Join Janet Tonkins as she shares her inspiring journey from low self-esteem to confidence, resilience, and wealth creation. In this powerful episode, Janet emphasizes the importance of seeking God first, serving the community, and leaving a legacy of determination and giving back. She provides valuable insights into real estate investment, financial education, and the power of persistence and discipline. Janet’s story is a testament to overcoming challenges and shaping one’s destiny. Tune in to be inspired by her journey and learn how you can transform your life and create a lasting impact.

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My guest today is Janet Tonkins.

Known as a cash flow diva because she buys houses like women buy shoes, is a renowned real estate developer, investor, coach, and philanthropist.

Rising from poverty, she built a stellar reputation for excellence and integrity in real estate rentals, emphasizing her mantra, I don't give anyone anything.

I can't live in myself.

With over 37 years of experience and a portfolio of over 500 properties, she's particularly proud of her 74 unit apartment building in Paterson, New Jersey, dedicated to grandparents raising their grandchildren.

Passionate about sharing her expertise, she mentors women and children in building their own real estate empires.

Her best selling book, the projects from adversity to success, she aims to impact the lives of a million women and children and giving back $1 million.

We welcome Janet to the podcast.

Well, Janet, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing today?

Oh, I'm truly blessed and I'm doing excellent, and it's a pleasure to be here, Keith.

Well, it's good to have you on.

I'm excited to talk to you about this conversation.

I always had a passion for this, never dove into it in my life.

But when I was younger, I studied it and was like, I want to do real estate.

And then my life took a different path, but it's always been the back of mind.

So I'm excited to talk to you about this.

Okay.

And I'm excited to be talking to you about it as well.

I love to ask my guests this question.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Okay.

From grandma?

It was, first of all, it was, seek God first, his kingdom, and everything else will be added unto you, and then do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And that's how I strive to live my life.

Oh, we called it a good old golden rule.

My grandmother told me when I was growing up.

Absolutely.

That is the golden rule.

And grandma had her own holiness church, so of course, those were the things that she instilled in each of us.

That's so neat.

You know, I always think about people like yourself who God has blessed with a level of success.

But on our journey, we always run across people who serve to be role models for us, to inspire us.

Who are some of those people in your life, in your journey that you want to kind of give a shout out to and tell us about what they meant, they meant to you in your journey?

Absolutely.

First of all, my first grade teacher, Miss Caldwell, from Mary McLeod Bethune elementary School in Jacksonville, Florida.

She always pushed us.

And I grew up in segregation, of course, once upon a time when we were colored.

And of course, you know, they were members of the neighborhood as well, so they really had a keen interest in seeing that we exceed in duo.

And so she pushed me and I could read.

I was actually tutoring at the age of five years old.

And so they told my parents that they saw something special in me and so they pushed me.

Then it was my 6th grade teacher, misses Rawls from Rufus E.

Payne elementary school, who helped me to win the spelling bee for the city.

And I mean, they pushed us.

Matter of fact, they almost cheated a little bit because they gave me some of the words, but they wanted me to meet succeed so badly.

And then grandma, good old grandma.

Pensacola, Florida.

I'm from Jacksonville, Florida originally.

We moved to New Jersey when I was twelve years old.

But every summer, regardless, as soon as school was out, my grandmother, we were at grandma's house.

And you know, I always tell people, you know, that I'm the oldest of six.

And I tell her that my husband and I were the first to have our homes, but that's not true because Grandma had her own home.

She had her own store with the knee high sodas and the Coca Colas.

And they had their own church, so they had a nice piece of property.

So that's where I have to attribute a lot of my entrepreneurialism too, as well.

But loved grandma.

That was my paternal grandmother.

We weren't as close to my maternal, to my maternal, but my father's mom, who was an only child, I have to, she instilled so many things and she, the first thing that she instilled was the ability to become a Christian as well, because they had their own church.

Oh, that's so neat.

And it's so nice to be able to kind of know that those people serve to inspire you, push you to achieve things you may not have thought you could achieve on your own, but I remember those are those, those kind of people.

My first, my secret always stands out to me as one of those people who did that for me.

And I got a chance to meet her later on in life and tell her just how impactful she was in my life.

So those are neat to kind of give thanks to God for those people.

Oh, absolutely.

And that was truly awesome.

I was unable to do that for my teachers, but we always, you know, I always give God.

Thank you.

And you know what I really, when I look back, you know, I really wouldn't have grown up any other way.

I truly enjoyed my childhood in the Florida area.

There you go.

I love that.

I grew up in Louisiana myself, so I kind of know that, that southern upbringing, so.

Yep.

So I'm always curious about people like yourself, too, because as we think about your personal journey, oftentimes it gives us insight into the.

The decisions you've made and how you got where you are.

Because those personal stories tell us some of the things you overcame to get where you are, but also the inspiring story of how you are, where you are today.

Okay, so, as I just said, I originally, I was born in Jacksonville, Florida.

I'm the oldest of six.

My parents moved to Paterson, New Jersey, when I was twelve years old, as a matter of fact.

And of course, as you know, that was the migration to the north at that time for a better living.

But when I moved to New Jersey, even though I told you about my teachers and how they pushed me in southern area, it was not to be the same.

So we grew up, we moved to the Christopher Columbus projects in Patterson, New Jersey, building for apartment 15 C, where, of course, drug abuse and violence were the norm.

There were often, the elevators were often broken.

I can't tell you how many times that we had to bring groceries and laundry up 15 flights of stairs.

And so often the elevators were broken.

We almost.

I almost got raped that one of those times.

And then there was low a and in Patterson today, there is still low aing or knowing for children that look like you and I.

And even though I graduated number 57 out of 500 and John F.

Kennedy High School, I actually wanted to be a physical therapist.

But the white guidance counselor said no, that that was not possible for me.

So the only thing that we were steered to become is either nurses or school teachers.

And which is something that, you know, I really wanted to do is to become a teacher at that time.

But, you know, that was not to be done either.

I've always worked.

I started at Geno's giant at the age of 13, and I would walk 3 miles because, number one, I always.

For some reason, I loved dressing and I loved clothes.

I grew up with parents who lived from paycheck to paycheck, never owned anything, I remember.

And I worked and I saved up enough money to buy my first car at the age of 17 years old.

However, I still needed a co signer.

Lo and behold, I go to mom and daddy and I guess, you know what happened?

They could not co sign because they didn't have good credit.

Okay?

So, you know, I.

That fueled my determination to say, look, this is not something that's going to happen to me.

There has to be a better way.

So that fueled, I always had a love for reading.

So that fueled my reading from money magazine, Forbes, Inc.

Kiplinger.

And I wanted to know how other folks that didn't look like me, how are they able to make it in life?

And so, upon my reading, I discovered that 90% of the wealth, or 90% of the millionaires throughout the world, not just the United States, own their wealth or became millionaires as a result of owning real estate, are owning assets.

And I say to my students that even your McDonald's, your Burger King's, even though they, you know, they have the burgers and so forth, the real money lies in the assets that they own.

So the way to become wealthy is to own assets.

And so I say to my young women, and I have two daughters that will be 49 and 50.

They're not married.

In my church, we have medical doctors, we have gynecologists, lots of female professionals that are not married.

And so I say to them, this is one way owning assets.

And even if you don't want to own assets, you still need to start learning how to invest.

As a matter of fact, we taught our son at the age of 13, he had eight vending machines.

And then we taught him how to invest in stocks by something called dollar cost averaging.

What you do is you buy one stock directly from the company, and then you automate that, where you can buy as much or as little as you want each and every single month.

So by the time he was able to get into college, he got a partial scholarship, but he was able to pay for the balance with the money that he saved.

From the start, he was a black enterprise journal as a result of that and Tony Brown's journal in New York City as a result of him teaching that.

And then he had eight Pepsi vending machines.

What Pepsi would do is they would throw their machines away.

But then we had it.

We built relationships with a distributor, with a friend of ours, and he said him, I'll give him a vending machines because we're only going to throw them away as well.

So entrepreneurialism, owning assets and then investing.

In my church, we teach folks, and I have to say 75% of our parishioners are debt free.

We teach them that.

Okay.

As I say, the pastor, though, okay?

But once they become debt free, you can't just save your money or sit on your money.

You still have to invest that money in order for it to grow and then compound interest.

Makes a big difference in how you can live your life.

I love that.

And I love how your story went from what you could have been when you moved to New Jersey because the education told you you were limited in where you could go in life.

And I wonder how many people who are like us, who look like us, believe that limitation.

You can only be this.

You can only be that.

So talk a little bit about to us about how you encourage people to get outside of that.

I would say a bigotry of low expectation.

Now, you can only be a basketball player.

You could only be a rapper.

You could only be a nurse.

Or this.

How do you help people to see beyond what society may say or teachers may say or a counselor may say, you can be to see, there's so much more for you out there than that.

Okay, first of all, with us is we have to invest in ourselves.

We have to be willing to read and change our own mindsets.

You gotta remember, I had low self esteem, believe it or not.

And sometimes I still suffer from that.

But as a result of reading, as a result of believing and trusting, and then having that faith, what the Lord said, we can do all things with and through our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, but according to our what, according to our own beliefs.

So it takes a lot of work and digging into it, having affirmations, meditations.

You know, I can do this through my.

I believe that I am smart, I am worthy.

I deserve to succeed and live not just a good life, but a great life with and through our Lord and savior Jesus.

He, you know, we can live life abundantly and things like that.

So meditations, affirmations, and then continuously investing and reading upon yourself, and then, you know, investing in yourself, educating yourself as well.

What did Warren Buffet say?

The best thing you can do is gain knowledge and education.

And at 90 something years old, he's still reading every single day.

And then we have to do that, too.

And then surrounding ourselves with other folks that have those values or have that.

Sometimes we have to go backwards in order to go forward, to go sideways, and surround ourselves with people who are doing those things so that we have something to emulate in order for us to improve our lot in life.

So let's get into your real estate, because I'm dying to find out how you say you did it.

I ran across your information.

You said you should own at least between two to ten properties.

So tell us how you begin to break through that and see yourself doing that and accomplish that goal.

Okay, first of all, we saved up, remember I told you, we were reading.

So you got to remember, homeownership is a way, if you use it appropriately, if you use it properly, is a way to increase your net worth.

Okay.

So we decided then, okay, we're going to start saving 20%, and I'm truly blessed.

As I started Verizon, it was at that point, it was New Jersey Bell.

I started at the age of 16 years old, and I should have gone.

I did not go straight to college.

I was in love at that time.

As a matter of fact, I was supposed to marry my high school sweetheart, and we got engaged.

He went off to the service, came back, he married somebody else.

Matter of fact, he married three other people.

All three of them, plus himself, all died of AIDS.

Oh, my goodness.

So, you know, God has been with me all the way, because had I married him, I may not have even been here to talk to you this day.

So I.

I married a few years later, and I've been married 43 years now.

It'll be 44 years in June to my husband and love, a best friend and business partner as well.

But we decided, okay, so we're going to buy a first property.

But what I wanted was a single family property.

I wasn't thinking about investing.

So we met this attorney.

My girlfriend had an attorney.

Everything is relationship.

So she said, he wants to sell his property, but his nephew wants to buy, but he doesn't think his nephew can qualify for the mortgage.

So we go, we see the property.

Absolutely loved it.

He said, okay, if you like it, we'll get together next week.

We don't have to do any paperwork.

Next week comes, I don't hear from him.

Two weeks come, I don't hear from him.

Three weeks, he calls my girlfriend and said, look, we finally held the mortgage, which is one way that you can buy it.

We held the mortgage because he knew his nephew couldn't qualify.

But I have a client that has a three unit property on Broadway in 33rd street.

Ask her if she wants to take a look at it.

I said, okay, we'll take a look at it.

So there were seven rooms on the first floor, three bedrooms, seven rooms on the second floor, three bedrooms, four rooms on the third floor, two bedrooms, five finished rooms in the basement with a kitchen and an office.

Wow.

Interest rate, 9%.

Which is why I say today, don't even worry about the interest rate, 9% interest.

Okay.

We bought that one property, and today you will call this house hacking.

We bought it because we were in an urban area, we were first time home buyers.

Remember I said we saved 20% down.

We only had to put 4% down and all of our closing costs were paid.

So with that one property, our mortgage was paid and the taxes were even high.

But because it was a triplex, you know, the tenants paid that.

We refinanced that one property over five times with lower interest rates.

As the interest rates lowered, took money out.

When you take money out on a refinance, that's free money.

You don't have to pay any taxes on that.

As opposed to you flipping a house, then having to pay once you sell it, having to pay long term capital gains or short term capital gains.

Then we say, oh, wow, we love this.

So we were able to buy that very same year for additional duplexes with 10% down on each of those.

And then at that time, we were putting properties in our own name as opposed to now we put them in an LLC.

But we didn't know any of that.

Everything was trial and error.

That was the only way.

So we were risk takers.

We delved in, we dug, we learned by trial and error.

Now I'm, you know, I'm a mentor and a coach, so I'm very transparent.

I'm going to tell you the good, the bad and the ugly.

The bad and the ugly was that there was a tenant in the property on the first floor.

We had not done our due diligence.

We were told that her rent was $500.

So when we get in there, she hands me $300.

I'm saying, you know, what's this?

She said, well, that's how much I paid.

She said, here are all of my receipts and so forth.

So what we did is we lied and we told her that my mother in law was going to move in to get, get her to move out.

Okay.

She found out and she sued us.

Okay, but should we settle?

We settled for $5,000 and it was worth it in the long run.

But what I learned from that is to do my due diligence, to get everything in writing, to actually talk to a tenant.

And then going forward, I would not buy a property unless the tenants were, were out of them or less.

They were able to move out.

Okay, that's interesting.

So you said there was some good and there's some ugly and bad.

So tell us what the, those other two parts of the real estate thing we need to be aware of if we were going to delve into this, that we need to be aware of, especially in today's market, because I know there's been some changes since you first started that we should probably be aware of some definite changes.

Oh, absolutely.

Okay.

So number one, what you need to be aware of, you want to find out, is where you're going to invest in.

Is that a landlord friendly state or is it a tenant friendly state?

Because that makes a difference as to, if you have to evict a tenant, how long it's going to take for you to do, for you to do that, then you need to determine whether or not your city or your state is rent controlled.

And sometimes that goes by county by county by county.

For example, I'm in New Jersey, I'm in Atlanta, and I'm in Baltimore City and Baltimore county, all of my properties.

So I have over 100.

So in New Jersey, because my properties are in an LLC, I can't represent myself in an eviction.

I must hire an attorney.

So you have to look at that.

In Baltimore City and Baltimore county, the way that evictions are handled are totally, totally different.

In the city, it's much more stringent.

I have to first give you a ten day notice, then before I can even file for eviction.

Then after the ten day notice, I can file for a victim.

If I get the judgment for you.

And remember, I'm not, when I'm filing, that's just to put you out.

That's not to recuperate any monies from there.

Then it takes me almost 60 days before I can actually put you out.

Once I get the judgment, as opposed to the county, I, once I get the judgment, I can put you out the very next day.

What do I do with your property in the city?

I cannot put your property on the outside.

In the county, I can put the property on the outside also too.

You need to determine what are some of the environmental issues.

For example, in Baltimore City, you are liable for lead paint lawsuits because you have older inventory.

A lot of these houses have a lot of lead in it.

I don't have to worry about that in New Jersey.

I don't have to worry about that in Atlanta.

But what I have to worry about in Atlanta is mold and trees that are falling down.

So you need to know those things.

Then you have to determine whether or not, you're in the area that you're going to invest in.

For example, Baltimore is a block by block neighborhood.

So I can live on a block, which is where I live.

I live across a lake, across the street from a lake and trees and everything.

But if I go up two additional blocks, it's called the blue light district because of drug abuse and so forth.

So you need to know those things then you need to know your fair housing laws, what you can do, what you can say to tenant, and right now you cannot hold, you cannot even ask them.

You can look to see if tenants were actually in prison or not, but you can't hold that against them anymore.

You have to be careful to ask them, you know, how many, how many children, you can't ask them how many children they have.

What you have to ask them is how many people are going to live in the property, because each property, each bedroom can only hold so many.

So there's a limitation for each bedroom.

So you have to know those type of things, your fair housing laws.

Then if you're going to be renovating properties, whether or not how, whether or not you need permits and what permits and things are needed for.

So there's a lot of those things.

Then if you're going to be renting, rooming out houses, whether or not how many rooms and how many people you can put in those, and then squatters have rights.

So if a squatter takes over one of your properties, if you're leaving it vacant for that length of time, you can't just automatically put them out.

You have to actually file, you have to take them to court in order to, in order to actually move them.

And so what I think, too, and, you know, if I was a politician, really, Congress should be doing something to take that, because even if they take over the house that you live in, your primary residence, you would still have to follow the same process and taking them to court to put them out.

So these are some of the good, the bad, and they are.

And of course, if you're not managing the properties appropriately and you don't put the right tenants in there, of course they can damage your product.

They can damage your properties.

Well, that's a lot to know.

So if you were giving people advice to find out more about this, where would they go to find sources of this kind of information?

Is there like a central located source or do you guys have to do your homework?

Well, you have to do your due diligence.

In every city straight there.

Unfortunately, there is not one because each state varies.

Now, if you want to, in terms of fair housing laws.

Oh, absolutely.

So what?

It's simply easy to just Google fair housing laws, okay, because that's a federal program.

But for your states and your various cities, most of them have, they have tenant and landlord laws on, on the website.

So you can just google tenant and fair loan laws from the city or the state that you're actually in.

So I know you wrote a best selling book, the Turning Point.

Tell us about that book.

The turning point chronicles my journey from low self esteem to confidence and courage, from living in the projects to creating and building projects, and then, as we just spoke about, from building confidence and then creating wealth.

So it chronicles me all the way from my six year old talking about my grandmother to me marrying my husband, which is my number one turning point to marrying him and establishing our business.

And then my number two turning point was accepting our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, and then seeking him.

Seeking him first and then serving.

You know, I'm a servant at heart.

I'm a child of God.

I'm a servant.

And so I seek to serve him first and then serve my community and serve.

I'm also a Bible study, Bible study teacher.

I'm a mentor.

I'm also a hard money lender and a private money lender as well.

So what?

My students get comprehensive education and that as long as they qualify, I will actually loan them the money to buy their first properties.

And so I've been able to change the trajectory.

And we also hold a quarterly retreat.

And every single quarter we take folks, and it doesn't necessarily have to be in real estate.

We've taken some folks that own salon owners or restaurant owners.

And what we do is we talk about entrepreneurial, we talk about business, and of course, we include the real estate.

And we go somewhere out of the country every quarter.

So I ran across your website, and you have some phenomenal resources.

So if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more from you and take your class, where can they find you?

That there are two websites, janettonkins.com, as well as the cashflowdiva.com dot.

And as a matter of fact, I am going to be doing a free masterclass on June 1, a free three hour masterclass.

So if they, if you want to contact me@janettowncards.com I will certainly provide you with the information for the free masterclass.

Now, I ran across what one of your life goals is, but I want to ask you this so you can tell the audience, what do you want your legacy to be, first of all.

I want my legacy to be one where I'm serving my community, that I leave a legacy of resilience, persistency, determination, giving back.

And also, you know, I'm about not only giving you a fish, but teaching you how to fish.

And so, and, you know, I don't know about you, but I was never taught how to set goals and teaching our young folks.

And even from five to six years old, we have a school from our church, and I've been able to teach to five years and six years old about money, how to invest compound interest.

And it doesn't take a whole lot of money.

If you do ten to $20 a month and you start at the age of six, seven, eight years old, within 20 years, you could have a million dollars.

If you don't touch it, as I said, dollar cost average.

Or just buy a fund, okay, just do an ETF fund and never touch it, then we could have.

But I want us to be able to take care of our own community.

And so, you know, I don't want my living to be in vain, you know, and I have that respect, responsibility, that, you know, I've been blessed, and therefore I have to be a blessing to others.

And so that's what I want my legacy to be.

That's great.

As we wrap up, Jan, I want you to kind of summarize for our audience some key takeaways you want our people to take away from our conversation today.

Okay.

Number one, first of all, and we didn't talk about, but there's always a way, okay?

And for us, we have to be persistent.

We have to be determined.

We have to be focused, organized, and disciplined, and never, ever, ever give up.

Okay?

Then if this is something that we want to get into, it's important that we always do our due diligence.

Okay?

And first of all, we need to determine if this is something that we truly want, because this is not a get rich quick scheme.

You get rich, you can get rich, but it's over the long term.

And then when we seek to serve, when we make that our first choice, remember, everything else that we do will come seek God first, and everything else will be added unto us.

We truly will get that back.

So if it's something that you want to do, and remember, if you think about it, anything that you really wanted to do, you did whatever you could to do it, and you've accomplished those goals.

So the other thing is, we cannot allow our environment to determine our destinations with and through God.

We can be the architect of our own destiny.

Well, Janet, thank you so much for this inspiring conversation.

I pray people look you up and learn from you because like you said, we can shape our destiny.

And I think one of the things I've always tried to do in this podcast too, for my community, and every community really is to realize that you can pass down something to the next generation.

And it's really important for us to think that way.

What can I leave to my kids and my grandkids that will get them set up so they can be successful in this world as well?

So besides leaving with a faith that comes, that really undergirds all that we do, but setting them up to be successful, to be able to navigate through the difficult times that the world has.

Oh, absolutely.

And we need to be able to take care of our own.

And remember, we used to be able to do that.

So when we look at other nationalities, they do it.

Okay, they all, as a family, they do it.

And we used to be able to do that.

So we need to actually get back to that, get back to the family.

Dig a ditch.

Dig a well.

What does proverbs three say?

Okay, we need to be able to leave our children, our children, something.

And so I will leave you.

I will leave you with that.

Thank you so much, Annie, you have a blessed day.

And thank you so much for what you do.

And thank you.

Thank you for having me.

And you continue to become a bridge builder as well.

So I'm truly blessed and honored that you would have me in your program.

Thank you.