Private Lending Can Close the Income Gap
On this episode of Next Level American Dream Women's Series, Abigail is joined by Alex Breshears. Alex has been a military spouse for the past 20 years, noticed how the military community is underemployed, found a career path on private lending, and now educates on how to bridge the income gap for the community and women. Today, she touches on her background in private lending, how she transitioned from teaching to also being involved in real estate, and some struggles she's found being a women in STEM and RE.
Key Topics
How did you go from chemistry to real estate?
Something I noticed is you're helping military spouses, what inspired that audience?
What are some challenges you have face being a woman in real estate?
Connect with Alex Breshears:
Facebook Group: Private Lending Lessons
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
private lending, military spouse, business, real estate, multifamily, investors, women, passive investing, American Dream, absolutely, career, people, process, wealth gap, male, years, landlord, job, investing, property manager
SPEAKERS
Abigail Thomson, Alex Breshears
Abigail Thomson 00:01
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast brought to you by Thomson Multifamily Group. Your hosts, Abigail and Sean, will discuss how you can take your American Dream to the next level through real estate investing, business practices, and personal development. Join us as we share our experiences as a father daughter duo who are trying to accomplish their goal of financial freedom. We hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American Dream. Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream. Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Women's Series in celebration of Women's History Month. We have an amazing guest for you today, but first, please make sure you've subscribed if you haven't already. We love getting your feedback through likes, comments, ratings, and reviews. Today I sat down with Alex Breashears. Alex has been a military spouse for the past 20 years and noticed how the military community is underemployed, found a career path on private lending, and now she educates on how to bridge the income gap for the community and women. Today, she touches on her background in private lending, and how she transitioned from teaching to also being involved in real estate and some of her struggle she's found being a woman in STEM, and real estate. If you found any value from today's episode, please share it with a friend and help us grow. For more information on our sponsor, visit thomsonmultifamilygroup.com to start taking your American Dream to the next level through passive investing. Hi, Alex, how are you today?
Alex Breshears 01:34
I'm doing great. How are you?
Abigail Thomson 01:36
I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today on the next level American Dream podcast and for my women series. I'm really excited about having you on today. So let's get started. So first, can you tell me and your audience about your background?
Alex Breshears 01:54
Absolutely. So first and foremost, I'm a military spouse, I've been married to the military for the last 20 years. I'm currently spending my 19th address and 20 years. And most people might be asking, you know, how does that relate to real estate, it has everything to do with real estate. Because as a military spouse, we are not stationed anywhere for a very long period of time. I mean, I've been literally all over the country back and forth multiple times, in the last 20 years. Some places we only live six months, three months, nine months, the longest I've ever lived anywhere in the last 20 years is 22 months. And for you and I'm sure most of your listeners realize real estate is not a very fast moving process. You know, even if you get something under contract, you're generally under escrow for 30 days, maybe 60 days, the way lending is right now. So the idea of remote investing is actually, you know, more ubiquitous now than it was before 2020. But you know, 20 years ago, the idea of just having a cell phone always at the ready was still wasn't part of kind of modern day society, much less a smartphone that you could Google walk down a street into a city you've never been in. So the reason I bring all that up is it really limited our options from a practical standpoint for real estate investing, which is how we kind of got into private lending at for our way of investing in real estate. Because the idea of doing a fix and flip from 2000 miles away was never appealing. We were a long distance landlord for short period of time realized exactly how much we hated being a landlord, we don't have children. And the large reason we don't have children is because we don't want to babysit other human beings. And for anybody who's a landlord, you understand that's a big part of your job. Even if you have a property manager, you're babysitting the property manager A lot of times, which is what we were doing. So not that it's not a great way to invest. I just think it's not a way that works for our skill set our desires, or really our goals as much as private lending did.
Abigail Thomson 03:46
Yeah, absolutely. That's really, really interesting that you guys started off thinking, oh, let's try and do this virtual fixin flip and realized that wasn't for you. What are some of the things that you noticed other than essentially babysitting your property manager, even your tenants that kind of deterred you from that avenue of real estate?
Alex Breshears 04:08
Absolutely. So when I first got involved in real estate, you know, went to a local Ria, you know, years ago, and I happened to get approached by someone who was a hard money lender at the time. And he's like, oh, you're in college, you know, I'm actually a chemistry professor is my normal w two job. So he's like, Oh, you must be good with you know, with numbers and math. I'm like, Yeah, not too bad. And he was kind of explaining what what the hard money loan broker process look like, what the job was, and he did the favorite sprays. every college student likes to hear his flexible hours. So you know, I was like, okay, sure, let's let's do that. Let's give that a try. It was some extra money play money while you're in college and undergrad. And again, back 20 years ago, fax machines are still a thing. I actually went out into the field with a pager. You know, it just it was very, you're actually going out with the loan applications to the active investors job site and, you know, taking a look at the scope of work and whatnot. So it was very manually intensive, but it was basically a crash course and active investing. But I also got the bonus of kind of seeing the back office side of it, because since I worked for this one, he turned out to really be more of a private money lender, when I worked for him, I did a lot of the back office stuff. So I was the person, you know, wiring funds to the closing attorney, or actually the courier taking the check to the closing attorney. And I was also the person processing the mortgage payments, when they were coming in those, you know, every fix and flipper knows those IO payments started to hurt after a little while. So I was the person literally seeing the cash flow through the entire deal without having to deal with a contractor or, you know, ordering supplies and all this other stuff. And the one kind of recurring theme I always noticed was these active investors, landlords specifically, it was basically there was this massive outlay of cash, you know, to get the property up and running, get a quality tenant in there. And then you basically kept your fingers crossed for 30 days that nothing broke. And then you could hopefully, maybe collect 150 $200, you know, that month, and then you start the whole process over again on the first. So no matter what happened, if your contractors three weeks behind, or three months behind, you still had to make that payment, if the tenant moved in, and then hasn't paid rent, since you still had to make the payment. And like I said, since I was processing a lot of those payments, and I was seeing him, you know, bank, you know, $700.20 $700 a month, a lot of that purely interest only. And I was like, and he's out on the golf course, you know, he's not babysitting contractors and ordering supplies and picking, you know, going on his eighth trip to Lowe's to repair something. And I was like, boom, there might be something to this, you know. So that's kind of how I got started, I got to I got the really fortunate opportunity to kind of see both sides of the table as far as real estate investing goes really early on.
Abigail Thomson 06:43
Yeah, that's really cool. To get that perspective, I, I have the other opposite perspective, I see everything that the investor does. And I wish I had the view of that other piece of it, because he's kind of like that middleman of like, it's not quite the investor, not quite the one actually dealing with all the stuff. So that's really awesome becuase I'm a college student now. And I'm in the investing side. And I wish I had that other perspective. That's really cool. But you touched on that your normal w two job is a chemistry professor. Where did that come in? And how does that work with real estate?
Alex Breshears 07:25
So, I tell people all the time that real estate and chemistry are the same thing. And people would maybe Wait, what yeah, it actually really is. So the type of chemistry that I went for is called organic chemistry. So producing organic molecules like drugs, that's actually at my graduate degrees is producing, you know, different chemicals on purpose for drug development. Yeah, well, in that process, it's literally a process of working backwards. So we know what the target molecule needs to look like. We know what chemicals we have on hand, what equipment, what processes we could kind of harness to get to those different things. It's not really like a Lego set, you can't just like pull out a hydrogen and put in a carbon and say, Okay, here it is. So it's basically, you know, you know what the end result is just like in real estate, if you're going to do a fix and flip, you know, that this property needs to be, you know, renovated, you know, need to do brand new bathrooms, brand new kitchens, whatever, here's what your ARV is going to be. And then you start working backwards finding contractors, tile vendors, all those things. And then you kind of it's a basic process, you know, what a lot of investors do is maximum allowable offer your ends up being, you know, 70%, minus whatever the rehab is, it's the exact same process when you're doing organic synthesis is you know, what the target is, you know, what your quote unquote supplies and costs are, you just need to back that process up and figure out what can I start with? That's going to give me a reasonable yield to get that final product.
Abigail Thomson 08:46
I would have never thought it in that way. Because I'm sitting here thinking, I've been in chemistry classes, how do those two things relate in any way possible, but thinking of like, just how the process of how you have to approach both of those things is very, very similar. Like you said, That's really cool. You also mentioned you are a military spouse. And that's kind of something that you focus on in your business on top of that, because I feel like you can relate to that audience. How does that how has that been in your business? What does that look like for you? Things like that? Absolutely.
Alex Breshears 09:19
So, one of the major problems with military spouse is that we have been underemployed or unemployed, historically high levels even before COVID. Before COVID. We're running about 25% unemployment even higher for underemployment. So it's you know, when you live somewhere three months, six months, it doesn't matter how much education you have, or what school you went to, an employer may not necessarily want to take the chance on someone, even if they're going to be there a year, they most likely don't want to put all that resources and time into training. Someone's only going to be there a year. So you end up not really being able to kind of pursue a cohesive career. There are spouses out there that are able to do that in some fashion. You know, maybe they're teachers, maybe they're nurses, but for all A lot of us, you know, if we are not in one of those fields that can kind of be, you know transportable, you really end up suffering career wise. Because if you're only going to be somewhere nine months, and you just want a job for something to do, because you don't know anybody in town, you kind of take the first job that's offered to you. And you know, it's something that's actually been great for me because it's offered me basically a life, a different life in every place I've ever been stationed. Yeah, but at the same time, you watch your spouse kind of grow in their career, their earning potential they have, you know, with the military, every time they transfer somewhere, they get a little plaque about how awesome they are. So we have this giant growing I love me wall in our house of all the places my spouse has been stationed all the commands all the coins, and you're just kind of like, yep, there's little ob not doing anything productive with my life is what you end up feeling like at least what I end up feeling like. So when I started doing private lending, I thought there's got to be something that I can do that will help others military spouses feel that level of empowerment, because a lot of military spouses they go to start their own job or their own career, or even their own business. It's a lot of times for the business side of it is that MLM kind of, you know, Sensi candles, Tupperware, perfume, Lululemon all those things. And, you know, yeah, it's a business, but it's not a business for you. I mean, it's, it's a lot of times, it's a business for whoever Lula Vaughn is. So I wanted to portray an ability to build a business that was going to be portable, that was going to kind of bridge that wealth gap that ends up happening, because if you if you think about men and women, everybody talks about the income gap, you know, women are traditionally earning about 70% of what men are, right? But we compound that problem. By we are earning less, we are living longer, and we tend not to have the disposable income to invest. So our income gap becomes a wealth Canyon, and I was trying to find a way like there's got to be an audience that would be interested in learning how to close that wealth gap. So you know, they can have a career, if they chose to have a career, they could build a business that would go anywhere. So you know, wherever my spouse get stationed, as long as I have electricity, and internet, which I guarantee you I'm not living anywhere, I don't have those two things, I can do this business from anywhere. So that was really, you know, the, the impetus for starting the business as a whole. But one of the things I do for my loans is every borrower when they go to, you know, take out the money, they actually signed on the dotted line that they are going to hire at least one active duty service member, one veteran, and one military spouse as part of the renovation project. So I don't care what they do in that, in that capacity, I don't care if you hire a military spouse to be the stager, the realtor, you know, I don't care. But as long as you are, you know, supporting those communities, supporting veteran businesses, maybe supporting other active duty military, that's what I'm going to do. So it's obviously very small, because I'm not doing hundreds and hundreds of loans in my local market. But I know for the loans that I am putting out there that they are signed on the dotted line that they are going to help that community in that fashion by providing jobs.
Abigail Thomson 12:56
Wow, you said a bunch of things that I found extremely powerful one was what you've just mentioned, in that you're actively working towards helping the community that is just overwhelmingly under employed, like you said, and I think that you even in a small way, you're still helping at least three people each time. And I love that was incredible. I also found super powerful that you called it a wealth, Canyon, because so many people, especially when it comes to looking at that wealth gap, and the income gap between men and women, we just look at paycheck, we don't look at investments, we don't look at what that looks like in so many other facets of Finance. And honestly, I hadn't even thought of those things up until now when you brought them up. And I think that's so important. And I love that you're really working towards taking that out of the equation. And I absolutely love that.
Alex Breshears 13:58
I would say it really speaks to especially women investors. Because I mean, we're kind of at a perfect storm for a financial problem, we live longer, we usually end up bearing the majority of the childcare costs, if we have children, you know, we don't have the income coming in, we don't have the disposable income. So our savings rate is not as high. So it ends up being a huge problem later in life. You know, especially if you've gone through a divorce, you know, if your spouse dies early, you know, you end up in a position where you know, you're 40 or 50, or maybe even 60 you don't have a career to kind of fall back on for that income level. And it really causes problems later in life that I think a lot of maybe younger female investors in their 20s and 30s, where you still kind of think you're, you know, invincible, you're gonna live forever. You don't worry about being old. And then you think, oh, wow, this is a major thing I didn't see coming.
Abigail Thomson 14:45
Yeah, no, for sure. And I think it's really interesting that you point out how you may be a stay at home mom, and then you have no career to fall back on if something happens with your spouse or you get divorced or things like that. And then you also lose Most in divorces or whatever it may be, most courts are things like that favor the woman to take care of the children. And they're now taking on a burden of not having a career to fall back on and having to take care of her kids. And that's, that can be a really big financial burden that most women don't even see coming. And I think that's really amazing that you're educating, especially military spouses on things like that. And I absolutely find that so inspiring, but something else that you have been talking through, and it isn't necessarily a direct correlation, but military spouses, you guys are traveling, and all you need is Internet, and electricity. And I think that's exactly why I went into real estate investing is all I need is internet and electricity. And I can do whatever I want. And I think that's really empowering about entrepreneurship.
Alex Breshears 15:59
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Especially in the digital age. You know, I could, I can talk to I had a conversation with someone in France yesterday, you know, I had a conversation with someone in Australia last week, they both invest in the US. But you know, they're, you know, five to eight timezones away from where I am. I mean, it's just, it's amazing what, what's now possible, that wasn't possible 20 years ago.
Abigail Thomson 16:20
I think that's really, really cool because I'm able to meet with you. Even a couple years ago, this probably wouldn't be as much of a reality as it is right now, which I think is awesome. So, moving on to a little bit of a newer topic. But now I want to kind of go into you and yourself and your experiences being a woman in so many different facets of our world that are very male dominated? What are some of the struggles that you found? And how did you combat those? And do you find yourself needing to take on more masculine qualities to be able to compete in those areas?
Alex Breshears 16:57
Yeah, mine is kind of doubly so because the STEM in general tends to be very male dominated. So when I was in grad school, one of the grad programs that I was in, you know, you're working with what they call principal investigators, basically trying to figure out which lab you want to join which project you want to work on. And I was in a class with a principal investigator that I really liked the class as a biochem. class. And I really liked his research. So I just sent him an email and said, Hey, I'd love to set up a time to talk to you about joining your lab, he set up the time, I showed up at the requisite time setting this little chair outside his office, and he's like, What are you here for? And I'm like, I have a meeting with you. And he's like, No, you don't. I'm like, Yeah, I got an email says, I'm supposed to be here. And he's like, What's your name? And I told him my name. He's like, Oh, no, you can't join my lab. And there was no explanation, no, nothing. And then I went to the, you know, I went to somebody else, another faculty member, and I explained what happened. He says, Oh, it's because you're a woman. He doesn't allow women to join his lab. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me? Well, because my name is Alex. That's obviously you know, what I go by, he just made the automatic assumption I was male. And then when he saw me in the hallway, realized the mistake he had made, and he said, No, I can't join that lab. And that since he's a tenured professor, he can kind of do whatever he wants. So I mean, that's, that's, I don't want to say it's rampant. But it's definitely a consideration. What I see a lot in real estate, if you know, when we are able to go back in person and have events, it's traditionally not 5050. In the room, it's not going to be 50%, women are 50%. Male, for the women that are in the room, they tend to be in more of a support role. So they're going to be the loan processor, not the lender, they're going to be the realtor, they're not going to be the owner, you know, they're going to be a property manager, they're not going to be the owner, you know, they don't tend to kind of take that ownership role, again, making those strides to kind of close that wealth Canyon, they're kind of an ancillary background in the periphery positions. Yeah, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, they maybe have a huge stock portfolio, I'm not being able to see but just, you know, looking at a Ria event, you know, that's one of the things I noticed, it's usually about, you know, 30% women 70% male, and of those 30% women, I would say maybe one in three actually owns investment property, the rest are there in some sort of support role. Yeah. And I wouldn't necessarily say taking on male attributes and female attributes because I don't necessarily like to think of people being held to those labels, you know, this is a masculine qualities as a feminine quality. It's just a matter of how you do business. So for me, as an active investor, it drove me crazy. I'm not gonna I'm not I just don't have the personality to put up a bandit sign on the side of the road will buy a house in any condition, here's my phone number and then have distressed callers you know, calling me all hours at night to sell me their house. That's just not my personality. Now, whether you consider that a masculine or feminine quality, I don't, I don't, you know, it doesn't really matter, but that's just not what I'm out for. So I would say it's really a matter of almost lifestyle design. You know, what are you looking to get out of real estate investing and what are you comfortable doing? And what are you not comfortable doing and Kind of establishing with what you're uncomfortable doing. Why are you uncomfortable doing it? There might be, you know, I'm not going to go into D neighborhoods and go walk around, look at scopes of work as a lender. Like, that's just, that's I'm just not doing that I'm not comfortable doing that, for my own safety. Is there a six foot four borrower that's, you know, who were in the Marines, that's happy to invest in those kind of neighborhoods? Sure. Because he's six foot four, and he's a Marine, nobody's going near him. So it's just a matter of figuring out like, you know, your strengths or weaknesses? And how does that fit into your lifestyle?
Abigail Thomson 20:32
Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. Have you found any, like, experiences that you've had, specifically, where you feel like you've been put in real estate specifically put in situations where like, Why Why am I put in that much like your professor with chemistry? Have you seen any of that happening in real estate with you?
Alex Breshears 20:51
I wouldn't say as blatant as that particular one. Again, I'm kind of in a funny situation where I have a male name, you know, so people will, you know, in the zoom age people, hey, what's your email, and I'll send an email, and we'll set up a time a calendly. Link, it's all kind of very impersonal. And then when you jump on a zoom call, if you see this, as opposed to, you know, something else you're expecting of, I'm definitely surprised a person or two, you know, jumping on a zoom call, and you know, or they'll send me a quick, you know, message Hey, dude, I'd love to connect with you. Awesome, dude. And I'll send them my calendly. Like, just like, if that's how they want to play the game. That's how they want I mean, there's nothing, it's nothing against them. I don't hold it against them. It's everybody's walking into every conversation with a preconceived notion. So you know, so if they are, if their experience and their past history, is Alex's a male, then fantastic, then that's fine. I'm just going to show them through there, they're going to get a new experience with me that Alex is not always a male.
Abigail Thomson 21:47
That's awesome. How have you seen any benefits in all of your industries as being a woman that has helped you I talked to a woman a couple weeks ago about how she uses that a lot of things as a competitive advantage. And I think that's really interesting. Have you seen things like that in your businesses and in your career?
Alex Breshears 22:07
Absolutely, I would say women tend to be in my experience, much more collaborative, that we don't have that constant, go, go, go, Hustle, Hustle, Hustle, beat somebody else to the deal. And when you're working on the passive side, or even in the multifamily space, you know, as a syndicator, operator, whatever it is, it's very much as you you know, you can't do it alone. So we don't have that kind of pride factor getting in the way that I can figure this all out. And I can negotiate with a contractor which you don't have the need to because there might be someone else on the team that knows how to do that possibly enjoys doing that. So I think it's it speaks really well for women that in this space on the passive side and the multifamily side, the syndication side, because it's so collaborative, I think we flourish really well here. Because we have that kind of outreach, that kind of naturally, like carry nature, we want to build relationships with people, we want to help other people. And that tends to be what that market space looks like in the passive side, you know, syndication side, multifamily side. Absolutely.
Abigail Thomson 23:05
I've noticed so many women excelling in the multifamily side, because we do multifamily, and I am usually the one that my whole team turns to Oh, we need to build a relationship with this investor or this broker. avi what what do you say? What do you What should we do? And I'm like, Oh, well, here you go. And I think that's really powerful. And something that really allows women to achieve is we can be more collaborative, like you said, and I really love the way you put that. Okay, so my final question for you is, what is your American Dream? And how are you using your steps in your career to take it to a new level?
Alex Breshears 23:45
My American Dream is definitely geographical freedom. The last 20 years we have spent living at least one timezone apart from the vast majority of my family and my spouse's family. We you know, we don't have kids, but we have nieces and nephews, we love being the finance and athon uncle. But we don't get to see them very frequently, especially now with COVID travels next to impossible. So we would like to have that geographical freedom where if we want to get in the RV and spend a month in Kansas, we can do that because we have electricity and internet access in Kansas, you know, if we want to if we want to have them, you know, we bought a second home I right outside Orlando, Florida, because we like to do rundisney events and we'd love Disney in general are one of those people. Um, you know, we can, we can invite the oldest one is 10, the youngest one is eight months. So you figure they're right in that perfect what we call Disney age where they love everything Disney related. So yeah, come spend time with your fun aunt and uncle in Orlando, and we'll take you to the parks and we'll take you to Disney World. So having that geographical freedom is very, very important to us. And that's really what kind of pushed, you know, the need to do passive investing was because we didn't have a home base that we were constantly moving. So when we kind of designed our life, we inadvertently ended up designing our retirement ability as well because we don't have that whole to have Particular geographical place, we can continue that right on to his his retirement when he does decide to separate from the service.
Abigail Thomson 25:06
That's amazing. I love that. And that's one of my, my dreams as well is to be able to just go wherever I'm about to graduate college, and I have this wonderful gift of just saying, I don't know where I'm going to be in. That's okay. And I like that. So finally, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they felt connected to what you said or anything that you're doing in your business?
Alex Breshears 25:31
Yes, my I have a Facebook group. It's called, Private Lending Lessons. And in that we offer a lot of it's just purely educational. There's no like courses to buy or anything, but it's purely networking and education based. And it focuses on private lending and passive investing and things like syndications, you know, whether it's multifamily industrial space, you know, whatever it happens to be, and I'm particularly proud of that group, because little more than half of the group is actually female. So, you know, those are people that are coming forward saying, This is what I want to learn, this is how I want to learn to invest. So if they, if they want to go and join the group, you know, feel free to join the group, and I'm all over that group in there. I'm also on LinkedIn. So it's just Alex, my personal mantra on, you'll be able to find it because my link is there. But it's, I invest passively. So I can live actively. And that's kind of my guiding principle for life. So I'm on LinkedIn, you'll be able to find me on LinkedIn. And then my website is infiniteroadinvestments.com. And there's a little download that I made about a 30 page Ebook that talks about the process of private lending. So if there's any, you know, women or anybody that feels they want to get started in private lending, maybe they're an active investor that doesn't know how to really kind of partner up with a private lender, it really talks about the whole process of private lending from start to finish.
Abigail Thomson 26:50
That's amazing. I'm going to go have to download that myself, because I'd love to learn that space. That sounds really interesting. And I've just gotten to talk to you about it just very briefly. And I think it's really something that I should have that knowledge on. So I'm very excited about that. And I will make sure to put all of those links in our descriptions of everything so that people can get in touch with you pretty easily. But Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. This is an incredible conversation, you talked about some really powerful stuff and how you're actively working towards helping people in the military space, how chemistry it has kind of altered your thinking and how that relates to real estate, which I think is amazing. And then how you're using your educational platform to help bridge that wealth canyon for women, which I absolutely loved that term. And I love your slogan of being able to invest passively to live actively. That's incredible. But thank you again. I really appreciate having you on today.
Alex Breshears 27:47
Yes, thank you! Yeah, it was so much fun. I had a blast. I'm so glad.
Abigail Thomson 27:52
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level American Dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, want to contact the team directly, or are interested in passively investing and being a part of our deal room. Head over to our website at www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com. Before you go, please leave a review! Your comments help us create more episodes for you to enjoy.