Welcome back to another episode of the IRA Cafe podcast! In today’s installment, the Cafe welcomes back Haley Gant of Elite Mountain Mortgage, powered by NEXA Lending. Haley Gant shares insightful updates since her last visit, chronicling her transition from the self-directed IRA world to launching her own mortgage brokerage in Asheville, NC. With a background deeply rooted in real estate investing and having recently completed her first year as a mortgage broker, Haley Gant gives listeners a behind-the-scenes look at the realities of entrepreneurship, relationship building with realtors, the value of social media in business, and the balance required to educate and support first-time home buyers as well as seasoned investors.

The conversation covers her hands-on approach to loan origination, her commitment to client education, and her excitement about launching a new real estate investor meetup in Western North Carolina. Haley also pulls from her extensive experience in self-directed IRAs, offering candid perspective on investment strategy in uncertain financial times and the importance of community and due diligence. Whether you’re interested in mortgages, real estate investing, or alternative retirement accounts, you’ll find practical wisdom and renewed motivation in this episode.

Key takeaways:

1. Entrepreneurship and Growth: Haley Gant details the challenges and rewards of starting her own mortgage business, highlighting the importance of patience, adaptability, and taking strategic steps to build credibility in a new community.
2. Relationship Building and Social Media: Establishing genuine, face-to-face relationships with realtors and leveraging Instagram has been foundational to Haley Gant's networking and referral strategy, creating new business opportunities even as a relative newcomer to Asheville.
3. Serving Diverse Borrowers: Haley has found success working with both first-time home buyers emphasizing client education and guidance and real estate investors, with a particular affinity for creative financing solutions and DSCR loans.
4. Navigating Market Uncertainty: Rather than letting headlines and economic volatility drive decisions, Haley encourages clients to focus on their personal readiness and employ financial discipline, advising that “the right time to buy is when it’s right for you,” and providing tailored guidance through changing rates and market conditions.
5. Self-Directed IRA Advocacy: Drawing from years of experience, Haley underscores the unique power of self-directed IRAs for private lending and real estate, urging listeners to engage with knowledgeable communities, do their homework, and take a proactive approach to building retirement wealth outside of the traditional stock market.

Tune in for candid stories, actionable insights, and a glimpse into how passion, persistence, and networking can carve a path to success in both real estate and retirement planning!

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Mortgages and self directed IRAs. People always want to know when's the right time to get into either one of them. Should I be buying my house right now? Is right now the right time? Even in this stock market? Should I really be diversifying my portfolio? Join us on the next episode when we sit down with Haley Gantt, an old friend of the IRA Cafe who's going to talk to us about her time in the mortgage world and her old time in the self directed world and how all of our experience can help you get ready for for a new mortgage and a new self directed retirement account. We'll see you there. Welcome once again everyone to another installment of IRA Cafe, powered by American ira. So wherever and whenever you are getting all of your self directed information from American ira, the west coast, the east coast and everywhere in between, we welcome you all again to another podcast that we have here for you. And never a dull moment in the cafe. Always bringing great information and it's so great that sometimes our folks even want to come back on and let us know updates about what they've got going on in life, in work.

And we are so privileged to have one of our previous guests come back with us today. So this is part two of bringing back in Haley Gantt of Elite Mountain Mortgage, which is powered by NEXA Lending. And so Haley, welcome back to the Cafe. We're so glad to see you again. I know that you've had a lot of stuff going on. It's hard to believe that when we were first together it was August of 2025 and here we are going into April. We are just on the heels of Easter. And so, gosh, if my math is correct, that's about eight or nine months, eight and a half months gone by.

A lot can happen in a week in our lines of work. So I'm eager to hear what all has been going on with you. For any of those of you that were around in August or heard her podcast when it came out. When we met up with Haley, she had just told us that she she was not new to the real estate world, but she was newer to the Asheville area where she still currently resides. She was getting situated in a new role. The hurricane had happened about 10 months prior to that and so it was a great time for her to be launching some information, some business and telling us all about it. So yeah, you got some updates. What's been going on?

I do. Well, thank you for having me back today. It's exciting to come back and kind of do a part 2 and update you guys on what's been going on. So yeah, we are almost in April. I have officially been a mortgage broker for about a year now and it's been a crazy year. Looking back, you know, I've closed a few loans now, hoping to close another one hopefully this week. We're waiting on clear to close as we speak. This whole last year has just been about establishing myself as a mortgage lender here in the Asheville area, building connections, meeting real estate agents and really, really just learning the business in and out.

It's been a fun year and moving into the new year and kind of looking at my goals for this year. Really leaning into helping first time home buyers working on investment loans like DSCR loans and diving back more into the real estate investing side of things. So I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit. But you know, I have exciting things coming up this year. Really leaning into hosting good, fun, exciting events for people because that's the side of the business that I really enjoy. But man, it's been a journey. It's been a year of learning and I can still feel in my heart that it's only the beginning of this new journey. So it's exciting to come back today and kind of update you guys with what I've had going on.

No, great, thanks for that. And we're all excited to hear that. You know, before I've, we had talked before the show about some questions that we were going to have with you here, but something that you just mentioned, really, I think that it'd be really good for anyone to hear this. Anyone who is entrepreneurial in spirit, who's looking to do something new, who's had that fear and maybe, you know, they've, they've, they've jumped off the diving board and they're looking down and, and the pool is still getting filled. So they're wondering what that landing is going to be like. Tell us a little bit about maybe what your expectations were when you knew that this was what you were going to do going on and starting up your new mortgage role. Tell us maybe what some of the pitfalls were that you didn't know about. Tell us about some of the challenges that you knew that you would face and really if anything, you know, aligned up, if you were ready for everything or you know, how you overcame some things.

I, I'd be interested to hear that.

Yeah. Gosh, that's a great question with multiple parts. So hopefully I hit all of it. So, you know, some things within my first year that I have learned. So the route that I chose when I got my mortgage license, you know, I started my own business. I have been in sales and marketing my entire life and I've always been a champion for other people's companies. So when I got my mortgage license and I was brand new to this, and to be honest, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just knew I'm going to be a lender.

Now I want to start my own brand, which I chose Elite Mountain Mortgage. My ultimate like 5 or 10 year goal would be to have a team, have my own office, have my own classroom where I can host events. But going the route of starting your own business from scratch on your own is definitely slower. Starting out on the front end. But you know, one thing that's really important to me is I enjoy the freedom of controlling my own time every single day of the week. So when I got my mortgage license, the one thing that I knew I absolutely did not want to do is I didn't want to go work in a cubicle at a bank 8 to 5, Monday through Friday. So I chose to go out on my own. And you know, I've, I've closed a few loans, I haven't closed a ton, I would say, but it's all in the process of getting started and making the decision to run your own business for yourself.

So a big learning curve that I had in the beginning was the business does not just come, it does not just happen just because you create your own business, you create a website and you're like, hey world, I'm a mortgage lender now. And then you get crickets and then you're establishing your day to day routine for yourself. It really took a couple of months to figure out what worked for me, what was my good morning routine, my day to day routine of just working my calendar throughout the week. So one thing I learned early on was I needed to get out there, join networking groups, meet realtors face to face. Because realtors are one of my biggest referral partners and I'm such a face to face relationship person. I have made it a goal to do two to three coffee meetings each work or each week face to face with real estate agents. But it's not just about the face to face, it's about the follow up and staying in front of them as well. So actually in the beginning of the year, I made it a goal and commitment to myself to post two reels on Instagram every single week because I was afraid to post on Instagram you know, when you're new in a business, especially coming from my past career, I was such an expert with what I did for over five and a half years in the self directed IRA industry.

And then I kind of got away from it for a few years and then Helene happened and then I got my mortgage license. It is so hard at first to put yourself out there when in your heart you feel like, I am not an expert in this yet. And sometimes that just takes the time to learn the business and, and overcome that fear. But one fantastic piece of advice that I heard at a mortgage conference last year was other people's opinions of you don't pay your bills. And that one quote literally was all I needed to be like, you know what? Screw it. We're starting an Instagram account. We're going to start posting consistently on it. And no joke, once I started posting on Instagram on my lending page, I realized so many real estate agents are on Instagram.

So I am now using Instagram as, you know, I'm on Facebook, but Instagram is really what I'm really trying to lean into this year. I love using Instagram to just follow other agents, posting a couple of reels a week and using that as a warm introduction to figure out who else is posting, who else is active here, who can I jive with, and, and then I'm using those Instagram connections kind of as a warm introduction. So not many of us out there like cold calling people. I personally hate cold calling, but it's kind of a necessary evil of our business sometimes. So what I do is when I scroll through Instagram and I'm like, ooh, this agent is posting a lot. I really like what they're doing. I'll shoot them a dm, I'll start interacting with their posts. And then if I'm feeling extra fun one day, I straight up cold call real estate agents.

I'm like, hey, we follow each other on Instagram and I've gotten a few coffee meetings out of it. And it's all just about building the foundation, building the groundwork. You know, I literally don't care if people watch my videos on Instagram. What I care about is that I'm posting them. Some people are seeing them because you have to start somewhere. And in order to really fine tune the skills of what I should be talking about, the video editing, look at those magical video edits in there. It takes time to build it and you only do it by the experience. So that's been a huge change leading into the beginning of the year is really leaning into that social media part of the business.

I don't know if that fully answered the question, but feel free to add on to that if I missed anything.

No, it did. We'll actually dive in here just a little bit. So, you know, a lot of, a lot of real estate brokers, they get very territorial, right? So they want to, you know, they, they've got their, their close knit group, they've got folks that they refer out. What has it been like, the reception that, you know, have you found realtors that have been in the business and lived in Asheville forever and you're coming from, if memory serves me correctly, you had moved out from Texas when you moved into the Asheville area. What has it been like getting to know a lot of the realtors out there? What sets Haley and her business apart from maybe what all these folks have heard in the past? Lots of people know bought them coffee in the past, but why are they now going to use Haley?

That's a great question. You know, when you're going out and you're building relationships, whether you're a lender, building relationships with real estate agents, or no matter what industry you're in, building relationships with your referral partners, there are a wide, wide range of real estate agents that I could go after. Whether it's like, hey, let's do business together, let's start to build the relationship. You know, there are a lot of very experienced real estate agents out there that have been in the business for 15, 20 years. They have their lender that they send their 30 deals a year to. You know, those might not be my target of the ones that are number one on my list to go after because they already have very established relations. And I'm also very realistic. You know, I, I've closed some loans now, but when I was brand new and I hadn't closed a loan yet, you know, I'm probably not going to expect a real estate agent who has their lender that can really get that deal to the closing table on time.

Because at the end of the day, that is the most important thing. You know, I really like to go out there and build relationships with real estate agents who maybe haven't been in the business that long. Maybe we're both growing our businesses and we're in the same kind of phases at the same time. I've met so many agents that have been in the business for three to five years. And now with being in early 2026, when you meet an agent that's been in the business for five years. That might sound like a long time, but if you think back, five years was the beginning of COVID and that whole roller coaster that we went through in Covid, where, you know, the housing market went crazy, you don't really have to work that hard to close that many deals because houses were just flying off the market week in and week out. And then things kind of slowed down a little bit, and a lot of people in our industry realized, oh, I actually might need to work a little bit harder to do the same amount of volume I did a few years ago. So even when I'm chatting with people that have been in the business for several years, it has been such a crazy few years in real estate.

There's still a huge opportunity there for me to come in and build a relationship with them and find value. I truly believe that people want to work with people that they enjoy being around. And that's kind of the first step to get your foot in the door is to find people that your personalities mesh well together and then show them, hey, I've been around real estate my entire life. I might be new to the mortgage industry, but here are all of the skills and experience I have that back up what I'm coming to the table with and build the relationship first as a friendship, and then lean in a little bit harder to do business together. And I think that also begins to snowball as you've been in the business longer. It's a lot easy for a real estate agent to come into my a conversation with me and be like, oh, wow, she's closed so many loans. She's been in the business for four or five years. I am still working on getting to that point, and I'm okay with that.

My advice for anyone starting a new business is you have to be okay with the fact that your first couple of years, you are in the trenches. Every closing is a learning experience. And your first couple of years, there might be hiccups. Some closings might go smooth, some might not. But you're learning. And the only way you get to the point in your business that you are an expert is to go through these first few years of learning. So what I come to the table with, I've been around real estate my entire life. Even if I don't always have the answer for you immediately, I know it's important in these transactions.

And at the end of the day, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get us all to the closing table on time. And if anyone listening to this is a lender or a real estate agent. You know that in these transactions it can be so crazy sometimes on the back end, underwriters are requesting new information. The insurance either isn't responding or isn't giving us the proper documentation that we need in order to close this loan. For me, on the back end, even if things are stressful and there's 20 moving parts, anytime I come into the conversation with my borrower or the home buyer, I come in with calm but assertive energy that shows them, hey, we're going to get this done. They will never feel the stress that I feel on the back end because that's what I'm here for. I'm here to make the process as smooth as I can on that home buyer. Because buying a home is stressful even when it goes smoothly.

And you know, retail home buyers, owner occupied, they might only buy a home once every five or 10 years. They're not in this business every day like we are. So I am always going to come into that side of the conversation with, with calm energy, showing that I'm a good resource, I'm in their corner and to not stress as much as they can because I'm going to do whatever it takes on the back end to make sure that we make it to closing on time.

No. Fantastic. You know, and, and really what it is, you know, people can say that talk is cheap, but I am in an industry now where Haley came from and I, even though I'm not in the Asheville area anymore, I, I know a lot of the people still in the mortgage and real estate industry and you know, what she said is exactly right. I think one of the things that folks can really go on, even though I hate the phrase at the end of the day because it gets so overused, but really at the end of the day, what you were left with after you shut off your lights, after you close your laptop, after you finally, well, after the nine to five working hours that a lot of people have, when you finally take some downtime for yourself, you've got your character and your integrity and those are the things that I think really carry folks into the next day. And I think that those are the things that as we continue going on in the craziness of seasons, is that who is still around. But really who did I enjoy working with? Who did they have that I enjoyed working with? People want to work with those folks that they like and folks like that have other folks in their arsenal that are like minded like them and it becomes a great teamwork. Because really it's not just Haley, it's, it's, it's Team Haley. Right.

Because there's so many people out there associated with one residential cell and all of those people and all the logistics that it takes to get everyone moving in the same direction to help the one person or the one family that's buying that house is, it is an immense undertaking that if you've never been in the profession before, that if you really just slowed down and thought if you, when you bought your house, all the different things that you had to sign or do or pay for, well, there are people and a team of people associated with every single one of those and somebody had to help spearhead all of that. So truer words have never been spoken. Haley, who are you seeing right now that are really your, your key borrower? Is it somebody that's a, a seasoned buyer, as you know, second and third home? Is it, you know, first time home buyers? I know you, you want to try to assist first timers. Has that been the, the majority of what you've been working with the past year? Do you, do you work with investors at all?

Yeah, so my clients kind of fall into two different buckets. I love working with first time home buyers or home buyers looking to relocate. You know, I relocated to western North Carolina myself just a few years ago, so I really love working with people that are also relocating here to buy a home for them to live in, you know, their personal homestead. But I also love working with real estate investors because I come from the investment space, I grew up in it. You know, my parents have been investing in real estate since I was in kindergarten. And to be honest, both types of home buyers have their pros and cons. Let's be real. I love working with owner occupied buyers because I feel like there is a big education gap from someone going online every single month, clicking one button to pay their rent, going from that to buying a home to live in.

And now they're a homeowner, now they have a mortgage, now they pay their own taxes and insurance. How much of a down payment do they put down is their mortgage insurance? So many different factors that ultimately determine what their monthly payment comes out to. But also the reality is, is buying a home, even if it's just like your one personal home that you're living in, is such a great way to build wealth for yourself and not just pay two or three thousand dollars a month to a landlord and you never see that rent back in your equity that you're building versus if You're a home. So I love educating future home buyers about what it actually takes to purchase a home, how the math plays out, what you know, if their goal is to have their monthly payment be around $2,000 a month, how does the math work out to how much home they can actually afford and then you know, based on how much they're looking to put down. Ultimately there's so many nuances and so many factors that come into play and if someone's a first time home buyer, they're almost don't know anything about this. So I love, you know, I always tell home buyers you need to start chatting with a lender 6 to 12 months before you actually plan to start shopping for homes. Because factors like how much do you want to put down? How much savings do you need left over after you purchase your home? Where does your credit score need to be? The more that we can educate and help home buyers plan and prepare on the front end six to 12 months before they plan to shop, the better we can do to help set them up for success as they take the journey towards homeownership. That is one bucket that I'm very passionate about.

The other side of my business is loans for real estate investors. So I love doing DSCR loans. You know, my dad's a hard money lender so I've helped a couple of people actually refinance their investment property out of a hard money loan into a 30 year DSCR loan. And, and I love those loans because real estate investors are probably doing a couple of deals a year and if the experience goes well with me, hopefully they'll come back when they have another investment property. I actually met with a girl last week and she was like, hey, I'm buying properties in West Virginia, are you licensed out there? And I said no, but I can be very easily. So it's just small conversations like that will lead to more closings, more transactions and my ultimate long term goal, to be completely honest, is to close loans as a mortgage lender, build a living for myself, use that money to invest into real estate, have my money make money on itself. That is my long term vision because I want to build something that, you know, my money is generating money on itself. I, you know, I've grown up around real estate my entire life.

I'm really ready to finally start build, I mean I invest but I'm ready to start building a little bit more over the next year or two. So I love both of those types of buyers. But another reason why I went with Nexa, because You know, my company is Elite Mountain Mortgage, powered by Nexa Lending. So while I have my own company, I'm backed by a national brokerage and that gives me a lot of flexibility in the loan types that I'm able to offer. So like self employed homebuyers that might make a lot of money every month, but they write off a lot on their taxes. They might not qualify for a traditional mortgage through a retail bank, but I have a lot of great loan products like bank statement loans, P and L loans. There's a lot of lenders that will make loans to self employed borrowers even if they don't report a lot on their tax return. Which in the more traditional like mortgage lenders with retail banking, a lot of those home buyers wouldn't qualify in a normal sense.

But I have a lot of creative loan products available for that. So I, I like all loans at this point in time and you know, even maybe like diving a little bit further into private lending and hard money lending as my business progresses over the next few years is definitely something I'm open to as well.

Fantastic. Let me ask you this. So you know, there's a lot of, there's always a lot of exterior stuff out there that no matter how much you try to control what you do and put into your profession and your day to day in your profession right now, there's a lot of things that affect what your clients and customers are dealing with. Fed rates, the inflation word out there, there's just a bunch of noise, right, that people might need to pay a little mind to it. But at the same time doing what we do, they can't get paralyzed to it. Right? None of us can. So how do you see a lot of the, say, financial parameters of things right now affecting real estate and mortgage in your world? I mean, obviously people, I would guess, see it more as, as, as a bad thing, but you have such an intrinsic knowledge that you can go in and really turn it and say, all right, look, that's always going to be there, right? Whether it's, you know, whether it's this, whether it's that, you know, these are all things we're all going to have to deal with. But you know, you're still gonna have to buy milk, you're still gonna have to, you know, put gas in your car to get somewhere.

You just have to figure out how to make it work. So how are you reassuring borrowers these days?

Yeah, and I love that you brought that up because there are always crazy things going on in the world sometimes it's more prevalent than others. You know, right now there's a war. Gas prices, it, I mean, grocery prices have already been through the roof for the last couple of years. You know, while there's always a lot of craziness in the world going on, I do think it's important that at the end of the day, you need to also focus on yourself and your world and what's immediately around you. Because you can get bogged down very easily by watching the news. And, you know, your brain will feed itself the energy that you feed it. So if you feed your brain and your mentality, positive things that are happening around you in your life versus if you feed your brain the craziness of what you see on the news and the world that's going on, those things are meant to be polarizing because good news doesn't perform as well as bad news. I think it's important to focus on yourself, your world around you.

How can you do good in your life, community, and your immediate world around you? Now, I'm not saying to not be educated about the world affairs and, you know, things like that, but you need to focus on yourself. And as home buyers, everyone always gets so wrapped up in, Is now a good time to buy because of interest rates? Is now a good time to buy because of the market? What I always tell people is the right time to buy a home is when it's right for you. And some of those questions that I consider people or I encourage people to ask themselves, is now a good time to buy a home for me, 1. Is your employment and income steady and predictable? Do you think you're going to stay at that job for a while? And have you been at that job, you know, previously for like at least a year or two, typically with normal mortgages, you know, do you plan on staying in your same area? Can you afford your monthly mortgage payment based on where rates are right now? Because to be completely honest, if your interest rate goes from 6.5% to 6.3%, sometimes that comes out to $40 difference a month. It's not a huge difference. But the cost of waiting to buy a home, home prices are going up every single year. You know, we, we have seen home prices stabilize within the last year, but when interest rates go down, more buyers enter the market and then there's more competition. So if you're always trying to time the market to buy a home, there's always going to be a reason that you're going to tell yourself, well, now's not a good time Maybe I should wait.

But have you been telling yourself that for the last four or five years when where's your opportunity cost of you could have bought that home four years ago and you would have been building equity versus waiting for the market to improve. Because there's always reasons why you should buy. There's always reasons why the world says you shouldn't buy. But you need to look internally, yourself, your family, where your own personal situation is. And once again, you know, quick little commercial. This is when you call someone like me an experienced mortgage lender so I can sit down with you, show you what the math actually looks like. Show you, hey, if you want to buy a $400,000 home, here's how much that actually comes out to a monthly payment and based on your other monthly debts, based on your income, maybe this makes sense for you right now, maybe it doesn't. Maybe you should be looking more in the range of a $350,000 home instead of 400,000.

So many nuances there. But long story short, there is always craziness in the world. Look at what you can do immediately around you, especially in your own community, because there's a lot of good that you can do for people around you in your own local town, city, community, wherever you live that will give you that fulfillment. Even if there's crazy things going on in the world, which there are.

Well, and that really goes into what you used to do and what I do now in my profession and being in business development with American IRA and self directed IRAs, and you know, talking to folks who are in the stock market right now who have seen a little bit of a change in that, you know, it used to be where the market would get a little crazy. You know, that is when folks search us out who know what we do because they know that unless they're truly working their account, their account might not be growing because. But it's also not gonna lose anything either, like it might be doing in the stock market. So what would you tell someone who is. We'll kind of focus now back on your past and my current. What would you tell someone who is looking to, you know, is now the time for me to, you know, do I need to recoup some of this? You know, financial advisors, they're, they're not wanting folks to take some of their portfolio and bring it to a self directed platform because it's going to affect, you know, their management of that. Right. Whereas that's more about the advisor and less about the client.

So for folks who are Trying to navigate and wonder if it's the right time for that. With your knowledge of self directed retirement accounts, how would you counsel someone through it now? Because in the past where you couldn't give advice or make suggestions or give opinions, well, now you can. So what would you tell somebody and say, yeah, right now is the best time to get your self directed account started.

Yeah, I'll let me give it to you unfiltered. So, okay, first I want to make a comment there because you said something that I really resonated with. So back when I worked in self directed iras back in Texas, you know, I was young, I was fresh out of college. I would still say these days I am not an expert in the stock market, but I always knew when the stock market was taking a dip because literally our phones would start ringing more and it was very synced there. I guess I don't know the better word for that, but yeah, you know, it's true. At the end of the day, no matter how much you know about the stock market and understand how it works, at the end of the day, if your money is in the stock market, you don't have control over what happens with those investments. And sometimes with the crazy things in the world that can be very volatile. My suggestion for you would be, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, you're already somewhat familiar, at least with self directed IRAs and the power that they can have for you.

You know, my Roth ira, I use it for private lending. I have only ever self directed my Roth IRA into private lending because that is the world that I understand and the connections that I have within the real estate investing world world. A lot of them are borrowing private money from self directed IRAs to fund their deals. My best advice there would be don't do it alone. Self directed IRAs is one of those things where you need to be in the right circles of people. Where if you're just learning about self directed IRAs, you might be thinking, wow, this whole topic is so new. I had no idea you could do this. If you get into the right rooms of real estate investors, go to some of these masterminds events.

Mastermind events. I'm sure American IRA has some resources for you guys there. There are big rooms of very successful, very knowledgeable and, you know, well experienced real estate investors that have been using self directed IRAs for their deals for a very long time. So if you're new to this, find the groups, the pockets of people that are really familiar with self directed IRAs the rules and the nuances of how they work. And I promise you, a lot of real estate investors out there are using private money from other people's IRAs to fund their deals. And I love private lending. As a self directed IRA account holder, my loans are, I choose exactly who I loan my money to. I know which property I'm loaning on and my IRA is secured in the first lien position.

So since I have knowledge about this and I have structured my deals properly and I've vetted the people that I'm working with, my IRA investment is as protected as it can be. Now where you might run into some trouble is you're brand new to self directed IRAs. You meet someone once at a real estate event, you loan your money to them without structuring it properly, without doing your due diligence and your homework that could, that could cause you some issues. So the biggest thing with self directed IRAs is you really just want to make sure that you take your time, you don't run into investments, you're learning from the right people, you're in with the right groups. I'll give a quick shout out. I was in Richmond, Virginia last week with Dealmaker, who fantastic group. I think their websites like dealmaker, catalyst, 300 people in the room. A big, big philosophy with this group is givers gain.

So you want to, there's a lot of real estate investors out there that are good hearted people that want to see others win and run their business with really high ethics. You want to find these groups and you want to get in with them. And I would also say listen to your gut, don't rush into things if your intuition is giving you little red flags in the back of your mind. Slow things down, put the brakes on, do your homework. But you know, those things Aside, self directed IRAs into privately invested assets is such a huge way to build wealth tax advantaged in your retirement account. That has nothing to do with the stock market. And you know, even my parents, they've been self directing their IRA since 2004 for the growth that they have had in their retirement accounts. You could never do in the stock market.

Maybe someone could, but your average person definitely could not. And it's all assets that are either directly owning real estate in the IRA or secured by real estate within the ira. So it's funny, I have not worked for a self directed IRA company since the end of 2001 and I still get calls on my personal cell phone every now and then. Someone's like, hey, I want to open a self directed ir. Can you help me out? Or I get to chatting with a realtor or real estate investor and my history with self directed IRAs comes up and then no joke, we're talking about self directed IRAs for the next 45 minutes. It is such a cool tool that not a lot of people know that you can use. But if you find the right groups of people, there is a lot of people doing a lot of cool things with these accounts. And your network and community when you're investing with an Iraqi is one of the most important things that you can have there.

Well, and I think one of the things too that you said is really finding the right information and how do you know that you're going to be getting the right information? And I think these days it really is surrounding yourself with the right people. Groups are wonderful. I mean, you know, we, I, I travel to different Rio groups, I'm on the board of a RIA group and it really becomes not just a friendship but a family. Because you know that when you're listening these people into these rooms, they really do have your best interest at heart because they're sharing what has worked for them, they're sharing what has not worked for them. And sometimes the mistakes that you can learn from of other people's and, or from other people and you know, unfortunately, sometimes yourself is, is some of the best learning lessons that you can share. I find now when people say, well why American ira? And I'll go ahead and just tell them that, you know, with the 24 hour news cycle, with the click of a button or the tap of a touchscreen on your phone, whatever the case may be, you can get any information that you want in less than a second. Somebody probably times this and, and, and has science on it on how it all works. I'm not a techie person but what I do know is this, is that if you're sick, we all know that the best thing to do is go to WebMD, right? Scare yourself to death.

We also know that anywhere else on Google, if you need an answer on something, that's where you're going to get the thousand percent correct answer, right? Maybe not so much. Because what I have seen is that people will talk to our competitors, they will go online and they'll try to teach themselves. And it's like somebody says, hey, if you got a bad golf swing and you keep working on it and working on it, working on it, you're working on the bad things. You haven't spoken to anybody who can show you the right way to do something. So take a few minutes, spend just a little bit of money and get that person to show you the right way to do it and then practice the right ways. I have found by the time people come to me and they get me on the phone, the top salesman here at the company, and by that I mean I've been here nine and a half years, right? And so I am, I have, you know, the amount of education and time and effort that we put into honing our craft and not just knowing our business, but knowing everyone else's, knowing all the other things that the buyers or the investors are going to hear across the industry that by the time they get to us, they have read articles, they've read books, they've gone to webinars, they've listened to podcasts. Then when they hear the 125% perfect and correct answer from me, there's only one person left for them to trust and it's themselves. And they can't even do that anymore because they've had such an outside influence of all this.

And I just tell folks, look, I'm going to, if I can't answer the question, you're going to, you're going to know it because I'm not going to fake it and tell you something and then hope that I don't research something different. I'm not going to answer the question. I have never had a problem with hanging up the phone and saying, you know what, I don't know, but I'll be right back. And those are the things where you know that you're going to have some of the best camaraderie. You've got somebody looking out for your best interests. And that's why we love to host folks, because, you know, from the front end of the house all the way into the operations side, we know that the client is going to be taken care of. And speaking about one of these groups that you just went to, it sounds like, if I'm not mistaken, you said that's kind of helped propel you. You're going to be launching one of your own.

Is it a chapter of your own, is that right?

We are, yes. I'm so excited. So Dealmaker started as a group in Virginia. People fly out from all over the country a few times a year to go to this high level mastermind event. And I am so excited to announce that a good friend of mine, her name is Mary Hart, she's a hard money lender here in Asheville. Mary and I are Actually starting a dealmaker Western North Carolina chapter and we are kicking it off July 7th. It's going to be a new monthly real estate investor meetup here in Asheville. It'll be at the Mule by Devil's Foot.

If anyone here was familiar with AVL Meetup which sadly ended at the end of last year, it's going to be very similar energy. I was actually a co host of AVL Meetup before it ended sadly. So right around the time that meetup was ending, Mary and I went to coffee together and she said hey, I'm thinking of starting up a deal maker WNC chapter here in Asheville. And I said absolutely, let's do it. My other meetup is ending and I'm very sad about it and I have a background in hosting events. My parents hosted a really big networking event in Houston we for over 10 years and you know, Covid kind of changed everything there and back. When I worked in self directed IRAs, one of the big parts of my job was putting on weekly lunch and learns monthly networking events. We did a big annual expo that I had a hand in and so I love putting on good quality, fun educational and networking events for real estate investors.

It's just, it's one of my favorite parts of the business. I've always enjoyed it. So we're so excited to kick off this new real estate investing event here in July again in Asheville. And my goal with these events is to provide good quality, relevant information about what's going on in our market right now that can help you keep your thumb on the pulse for what's going on in real estate in Asheville. And every presentation will have a few good nuggets that you can take with you and and immediately applying your business to help you either run your systems better, close more deals, learn how to communicate better with people, you know, follow up with your leads better. We have a lot of really exciting topics and speakers in the works and what that timeline looks like is we are finalizing things on the back end throughout this month throughout April and then have everything finalized by the end of April and just really kick in that marketing hard all of May, all of June, then kicking off in July. And once we kick off will be the first Tuesday of every month at the Mule. So I'm so excited about it.

Y' all come out and check it out if you're local.

Well fantastic and good luck with that. And if I am in the Asheville area on that time of the month, I will definitely make sure to get over There and see you in Mary. Just a couple last rapid fire questions here. All the pressure's off now. These are fun. It doesn't have anything to do with the professions at all. I've just started thinking about fun ways to wind this down because as you know that, you know, by the time you finish doing, you know, podcasts throughout the day and everything else, like, wow, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. You want to be top of your game, right? So let's just go ahead and dive right into this.

We've got about two minutes left. So when it comes to Christmas trees, are you a real tree or a fake tree kind of person?

Real tree all the way.

Gotcha. And do you have one or more trees in the house at Christmas time?

You know, I was actually tempted to buy two this past year, but I found an old little fake four foot tree. So we actually had two trees in our house. But our tradition is the day after Thanksgiving, we, my boyfriend and I, we go cut down our own Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm. And then after Christmas ends, there's always a brewery around here that has a big Christmas tree burning bonfire. And so we take it down and we go burn our tree. And it is a really, really great time.

You find out the folks that, oh my gosh, I forgot that really great ornament that I forgot to get off the tree. So they're diving into it. All right, Coke or Pepsi?

Ooh, Diet Coke all the way.

Gotcha, peeps. We're coming up on Easter. So peeps, you eat them or you hate them?

Okay. I big fan of marshmallows all around here. I actually saw peeps in the grocery store yesterday and I considered buying some, but I didn't. But my current fascination is Greek yogurt bowls. And I put Nutella and mini marshmallows in my Greek yogurt bowl. So you got more than you asked for with that question.

About to say we went from peeps to a Nutella Greek yogurt marshmallow bowl with the marshmallows.

Very important.

One last thing. Your. Your. Your favorite business book.

Ooh, I was really hoping you would ask this question. So when I drove to Virginia last week, I re listened to Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. I love that book. And there is a really great art to good communication and forming your words and sentences in a way that gets the other side of the conversation to open up. Explain how they're really feeling without feeling like you're accusing them of anything. And forming your conversations in a way that build trust from the other party is such a great art that I think everyone should work on. No matter what industry you're in, never split the difference. Cannot recommend that book enough or the audiobook.

And folks, the deal behind that one is that he was a criminal negotiator. So really like when your life depended on it. Well, no kidding. So well Haley, listen. Such a great time having you back here. Maybe it's something that you know within the next year or something we'll bring you back and see how the new venture is going. Seeing how business is going to go up in the mountains and late spring into the summer and into the fall because it's always a good season for buying up there and everywhere. It's always a great time to get ready for your self directed IRA needs as well.

And anytime you have that, you are always more than welcome to join us here at American ira. You can do so by visiting us at our website@american ira.com you can also set up an appointment with me which is we can have a chat. Won't cost you a thing, but I guarantee you're going to learn a lot. You're going to get a lot of good honest answers to your questions and learn something that you may have not learned before. Always find us on our YouTube channel where you're going to hear this and other podcasts along with seeing our webinars that are out there both current and past. And then if you are on Facebook, you'll also be able to find us on Facebook. Book like us there and you will always be in the know of all the new things that are coming up. So again for American ira, I'm Kyle Moody and we thank you so much for joining us again on another episode of the IRA Cafe, powered by American IRA and spending some time with me and my friend Hayley today.

So for all of us here, we will talk to you next time.

American American IRA llc, a North Carolina llc acts as a third party administrator for New Vision Trust Company, a state chartered South Dakota trust company. As a neutral, self directed IRA administrator. American IRA does not recommend or endorse any investments, individuals or entities including financial representatives, promoters or companies. American IRA and the IRA Cafe are not responsible for other statements, representations or agreements nor do we evaluate the quality or profitability of any investment. American IRA does not endorse guests on the IRA Cafe Podcast. Guest opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of American ira, its subsidiaries, associates or custodian. Participation in the podcast is voluntary and no compensation is provided. American IRA is not a fiduciary and cannot offer financial advice.

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