Shownotes
Terrie Schauer is a property manager, real estate investor and property-management coach with over twenty years of experience. She holds a Masters and PhD from Oxford and a PhD. She is the leading authority on applying mindfulness principles to real estate investing, and has written the #1 bestselling book on the topic, Mindful Landlord .
Today, Jonathan and Terrie discuss real estate investing, mindful wealth and the concept of getting to ‘enough.’ Terrie reflects on her own entrepreneurial journey, struggling with privilege and advice she has to offer on holistic wealth, financial freedom, and investing.
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Key Takeaways
01:06 – Jonathan introduces today’s guest, Terrie Schauer, who joins the show to share the lessons her father instilled in her about money and entrepreneurship
06:10 – Struggling with privilege and earning success
11:29 – How Terrie got involved in property management and real estate investing
18:18 – The Mindful Landlord
20:58 – The type of real estate Terrie invests in
23:03 – Recognizing and getting to ‘enough’
27:55 – Terrie provides the single most important piece of advice that led to her success
30:38 – One piece of real estate investment advice to avoid
34:54 – Terrie’s next project
36:16 – The last thing Terrie changed her mind about and one thing that she would like people to know about her
37:39 – Jonathan thanks Terrie for joining the show and let’s listeners know where to connect with her
Tweetable Quotes
“My dad used to say two things. The first sentence was, ‘In life you can be a hammer or an anvil. Be a hammer.’ And the other is, ‘If you want more money, make more.’” (04:43)
“As an investor, I’m also very transparent about the fact that I started investing with my parents’ money and then that turned into something else after a while. But, I went to see dad for the down payment, and it was dad who co-signed my first couple mortgages. So I had an easier road through that than a lot of people who don’t have that support.” (10:48)
“Coming from a combat sport/martial arts background, if you want to succeed in that environment, your mindset has to be so clean. And I really went through a ten year development period where I was building my martial arts career. But at the same time you have to build your mind into something very strong.” (19:42)
“Getting to enough has nothing to do with luck in the sense of being cognizant of it. I think that we live in a context that’s always trying to push us for ‘more, more, more.’ So, how did I know what was enough? Well, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of introspection and a lot of mindfulness.” (23:26)
“And so it’s not about the dollar figures. It’s about what network are you gonna build and are you gonna get the specific knowledge that you’re gonna be able to implement in your market. And then the best way of doing that is talking to previous grads of whatever program it is.” (32:40)
Guest Resources
The Real Estate Investing Club Podcast
Mindful Money Resources
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Transcripts
Jonathan DeYoe: Hello and welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money podcast, I’m chatting with Terrie Schauer Terrie is a property manager and a real estate investing and property management coach. She has a master’s from Oxford and a PhD. She’s a two time world champion. Anything is impressive. Jiu jitsu, whatever that. So her number one bestseller, the Mindful Landlord, has recently been redone with lots of additional updates that she put into it. And I wanted to chat with her about how she develops real estate investments and how she coaches and just talk to her about money and earning. On this episode of the Mindful Money podcast, a couple other things about Terrie She is the host of the real estate Investors club podcast, and she co hosts the Mindful wealth podcast with yours truly. Terrie welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.
Terrie Schauer: Thanks, Jonathan.
Jonathan DeYoe: I know that we get into this, like, the depth of stuff in the mindful wealth podcast, but I wanted to get some nitty gritty from you today. So I’m glad you’ve, uh, agreed to join me here to start. Most listeners to this podcast don’t know who you are. Where do you call home? Where are you connecting from? Tell us a little bit about you.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, so I’m in Montreal, Canada, and I’ve been doing real estate for over 20 years. Mostly the hat that I wear has been that of the property manager, and then that sort of turned into investing myself. And as my real estate career has gone on, I’ve discovered that the best place, or the most lucrative place to be is as the investor sitting behind. So I do have a property management firm, but that’s slowly taking less and less space, and the investment business is taking more and more space. And then I guess lately, in the last few years, I became interested in coaching and kind of helping other people get the same thing out of real estate that I got out of it. And you and I went on this kind of adventure together to start a podcast. And so that’s also become something that I’m interested in doing just because selfishly, I use it to educate myself and follow my own interests. But I think that those themes, or, like, specifically in real estate, that information is interesting to other people, and so I want other people to be able to share some of that discovery along with me.
Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it’s the beauty of podcasts. I mean, you can find all kinds of, you know, if I called up somebody randomly and said, hey, could I have a conversation? They’d be like, no, but if I say, hey, can I interview for the podcast? They’re like, sure. So it opens a lot of doors. Where’d you grow up? Was it Montreal?
Terrie Schauer: Montreal?
Jonathan DeYoe: You did? Okay, so when you were growing up, what did you learn about know? Did you learn anything about money? What’s the know as a kid in.
Terrie Schauer: Well, I mean, I think that’s like two questions, right? There’s what’s the story about money in Montreal? Which I think maybe if a lot of your listeners are in the US, no, it might not be the same story. Right. And I think that Canada is a different ecosystem, and I think it’s an ecosystem in which everything is a bit more compressed. So if you want to think of scandinavian countries, we’re not quite a scandinavian country, but we’re not super far from there either. Like, we have a lot of social network, we have a lot of things that sort of redistribute wealth. And so I think that some of the extremes are a bit smaller maybe, than in the. As far as my know, without to not hide know. I come from a pretty privileged background by Montreal standards. I went to private school, grew up in a good part of town, and then what got said about money in our like. So my dad’s an entrepreneur. He owns a manufacturing, and. But he comes from Austria. Uh, my grandparents were pretty poor. They were gardeners, factory workers, and my dad really had this kind of rags to riches. Pull yourself up by your bootstrap story. And that’s really, like, the foundation myth that my brother and I kind of grew up with when we were kids. And so my dad, two things. The first sentence was, in life, you can be a hammer or an anvil. Be a hammer. Intense. And, uh, the other one is, if you want more money, make more. Don’t save. Don’t worry about saving. Don’t worry about cutting costs, but make more money. And so that really, both my brother and I went on to become entrepreneurs, and we kind of applied that. And both of us, I think, were employees for about two or three years of our lives, and that was it.
Jonathan DeYoe: Couldn’t hack it as an employee.
Terrie Schauer: No.
Jonathan DeYoe: So what are the lessons about business ownership? Did he take you to the office, show you how things run? Or was it just, he goes the office, he comes home, and you kind of picked up entrepreneurship on your own?
Terrie Schauer: No. I mean, I actually worked for my dad for two years. I was an admin assistant in the office for one year, and actually, uh, did, like, a welding apprenticeship when I was 16. In the shop? Yeah.
Jonathan DeYoe: Brazilian jiu jitsu and welding. There we go.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah. Well, it’s actually more similar than you’d think. No. And we got taken to the office. The business also grew a lot when we were young, and so when he first started it, we were living in an apartment above the factory, basically. And so at that stage, when there wasn’t babysitting, we would end up in the office playing around while my dad was working. And then we bought a family home. And so the distance got a little bit wider, but it was the same thing. My mom worked also, and so when she went on business trips and the childcare wasn’t there, dad took us to the office, and we kind of, like, played in a corner with the paperclips.
Jonathan DeYoe: Super fun. Yeah, super fun. Do you have any experiences of that period of time that you can point to and say, hey, this helped me develop my philosophy around money or my current philosophy around running a business from that time.
Terrie Schauer: Look, I think it’s kind of funny, because in my childhood, it was more an issue for me to hide my background because, uh, again, I played ice hockey before I got into combat sports. But both combat sports and ice hockey are pretty, kind of popular. Yeah.
Jonathan DeYoe: Is ice hockey different than a combat sport?
Terrie Schauer: Well, women’s ice hockey. Yeah.
Jonathan DeYoe: Okay. Just to be clear.
ke, Terrie like Beverly Hills:Jonathan DeYoe: This sort of goes to the next conversation we’re going to have in a couple of weeks. But I find that fascinating. Just how that upbringing affects who we are and how you felt you had to hide the fact that you were privileged, specifically because of the activities you.
Terrie Schauer: Were pursuing, and to prove also to yourself that privilege if it does give you a head start. I didn’t want a head start. I didn’t ask for a head start. Obviously, it’s nice, but for me to really feel like I earned what I got, it had to be in something that was not financial because I felt like I was already starting with such a leg up on other people that winning in that field didn’t really feel like winning. M to me, it felt like everybody’s trying to hit a three pointer, and I hit a layup and want to call myself something amazing that didn’t sit right with me.
Jonathan DeYoe: So how old were you when you realized that you had this privileged background? I mean, then how long until that translated into what I got to kind of hide this?
Terrie Schauer: No. Super young. I started playing inner city ice hockey when I was 13, and back then they put girls on boys teams because there weren’t women’s teams. And it was like that. My mom dropped me off, like, almost to the first practice in a nice car, and everybody started making fun of me, and I was like, okay, no.
Jonathan DeYoe: So that hit right away. No learning required, right?
Terrie Schauer: Yeah.
Jonathan DeYoe: So it seems that’s very organic. It just comes right out of the experience as a know, being made fun of, et cetera. Were you ever okay with it? Did it translate into, yeah, I have some privilege, and yet I can produce in jujitsu or welding or whatever it is, and I’ve earned it? Now, when did that come?
Terrie Schauer: Like, jonathan, to be totally honest, I don’t think it ever became okay. And I think then, before going into business, I actually picked an academic career, and there was an aspect of that as well, which was I wanted to be a Prof. And kind of succeed in that environment. And again, that was something where really, it’s about your intellectual ability and not about your ability to make money, because again, I felt like I wanted to be in an environment where that leg up wasn’t there. And then after having done a phd and being a bit disappointed with, there’s some aspects of what academia has become in terms of a very narrow kind of perspective that I feel like you could take on the world, then, only then did I end up going into business. So it was like, really in my, like, no, okay, I’m going to just do what I should have done in the first place and go into business.
Jonathan DeYoe: Both through athletics and through academia. You chased down something where your privilege didn’t really help you, but probably helped you pay for the education to some extent. It probably helped you get a coach and the free time for Jiu jitsu, but you did have to put in extra work. So are, uh, you still kind of apologetic about the privilege you had to start out?
Terrie Schauer: I mean, I think not in sport and not in my intellectual pursuits, let’s say. But definitely, uh, to the degree that I’ve succeeded in, I always kind of, in my own mind, and when I have conversations with people, the asterisk does come out. I’m not hiding where I come from, and I do feel like it’s kind of. I don’t know, I feel like it’s worth mentioning because I think you don’t succeed from the same place. Right. Like, somebody who really came from nothing and ended up where I am in the business sphere had to work a lot harder than someone who. And as an investor, I’m also very transparent about the fact that I started investing with my parents money, and then that turned into something else after a while. But I went to see dad for the down payment, and it was dad who co signed my first couple of mortgages, and so I had kind of an easier road through that than a lot of people who don’t have that support have. And I think it’s worthwhile mentioning because at the risk of, like, once you succeed, people who try to make it look too easy, I don’t think that they’re doing other people a, ah, service because you really want to let people know, this is where I had challenges. This is where maybe I’m the person you listen to, but maybe on this subject, I’m not the person you listen to, because I didn’t face that particular kind of adversity on my journey.
Jonathan DeYoe: Let’s go back to that beginning, because it didn’t start with investing. It started with property management. So how did you get started in property management? I know a little bit of the story, but I want listeners know the story.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, no, it’s really funny. So I went to, uh, University of Toronto when I was 19. I moved out of my parents house to go away to college, and there was no space left in student residence, so I ended up living in this big victorian co op that was a complete disaster. Like, no one was taking out the garbage. It was a big mess. And so the next morning, they voted me house manager. And so then I ended up managing this with really no sticks and no carrots because I didn’t have the owners powers to force people to clean up or do whatever. So it was really a question of just leaning on people to do their chores and then organizing a system that would keep the house running properly. And so that was that.
Jonathan DeYoe: So one day in the next day, you were running this and trying to assign chores to fellow 19 year olds.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah.
Jonathan DeYoe: And I’m just curious, did they do the chores?
Terrie Schauer: Well, not at first, but then I developed a system. Right. Because then it’s like group accountability. Right. So then we have. I set up house meetings and then.
Jonathan DeYoe: Public shaming, and Bob didn’t take the garbage out. So Bob, you get. Right. Yeah, exactly.
Terrie Schauer: So eat all his.
Jonathan DeYoe: That. Were you paid for that or did you give any benefits for?
Terrie Schauer: Just didn’t. The house manager didn’t have chores. Their chores was to organize everybody. And it was also because this is where the property manager’s character. I like things to be clean and organized, and I couldn’t live in, uh, a squat. Right. And so then it becomes the fact that when it comes to the worst, I would be the one who would go behind and end up picking up after the people who I couldn’t coerce into doing it themselves.
Jonathan DeYoe: So you had to manage and clean up after people that would not participate.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah. Which is pretty much property management. It’s pretty much what property management is.
Jonathan DeYoe: How does that translate into. Yeah, let’s buy a building and manage it. Uh, you didn’t manage the building for yourself originally. You managed the building for somebody else.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah. So, well, then what happened is that I liked the living model so much, like this kind of, like, big student house, and I went on to do a phd. And so each time I moved cities, I then moved to Vancouver and was like, I can’t find a place like this to move into, so I’m going to create one. And then I asked dad to co sign a lease with me on a big house, and then I portioned out the rooms in the house. And at that point, it was like I was using that to basically live for free or for lower cost because I was renting the rooms to other students and we had this kind of community there. And then after I did that in Vancouver for two years, I moved back to Montreal and was like, dad, look, I did this by myself for two years in a rented house. Why don’t we buy a house and let me do it? And so then that turned into a down payment and a mortgage cosign, and then I just created the same model and then cookie cuttered that again and again till I was running, like a community with 50 rooms, of which I owned. I think it was like I owned, I don’t know, maybe nine of them in the end, but the rest was the business model worked so well that I was then able to package it and sell it to other landlords in a not great area as a way to have good tenants close management and to get some upside on the rent.
Jonathan DeYoe: So I’ve talked to many, and I know that you talk to more than I do, but many people in real estate, and there’s all kinds of different ways to get into real estate. Can you kind of just give us a broad picture? You wrote the book the mindful Landlord, so I’m guessing you have a pretty good understanding of the broad picture of real estate investing and real estate management. Can you lay that picture out also getting in?
Terrie Schauer: I mean, I think there are different places at which you can get in. Right? And so I think what’s interesting about my story as an example is that basically what I did is called house hacking. And this is what you can do when you’re a student, basically, and you don’t even have down payment money, right? Like the fact of renting a house or renting an apartment and selling out the rooms or doing Airbnb or something, you can actually bring your living costs down to zero and save money for that down payment eventually. So I think this is, like, maybe the lowest level at which you can get in which you don’t actually need to even own the place. Like, you can do it as a tenant or you can do it as a manager, where you skim some off the top, right? Because, let’s say, when I started, my clients wanted a particular base rent, and then the deal I had with them was that over that I got to keep the money, and I made sure that the property was well managed. Right? So that then becomes maybe, like, let’s say, the ground floor, like, the least capital and lending intensive way to get. So maybe, um, a model that’s a bit less used in Canada, but I think more popular in the states is the single family home investing. And so then people buy a home, renovate it, and then put some tenants. In Canada, we have lending laws that are really a bit of an obstacle to that business model just because, although that lending is really done on your personal income. And so the rule of thumb here is that after two or three, what’s called residential properties, everybody has to start getting into multifamily. And for us, the line is residential is considered a single family home all the way to a fiveplex. So in that zone, you’re always borrowing against your own income. And so, for me, this was a problem very early, because as an employee, I never really earned that much money. And so then very quickly, we have to get into the multifamily space, which is six doors and over. And then when you’re in that space, they finance basically the project, so they’ll finance the building, and it doesn’t go on your personal debt ratios. And I always like to say, they would lend my dog money if they had a good business plan and they had the down payment money to close on a particular thing.
Jonathan DeYoe: That’s good for your dog’s estate plan.
Terrie Schauer: Exactly.
Jonathan DeYoe: Something you said. You gave me a word. So I didn’t do the house thing, but I did car hacking to get to college. Basically, I purchased a car in the off season, then I sold it in the high season, and I would make $2,000 with every sale. And I think I went through 20 cars in college, so I never heard of that underscore hacking. That’s cool. I like that.
Terrie Schauer: And now with Turo, if you’re into a car hacking, like Turo, you know the app where you can rent your car? There’s a lot of people who do that. They’ll own, like, three, four cars and then turo them. So it’s like the equivalent to Airbnb.
Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, I have never heard of that as a business opportunity. But yeah, I guess people are doing that and not driving, just renting the cars.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, what’s a car go for? Totally offhand, do you have any idea?
Terrie Schauer: Look, I don’t know because my husband’s a mechanic, so he has friends who does this and he tunes up the Turo fleets. But there’s actually been like with COVID a real problem with rental cars because a lot of the companies with lack of tourism sold off their fleets. And so basically, at least in Canada, the price of rental cars. And that’s when the turos really took off because you could just undercut the exorbitant rate of the rental car companies and be rented all the time.
Jonathan DeYoe: So tell us about your book because people ask me all the time, how does mindfulness and money go together? How does mindful landlord go together? And what’s the development? What made you think, yeah, I can write a book on this, I’m so good at this I can write a book?
ot to belittle people who own:Jonathan DeYoe: Tell me about the kind of real estate you invest in, because I think that there’s a lot of people that invest in whatever high end real estate, and I know that that’s not where you play. And I’m just curious about if mindfulness falls into that at all.
Terrie Schauer: Well, so I work mostly in the affordable housing, low income space. And it’s not like that was some big grandmaster plan. It’s mostly because when I started investing, I knew an up and coming area of town, and I had to pitch my dad on a project that was going to make money. And so I was like, okay, I know this particular part of town. I would dare to go there. Nobody else dares to go there. Let’s do this. And then I saw that it was working, and my portfolio grew in this not super part of town. And so then I kind of became at ease with it and became familiar with what kind of problems. You can see how you can deal with those problems. And then after 20 years later, and having observed what happened during COVID I guess I got a bit more compassion and a bit more understanding for the position that my tenants find themselves in. And by watching also what I call the squeeze, which is that when I got into investing, buildings were sold at much lower times, multiples. And so you could buy a building and let it run because it was cash flowing and there was not this hyper competitive thing. Whereas now, when we buy buildings, the valuations are much higher. And so in order to make that building profitable, you have to squeeze the tenants to raise the. And like, certainly in Montreal, which is kind of like New York, like, we’re a highly rent controlled environment. It turns into this kind of icky practice where people have to do renovations and they have to really squeeze all the juice. And then you’re watching these people who are barely hanging on lose their last grips because now the rent is eating 60% of their monthly income. And then try and understand what’s happening to be sensitive to the fact that I don’t want to necessarily destroy this affordable housing segment, but at the same time, is rent control really the best solution? I’m not sure.
Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I think we’ll talk a lot more about that, uh, on the Mindful wealth podcast. Those folks that are interested in that, you’ll hear us talk about that quite a bit. Hey, one of the things we try to do on this podcast is we try to bring money back into the context of life. And you said a word a little while ago, enough. And I’m just curious, how do you even recognize enough? And then let’s say you recognize it and you’re lucky enough to recognize it. What do you do once you recognize it?
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, well, so, Jonathan, you and I have, uh, a back and forth about luck, but I think enough, like, getting to enough has nothing to do with luck in the sense of being cognizant of. Right. Like, I think that we live in a context that’s always trying to push us for more, more and more. And how did I know what was enough? Well, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work, and it was a lot of introspection and a lot of mindfulness that allowed me to be like, no, actually, I don’t need more dollars to be happy. And the things that are going to move my happiness needle are not financial.
Jonathan DeYoe: So you said it was a lot of work. It’s not that it was a lot of work to get to enough. It was a lot of work to see what enough was.
Terrie Schauer: Exactly. This was not a bank amount. It’s really a state of mind. And for me, it was that at one point, I tell the story of when my son was one, and, uh, I had worked harder in the first year of his life than ever before, doubled my business figure. And at the end of the year, I was like, man, I’m not happy. And I don’t feel like he got what he should have had out of this year. And, no, I’m done. I’m done running after metrics that ultimately are not the right metrics, right so.
Jonathan DeYoe: Part of it is put your ladder on the right wall, know what metrics you want to go after. And the three ds may not be the right.
Terrie Schauer: Exactly.
Jonathan DeYoe: May not be the right metrics for everybody. I could see somebody wants to build something, but you got to recognize that some part of this has to be happiness, some part of it has to be my family life, some part of it has to be uh. Success has to be derived from something other than finance, right?
Terrie Schauer: Uh, yeah, no. And it has to be located within a life that makes sense. Right? And God knows in competitive sports, you have to mortgage a lot of things in your life to that particular goal, but you can still do it in a way that’s healthy. And I think in business it’s the same thing. People end up mortgaging a lot of stuff to get to whatever goal they want to get to. But you can do that in a way that’s healthy for your community, healthy for your family, healthy for you, and supportive of well being, and not just a metric to the exclusion of all else.
Jonathan DeYoe: So at the same know, I think that we both have a position where we’re pretty privileged to have enough or to be in that position of having enough and recognizing that we have seem. And this may be more true in the US than in Canada, but there seems to be a lot of folks who believe that they don’t have enough. Whether it’s true or not, that doesn’t matter. They believe they don’t have enough. They believe they need more. And I think it’s probably true in many cases. So how can you counsel somebody, whether it’s through real estate investing or just getting their spending right? Hey, this is a good path to enough, because I do think there’s people that are behind and want to catch up, but may not know what’s the best way to do that.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, I mean, it’s a tough question because I feel like, uh, a lot of the people that I work with very clearly don’t have enough in their lives. Like a lot of my tenants are scraping by. Right. But I don’t feel like that question is really on their radar. And after that it’s a question of like, why is that? Is it because they’re so tied up in the day to day and they don’t have their head out of water where they can ask those macro questions? Is it because somehow their context didn’t give them the horizon that it’s possible to change your surroundings, or didn’t enable them, or they digested some kind of negative self concept and they’re suffering from that. I don’t know. I’m not a social worker. Uh, for me, what I do feel like I know something about is that when someone knocks on my door and says, Terrie show me the way to enough through real estate, like, I feel like then I can sort of frame a way forward. And it ends up being some mixture of overcoming whatever personal obstacles are in your mind and doing the right thing on the ground. And with, uh, the mindfulness approach and having gone through this optimization process myself, I can usually kind of point to, this is where you’re stuck. This is where you’re stuck. Go address this mental issue, come back, talk to me. Let’s put an offer on a building, right? But if the person doesn’t come to my office and knock on my door, I don’t really know what can encourage them to make that move, because I feel like that’s really where people get hung.
Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, I think the reality is you have to ask the question first. And if you never ask the question, you never find the answer. And I think I struggle with that same concern. Like, how do we stimulate the question?
Terrie Schauer: Exactly. I don’t know, Jonathan.
Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I don’t know either. So one of the things we want to do here is we want to simplify, simplify, simplify. There’s a ton of financial noise out there in real estate investing, stock markets, economy fed interest rates. There’s just so much crap out there. Bitcoin, ETF, there’s so much stuff. So what has been for you, the single most important lesson you’ve learned? That somebody that is shareable in a sound bite and people can walk away from today and say, you know what? I’m going to implement this thing, and this thing is going to actually make a difference. Like the single biggest mover that enables your success.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, I mean, I’m going to give you a general answer and then I’ll explain to you how that applies. Right. I don’t know where I got where I heard this, but it comes from someone else. But it’s just do the next right thing. And I think that very often, when we’re trying to attain a goal, and the goal can be a financial goal, the goal can be a health goal, a personal goal, whatever it is. There’s so many things on the horizon, so many levers you can pull on, so many ways you can complexify things for yourself. But if you just ask yourself, like, what is the next very next myopic step I can take to get one bit closer to my goal, chances are you can answer that question. And if it’s in the direction of real estate, be it networking, be it talking to someone, be it getting some kind of education, if you’re really at the beginning, or else if you’re a little bit further along, just like, make some offers, make some crazy offers and see what answers you get. And don’t be afraid to make a mistake. But it’s really that business of just get moving and do the next right thing.
Jonathan DeYoe: So does that still work? The next right thing works, absolutely. I understand that. But make, uh, the crazy offer. I mean, I read, my dad gave me 40 real estate books when I was in high school. Here, read these. This is the path to wealth for you, and just do these things. And at that time, they were saying, yeah, make some crazy offers. Like, if someone’s asking a million bucks for something, offer them $250,000. And does that actually work anymore? Or is that the illusion?
Terrie Schauer: Well, I mean, it works in the sense that often people are afraid to make offers because they’re afraid someone’s going to say yes. And so what I tell my clients when they have that kind of barrier of getting started is go make some crazy offers and have someone say no. Because it’s as if making the first offer is the really stressful part, because that’s when they’re getting in their own way with the anxiety. But once you’ve done three stupid offers and people have said no to all of them, the fourth one, you’re going to be like, no, okay, I’m comfortable with this process. Let’s actually make an offer that might get accepted. But so it’s part of that. Do the next right thing. Because if you don’t get moving, you’re always going to get in your own way. The stupid offers are not to get accepted. The stupid offers are to get over the fear of making offers.
Jonathan DeYoe: It’s practice. It’s just practice. I love it. I’ve never heard that before. That’s great. Do, uh, the next right thing is the thing to do, but in the context of there’s so much noise, there’s so much crap that people are telling you, you should do this. And I’ve listened to 40, 50 different real estate podcasts with different ways and different methods and different importance and different metrics. Right. So what are some of the metrics that people are talking about that you should just ignore? That don’t matter, that you should just set this to the side, worry about this in ten years. Don’t think about this right now.
Terrie Schauer: Well, I mean, it really depends where people are starting from. I think people, when they want to get into real estate investing, it’s very difficult because it’s a huge spectrum, right? Like, you can go from the student who is a house hacker, and I do have 20 year olds who come and talk to me and are like, Terrie I have no down payment money. My parents can’t help me right now. What can I do? And then the advice is house hacking advice. Or I have people who come to me and they’re like, I, uh, just sold my business. I have a crazy amount of money. Like, should I start a ReIT or should I buy my own portfolio or do whatever? And it’s a different set of answers depending on where people are and what their experience level is. So I don’t know. That’s why I do come back to the next right thing, because wherever you are, that’s always going to work. Right. And it corrects for the fact that people are just on a very different spectrum depending on where they’re starting from.
Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m going to ask you, it’s the same question for a little different angle because I was expecting something a little different, but I’m going to try to get to it here.
Terrie Schauer: Sure.
Jonathan DeYoe: There’s a lot of shysters out there.
Terrie Schauer: Yes.
Jonathan DeYoe: There’s a lot of people saying, hey, just do it my way. And by the way, pay me a couple of coaching and do it my way, and you’re going to be rich. How do I tell, when I’m listening to a shyster or somebody that’s just telling me a good story, how do I tell if it’s for real? And how do I say, you know what, this is not for real.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah. Okay. So number one, don’t throw away your down payment money on coaching, because often it’s people being lazy because the information you want is there for $20 in a few real estate books, and it’s there for free on podcasts. So you don’t need to pay 15,000, $20,000 to a shyster who’s going to take your money and give you knowledge that’s there for very low cost or for free. So that’s, number one, just do the work and you can educate yourself for very little money, and then if you do feel like you want to take the next step. And, um, I work in partnership with a real estate organization that does education in Montreal, and it’s the cheapest one, and I do feel like it gives the best coaching, and so it’s not about the dollar figures, it’s about what network are you going to build and are you going to get the specific knowledge that you’re going to be able to implement in your market. And then the best way of doing that is talk to previous grads of whatever program it is. And for sure, don’t pick the most expensive one. And if you do get coaching, be very scrupulous and very do your due diligence about what organization you’re going to work with. And don’t think that the dollar figure behind it has anything to do with the quality.
Jonathan DeYoe: Right. A $20,000 course will not teach you more than a $20 book.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, exactly. But I mean, after that, you have to have the discipline to do it. And the one problem with books and podcasts is that real estate really is a people business and you cannot succeed without building a network. And one of doing especially like local education in the location that you want to invest, I watch people come through the coaching program that I teach for and the network that they build within. It’s like a ten week program where they have whatever, ten Fridays where they come for a full day to a location. And the network that they build and the connections they build through, that is really what then enables those who succeed to succeed. So it is kind of nice to be in a kind of a community, even if you do end up paying a bit for it, but don’t pay 15, $20,000 for it.
Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So it sounds like we’ve added a number two to the number one thing that we should do. Do the next right thing and then have a network. Build a network. Build a network. Know people.
Terrie Schauer: Get to know people and tell everybody. Don’t be a closet real estate investor. Right. Tell everybody what you’re doing. I know I’m the first one who suffered from impostor syndrome for years, and people knew me at the gym. Nobody had any idea what my day job was because I was just ashamed and I only had nine doors and it wasn’t big enough. But then once you kind of open up and really tell people what you do, what you’re looking for, things kind of fall into place because people, you’re top of mind when people are thinking of that particular thing.
Jonathan DeYoe: I had more than nine doors. When I started winding it down. Uh, I sort of hated it and I decided not to go that way. But I’m shocked to hear that you had this feeling of being. Having enough with nine doors. But, uh, that’s fantastic. That’s knowing both sides of the ledger. Hey, what are you working on right now? I know that, uh, you redid the book. So what’s new in your world?
Terrie Schauer: Yeah, well, it’s actually very exciting. I’m working on, uh, my next book project, which is going to be called squeezed. And so it’s kind of what I alluded to a little bit earlier on, which is this crunch that the real estate industry affordable housing space is feeling, where on the one hand, us as investors, we are forced to act in a different way, which changes the investing environment and then the tenants on the other, who are feeling the tightening of that. And basically this optimization, financial metrics, noose is kind of squeezing everybody. And so basically the book is looking at housing policy, looking at economic trends, and then undercutting, interspersing that with chapters from my life as a property manager. So some experiences with tenants, some tenant stories, some stories for managers, and just to really see what does the reality of that look like and that it’s not what people think it is. If you think the evil landlord, this. If you could see what our day to day was like, I invite anyone who thinks landlords are evil to come and do my job for a week because it’s really not that simple.
Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, well, narratives often hide a lot of true story. So just really quick, I want to ask a couple more personal things before we wrap. So just a couple of quick things first. What was the last thing you changed your mind about?
Terrie Schauer: Wow, that’s a really good question. Yeah, no, like personal, um, guilt, actually, in personal relationships. Yeah. So I’m going through this funny thing now where I’m like, I’m reading books about feeling guilty and how you need to separate kind of feeling negative feelings from feeling guilt and how that then feeds into your personal relationship so that you don’t end up doing things you don’t want to be doing out of feeling bad. So I don’t know if that’s a.
Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s not one I have heard before. That’s beautiful. And then the last thing before we do wrap is just, I want to know if there’s something about you that you want people to know that you’re afraid to say or that you’ve told people and they forget, but just something that’s really important to you that you want people to know about you.
Terrie Schauer: Wow, Jonathan, that’s really out of nowhere. It’s tough. Something that I want people to know about. You. Uh, know, for a long time I was like a closet introvert. And I feel like I’ve done my best to get know the shyness and that. But the little shy kid is still alive and well inside me. And so if you do see me at an event or something, come and say hello, because the introvert is actually hiding.
Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, there’s a common name. Many people say that I’m actually way more sensitive than appear, like I’m way more cautious than I appear because we all wear a mask and we go out into the world and we pretend. But yeah, totally, I get that. How do people connect with you? I want them to make sure that they can find you for coaching or just for whatever.
Terrie Schauer: Yeah. So the best thing is on social media. If you reach out to me on LinkedIn. Terrie shower on LinkedIn. And if you want to check out the book, I have a website for it that is mindfullandlord.com. So you can check out either of those things.
Jonathan DeYoe: We’ll make sure it’s all in the show notes. Thank you, Terrie I appreciate the conversation. Go get your son.
Terrie Schauer: Thanks, Jonathan. Namaste.
