking about quitting your full time job was obviously like a scary thought For me. I was making at the time, I was only teaching it three days a week. I was starting to scale down and even that tiny bit of money was like holding me to that job because I felt scared to leave that. You know, every two weeks I was getting that money, no matter what. What did that process look like for you, and how did you figure out the finances to know that, okay, I'm going to be okay with this, you know? Unknown.
Speaker 3:We all have limiting beliefs, right, Like no matter what we do, we have limiting beliefs around what our capabilities are, and one major limiting belief I had to get over is poverty. I grew up poor and so finally, when I was teaching, even though it was only $4,000 a month, I knew I was going to have that $4,000 a month and so really I had to overcome that. First like, hey, Brittany, you've done this now for two years and you're making much more. So I stockpiled, I squirreled away three months and I figured, okay, in three months, if I don't sell one house, I'll go back to teaching. And that was my biggest thing is, you can always go back.
Speaker 3:I was a great teacher, I was a great librarian, I used to present at the state level and people wanted me to be in their schools, and so I had to really tell myself that every day I got this if I fail, I can go back. And even then that was still kind of a limiting belief. It was really based out of insecurity. But the great thing is is I started selling and then it just kept going, and then now I can't even imagine going back into the school system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me it was like the first six months was I need to keep making money, and then after there was like a period where I was like, okay, I'm going to be fine, and that's where I felt like I really started scaling the business, because I got over being scared of not having money and then it just kind of rocket ships from there.
Speaker 3:And isn't it crazy? Now, like I bet you don't even worry so much about money, not at all. You know it's going to come.
Speaker 2:Not at all, and I think the big thing too is like, once you quit the job, the security that is the thing that drives you to work.
Speaker 3:so much harder oh so hungry it's that fire that you needed to keep going, yeah. Yeah, my little sister came to visit me one time and she's now actually one of the agents that works at my brokerage, and she's a full-time salary employee too now with me, which is mind blowing that I can do that for her.
Speaker 3:But she came over one time to visit me and it was right when I was transitioning between the two and I had her just start texting this mass list of sellers. I was like, hey, just start texting, just copy and paste all of this, change out the name. She was like man, brittany, is this what you don't like? Hey, I have to. If I don't, one of these doesn't hit, then I can't pay the mortgage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like that's a struggle for a lot of people who are working a job they don't know and maybe have a small side hustle or a small business they don't know. When is that perfect opportunity to get out of it? And the security of having that income coming in every month and maybe benefits that you may lose if you quit that job. It's like something else that they think about, but sometimes they just got to take that leap.
Speaker 2:You have to take the leap, but it has to be the perfect time. I feel like timing it too.
Speaker 1:There's no perfect time, Ryan.
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of disagree because. So, brittany, maybe you can weigh in a little bit. I think about this what if I quit two years prior? Or what if I waited another year? I felt like if I quit two years prior I didn't have the business sense that I did while working and having those two jobs, and had I waited another year I would have pigeonholed my whole business. So there's kind of like that happy medium place where and maybe you can give us your kind of opinion on that what do you think you would have happened if you quit one year prior?
Speaker 3:I was thinking about that as you were talking. It was really. It's hard. I have agents that come to me now that have full-time jobs and they're hesitant to quit, and I understand that fear. But then they'll ask me should I quit? I'm like, yes, you should, because I do think that if I would have started sooner I would have been further ahead. I mean, I'm 37 years old, I'm going to be 38 in a few months. If I would have done all of this 10 years ago, even imagine how much further I would have been. And so I think that there isn't. I kind of agree with you, nick. There really isn't a perfect time. But in teaching, when can you leave? Teaching, you can leave twice a year, right, really, if you really want to keep that bridge safe, you only have one time that you get to leave, and so that was the window I was working with. I can leave in December.
Speaker 3:My principal would probably fucking hate me if I did that, or I could leave in May, and so that was the great thing about being a teacher leaving education is you have that window right there and got to make a decision.
Speaker 1:So I think like obviously I do agree partially with what you're saying, ryan there could be a time where you it's too early to leave, but I think if the thought is in your head, that's probably the time to do it, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think also you individually, like if somebody came and asked me should I quit my job to go full-time in real state, so what's your risk tolerance? Also Like it's individual, right, I'm 32. I have no kids. I have a wife who's also a teacher. So like my risk tolerance is higher than somebody that has a job, has two kids, has to support them, has to send them to school, have to do sports, whatever else. Their risk tolerance is lower. So maybe that person that my counterpart that you know has more responsibilities let's say they can't quit right at the same time. I could, because had I failed I was only gonna screw myself, I wasn't gonna put anybody. So it's interesting with you, you had two kids, so that's like a huge leap of faith in yourself that you had to take, knowing that.
Speaker 3:I got people responsible even though I'm responsible for it was scary when I was actually leaving an abusive relationship about a year before I really decided to quit selling and I had to take a loan out from Wells Fargo for $5,000. I've never told anybody this before, by the way, but this made me think about it. I had to take a loan out for $5,000 to get me and my kids out of this really bad situation I had put us in and to be able to pay that loan off, to put myself in that new situation and then to say, oh, now you wanna leave teaching again. Brittany, what are you thinking? Are you gonna put your kids right back in another situation?
Speaker 3:But I was like I told you guys I was making 60,000 as a librarian. I made 80,000 that first year selling real estate right, like that's pretty fucking huge in my mind. $140,000, what? And just, I had to put pen to paper and really see, like, okay, if I make X amount of calls a day, if I go to three networking events I do open house every weekend, I know I'm gonna be successful. I know I'm gonna be successful. The magic of thinking big it's a great book. I don't know if you guys have read it yeah, I have, yep.
Speaker 3:But it's all about what beliefs are inside your head that really you need to focus on so that you can be successful. Yeah, your thoughts are your biggest damage.
Speaker 1:I feel like when your backup is up against the wall it's easy to create that fire that you need to move forward. When I first started my real estate buy and hold business, I didn't have like a construction crew. That was like full time in house. I just hired out of GC and work with them. And then one of the subcontractors reached out to me.
Speaker 1:He's like hey, I wanna be hired full time, I'm gonna work with you full time. And I was like scared, I was nervous, I'm like I don't know what to tell you, like I don't think I can afford you full time. Like that's a huge responsibility on my end. And he's like well, if you hire me full time, can you also hire me and my other buddy? I'm like, man, if I don't think I can hire you, what makes you think I can hire both of you? And I'm like you know what? I just pulled the trigger, hired them both. And that created a fire under me to help me grow so quickly. Because had I not did that, I wouldn't like in the back of my mind like I have to provide for them now.
Speaker 1:Like my responsibility now is not only to buy houses, but to buy houses to keep them busy, and that really helped me grow. And then you know one thing yeah, the same thing happened to me just recently.
Speaker 3:So I was selling real estate on my own, doing really well, started making even more. The next year I made 250. I'm like, yes, crushing it. And then the next year I decided to hire my sister-in-law as a TC. She had just quit her job, she had a baby my nephew and I decided to hire. I was like you know what, I'll train you, I'll teach you what to do, I just need help. And so I hired her on and I immediately noticed that my time doubled. So then my income doubled even more. And in the end of last year end of 2022, I decided to start a brokerage.
Speaker 3:And so January this year I opened up the doors and I had my sister-in-law, alex, who was my TC. I said, hey, I'm gonna offer you this position, director of operations, and I'm gonna pay you $60,000 a year in salary. And the fact that I was able to give her what I had worked so hard to make as a librarian blew my mind. And just last month I hired my other sister for a family business here. And then another $60,000 salary. And it's scary, right Like I have not only employees, but now I have sisters that have kids and families. And if I do not perform, if I do not make this brokerage as successful as it can be, I'll have to put them back into what they were doing, I'll have to leave, and that is fire, but so exciting.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about the brokers that you started at the beginning of this year. How did you start it and what made you start it?
Speaker 3:So I started it kind of twofold Number one I love challenges and I love goals. That's something I saw in myself early on. I was the first person in my family to go to college and I'm the oldest of seven, by the way and so first person in my family to go to college and that was already like whoa man did that. That's scary. And I got my masters and I noticed this pattern Every couple of years. I needed a change, some sort of growth opportunity, and so for this it was like, okay, I'm doing great, making great money selling houses. That's when I also discovered bigger pockets.
Speaker 3:Right about that time I was telling you guys, before the show started, that I cashed out my TRS Texas Retirement teacher retirement system. My, I think I had 25,000 after 10 years of teaching, cashed that out right when the divorce was going on. I needed to pay bills and I had nothing, nothing to give my kids. So I started buying houses but I saw that I was being limited within my last brokerage and nothing against them, but I wanted to sell multifamily and they were strictly residential brokerage.
Speaker 2:Was it a big brokerage, like a big brokerage, like one of the big ones? No, very boutique, it wasn't KW or any of those big ones.
Speaker 3:There was a boutique, but it was owned by an attorney, right? And attorneys have to keep themselves safe.
Speaker 2:So I was talking to Marcus on the way here about this like what did you learn from that broker that you had before, and why is it necessary to even have a broker now, besides the law of needing a broker's license? Like what did that person do for you and now, what do you do for yourself that makes it worth it to be a broker?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know they were awesome. There is nothing against that brokerage at all. They were wonderful people, they were great resources, but that was kind of part of it too. Like man, if they can do this, why can't I? In that magic of thinking big book they were talking about, one of the first things they say to do when you're trying to retrain your brain is look around, you, be a people observer. Gosh, if Ryan can do this, he seems like a normal guy. He was a teacher.
Speaker 3:You know, I don't know much about you, nick, you'll have to tell me later, but like you, look around and you're like these people can do it, why can't I? And so I looked at my broker and as great as he was and wonderful as he was, I thought I could do that too. Plus, you know, I felt a little limited because they were uncomfortable with me selling multi. I ended up selling the multi-family, made the biggest commission of my life and did a great job on it. But I pushed through their hesitation and just did it, and so I sold that multi-family and I think it was September, October, and then that was the moment I was like you know what? I can just do this myself.
Speaker 2:Why would they be against you selling anything?
Speaker 1:You're like more realistic, you would think that's more money for them also.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a protection thing, right, like what you don't know. You don't know and I could mess something up. I could have a lawsuit filed against us. I understand what they were doing. However, there has to be a time where you learn right.
Speaker 1:Well, you just say he's an attorney. I know a lot of attorneys that are really like Very protected.
Speaker 3:Yeah, understandably so and I understand where they were coming from, but for me it just. I was limited, and so decided to start my own company.
Speaker 2:So you're selling multi. Obviously, people that are buying multi are mostly gonna be investors In your business. Now what percentage of your sales are investor sales versus residential home buyers?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and this is funny, I have a Tuesday sales meeting every week with my team and we just talked about the fact that having a diverse clientele is a protection for you as an agent in this market right now actually, or any market Retail right now is tricky, investors are tricky, but if you have a mix of flippers, you have a mix of buy and hold, you have a mix of retail people, you're working your sphere, you're getting out there, then you're gonna be successful and so mine is probably 50-50.
Speaker 3:Right now I've got a couple of flips listed, a couple of flips under contract for people, and then I've got several first time home buyers and friends of mine buying and selling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were Marks and I. Again, we're talking about this before the investor. Like, selling to investors is great. I love that way more than selling to a wife and husband who are talking about the kitchen, because my thing is, if I can sell multiple houses to one person, that's less marketing that I have to do. They don't care about the kitchen, they don't care about the bathroom, they only care strictly about the numbers. And even though in our market anyway, when I sell to investors, it's gonna be a lower commission typically because we're selling projects that need to be rehabbed or whatever, but I'm gonna hit that same person four times in a year, five times a year.
Speaker 2:And they are only looking at. They don't even care what the house looks like, because they know we're gonna do most, even most, of the rehab anyway.
Speaker 3:Oh cool, so you do it yourself.
Speaker 2:You'll help them buy it and then help them, yeah, so my company is vertically integrated, so we have a sales team, construction and property management all in-house and we call it the trifecta. So when I have a client that I get to be their agent, then I get to be their contractor and then I get to be their property manager long-term. But those people I get to have less relationships. I don't have to send out as many postcards. So that's why I think right now in this kind of environment, investors are where it's at. If you can find those deals for them, they're gonna keep buying, whereas the residential people are kind of a lot of them anywhere, sideline themselves, waiting for rates to drop and whatever else. And the way we look at investing is like if we're making money, we're gonna just keep buying, it doesn't matter, I don't care if it's 9% rates.
Speaker 3:12% rates or 20% rates. It'll just get better later when you can rebuy.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly that's how we look at it as investors. But the retail side of things people are not buying as much and they're thinking too much about those metrics.
Speaker 3:Maybe, yeah, I mean, but there's always people that need to buy and sell. Life happens and so I don't wanna limit myself, because a retail client typically will make me more, and so if I have my retail people and my investors, then I'm just double dipping there.
Speaker 2:What's your marketing strategy look like, and is it the same for your retail versus your investors?
Speaker 3:No, not really Like you. My investors I have limited relationships with and they can be deeper relationships. My sphere, my retail, did I say that wrong? My investors, yeah.
Speaker 3:My retail people. I'm sending out postcards, I'm going to my PTA events and helping out in the schools and just talking to people. I don't really spend money on advertising, except for some postcards occasionally. I work with tons. What's really been my bread and butter and what's allowed me to grow quickly and my brokerage to grow quickly is I work with several wholesalers in DFW and what we do we have a kind of a group, a little partnership going. They send me the leads that don't work for them, the retail stuff, the people that are a little less motivated, and then I turn them into listings and then we give them a marketing fee for it.
Speaker 1:What does that fee look like?
Speaker 3:20%, 20%, mm-hmm nice.
Speaker 1:So what have you learned over the course of the 10 months that you had your brokerage open that you wish you would have known when you first opened it?
Speaker 3:I've learned that you can't make everyone happy. It's literally the biggest thing. I'm a people pleaser by nature and it comes from just a lack of maybe self confidence I had early in life and I just wanna make sure everybody's happier. You good, are you good? Are you good? Are you feeling good? You feel the love I love you, and it's impossible to do that when you.
Speaker 3:You know, we are at 30 agents now and I try to co-list with a bunch of my people because I've got my best friend since fourth grade on my team, my sister on my team I mean my boyfriend's on my team where there's just so many of us that I feel like I need to take care of these people not my boyfriend, but just so many people and I can't make them all happy as much as I try. And that's probably the hardest thing about being a broker is making tough decisions knowing that I'm not gonna please everyone Like we gotta raise caps or we gotta do this. You know this is a business at the end of the day and it's not really for them.
Speaker 2:It's hard because the way when you describe that like I have friends that work for me too I have a project manager that was one of my groomsmen, my director of operations on the property management side it's a good friend of mine. We have I have, three or four people that are really close friends, that were friends prior to being employees. What have you had challenges with that? Because I've recently had some challenges with that and I'm interested to hear somebody else that has people close to them also working with them.
Speaker 3:And what kind of challenges?
Speaker 2:do you have with that?
Speaker 3:So I can give you two great examples my best friend Lacey, who I've known her since fourth grade. We were college roommates. We were trouble in college. I will tell you that she and I co-listed something and I forgot to pull her split out for the brokerage on the first CDA. So I had my assistant get the revised CD out and I don't think she saw it. So when she got her check, it was short and you know. And then she texts me. She was like what's going on? Is this because this was a novation Cause we work with a lot of us? I said no, no, no, I just forgot and I was in the middle of something and I was busy and it was all texts and I was kind of short with her. She was like are you mad at me? I'm like, no, are you mad at me? No, okay, we're good. I mean just things like that.
Speaker 3:Right, because they're your friend, because they're close to you, they take things differently than maybe you mean for them to come across. My sister is the other example. When she came on as full time she knows everything about me, she's my sister, she's one of my best friends and she was like are you sure you're good. Are you sure you're good making? Are you sure, brittany, $60,000 is a lot of money. You know what? I won't take it. I'll just work for you. Stop, stop, stop. And I had to tell her. You're causing me more anxiety than my anxiety is. Please stop. And since that's you know you're navigating friendships, relationships, because they know you and they know you deep, that sometimes that can really affect a business relationship.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, absolutely. So what is your next step Now? You mentioned before that you know you need this change, you need, you know, kind of something to work towards. What's the next step for Brittany Kosiff?
Speaker 3:I've kind of got twofold. So you said you've got your vertical integration going. I'm doing the same. Started a mortgage company. We service residential, retail, dscr, investor stuff, x and flips. And that's cool, right, because my clients can feed my mortgage company.
Speaker 2:Are you allowed? So in Maryland they just changed that law where you're allowed to do both. Are you allowed to do both?
Speaker 3:Yes, I have to have a, a dendym that goes out with every contract, right? Showing that my clients realize that they're I could make up to X amount on this. It doesn't say what I actually make. They'll find out, of course, when they get their loan estimate Right. But I could make this and they have other choices. So as long as we get that filled out, they understand we're very upfront and honest about that.
Speaker 1:Did you start both of those at the same time?
Speaker 3:I started the brokerage in January, and then the mortgage company followed in May.
Speaker 1:So what percent of the clients use the mortgage company to get their loan?
Speaker 3:So right now we have, I believe, six contracts going for the mortgage company, which is a pretty strong start, considering we only came in May and interest rates suck right now. But you know, I give all of my clients the option. I let them know like hey, because I'm part owner of this mortgage company, I can do some creative things with my profit to make sure you get a good deal. Always try to tell them that Not all of them go with me and that's okay too. And I tell them like no biggie, you know, I had a VA, a veteran, that just I couldn't beat it. No matter how skinny I got on my side, we couldn't beat it. And happy I was making money on the retail side, right On the on the sales, I was like you do you, if you got that, that's great. I can't beat that. But yeah, probably 40%, maybe.
Speaker 1:So do you have like an agent count or like a sales goal for your brokerage?
Speaker 3:That was the other thing. So the vertical integration was my one big goal, but my next goal is I would like to get to 6,000 agents. In the next five years.
Speaker 1:So how are you gonna do that?
Speaker 3:Well, the position I created for my sister is growth and development, and so we just announced this big collaboration with EarthDorbit Rob Stein. He's out of Austin, where we have BK University. It's like a training platform that we now offer to our agents. So it's just offering things like that, really making sure that the agents are taking care of and you know, we have a great culture and so it's it's gonna grow naturally.
Speaker 1:What's the name of the brokerage?
Speaker 3:BK real estate.
Speaker 1:BK real estate.
Speaker 2:So I have an interesting, just general business question. When we built our construction company, most people in our network they know me as the contractor. It's Ryan Greenberg, it's Tyler, my business partner. They don't necessarily associate that with the business name, so it's a very hard business to sell in the end because people are they're gonna buying me and I can't sell myself. What do you do to brand your business so people know BK real estate and not just Brittany Kosiff?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that's a great question and it's it's probably multifaceted, right, Make sure the logo is great, the website, the front facing stuff is there and that everything that we do is the logos with it. But at the end of the day, a lot of people wanna work with me, right, like they wanna come and they wanna work with me, and so that's why I've started doing more of the co-listings. That way they get me and the group texts and I'm doing the buyer consult and helping them out. But they're working with Lacey or they're working with Bree or Zara or someone else on my team, kinda doing them more of the day-to-day stuff, and it's great. It's a win for everybody, because everybody my girls are making money and my clients are better served than if I was serving them because I'm so torn.
Speaker 2:So in your business, how important are you? And if you left, how long? Like how long do you think you could leave for without being there and have your business run for you?
Speaker 3:I mean tomorrow is Monday, mindset Monday at 9 am for my team and I don't wanna miss it, so I'm gonna dip out of the keynote in the morning and pop over and do that. Tuesday same thing. It's the sales meeting and we kinda had a bit of a drama last week with lawyers involved and I want to be there for my team. Like I need to be the face of it. One of the other leadership people in the brokerage could do it, but I need to do it because of the drama that happened last week. And so to answer your question, I don't know, probably it would not be great. Be fast falling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also think, because you're in like growth mode, that you kind of just want to be in the day to day and you're probably not thinking about like exiting out and having it run on its own.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Like what is it that restaurant owners? They learn to bus tables, wash dishes, cook, be a hostess. I mean, I'm in that role right now. I want to know how to do a CDA, even though I'm going to call Alex five times while I'm doing it. I need to know how to create these, this content. I need to understand everything so that hopefully someday, when I get to that five year mark and 6,000 agents and 30 million a year in revenue, I can be up here just watching and hopefully going to the pool more and massages more and spending more time with my kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just ask that because I feel like you know entrepreneurial people, they like that to be in that, you know that position, that leadership position. But also one of the goals should be how can you buy my time back?
Speaker 2:Right, and that's a huge thing, and even if you're going to buy your time back to start another business or to do something, I just see people and now we're all pretty young, but I see people that have owned these businesses, that are so deeply involved in it that they literally can't retire. They get stuck working for this business and they're just an employee. Even though they own it, they're just an employee. And it's always interesting to hear other people like what if you, if your time doubled, what would you do with it? And that is a quite it's a hard question to answer because like I don't want to go, just get massages and go to the beach, Like I'd probably start another business.
Speaker 3:That's true. I say that, but I know myself and it's every couple of years. I start getting that itch.
Speaker 2:So yeah, basically like, what are you doing? Are you taking steps to put other people in positions to do? Some of the things that you're doing to hopefully open yourself up, to do the title company, and because that's that's the thing, like if you wanted to start a title company, you have to have more time than you have right now. Right, and how do you create that time? Right, it's you got to, there's something has to give. We only have 24 hours a day, yeah.
Speaker 3:And we we had, I had an option and I still have it. Um, in DFW I'm. I love Scott Horn and Susan Tierney. I don't know if you guys know them. They're really big in the owner finance world and and I wanted to start a title company with them, but I had to tell myself no, and I and I sat Susan down. I was like Susan, I love you so much, but I think this is where I need to start. So we're doing profit sharing for now. Just, I do not have the capacity, even though it sounds easy, you know. It's one more thing, and starting the mortgage company really taught me like, hey, for this to be super successful, you have to be invested more. And, uh, you know, when you say yes to something, you say no to something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, it's. It's always hard for people like us that uh, you know, just want to do everything I want to do. I want to start this business, I want to buy this business, I want to do that. But having that, you know, self control, almost it's like being an addict, almost right, like I'm like addicted to doing the next thing, building that next business, but having that self control to say no, I got to like, I got to niche down, I got to really just focus on this. It's.
Speaker 2:It's a really, really hard thing to control when all you can think about is what that next, what's that next thing we can do? Like, what can I buy next? What can I do if I had this much, if I had 10 more minutes a day, what would I do with it? And it's an interesting question to ask because you talk to. We talked to a lot of people, and all of the people that we talked to are pretty much typically, you know, entrepreneurial type people and they all kind of have the same answer Like I wouldn't go get massages and go to the, you know, but I don't know what I would do next, but I'd be doing something productive.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's, it's cool. What else you got, Nick?
Speaker 1:So talk about the your investment properties that you have and how you started getting into that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So before the podcast I was telling you that I started bigger pockets. Really I feel like I changed who I was as a person. You know listening to to their beginning episodes, where I was like, ah, this person went from zero to 100 and X and she was just a librarian. I mean, I did.
Speaker 3:There wasn't an episode like that, but you know pretty much that was the, the old, that was the premise, yeah, the old premise of how they did things and that was so inspiring to me because, no matter how much money I was making selling real estate, if something happened to me, if I died tomorrow, what did my kids? You know, a single mom, what happens to them? I need to give them something and I will tell you I'm shitty in the stock market. I'm horrible with that. I don't know anything about any of that, but I do know a lot about houses.
Speaker 1:So do you think that's a thought that a lot of people miss out on? And what I mean by that is like there was a time six years ago when I'm thinking like I see the life cycle and how everybody does the same thing over and over again, I'm like I got to break that cycle, like I need to do something to create passive income. That's when I started thinking about real estate. You said that you, you started thinking about it because you know you, you want to leave your kids, something Like I feel like there's a lot of people out there that are just they don't get that thought and like they need that thought to think about. If I don't work, I'm not going to be making any income. I need to find a solution for that.
Speaker 3:You know there's in Texas alone we're going to grow by seven million people in the next few years. Okay, that's like equivalent to another DFW, another San Antonio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wanted to touch on this because Texas is one of those places that's blowing up like crazy.
Speaker 3:And and we're in a boom. You know, and, but but to what you're saying. Those seven million people that are coming here, how many do you think are going to be successful? Very few, because the majority of people aren't, aren't proactive. You know they're not going to get on bigger pockets, and or they are and they're going to have. What is it?
Speaker 3:analysis, paralysis where you just sit in the deal for so long that you never make it happen, and so you have to educate yourself. But it's coupled with that, like Grant Cordon says, you have to have massive action, and at some point my very first house I bought. Brandon Turner said he buys his kid a house, right?
Speaker 3:I remember in one of the episodes- he bought his daughter a house and teaches her all about appreciation and how to be a landlord. So I bought my kids a house I. I bought it in a small town called Wichita Falls, texas tertiary market for us and DFW and I bought it for $21,000. Didn't see it. It had a tenant in there, $5.50 a month. I'm like hell yeah, that's 2% all day.
Speaker 3:When I went to go see it for the first time, thankfully I had a friend with me, another investor, who had a gun, because I had to go with a gun to pick up this rent. So that's my son's house. And then I quickly was able to buy my daughter one in the same town and then I showed them. You know, after they I finally evicted that guy, I fixed it up, put another 40 into it. It was then worth a hundred, put an R lock on it, a revolving line of credit, which is a great loan product for people that are needing to to get some income to buy other properties and was able to buy several more because of that. And now I've taught my kids right debt service, how to be a landlord. It's been great.
Speaker 2:And how old are your kids again?
Speaker 3:So my son's 13, now my daughter's 11.
Speaker 2:Are they interested in the idea of real estate? Because I've been trying to get my wife to be interested in it and we're driving around I say you know, this is our house, like we as we own this, trying to teach her about it. But she's a third grade teacher. That's what she does. She doesn't care about real estate. How do you motivate your kids to like, want to learn, at 13 years old, what you're doing and why it's important? I don't know if you saw this. It was like a funny video. It was like a viral video. It was a kid. It was a dad talking to a kid and he was like I have $1,000 cash for you right here. Or and I was a young kid, not 13, or I have this Oreo, which do you want? And the kid grabs the Oreo.
Speaker 3:Yeah that emotional intelligence is huge, so how do you?
Speaker 2:how do you motivate your kids, like, do you teach them about it? Do you say hey, this is your house, this is how much money you're making, like, how does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a little bit of that right. We drive over there, we look at it, we walk it. You know we talk about the numbers. Last week was fall break, which is a stupid thing that they started doing by the way They've been in school for like two months.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we already get a break. Yeah, teachers deserve it though. So that's fine. I took the brunt. But I made my kids listen to Mindset Monday at the Tuesday sales meeting, like they need to just sit, be quiet and listen, whether they absorb it or not, just like your wife, you know. Whether it takes, I don't know, but I'm doing everything I can to show them the value I want. My daughter, my son, you know I see in them the potential to take this over someday. Whether or not they want to is up to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a. As a teacher, when I was kind of transitioning out, I started teaching and that's what started this podcast really. I started teaching some financial literacy to kids and I taught in a lower income area and I like I was teaching this fifth grade class and I saw like their eyes some of their eyes light up and they like started asking questions. They were super interested and then other kids, like you know, couldn't care less about learning about it. But when you see that like potential, I feel like you know, teachers in general don't do a good job of teaching financial literacy, mostly because most of them are broke.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when you're teaching your kids and stuff, are you? How are you doing it? Where are you like telling them everything, like the breakdown of everything, or just like a general like hey, we own this house, we collect rent. Like how deep are you getting?
Speaker 3:Well it's, it's evolved right Like I bought the house for my kids two years ago and now they're older so we can talk more in depth about things. You know, my son is really starting to grasp the idea of a mortgage and what that means and interest rates and how they fluctuate, and so with their maturity we've been able to go into deeper conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you guys know better than you know a lot of people, because you were both teachers at the school system doesn't teach that kind of stuff, so it's very important to you know and not to get into too much, but nor should they.
Speaker 3:I mean, our, our education system needs to focus on course, course stuff. It's our, it's parents responsibility to really dive deep into financial literacy, emotional intelligence, yeah.
Speaker 2:But see the thing that I disagree with there a little bit. I don't want to get too, you know, in the weeds with the teaching thing, is like where I taught, there weren't parents. They weren't there to teach their kids financial literacy. I'm going to teach my kids. You obviously taught your kids. You're probably going to teach your kids 100%.
Speaker 2:But, we're, we're not the norm. So I feel like this the school system has some responsibility to teach about basic, at least basic finances. Like we're learning all this stuff about Christopher Columbus that half it's in the textbooks not even true, but we, they, don't know how to write a check when they graduate high school, which is, you know, maybe a bad example now, because not too many people are writing checks anymore, I guess. But like just simple stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Or how to balance a ledger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't know what a profit and loss is. They don't know just basic, basic stuff where those parents didn't teach them because they didn't know they weren't taught. It is hard.
Speaker 3:And I, I understand I taught fourth grade in Louisville, Texas, right on the corridor of Interstate 35. And all of my students spoke Spanish and I was English immersion and so they needed a hug in the morning, Like that's what they really needed. They needed the Friday backpack full of food, and so there are some basic things you have to do in those kind of environments. But you know, as a whole, I'm trying to say that we do a, we do a poor job sometimes really getting that core stuff taught because we're so worried about their emotional well being there. You know, I need to teach the food pyramid and I need to do this, this and this, and and I understand what you're saying because I, I was there too but me, my kids, you know I can teach them that you make sure that they're damn good readers.
Speaker 3:You make sure they understand algebra yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think that's all I got Brittany. I appreciate you coming out. One last thing oh, you got. You got one Fast forward.
Speaker 1:It's BPcon 2024. Where is Brittany out right now in her business?
Speaker 3:I'm hustling.
Speaker 1:Give me some numbers. Give me some numbers. Where are you at?
Speaker 3:Okay, we are number 286 out of DFW Brokerages, which is huge. There's over 5,000. We have Beat Out my friends who's back here in the background, her last brokerage. We've beat out my last brokerage and numbers and production. Right now I'm on point to make more than I made last year, which is saying something in a down market. I own 10 doors. How many?
Speaker 1:agents. So now I'm fast forwarding a year, oh, a year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so BPcon 2024.
Speaker 1:Oh, do you tell me where you're at right now?
Speaker 2:So then we can do accountable next year. Yeah, all right guys, how many?
Speaker 1:agents. Do you have? What numbers did you hit?
Speaker 3:All right, I'm going to have 500 agents at least and we're going to be in the top 10% of brokerages in production-wise in DFW. I also have offices in San Antonio and Houston, but since I'm based out of DFW, it's kind of been my focus, but that'll be growing too.
Speaker 1:Let's fucking go.
Speaker 2:All right, that's it Next year 2024.
Speaker 3:You better do it, I better write this number down 500.
Speaker 2:All right guys, thank you for listening. Make sure to follow us. Britney is what's your Instagram handle?
Speaker 3:Britneyco-siv, and then we have BK Real Estate as well.
Speaker 2:BK Real Estate Britneyco-siv. We will have it in the descriptions, all right guys.