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Ever wonder if building wealth, balancing family, and launching your dream business is really possible—or just a myth? I’ve asked myself the same thing, and this episode brings the answers you need.

Join me as I sit down with Wendy Papasan—team leader, real estate investor, philanthropist, and host of the Empire Building podcast. Wendy is a powerhouse in the real estate world with years of experience building successful businesses while staying grounded in her family and personal growth. She’s a sought-after mentor for women in business and is celebrated for her practical, empowering leadership style.

In this episode, we dig into the journey from Wendy’s entrepreneurial roots—starting with her first high school business—to building a real estate empire (that started with a $50K flip and grew to 19 doors and 2,500 families served!). Wendy unpacks how developing the right habits, from net-worth tracking to prioritizing date nights, enabled her and her husband, Jay, to reach millionaire status in just six years. You'll hear candid insights on failure, recalibrating goals, and why living below your means trumps chasing big paychecks.

But that’s not all—Wendy also shares her experiences launching two podcasts (and why she wishes she stuck with the first one!), creating strong business boundaries in her marriage, leading a team of female entrepreneurs, and harnessing the power of focus thanks to lessons from “The ONE Thing.” She opens up about the often-overlooked bravery behind entrepreneurship, the underestimated power of compounding effort, and finding fulfillment through giving back and coaching others.

Ready for actionable inspiration, honest advice, and a dash of real talk about life and business? Press play and learn how to build your own empire—without losing your sanity or your sense of humor. Tune in now!

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Key Takeaways

Track Your Net Worth Monthly

Wendy emphasizes the importance of tracking net worth regularly, not just focusing on income. This habit helps keep you aware of your financial progress and encourages smarter asset-building, rather than simply increasing earnings and spending.

Live Below Your Means and Invest the Surplus

Consistently living below your means allowed Wendy and her husband to invest extra income into growing their real estate portfolio. She recommends prioritizing investments over lifestyle inflation to build sustainable wealth.

Failures Are Learning Opportunities, Not End Points

When Wendy’s first house flip was unsuccessful, she didn’t give up. Instead, she viewed the experience as a valuable lesson and pivoted to buy-and-hold strategies. The key is to see setbacks as a way to learn and improve.

Compounding Habits Lead to Big Results Over Time

Success is a result of repeatable activities done over time. Wendy highlights how tracking net worth, investing, giving, and prioritizing relationships all compounded to create her family’s empire, stressing the power of habits and patience.

Set Specific Goals and Revisit Them Together

Wendy and her husband committed early on to becoming millionaires by tracking progress as a couple and setting intention-driven goals. Their practice of annual goal-setting getaways kept them aligned and moving forward together—showing the value of planning and partnership.

Tweetable Quotes

"Success is repeatable activities done over time. Everything compounds—it’s amazing how wealth compounds, how working out compounds, how investing in yourself compounds."

"I've always had the mindset that you fail your way to success. For me, a failure looks more like a learning experience, a learning opportunity."

"A lot of people think being brave is the absence of fear, but being brave is really about the fear always being there, and you're just doing it anyway. The more hard things you do, the better you get at doing hard things."

Resources Mentioned

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/papasan

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wendypapasan?igsh=OGM3ZXNqcXdod29m

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wendypapasan

The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, and others - https://amzn.to/4aeuV9V

The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan - https://amzn.to/3XyXmFO

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1

So Wendy Papasan, host of Empire Building. Thank you so much for joining me on

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Podcast Junkies. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me today, Harry.

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What a pleasure it was to meet you, and shout out to our mutual friend

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Christina Wise for bringing such a unique group of fine human

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beings together. It's a testament, I think, to her energy. And so we met at

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her event in Park City, now going back to— was it

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October? Yeah, it was October. It took us a hot minute to get together, but

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yeah, yeah, it was a very special event. I a nicely curated

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group of really interesting people. And I just remember having

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great conversations and one of my great conversations was, was with

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you. So thanks for reconnecting and I'm

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happy for us to stay connected. Yeah. I'm always grateful to have the podcast as

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a platform to invite people on. And that's really the reason why I started

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it. And the only really prerequisite is that you have a podcast

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or in the podcasting space, which is a lot of people nowadays.

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Yeah. Well, I love that. And it's so interesting because then you get to learn

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a lot about a lot a lot of different things. So yeah, yeah, because typically

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most of the people have the show as one aspect of their business or their

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life, and then they start branching out into other things. And it's helped me become

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a better listener, conversationalist. I'm at— between my

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two shows, I'm over 500 interviews. So wow, it's been a

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fantastic journey. And I started this show in 2014. Amazing.

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Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, can you believe that even? No, no,

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sometimes it's like I remember the first day I went to a conference called New

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Media Expo in Las Vegas, and it was bloggers, podcasters, and

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YouTubers. And so that sort of dates the event.

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Wow. Back in the day. Back in the day. You were like, you're OG. And

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I thought it was late too. So it was funny. I actually started, my

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husband and I had a podcast probably about 2016.

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Yeah. It was called Inside ATX and we interviewed interesting

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people in Austin and you know, I sort of regret not

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keeping up with that. You know, it just ended up being a lot of work

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because we were doing so much of the work ourselves. Of course, now it's so

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easy to outsource and get help and edit and all

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that kind of stuff. But in 2016, it was editing by,

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you know, printing out manuscripts and trying to do it manually. And it was just

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a lot of work. So ultimately we let it go. But man, I wish I'd

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kept that one up since 2016. I was thinking I was looking for some

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of the shows and I saw that Inside ATX is still on like It's a

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live feed. There's a site called Listen Notes where you can put in podcasts and

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it does come up. So I think people can still find it. Oh, wow. Okay.

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That's good. I didn't realize that. So a little bit on your background. You've

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built businesses, invested in real estate, and host Empire Building, which we'll get into.

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When did you first realize that you were wired to build?

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Well, that's really interesting. I actually had my very first

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business aside from babysitting, but I was a junior

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in high school and me and my best friend, and she went on to

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become a doctor. She's an OB-GYN

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near you in Minnesota, actually. And so we started, we had a little earring

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business and we ended up selling it in 3 stores

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in our little hometown in northern Minnesota. And

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yeah, that was kind of, you know, we got a checking account, we had a

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name and we, you know, made some money from it. And that was kind of

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my first entrepreneurial journey. Yeah. Yeah. That must

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be a good feeling as an entrepreneur, that first sale or

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getting, you know, the earrings selected to be in a store. Like, it's that moment

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when you realize, okay, maybe there's something here. And it's— you never forget that first

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feeling. Yeah. And I think that what's interesting is I had

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no role models for being an entrepreneur in my life. You know, both of my

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parents were kind of working class and, you know, my whole family

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was. I have, you know, I come from a a long line of farmers.

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And so I really had no, which is very

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entrepreneurial actually when you think about it, but I just had no

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reference for it. So if I had, I may have

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pursued it more, but you know, I didn't really start my

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big business, my real estate business until I was 38. Okay. So it

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was a pretty big gap between the two. You mentioned the farming, so I couldn't

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resist asking about it because I don't know if we I mentioned it when we

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spoke, I have a second show called the Vertical Farming Podcast, which was

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interesting to me because I was interested in the topic and I've interviewed CEOs, about

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180 CEOs and founders. It's turned, I've had to actually spin it off into like

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a little, it's another business as well because it's a media company related to the

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AgTech space. But I have had conversations with people who

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have a family history in farming. And I think what's been interesting

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as I have those conversations with those people, I always notice the trend that if

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you've got a farming background, or you grew up on a farm,

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there's a work ethic that is instilled in you that's so

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crazy, and it's prevalent, and it's really interesting, that aspect

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of it. So I don't know how much into farming the family was. I didn't

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grow up on a farm, but like my whole extended family

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are farmers. And, you know, my grandmother, who I was

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very close to, she was 14

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and her dad died, and she had, you 9 brothers

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and sisters at 14. Wow. And she and my great-grandmother,

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who is also an amazing woman, they worked the farm together. So I had

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lots of stories around that. And they were both so

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hardworking. You know, my great-grandmother lived to be 100.

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She shoveled her own walk until she was well into her 90s.

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And that's no joke in Minnesota. Yeah, for sure. And

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so just this idea of Yeah, you just get up and do what

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needs to be done until it's finished. Yeah, that's definitely the work

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ethic that was installed in me. I grew up in New York and

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lived in New York City and then I lived in LA and now I'm in

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Minnesota and I have chickens. And so it's been a really interesting journey. So I'm

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not like a proper farmer, but there were a couple of, you know, there's some

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times in the, especially last week when it was like -20, like I had to

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get up early and on top of everything else that I want to do, my

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meditation, my workout, I'm like, I got to check on the chickens. I got to

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check if the water's not frozen. I got to make sure there's eggs, that there's

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no eggs there so they don't freeze. And the first couple of times I was

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like, my God, this is like a lot of things to be thinking of. But

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you get into this rhythm, I guess, for lack of a better term. Yeah, you

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just do it. Yeah, you just— well, but it's also the cold, I think, makes

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people really tough up there in that part of the world. I mean, I live

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in Austin, Texas now, and I have two native

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Austinites. My sons are 20 and 21, and they're wimpy, you

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know, when it comes to the weather. My husband from Memphis, they're

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all wimpy. So I am strong when it comes to the weather,

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you know, I realized that too, cause I had it in New York and then

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when I went to LA, I was there for 4 years and all you need

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is a hoodie in your trunk and you're good. LA spoils people and people

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who, who try to move from LA or Northern California or San

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Diego or something like that, they're just messed up. They can't leave. They like, don't

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even try because they come to Austin. They're like, it's too hot.

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They go anywhere else. It's too cold, which it is compared to where they grew

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up. So I feel for them. They're stuck. You do get acclimated though, I think,

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as you were referencing, because now like I'll go outside and like throw out the

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trash in a t-shirt and then I look at the temperature and I'm like, oh,

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it's like 30 degrees out, but it doesn't faze me anymore. Yeah. You're fine.

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Your blood is, your body does adjust. I think that is true. Like I read

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somewhere in Finland, they bundle up the babies and

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they put them outside in the winter. I've seen that. Yeah. Just to get them

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like acclimated. So I think it must do something to your, at the cellular

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level. You know, I, I certainly remember in high school, you know, in

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high school, of course, You do all kinds of dumb fashion stuff, but yeah, just

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wearing like my jelly shoes in the middle of winter

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with like a, you know, maybe a sweater, something like that, you

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know? Yeah. So after your success with the earring business

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and prior to getting in into real estate, what's the, the short version

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of like where your career took you? Yeah, well, when I

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graduated from college, I actually traveled around the world for 18

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months. Nice. I had multiple jobs. I had a 6-month

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visa to work in the UK and I had several jobs there, including

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one on the Golden Hind, which was Sir Francis Drake's ship

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that sailed around the world. So it was like a full-size replica of it.

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And it was— it sailed around the UK. So I was actually a sailor and

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I would give tours to schoolchildren. So it was like a fun job.

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And I saved up some money and then I backpacked around the world. I went

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all through the Middle East. I traveled all over Europe. I

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actually hitchhiked across Canada, which was which was

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crazy. And yeah, then landed back

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in northern Minnesota and it felt really small. So then

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I hopped on a Greyhound bus and I went, and I went to New York

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to see if I could make it, you know, find my destiny in

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New York City. So I worked for about 4 years in New York City

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as a public relations consultant. And it's kind of where I got

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my cold calling acumen. I would cold call

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newspapers. And then I would go fax my, you know,

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remember faxes? Yep. My fax, calling and faxing, calling and faxing way in

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the '90s, you know? Yeah. And then I met my husband and we got

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married and then we traveled around the world together for 4 months. We had a

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really great long honeymoon and then we landed in Austin, Texas. Nice. And

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yeah, I had some jobs in the travel industry and then I took 5 years

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off to be a stay-at-home mom. Okay. And then invest in real estate. That's when

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I got started in investing. And then in 2009,

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when my oldest son was getting ready to go to kindergarten, I got my real

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estate license. Nice. Yeah, I've been doing that for 17 years, which is

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crazy. That's a fantastic, yeah, story. Thanks for sharing

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that. Yeah. What is it about real estate that attracted you? Well, I actually got

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into it because my husband worked at the corporate office of Keller Williams. Perfect.

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And so he and Gary have been business partners for 25

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years and written many bestselling books together and

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So he wrote a book called The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. Yep. And

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he decided that he wanted to, you know, learn about

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investing. So we did a flip. So Jay,

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my husband and I, and a couple other

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folks decided to flip a house. It was

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unmitigated disaster. We made no money. I

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put in most of the sweat equity because I was a basically not working

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outside of the home at the time. And I think between

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the 4 of us, we each made like $500, you know, with

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no one getting paid for their work. And yet that kind of lit a

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fire in me. So we ended up buying several more investment properties.

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And I was a real estate investor before I got into real

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estate. So I did that for about probably 3 or

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4, 5 years, just kind of buying properties remodeling

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them and then keeping them. And it's been such a blessing for our

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family for me to take on that landlady role. And now we've got— we have

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19 doors now. Wow. Yeah. Which is— it's hard to

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believe, but, you know, it was sort of just over time, every one, every 2

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years. And then all of a sudden you look up and you have a— you

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have a little empire. And then in 2009, when my

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oldest son decided— well, no, he didn't decide to go to kindergarten,

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but he went to kindergarten. I got my real estate license really to

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save money on investment property. 40s. That was my whole reasoning behind

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it. And my goal was to make $15,000,

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which was— a lot of people start real estate as a little side hustle. And,

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and I ended up making $85,000 my first year in real estate,

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which was twice as much as I'd ever made in any other job. And

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that's about $239,000 in today's

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Austin dollars. So yeah, then I was like, wow, I

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might be good at this. So yeah, the rest is history. We actually are

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celebrating our 25th hundred

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family served this week, actually. Congratulations.

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Yeah, thank you. It feels like a real impact. Yeah. Yeah.

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2,500 families. So it's good timing on this interview

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then. Yeah. Yeah, I think it actually is. I want to

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say it's maybe next week sometime. Okay. You know,

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the 2,500 closing. So. So what do you think it was about

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that experience with that first property where some people would

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probably say, you know what, this was a colossal mistake.

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What were we thinking? Or what was I thinking? And just go back to like

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regular 9 to 5 or trying something else. Yeah. And so what,

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what clicked in you though? Because it sounded like you got, you got the bug.

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Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think that I've

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always had the mindset of you fail your way to success.

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And so for me, a failure looks more like a

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learning experience, you know, learning opportunity. And to be honest, we haven't done a

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lot of flips. Since then it was more like buy and hold. And

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I go back and I wish we'd kept that one. You know, we bought that

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house for about $50,000 and I know it's probably

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worth, you know, $450,000 now. I wish I'd held

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onto it. And we just got great guidance. You know, we're blessed to have been

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in Gary Keller's orbit. He's a self-made billionaire

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and I got all of that like trickled down from

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Jay. Jay would come home from work and kind of share his wisdom from Gary

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and, you know, we just And, you know, at one point we

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decided that we were going to set a goal to become

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millionaires. Okay. And that was pretty early on in our

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marriage. And so we started tracking our net worth.

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And at the time, our net worth was about $2,000. Yeah.

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And so that real estate seemed like a way that we could get there.

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You know, that was always our goal was our— was not necessarily the income. It

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was the net worth. Yeah. And we thought if we could get there in 10

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years and have 10 rental properties, we would have

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$75,000 in passive income and then we could be

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financially free. You know, we always kind of called it our FU money so

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that we could say FU to our jobs. And,

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you know, at the time we didn't, when we set that goal, we didn't have

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children. So $75,000 was definitely doable as far as

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living expenses go. And yeah, so we ended up hitting that goal in 6 and

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a half years, became, became net worth millionaires

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and have greatly exceeded that. Yeah. And, you

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know, through luck, hard work, and just, you

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know, Keller Williams has been a big blessing to us in terms of, in

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terms of my mindset, you know, just helping me understand

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what is actually possible over time.

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Congratulations on that. That's really, really impressive and inspiring.

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I think a lot of people are at that point as well, wondering, you know,

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when you see it, when you map it out and you are intentional about

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what you want the outcome to be, then everything that you

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do on a day-to-day basis, if it's not meeting that goal,

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then, you know, you got to get rid of it or to stay focused. So

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I'm sure a lot of that happened as well. Yeah. I mean, success looks different

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than people think it is. Success is repeatable activities

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done over time. Yeah. And so we can

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look back at the last 20 years and there are definitely some habits that

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we put into place that helped us become really

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successful. And that's not always that exciting to think

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about that. And everything compounds, you know, it's

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amazing how wealth compounds, how

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working out compounds, how investing in yourself

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compounds. And, you know, we've just done some of those things. And it's— if

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you had told me 25 years ago, you know, that I would

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be on a podcast talking about this, I probably would have laughed at you. So

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what are some of those habits that come to mind? You know, We don't have

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to go through the full list, but when you think of the ones that are

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like the most, the ones that resonate with you. Yeah, well, definitely the net worth

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tracking. So I think a lot of people are really focused on their income

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and that is what we're taught, or at least I don't know what young people

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are being taught today, but like that's what I was taught, which is become

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a doctor, become a lawyer, become a dentist so that you can make

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a lot of income. And the problem with that mentality

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is that as your income scales, usually your expenses,

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you know, your kind of lifestyle grows as well. There's a lot of pressure.

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And so we opted to think about wealth in a

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different way, which was our net worth, which is assets, you know,

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and if you make $250,000 a year as a doctor and

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you spend $251,000, you are

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broke, you know. And so we just really, we

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just track our net worth every month. We still do it. We actually created a

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club around it for our team members. We call it the Hot Millionaire

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Club because who doesn't want to be a hot millionaire? And

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that's really the main one. But some of the other ones were just

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really living well below our means. And as my real

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estate scaled and grew, we stayed working

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because I didn't make any money for 5 years. So I was a stay-at-home

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mom. And so that really

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pulling yourself out of the workforce for 5 years is, is a lot

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for people. You know, it affected my career a lot. And of

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course, I'm happy that I was, was able to do it. But really

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living on my husband's income as I grew my real estate,

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so then I could invest back in the team, grow the

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team, and then we could buy investments

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with the extra money. So definitely like living below

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our means was huge for us. And, you know, at the end of the day,

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it doesn't really matter what you make. It matters how much you spend.

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I think about that old story of that. I think it was a janitor, Ronald

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Read. I don't know if you're familiar with that. He was a janitor

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and he worked at a gas station. Yeah. Just a regular guy.

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And when he died, he donated $8 million. He had $8 million

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and $6 million went to charity and $2 million went to his family. Everyone was

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shocked. And they asked his family, did he win the

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lottery? Did he do this? But he really didn't. He just lived well

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below his means and he invested the rest and he let that

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compounding do the heavy lifting over time.

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And anyone can do that. Yeah, that's very inspiring.

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What's been the upside of building an empire with Jay?

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The upside? Well, we have a lot to talk about all the time,

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so our date nights are never boring. And I would say that has been one

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of our habits too, is a weekly date night. We have a date every Wednesday

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and we've done that for— since our kids were toddlers,

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you know, we've been on probably close to 1,000 dates with each other.

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That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. The upside has been—

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it's been amazing. You know, we've grown a lot. I've personally

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grown a lot aside from being a parent. It's been the biggest growth experience

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of my life, maybe even more so, you know. Yeah.

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So we give a lot of money away. We have a huge giving goal every

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year. We've raised probably over $3 million

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for local charities just by doing events and sort of doing

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that. And that's been a real true blessing. And then we've just been in business

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with amazing people along the way. And that

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network and the ability as a leader to

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lift others with you as you climb is a great gift.

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You know, it's been a really great gift for us. Yeah. Was there ever a

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challenge about or struggle with trying to protect the relationship from the business?

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Well, the good thing is we don't actually work together. Okay.

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So he's at the corporate office. He's got his W-2 job

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that he leaves the house for and goes to every day. And I kind of

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handle the real estate stuff. And so there's a lot of

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overlap, but we don't work together. I would love to

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work together with him. I think he's a little nervous of it. Yeah, probably. Right.

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But, you know, I mean, we, we're busy. We're both busy a lot. And there

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have definitely been times where there's nothing extra, you

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know, to give. And we both, we need something. We never did this, but I

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listened to Brené Brown talk about how she and her husband

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have like a number system for their family, which is they

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can just be like, listen, I'm at a 2 today. I'm like at a 2

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out of 10. And I really need, I need to like lean into

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you today. And especially when, you know, when you have

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younger kids or when your kids are in middle school and you're like

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chief Uber officer, you know, driving your kids around. And then when

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they're teenagers, it can be really difficult. And we

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always prioritize our marriage though. You know, I would tell our

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kids, listen, I love you, but you

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guys are random. I picked your dad, you know,

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which hopefully, you know, hopefully didn't mess them up too much. But

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they have always known that we're first, you know, our marriage, not

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that we wouldn't pull our kids out of a burning building, but you know what

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I mean? Like they know that our marriage is the priority and we've always prioritized

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it. And that's been super important. And we do that

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in several ways. We have our weekly date night. We do

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an annual getaway goal setting session for

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couples, which has been very powerful for us and helped keep us on

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the same page. So we'll actually leave the city and Even when our

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kids were young, especially when our kids were young, you need that to just

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have a way to focus on what's important. And then you get the

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opportunity to share your goals and build something

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together long-term. And so, yeah, I feel really

350

lucky. I mean, I certainly wasn't a marriage expert when Jay asked me

351

to marry him. And I, I'm just, I feel really lucky that it worked out

352

because I know some people are unlucky, you know, you think getting into relationship

353

with someone and they're a different person than you. Of course. Or people just evolve

354

over time where they change. Some people grow and some people don't. And you just—

355

Absolutely. Yeah. Some people are. And so I feel like we're lucky that we both—

356

we have a lot of— and I think you do when you're in a marriage,

357

you can fall out of love with that other person, especially

358

with life going on. You know, our kids are 15 months apart. So

359

when they were little, it was really hard. And I've always

360

respected him and he's always respected me. And that's great. That's carried

361

us through the more challenging times. Yeah. What was the impact

362

of the book when it became popular? Did things

363

change or was it? One thing? Yeah. The One Thing. Yeah. Yeah. I

364

don't know. Well, first of all, that we'd been living that book for many

365

years because it took them about several years to do the research around

366

it. And I would say it affected us personally

367

more than professionally, if that makes sense. And just from the, just because the book

368

is so good. So for your listeners, it's called The One Thing.

369

Jay's written many books. That one's definitely sold the most. It's, I think,

370

3.5 million copies now, the best-selling business books of all time.

371

And for me, you know, I was like a variety is the spice of life

372

kind of person. Like, I want to do this, I want to do that. And

373

so that really helped me understand, and I think this is so important for a

374

lot of entrepreneurs, that it's kind of like I said,

375

success looks different than you think it does. You know, focus on one thing.

376

Yeah. And that compounds over time versus A lot

377

of entrepreneurs like the shiny new thing, and I'm certainly guilty

378

of this where this is fun and then you go over here

379

and that's fun. And so, when I'm feeling really scattered, I'll

380

actually just open that book to any chapter and read a chapter and be

381

like, oh, I just needed that. That's good

382

advice. I read the book years ago and I've moved so many times. I don't

383

know if I still have the physical copy, but— Oh, I'll send you. Yeah, it's

384

just important. I think just that Even just seeing it on the shelf, it would

385

probably be helpful. Just be like, oh yeah, yeah. When you said,

386

yeah, we do that as a team. So we get on a quick huddle every

387

morning and everybody goes around and they say what their one thing for the day

388

is. And that just allows you to have like that micro-focused

389

because I know for me, sometimes at the end of the day, I'm like, wow,

390

what a busy day. And then I'm like, well, what did I do really? Like,

391

did I actually move my business forward or was I just like in response

392

mode all day? Yeah, that's helpful. So, with the visibility

393

you have with your success, do you find, like, women

394

approaching you and asking you for guidance? Do they see you as a role

395

model, you know, for the success you've had? Yeah, I do.

396

Yeah, it's kind of nice. Like I said, I didn't have a lot of role

397

models in that way growing up or even in college or even in really

398

in my early 20s. I just didn't realize that it was available to me in

399

a way. And so, yeah, I have many conversations with young

400

people old people. I love to coach and help people,

401

and I have a very strategic brain, so it's

402

very easy for me to look at the pieces of someone's life

403

and ask them powerful questions that can help them just

404

think about something that might— they might not think of

405

otherwise. And so it's just a gift that I have, and I'm brave enough to

406

say things that can be hard for other people to say. So

407

I have people come up to me all the time who've said, oh my gosh,

408

I ran into you in the hallway at our real estate office 7 years ago

409

and you asked me this question outside the bathroom and it

410

changed my life. And I'm thinking like, I have no

411

idea. I don't remember that conversation at all,

412

but that's kind of, I think that's one of my superpowers. So

413

yeah, I can help somebody. I will. Where'd you cultivate that bravery?

414

I don't know. I've always been kind

415

of brave. I think it really started,

416

you know, I got my love, my desire to travel from my

417

dad. We used to take these long road trips to visit my grandparents

418

in California. And then my dad would take our

419

family on these little drives around to weird places

420

in Minnesota. And he kind of cultivated this

421

curiosity in me about other places and

422

exploring. And I always wanted to study abroad,

423

but I just couldn't afford it. So I paid my way through school and

424

I just knew that that was never like really in the cards for me. You

425

know, sometimes I couldn't even afford to go home for holidays and things like that.

426

And so then I always said, okay, well, if I can't do that,

427

then I'm going to go travel after I graduate. And

428

so I got my little visa to work in the UK. I'd never been

429

overseas. Yeah. And I was so scared,

430

Harry. I literally got to my hostel and I just laid

431

under the covers for 24 hours. I was on the top bunk, I remember it.

432

And I just was so scared, I couldn't even— and I think now, I think,

433

gosh, London, how hard could it have been? And it was really

434

scary to me. And so I think a lot of people think being

435

brave is the absence of fear, but being brave

436

is really the fear is always there, you're

437

just doing it anyway. And the more hard things

438

you do, the better you get at doing hard things. So you get to look

439

up and that also compounds over time. Yeah. Yeah.

440

That's the consistent thread here. Thanks for sharing that story. I really appreciate that.

441

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So moving into the podcast, have

442

you always been a podcast listener? Let's see. I'm trying to think of when

443

I started listening to podcasts. I mean, probably right

444

around when we started doing that first one in 2018,

445

'17, '16, something like that. Because as a

446

realtor, I mean, you know, I was, I don't do a lot of sales

447

anymore, but when I was in my car a lot. So, and there's just something

448

great about that versus an audiobook, you know, you can

449

listen to as you're driving across town 30 minutes. Yeah. And

450

I'm a lifelong learner. And what's great, what I love about podcasts is you can

451

kind of pick an area that you want to get better at and

452

then just binge on that and then move away from it if you want to.

453

Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned you and Jay had started with Inside ATX, so

454

that was your first taste of it. What was the story around starting

455

Empire Building? Well, I think Keller Williams had this vision, and I

456

think honestly it came from Jay. You know, the Inside ATX podcast also came

457

from Jay. He's a content creator. Yeah, that's definitely his

458

gift in the world. And he's a phenomenal writer.

459

Author, and he has a really popular podcast

460

called The One Thing, which has been— I don't even know when that started,

461

but there are millions and millions of downloads. Yeah. So he

462

kind of suggested it to Keller Williams, and

463

then we were going to launch it in February of

464

2020. There's 4 of us. And so there was like, we were

465

on stage and they were talking about it. And then of course, and the idea

466

was, this is so crazy. The idea was, is all 4 of us were

467

going to fly to Austin, which I live in Austin. Yeah. Like

468

Seychelles was going to come from Dallas and one of our

469

hosts was going to come from Seattle and one was going to come from

470

Washington, D.C. Like every other week.

471

Like that was the goal. Yeah. And which kind of made sense.

472

It sounded like fun at the time and possible. But yeah. And

473

then of course the shutdown happened and we recorded a few

474

episodes in February. And then we launched in June

475

of 2020. And of course, we were 100%

476

virtual. And it was such a gift for me as a leader

477

to have a space where I was with 3 other leaders in the

478

trenches during COVID Yeah, just to come and record the

479

podcast. And my co-hosts are so amazing that I'm

480

always learning and taking notes. And of course, now it's just a lot easier.

481

But at the beginning, it's a whole, you know, it was a whole thing and

482

trying to coordinate content and things like that. So, yeah. So it's hard enough sometimes

483

when you have a co-host to figure out the dynamic, but you have 4 co-hosts.

484

So I'm curious how you landed on that format. Yeah. Well, originally

485

we had 4 and then we just, and then one of our

486

co-hosts decided to move on. And so we invited 2 other

487

people to join us. What's nice about it is

488

we don't all do the podcast. Every single week.

489

So we can split up. Generally, we have a time block to record every

490

other week, and sometimes 5 of us can come. And

491

if that's the case, then great, we split up, we go into 2 separate studios,

492

we figure out— and then just the burden of coming up with the content.

493

Yeah, yeah, is so much. I mean, you know, it's a lot.

494

You've been doing it for 12 years, so it's a heavy

495

lift. And then when you've got partners to help you out with And then we

496

just have fun. I mean, we laugh, we have fun. So

497

it's a time to hang out with my friends too. We do it on Fridays

498

and Fridays are kind of like my me day. And yeah, it's fun.

499

How many episodes do you have? Let's see, we'll be at

500

6 years in June. So

501

what, 6 times 50, 3, so 270,

502

280, something like that. Yeah. How has the

503

show evolved and from what you thought it was going to be in terms of

504

the content and what you were producing to like now? Well, I

505

think the content creation is so much easier for us.

506

I don't know if you would feel the same way, but it's just a

507

lot easier for us to think about because I'm always thinking of

508

ideas. So I have a little list of ideas that would be good content.

509

And then of course, you know, we're using ChatGPT

510

to, you know, help flesh out some of

511

the content and we're always going back and tweaking it, but, and we're

512

not creating scripts verbatim. It's more like bullet points and things like

513

that. So that's just been a lot easier. And then somewhere along the line, we

514

actually got a producer from KW and that's

515

been, that's been a game changer for us. So we just have to roll in

516

and do, do what we're told and read the script

517

and, and it turns out okay. But it's been fun. You know,

518

so many people think they know you when you have a

519

podcast because you're usually speaking very casually and you're

520

really in someone's ear and they think they know you. Yeah. Yeah.

521

Yeah. You know, so that part's been, can be slightly creepy

522

sometimes. Great. So yeah, it's interesting cuz I go to podcast conferences and then, uh,

523

when like when I had the show, I'd occasionally find a listener and they'd be

524

like, oh, how's your dog Disco doing? Cause I mentioned him on the show or

525

something like that. Or like, it's really interesting cuz 'cause they talk about

526

the know, like, and trust factor in podcasting too, and it's just natural if they're

527

listening to hundreds of episodes of you and you're in their ear, they

528

develop this connection with you, and I'm sure it's strange when they meet you for

529

the first time, they're like, I feel like I know you, and you're like, I

530

don't know you. I have no idea who you are. Well, and you have such

531

a distinct voice, I'm sure that there's been times when people have

532

probably heard you. Yeah, yeah. 'Cause your voice is so distinctive. That

533

has happened, yeah. Yeah, I had this one lady one time, she said, I

534

love listening to your show, your voice is so soothing. Sometimes like I listen to

535

it as I'm falling asleep and I'm just like, I don't know what your husband

536

thinks about that, but yeah, thank you for

537

that. Coming to you live. Yeah, the— speaking of like

538

voices, there's a guy who started a show called Sleep With Me, and the whole

539

purpose of the show, he spoke very monotonously and he would read with his— like

540

he would just read like the paper or something. Wow. He'd be like this most

541

boring copy, and people would— and the purpose of it was just like to put

542

you to sleep. Yeah, I think that would work

543

for me. It's like when you're a little kid and your parents have— there's like

544

a few people over and you're just kind of like falling asleep on the floor

545

or the couch or something. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds soothing. I'm

546

gonna have to look into that. It became so popular, he started doing live events

547

where people would bring pillows and blankets and

548

like And he would read and he would do the podcast live. And

549

inevitably some, you know, people would fall asleep. Wow. Wow. That sounds

550

so relaxing. Yeah.

551

So there's that whole— I can totally imagine myself like in the studio audience and

552

he's reading and there's just a bunch of people dozing

553

off. Yeah. So are all your episodes recorded in studio? Have

554

you done, have you played around with live? We've done a few live

555

episodes. So Keller Williams has two large events. One is

556

actually coming up in Atlanta next week. And so

557

we will, we're not recording any this year, but we've done in the past, we've

558

done like a live audience Q&A and that's been fun.

559

We've solicited questions from the audience ahead of time and then

560

sort of answered them in the audience. That's been fun. Yeah.

561

So mainly that. And occasionally we have guests, you know, we don't have

562

tons of guests, but we've had some guests, which has been fun. So, if

563

anyone hasn't heard the show, who would you say the show is for?

564

What's the type of content you cover? Yeah. I think if you have any kind

565

of— if you're any kind of entrepreneur, we have 5 female

566

co-hosts and we have lots of men who listen too. I would say our

567

primary listeners, probably women, but we have— I have lots of men that come

568

and enjoy our perspective as well. And, you know, you're really trying

569

to balance this sort of work-life I would

570

call it counterbalance. I don't think you can have work-life balance, but kind

571

of counterbalance. And we just talk a lot about, you know, scaling your

572

business, how to get leads, how to get into business with good

573

people, how to hire and train good people. So we do a lot of

574

tactical sales things, a lot of tactical things for leaders. We talk

575

about leadership a lot. So yeah, a small business owner would really

576

be who we're talking about, who's trying to kind of do

577

Yeah. All the things. So. That makes sense. Yeah. When you look

578

back at when you started the show to present day, can you

579

see like the trajectory of like how you've grown yourself as a

580

host? Yes. Well, like I said, I learned so much from my

581

co-hosts. Yeah. I mean, I've always like, while we're recording, I'm

582

always taking notes, writing things down. And you know, one of my

583

co-hosts, Sarah Reynolds, she's the number one Keller Williams agent in the

584

world. Oh, wow. She has a team of, 350

585

people and is closing, I don't even

586

know, thousands of transactions every year. So she's

587

doing things at an incredible level. So yeah, definitely

588

learning, learning from them. And then I think, you know, I do

589

listen to my podcast, which is, as you know, it's painful

590

at first. Sometimes, yeah. Especially at first, you

591

know. It's important though. But that's, it's good. Yeah. To

592

understand. And I'm always trying to get better. I do a lot of speaking outside

593

of the podcast and I am in the middle of, I have a

594

speaking coach. Okay. So I just met with her yesterday and so I was

595

just trying to get better and grow and we're not Mel Robbins

596

yet. So that's definitely aspirational.

597

Yeah. So besides the podcast and the real estate, what other projects are you working

598

on now? Well, I have a, a couple of fun development

599

projects. So I started my real estate career as

600

a real estate investor, and we've bought properties over the

601

years. And then as I grew my real estate team here in

602

Austin, it's— it was a distraction from the

603

investing. And so now that I've got my team really stable and I've got

604

multiple agents on my team, I can kind of do more of what I want.

605

So yeah, we have a big $2 million development where we're kind

606

of taking advantage of some new code in Austin. And then I'm

607

going back to my roots and doing a flip in California right now. Okay. Oh,

608

California. Yeah. Near Santa Cruz with my partner Megan Archer out there.

609

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yep. We call that business Empire

610

Sisters. Still with the empire theme. So yeah. Yeah. Seems like you, I think

611

the, is it in your DNA that you just are always, you know, feel like

612

you need to be working on projects and just building your,

613

your empire? Yeah, I think so. I think I

614

do like to have multiple plates spinning,

615

which I think every entrepreneur really does at their heart. And I do

616

love to start up things, and I'm good about hiring and

617

training people to sort of come in and, and run the show, you know, so

618

I can move on to the, the next exciting thing. So yeah,

619

I don't know, I've just been blessed with bravery. You know, you have to have

620

a certain amount of optimism, and I've just learned about business

621

building through Keller Williams. It's been your gift

622

and we've had many mistakes

623

and thankfully the wins have outnumbered the failures. So we're

624

still kicking. But you gotta put the reps in for sure. Yeah, you gotta do

625

the reps. Yeah, you gotta do it. So a couple questions as we wrap up.

626

What is something you've changed your mind about recently? What is something

627

I've changed my mind about recently?

628

Well, this is gonna sound weird, but

629

my Family has had this ongoing debate about whether or not a

630

hot dog is a sandwich. And

631

I've always been a firm believer that a hot dog is

632

a sandwich. Maybe just to be contrary. Yeah.

633

But the other night my oldest son was home for Christmas

634

and they kind of all ganged up on me. So I'm kind of

635

in the hot dog is its own category right now.

636

So. I guess it's, I mean, if it's two pieces of bread and

637

meat, it's a sandwich. I mean, hamburger is a sandwich. I don't know if you

638

see a hot dog on the menu, it's not going to be with the entrees.

639

It's going to be in the sandwich section.

640

Yeah. But then it kind of extends like, is a taco sandwich?

641

Oh, okay. Not really. Or, you know, you can get, I

642

mean, we've debated it a lot. So that's a fun one. We debate it

643

endlessly, but I think I just, yeah, I just make a lot

644

of enemies when I say that a hot dog is a sandwich. So I'm just

645

going to keep my mouth shut from now on. Being brave and contrarian

646

there as well, I see. What is the most misunderstood thing about

647

you? Misunderstood thing about me? I

648

would say, I would say that I think

649

sometimes I can come across as almost like

650

too direct. And I think it's people who don't know me well can sometimes think

651

I'm almost kind of mean. And I'm

652

really not, you know, I'm really not. I am sarcastic and I think that's

653

part of it. And yeah, I think sometimes

654

people perceive my like efficiency and

655

busyness as not being warm, but I think people who know me, you know,

656

I have a deep heart. And love for people and everybody

657

that's in my world I care very deeply about. And yeah, well, that came across

658

in our time together. So the couple of days we spent together, so I can

659

definitely— I'll be vouching for you if anyone asks. Yeah. Thank

660

you. Thank you. Well, thanks so much for making time for this conversation. It was

661

nice to connect with you in person. And then I just realized, you know,

662

that I've got the platform, so let's go deeper and figure out a little bit

663

of your backstory and how you've experience success with real estate

664

and with your business and with the podcast now. And it's all

665

incredibly inspirational. So I'm really happy that you came on to share some time

666

with me. Well, thank you. And I think, you know, you're so amazing

667

about amplifying other people and their voices,

668

and I'm a big, really big fan of that. So I love what

669

you're doing here with both your podcasts. So we'll make sure all the links

670

to everything you mentioned is going to be in the show notes. Empire Building is

671

the show. Anywhere else you want to send folks to connect with you or learn

672

more? Yeah, I'm on Instagram. So I have a weird last name,

673

Papazian. It's like those comfy Papasan chairs from the '80s

674

and '90s. Remember that? The scoop ones? Yeah. So

675

yeah, I'm pretty easy to find on social @wendypapazian. And

676

I'm pretty active there and love to connect with people there too. Okay. We'll make

677

sure all those links are in the show notes. Thanks for your time, Wendy. I

678

really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Harry.