EP 534 – Launch Your Business To New Heights With Jen Du Plessis

NCS 534 | Launching Your Business

NCS 534 | Launching Your Business

 

You may not realize this but you can actually launch your business by using what is already present in your own market. Today, Scott Carson talks with mortgage expert and real estate investor Jen Du Plessis about some of the creative ways that investors and mortgage experts can capitalize on the markets for their own pockets. Jen is the Founder of Kinetic Spark Consulting, Black Fox Investments and Valor Home Solutions. Tune in to this episode to discover her strategies for earning top dollar as well as some great takeaways about compartmentalizing work and learning from your mistakes.

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Launch Your Business To New Heights With Jen Du Plessis

I am so excited for our special guest who’s going to leave a lasting impression for many of you guys out in Note Nation across the country, especially as we’re coming into the end of the year as we roll on into a new decade of everything. I’m excited because I’ve got my friend, Jen Du Plessis to join us here to talk about some of those things that we’re struggling with or what we’re working on as we have that balanced but how we manage to be an investor. Especially for those of you balancing or trying to juggle another full-time position or a job in investors to sign to us.

Jen is the Founder of Kinetic Spark Consulting, Black Fox Investments and Valor Home Solutions. She’s the author of LAUNCH! How to Take your Business to New Heights. She’s also the host of the first mortgage specific and top-rated podcast, Stop Talking, Take Action, Get Results. She spent many years in residential mortgage lending and was ranked in the top 1% of loan originators in the US for many years as well as being in the top 200 for a few years. You guys know we bring the best, the brightest and the most awesomeness to the show. Jen, we’re honored to have you here in the show.

Thank you so much, Scott. I am excited to be here and I can’t wait to share as much as I possibly can in the time that we have together.

You’ve been a busy gal. You finished a retreat with some of your clients in Tampa. You were in New York in a big real estate event too.

I was in Austin the day before I flew into Austin and right back out. The New York event was a New York Real Estate Expo. There were 3,000 residential and commercial realtors and lenders there. It was a fantastic event.

You’re the girl that was recording your retreat in Tampa. It was doing a live stream for a few minutes there, but you’re asking the people to make a list of ten items of goals and things that they wanted to accomplish. What do you like to have your clients and your students focus on this time of the year as we get into the end of 2019 and rolling in 2020?

On that video, what we were talking about is identifying ten core values. When people think core values, they’re not sure what it means. If I dissect it into a different term, it’s writing down what ten things make you happy or fulfill you on a daily basis. If it’s watching ants carry food or if it’s watching someone be able to have a home. Everything in between, playing jacks on the floor, playing football with your son, what fulfills you and makes you happy but it starts with the core values. What are your core values? I believe that you can make it better and faster decisions when your core values are aligned with your business. The biggest one is that if your family is a core value, because a lot of people say family, then why are you working until 11:00 at night?

That isn’t a core value. Not that it’s a core value, but you’re not in alignment. That’s what I’m telling people is get yourself in alignment with your core values so that you can make better decisions as you go forward and it’s easier to make decisions. We tend to haul around a lot, from the New Media Summit, I spent my entire career in the top 200 of loan officers in the country. It’s better than the top 1% because it’s 0.003% of loan officers. I spent my entire career sabotaging my personal life, my health, my relationships, cultural experiences, all of those to chase the almighty dollar. I finally found a way that I can get the almighty dollar without sabotaging my life.

I remember the most about the rumor is always what’s closing before the end of the month. We’ve got to hit here numbers. What are we doing in those late nights? We had a dozen mortgage companies in there and last weekend, last Friday of the year, people are always in there until midnight. I’m driving by and people are working and I’m like, “That’s not good. That’s not good for your health.” It’s not good for your family and your life in the long-term because you put a lot of great things on the back burner that can help drive you, invigorate you if you learn how to be in line with your core values. 

The core values are important. The other part of it is priority management. I don’t feel like we can manage time, but we can manage our priorities. When you have those core values in line, now you know what your priorities are. How about this? Every time we go on vacation, don’t we get busy and intentional and all of a sudden, business comes in or like, “How are we going to be able to go on vacation because we got all this business in.” That intentionality, that priority management, if you could do that every day, then technically you could go on vacation every day. What I mean by that is you could enjoy the things that you love in life every single day. The bottom line is we’ve got to get intentional about our business. In the last few years of my practice, I worked four days a week. I did not work on weekends and I made more money because I was more intentional when I was working. On my goal was I got to get this done so I can go do what I love to do.

That’s such a great thing and focus on having because many people drift. One of my favorite books, Outwitting The Devil, by Napoleon Hill and Sharon Lechter. It talks about how many times we’re drifting, getting attention is being directed by the shiny objects or the squirrels. You said it right best when you get focused and direct in what you do. You get things done so you can get out and chase the squirrels that you want to chase, not what others that are distracting you.

I always use the analogy of driving down the road and how you hit rumble strips. We’re driving down the road and we’re not quite paying attention and we hear a broom on the car and we go, “That’s right.” When you have your priorities in line, those are your rumble strips because if you don’t have those, you go off the road. You take the wrong exit, you go off the road, you flip over, you have all kinds of chaos in your life. Those core values help you stay in line. Metaphorically, we’ve dissected that into the metaphor of saying, “Be intentional and laser-focused on what is important in your business and your life.”

That rumble strips can easily pop up fast in nowadays world if you’re not paying attention to things. Everybody’s struggled with that at some point. It’s always good to try to be focused on that. I’m sure you agree that saying no a lot of time allows you to say yes to what you want to accomplish.

Those are baseline things that you should be doing. When you can build, when you can identify what you want in your life and then build the business around it instead of what we all do is we go in and we build our business and we say, “We want to make X amount of dollars,” and then we focus on that. We don’t track it, which is another issue. We don’t track what we’re doing and we’re still focused on having our eye on that $1 figure that accumulation of I want five properties or I want to have 25 new notes this year. Everything else gets sacrificed. What we want to do is we want to focus on what’s important and then we’ll fit our business in, but in a way that’s disciplined. It’s disciplined work. That’s okay because I’m going to be disciplined for a couple of hours and I’m going to have fun.

NCS 534 | Launching Your Business

Launching Your Business: Aligning with your core values allows you to make better decisions.

 

To get the big rocks done and then go have fun is always a big thing. That’s such an important aspect of things. A lot of people when they’re looking at a job, they want to get note investing of some sort. The big question is how many hours I have to dedicate to this? I’m like, “You don’t have to dedicate eight hours if you don’t want to.” It’s good to dedicate 10 to 15 hours. You don’t have to work 40 to 50 hours a week if you’re focused and doing the right things at any given point.

You bring up a good point because I’m also an investor. I’ve invested in a gazillion dollars in all this and all you need is one hour of time. In order for me to manifest that goal and be able to start investing, because I started investing many years ago and still had this thriving practice. It’s not a matter of, “I’m going to invest an hour a week, an hour a day, an hour a night.” What we do is we come home from work and we’re exhausted and we’re not taking the time to understand that. The thought is we go to work and then I need to spend an hour on this secondary business. We didn’t realize that we needed to spend two hours with their family.

We need to spend two hours before we get home going to work out. To get a release first so that we’re re-energized and we’ve sharpened our ax that we can attack that one hour. If we come home saying, “I have to give an hour,” that’s where the problem begins. It’s prioritizing that and saying, “You know what? What will rejuvenate me and sharpen my ax is if I spend an hour or two doing something I absolutely love, then I can dedicate my time to the investing. I get a checkup from the neck up first.” That’s how it works for me. As I had the energy to now go after the one hour a night that I needed to do to start putting into place formulating the business.

You say something very well there. A lot of people take our hills and take our personal mind game or energy and put it to the back burner trying to accomplish anything else. We pick ourselves last when it needs to be taking care of ourselves first.

You have the energy and fortitude. Our brains are mush by the time we came home from work. If you have a real job, you come home from work. If you’re not in a 9:00 to 5:00 type of job and you are an entrepreneur, you still have to look at that. Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur and you’re a professional plumber or electrician or financial planner. You still have to come home and you still have to debrief yourself and make sure that you’re taking care of yourself first. I can go into that whole finder minder grinder, which is in the book.

It’s a great book by the way. As I’ve said before, absolutely awesome. The thing that’s great across the board. If you’re reading out there, you want to go grab a copy of that and listen to it or read it. Listen also to Jen’s podcast after as well, which is phenomenal. Let’s talk about that transition going from, “I’m working so much,” to that four-day workweek that you talked about. How difficult was that for you? What are some of the things that you put in place to help make that happen for you? 

The first thing again is putting in the big rocks that are important to me. I decided that Friday, Saturday and Sunday, my husband and I would be on our boat. That’s what we’re getting to do. To break it down a little bit, it’s putting in the big rocks. We’re always going on vacation. I worked thirteen weeks a year and then I take four weeks off and then I worked for thirteen weeks and then I take four weeks off. That’s my plan. Inside of those weeks, the four days I have to make sure that I’m time blocking for finding activities, minding activities and grinding activities. That’s what I referenced in the book.

As entrepreneurs, we tend to put all these hats on all the time and watching me do that, it’s chaotic. Put on a hat and work in that zone, be efficient and then take off that hat and put another one in instead of trying to scramble to do everything. One of the things that we know and it’s a silly example, but it will drive this home is you went to the grocery store and all of your groceries were thrown in the back of your car, that’s chaos. The reason we have them in bags is that it’s more efficient. They’re compartmentalized. Furthermore, when you get into the house and you try to put everything in the fridge and in the cabinet and whatever, you compartmentalize them on the kitchen counter as well.

You tend to put everything that’s going to go in the fridge. You don’t open up the fridge and put something in and close the fridge and then find something and go over to the pantry, do that and then come back to the fridge and open the fridge because it’s not efficient. When we get an email, our email every day is like having all of our groceries in the back of our car spread out. We go through it and go, “Let me respond to this. Now let me do that.” I’m suggesting that we compartmentalize instead of going through and saying, “Do you want to go this networking bank can take a look at this contract,” “Watch these cute little puppies on this YouTube.” That’s a waste of time.

If you can compartmentalize them, you will be more efficient and you’ll be able to grab more time back. You’re not trying to trade time, you’re utilizing your time in the best, most efficient way. That will save you time. I’m always looking for ways to do things faster, but more efficiently. By compartmentalizing, if you’re going to write contracts for your notes, if you’re going to write all your notes out, then do them all at once. If you’re going to do some research, do it all at once because if you’ve ever written Christmas cards, you start off going, “It was a great year, love you.” You fold it and you stuck it in, you lick it and you stamp it, and you write it out. By the time you’re at your 10 to 20, you’re like, “Great year. Love you.” You stop them all at once because it became faster. I would encourage you to think about compartmentalizing the types of activities that you do. That’s the second thing to do because the first thing is if your child is having a recital, you need to go to the recital. If you need a massage, go get the massage first and then fill these items in.

It’s the whole jar with big rocks, gravel, Culichi, pebbles, sand and water. I totally agree with that, 100% with time blocking. One of the big things that we love to talk about is that if you will not control your schedule and value your time, nobody else will value your time and you’ll find yourself drifting all over the place. At the end of the day, you’ve checked off a lot of items but not been successful in any of the bigger rocks.

It’s like eating soup with the fork. You come home and you’re exhausted but you’re not full. You’ve been eating soup with a fork all day long. Your quote is on to me and it was the great Jim Rohn who said that, “If you don’t discipline yourself, everyone else will.”

Let’s talk a little bit about some of your investment stuff on the side. I know people are always interested in that and hearing from our guests, what are they invested in. What their background on the investment side? Why don’t you share a little about what you’re doing at Black Fox?

Black Fox and Valor, they do two different things. Black Fox is my company for buy and holds. It’s the buy and hold of the investment property. We did step investing when we were younger and because we had jobs, all of the positive cashflow went to paying off the first one. All the positive cashflow was paying off the second. We’ve accumulated numerous properties as a result that we’re around 55 properties, maybe 75 to 78 units. We’ve done that to Black Fox. Black Fox also manages all of the properties as well. Black Fox is also my note company. I did not start doing notes.

NCS 534 | Launching Your Business

Launching Your Business: Buying your own home is different from buying an investment property.

 

I inherited notes from my parents and I knew that they had them for years and years. I inherited notes from them. My dad was a contractor and an architect. What they did is they bought 5 acres of land in Colorado up in the mountains. They bought 5 acres of land, he’d do the well and septic and then he’d go down to the auction and get mobile homes, have them carted up. I wouldn’t do all this because it’s expensive, but he would have him carted up there and he put them on a permanent foundation. He’d renovated and then they would rent them out to people. If they stayed for 4 or 5 years and they were good renters, then they would ask them if they’d like to do a lease option with it. Those are the notes that we have on those particular properties. Under Valor, I do wraps and subject-tos. Some are lease options and some do not lease options. Those are the types of properties that we have there.

The last thing is I’m also the Founder and CEO of Better Way Escapes and I have fifteen Airbnbs. Some are my buy and hold converted into Airbnbs. A small set is me renting from a landlord and then turning it into an Airbnb. It’s not a sublease, a sublet. I also Airbnb my own property, my own home, because we’re on the boat or in another property all the time. Those are some of the things I’ve done. As a lender, traditional lending you can only do so much. If anybody’s reading, if you have questions, I’m excellent. That one of my niches was investor financing, but I had my own need where I couldn’t even get a regular loan because I had many properties. I learned all of the aspects of the other world of investing as well. We utilize that to our advantage when we need properties.

That was one of the great things that I love. When we met at New Media Summit, you came up to me immediately and we had to start talking about notes. Some owner finance and I was like, “I’ve got to get you on.” You were the first one that I scheduled or sent the links out for New Media Summit, something to have on. We both had busy schedules to get you on here. With subject-tos and wraparound mortgages and Airbnb, there are many different ways to use that career to financing it with a note business that most people don’t even know about. 

If you’re starting out and if they get your course, they can learn how to do it quickly if they have capital. If you’re not, I’m sure you want to go in that direction, you want to accumulate well through equity and appreciation and properties. Go to a lender who knows what they’re doing. It’s not about the first house that you buy. First of all, the first one that you buy, you have to get your emotions out of it because you buying your own home is different from you buy an investment property. That’s the way it matters because it’s the bottom line. You have to draw a line in the sand of what is important to you. The rate can be 18%. My company lent money at 18% to buy a house. It’s not about the rate, it’s making sure I can get the return on it. Making sure that when you buy that first one that you have the long game in mind so that you don’t go back and say, “I shouldn’t have done it that way.” Make sure that you’re working with someone who knows what they do. I also think real estate agent that knows what they’re doing to, they’re excellent in that market.

Those are the two most important aspects of things. When you’re putting a team together, vendors around you or dream team, having a good realtor that understands investing and some different options then also a great lender-banker, mortgage-broker who can help you. Understand the creative solutions that are available out there for you besides traditional mortgages. Some people thought, “18% is ridiculous.” No, it doesn’t. If you look at the time from what you’re using it for and that’s a proper tool to help you get where you want to go, it can be a great tool for you. 

When I first got into the business, regular mortgage rates were 18.5%. I would ask this question too. I want to make sure everybody understands this too. It amazes me how many loan officers and how many realtors don’t have investment properties. I’ve heard this question 1,000 times from the borrowers, “Is it a good time to buy?” The realtor says, “Yes, it’s a great time to buy. You should definitely buy.” I’m not buying, but you should buy. I said in my retreat in some other place that I was, I was speaking at something and I said, “I don’t understand why you aren’t buying property as a loan officer. Why wouldn’t you buy a property?” It’s not someone who’s good at what you think they’re good at, “I’m good at that.” How many properties do you own? What type of financing do you do? We need someone who’s going to be creative working with us and not fraudulent, creative who understands how to maneuver different situations and scenarios.

That takes me into it asking you the question. If you’ve got your crystal ball there with your experience, where do you think the market’s going here in the next several months? 

I never use that crystal ball and analogy, but I do use my expertise and understanding mortgage-backed securities in the market. My son is an expert in options trading. He’ll tell me what’s going to be great on that side and then I can correlate that to mortgage-backed securities. What I can tell you is that we’re going to have rates stay low. In fact, we might even have a little dip again in interest rates. I would say get your ducks in a row so that you can be prepared to take advantage of that. We’re already in a recession, first of all. One of the bad things about a recession or any appreciation on your A market is that you don’t know you’re in it until you’re in it for a quarter because that’s the definition. We’re already in it.

We’re already in a recession. What I say now is the time to buy condos. I wouldn’t buy condos right now because that’s going to be the first to go in this round. It’s not always what is going, but the real estate market accumulation has been tough in the Airbnb market because many condominiums have been fussy about that. We sold off all of our condos and we have directed our funds into multi-family and converting multifamilies into Airbnb units. We’re focusing our time and attention is into the small multifamilies. I’m not talking about 50, I’m talking about 5, 9, 12-unit properties. I see that’s where that’s going well. We have a major issue with not having enough properties in them.

We don’t have enough housing for the economy. It’s not even affordable. We don’t even have housing. There are not enough homes out there for people. You’re going to continue to see construction going well. I do think and I see it in different markets as I’m traveling around, regional issues that are going on where I’m seeing a lot of commercial buildings being converted into residential. In some areas, there’s not enough commercial. I would look at those markets closely. What you’re going to find when we have a recession is that people are going to need your type of financing as a note holding more frequently. Save your money and be prepared to help people out because there are going to be people who need help.

We’re already starting to see that, especially in different markets. I’ve been softening for a while. Dallas, Houston, Vegas, a couple of Denver have been hitting a little bit of softening in the market as well too, other areas too. Miami condo markets an uproar, especially for the high-end towns. I made a lot of money in condos in the last downturn because I picked up a bunch of them, I had $5,000 and $10,000 on Miami Beach. I can remember many years ago, it’s going necessarily the Arts District of DC. All these brownstones that were dollar days, you could go and buy a property for $1.

When I bought, there’s the deal of the century every day, you have to find it. My deal of the century was I was calling a mortgage company and they had six houses in a row in Detroit, sans one. It was five and then skip and then one. They have these six houses in a row and they were in foreclosure. They had them as REOs. I kept calling and offering them $1,000 for these homes. They told me I’m silly. I did it for about 4 or 5 months. I kept saying, “I’ll take it off your books for $1,000.” They happen to call me one day and said, “Now we’re interested.” I said, “That’s great, but now you have to pay me $1,000 per property.” I had done the due diligence, found out about where it was located, what I could do with the properties.

I ended up negotiating. I bought every one of those properties for a negative $1,000. I donated three of them for tax deduction prior to our new tax laws. I donated three of them for a tax deduction and one of them was for a Ronald McDonald house, which is cool. One of them was being rented by a karate studio. I did seller financing for the karate studio. I kept one because the taxes are $300 a year. One of them I sold to a renovation investor. For me, that was the deal of the century, going to closing and not bringing any money to closing whatsoever. We do a lot of no money for closing but I bought it for a negative $1,000. They paid me to take them over. That was the best. They’re little Archie Bunker houses.

That’s what I love about your brain. Love about what you’re doing. You’re taking it and spreading that knowledge across different platforms. Not only being the mortgage broker but the investor in the creative financing side. That’s the thing that I respect about you is you don’t only see that. You don’t always see mortgage brokers or real estate agents who are taking that step outside of the box. Investing, putting their money where their mouth is and putting it to work or looking for opportunities themselves. Why do you think we don’t see more of that, Jen? 

NCS 534 | Launching Your Business

Launching Your Business: Mistakes will teach you what not to do the next time.

 

For realtors, it’s feast or famine with them. They either make money or they’re not with lenders. Remember, with realtors are 1099, so it’s feast or famine. All loan officers are commissioned but they’re all W-2. When they make money, so much of it is taken by taxes. They don’t have any place to save money. It sits in their bank account and then they go, “Yummy, let me go buy a $10,000 watch.” Instead of buying a house, they don’t think about it. They’re in the now and I’ve seen it many times over my career, and now that I’m retired, I see it even more that people are doing that. That’s why that happens. They may not have been taught either.

I’m fortunate enough that I’m 1 of 37 cousins and my mom was 1 of 10, 5 boys and 5 girls. All men are real estate investors. Do you know those little machines that shine the floor, those round things? I used to sit on those when they were cleaning commercial buildings and then they own those commercial buildings. Now, they own casinos and all kinds of fun stuff. I learned all that. I learned that skill. My mom did it. She’s the only woman who did it. Mom and dad did it. I’ve been married for 36 years with my high school sweetheart and we got married, we were nineteen. We bought our first home for $42,000, the rate was 4.75 on the arm.

We still have that house and that’s been renovated a couple of times. We’ve learned it. It’s a learned skill. If you’re reading and you’re thinking, “Should I get a coach for doing all this?” We’ve all spent. You have to. I’ve spent tons of money on this coaching. We take all those nuggets and pull them together. That’s why my podcast is called Stop Talking, Take Action, Get Results. It was shut up and go do it. That’s what I wanted it to be. Shut up and go do it. A lot of people don’t know how to do it. They know what to do, but they don’t exactly know how to do it. That was why the book came out. Although it’s not about investing, that’s why it came out is because people get stagnant and they don’t move forward because they don’t know how to apply it.

If you can do something that freshens you up at night before you come home. It’s 1 hour a night to formulate your business, take bite-sized pieces rather than saying, “I need to spend 20 hours to make this happen.” Take little bite-sized pieces. If I may, there are four stages of growth. It’s formulation, concentration, momentum, and stability. You can’t go from, “I went to a class and now it’s stable.” You have to formulate. You have to figure out those smaller things. Once you had the formulation done, go out and concentrate and do. You will see the momentum start happening. It’ll take you to stability. It’s a pattern. A lot of people, their expectations are that I learned it and now I should be able to be at stability. That’s not going to happen. You have to work at this. It’s not sexy. Success isn’t sexy. People see all the great things you’ve done, but they didn’t see all the mistakes and the back and forth. That’s okay because mistakes will teach you what not to do the next time. You can apply that across every business you then go and do.

That is true. Success is not sexy. It’s just that you’re dedicated to the process, dedicated to working through that and overcoming obstacles. We all hit obstacles along the way. That’s why it’s important to have a coach or mentor there that you can reach out to, “I’ve hit this hurdle. What do I do next? How do I overcome this?” and go from there.

Coaches have coaches. I’m sure you do. I know I have seven coaches who helped me with seven different things. I’m coaching people as well. I firmly believe that I need to have someone to hold me accountable, someone to lean on so that I don’t feel like I’m a little island out there. Certainly masterminds, you’re talking about going and doing mastermind, which we did at a retreat. It was a big mastermind. That masterminding helps because what you might be struggling with someone else’s doing fantastic with and has no issues and vice versa. Don’t think that you’re a little island out there and you’re struggling on your own. You find a community that can help you.

If you don’t mind sharing, what’s one of your coaches that you work with or a focus of your life or business that you feel you have a coach for? Maybe most people don’t know about it if you don’t mind sharing. 

I had several. I have a speaking coach who helps me with my speaking. Not so much anymore because I’ve been speaking for many years, but I felt like I needed a coach once I retired out of lending to say, “Now it’s a different world.” This is my job, this is my livelihood. I have a speaking coach. I have an investing coach for my raps. I have an investing coach. I have an Airbnb coach because I’m trying to, at this point, provide technology and make the most efficient piece of it. At first, I had to know what I needed to do and now I’m ready for efficiencies. I have an online funnel coach. I have an icon maker coach. New Media Summit for podcasting. I have him as a coach now. By the way, I am a competitive ballroom Latin and swing dancer. I have a dance coach. Luckily, my brother’s an NRA instructor, so he helps me with my shooting because I’m on a competition team.

That’s a beautiful thing. You’ve got coaches for not only stuff that you’re doing business-wise and career-wise, but also for the fun side of things, the things that invigorate you.

They held me accountable. When you make an appointment to have a dance lesson and you don’t show up, it’s $65. That holds me accountable to make sure that I do the big rocks and it gives me pleasure. I love that I have someone to hold me accountable for something that I feel like I should always be doing, but I don’t do anyway. If I’m not careful, I won’t do it.

Free has no value a lot of times and if you’re invested. I have a coach that I’m working with afterward here, the fitness coach I work with a regular basis. If I didn’t have that investment or as I say, money in the bank and my goals, I don’t think I would do it. We’d all find other things to do with it. It’s important to you and it’s in one of your core values to what you want to accomplish and achieve. It’s important for you to invest in it and invest in yourself as well. 

I hate 10X. It’s 10X, it’s 20X, it’s 30X, it’s 1X. Let’s say it’s one-time X. It will pay for itself because they will hold you accountable. There’s no question. That’s what I do and my clients do it. I help them to be accountable and be a mentor to them. It’s a third eye that you don’t see. You bang your head against the wall all day long, but if you bring someone in, they go, “This is easy. This is how we solve this.” How much time would you have wasted? How many opportunities, that opportunity cost and how much money did you leave on the table trying to figure it out by yourself?

It always drives me bonkers with coaching students is when you’re like, “You should reach out to me if you have questions.” The phone doesn’t call them and then you find out they’re dealing with issues. I’m like, “Why didn’t you call me?” This drives me bonkers. I’m like, “You’re busy.” “No, I want to help you.” 

NCS 534 | Launching Your Business

Launch! How To Take Your Business To New Heights

That’s what we’re here to do. Take Scott up on that offer.

I love what you’re doing. You’re doing many things. I had somebody asking me a question here. Where are you finding your deals for your Airbnb especially your smaller multifamilies? They all think it’s too much specific secret sauce for you. 

I don’t mind the secret sauce. First of all, I tend to not invest in high-end areas. I know there’s a lot of people that buy $1 million homes and renovate $1 million homes. That’s not me. We tend to go to college towns. That’s where we spend our time in college towns because we find that there are a lot of people. There are a lot of investors in college towns, but they’re focusing on the little one-offs. We went in with the elderly person who has had it forever or a family that inherited this multi-unit thing and it’s never been renovated or it was renovated years ago. We find that seems to work best or someone bought off more than they could chew, bit off more than they can chew on a 5 to 9-unit property.

Housing in college towns is always in me. It’s always difficult for people to find housing and it doesn’t matter where you’re at. My kids, they’re grown up and I have grandkids now and everything, but then and even now, we’re always full. My daughter went to Alabama, went to the University of Alabama and George Mason University in Virginia. I had to find housing locally. My son went to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and then went to the University of Virginia. Every time we were in those situations, it was difficult to find housing. We had to get it a year in advance. In fact, I know my kids, we signed a lease on one of our properties at IUP for 2020. They think, “Can we get in next year? We want to make sure that we have housing.”

Housing is a problem, then it’s manifested by housing for students as well. By the way, my family, my uncles that I was telling you about, three of them live in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, where Central Michigan University is and that’s where they have all of their wealth. That’s where they started. They built them, they built multifamilies. We’re going in and now looking for the multifamily and if the town or the county allows us to do Airbnb, then we’ll do Airbnb. Half of it Airbnb and half of it rental sometimes because that was also a challenge. Can you imagine going to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 94,000 people go in that stadium? I can’t find a place to stay at all. What a great way to have parents come in and all of them can stay in the multifamily Airbnb. That’s where that has come from. The answer to the question is Craigslist, the advertising that’s down there. I look for advertising in the housings that are in those smaller towns.

It’s a smart play. I am a big fan of college towns too because there’s always a need, especially when you have big things going on at the weekends, home games and basketball.

As a parent, I’m watching my son play. That’s what he played. I want to go and watch him play and I can’t find a place to stay.

Jen, what’s the best way for people to reach out to you to find more about what you’re doing or if they’re interested in working with because we’ve got such a broad audience of people out there. 

The best way is to go to JenDuPlessis.com. I also wanted to offer, if anyone would like to have a strategy session with me, to see where I could help them and maybe not, you never know. Text the word, STRATEGY, to 66866. You can sign up for a strategy session. I’d love to chit chat with you and have a conversation to see if I can help you with your business.

It’s such great counsel because that’s the thing. Everybody has advice but few people give counsel out there. Jen is one of those people. You should know that we love to bring good quality people on that can help you in your business no matter where you’re at. Jen is one of those people up there who can help you, especially if you guys are struggling to try to figure out 2019 maybe wasn’t successful as you want to be. You find yourself banging your head against the wall on a variety of different issues, especially some of the things that Jen specializes in, not only on the mortgage side but on time blocking and the goldstone. If some of those investments that she talked about what they’re doing are a fancy, something you want to focus on or fancy doing a bit more of in the new decades. Text the word, STRATEGY, to 66866 and we’ll get in our pipeline and be able to spend some time with Jen and talk with her.

It’s 30 minutes or so. I don’t block it off. I’m a giver. I want you to get something out of a strategy session. If you decide you want to move forward with me, great. If not, my goal is that you walk away smiling and saying, “That’s exactly what I needed.”

Jen, you were exactly what we needed on this episode of the show. Thank you so much for giving and sharing. Once again, go out, check out, get a copy of her book, LAUNCH. It is well-worth it. It’s such great information and I’ve got some great stuff on here, 220 pages, it’s great. That’s what I’m saying to people, “I’m going to buy this and this.” I’m like, “This is all you need a lot of the time if you’re looking through this.” 

There’s not any chapter that’s more than 2.5 pages long. You can open it, read it and then there are actionable items and do it every day.

It’s bite-size nuggets, bite-size your way to success and launch. Thanks so much, Jen. Be safe now. 

Thank you.

That’s going to wrap it up for this episode of the show. Go out, take her up on that option to spend some time on the phone with her. Once again, text the word, STRATEGY, to 66866. I guarantee you, you will not be disappointed because she has a huge heart and she loves working with people. It comes across in everything she does. It’ll be a joy. Trust me. It will be a highlight of your day to spend some time with her on the phone to help you set your goals, set your direction and go out and take some action. By doing that, we’ll see at the top. Bye. 

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About Jen Du Plessis

NCS 534 | Launching Your BusinessJen is the Founder of Kinetic Spark Consulting, Black Fox Investments, and Valor Home Solutions.  She the author of “LAUNCH! How to Take your Business to New Heights.”

She is also the host of first mortgage specific and top-rated Podcast “Stop Talking, Take Action, Get Results!” She spent over 35 years in residential mortgage lending and was ranked in the top 1% of Loan Originators in the U.S. for many years; as well as being in the Top 200 for 4 years.


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