Study Session with a REI Coach
On this episode of Next Level American Dream, Abigail and Sean are joined by Stacy Rossetti. Stacy is an Investor Coach, a long time Real Estate Investor, and recently transitioned into self-storage and commercial properties. During the episode, she explains her knowledge as a Real Estate Investor Coach and highlights some major hurdles associated with being a Real Estate Investor.
Key Topics
How she became a real estate investor educator
How having a child changes your business
Why Self-Storage?
The major hurdles of being a REI
Connect with Stacy Rossetti:
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
delegating, storage facilities, business, people, deal, investors, passive income, American Dream, passive, facilities, husband, started, credibility, lenders, storage, active investor, find, systematizing, lend, property
SPEAKERS
Abigail Thomson, Stacy Rossetti
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 our 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 Podcast. We have a wonderful guest for you today, but first, please make sure you've subscribed, if you haven't already. We also love getting your feedback through likes, comments, ratings, and reviews. Today, I had a conversation with Stacy Rossetti. Stacy is an investor coach, a longtime real estate investor, and recently transitioned into self-storage and commercial properties. During the episode, she talks about her knowledge as a coach and highlights some hurdles associated with being an active real estate investor. If you found any value from today's episode, then 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, Stacy, how are you?
Stacy Rossetti 01:22
I'm good. Thank you!
Abigail Thomson 01:24
Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for joining me today on our podcast. I'm so excited to have you, but first, can you tell me a little bit about your career background?
Stacy Rossetti 01:33
Sure. Yes. Thank you so much for letting me come hang out. Yes. I'm Stacy Rossetti, and I have been investing in real estate for the last 10 years. I've been teaching people how to invest in real estate as well, too.
Abigail Thomson 01:48
That's really cool. What got you started in wanting to be an educator in the field?
Stacy Rossetti 01:55
You know, I'm the type of person that when I figure out something that works, I just want to share it with the world. So, instead of keeping it to myself, I just kind of like I'm an open book, and I just kind of share it with everybody.
Abigail Thomson 02:06
I love that. That's really great. What are you teaching? What field of real estate are you investing in yourself? What do you share with everybody else?
Stacy Rossetti 02:16
So, you know, back in the day, when I first got started, I was wholesaling and rehabbing. And so then I was teaching people basically how to actually my focus was systematizing your rehabs. So really how to like how to become cookie cutter essentially, is what I taught back in the day. I no longer do rehabs. I focus on self-storage. And that's what we my husband we do now is just buy storage facilities. And I teach people how to invest in self-storage.
Abigail Thomson 02:43
That's really cool. What made you want to transition from fix 'n flips and rehabs into Self-Storage?
Stacy Rossetti 02:50
Actually, I got pregnant. So, I had 15 rehabs at the time when I got pregnant. And then like, in my mind, I was just thinking like, how am I going to do 15 rehabs and have this little tiny baby, there's just like, no way, you know, and so I just told my husband, I was like, that's it, we're done. Like, I need to figure out passive income, and I want to just stay home and just be with my daughter. So that kind of put us on the pathway of just trying to figure out which nice we wanted to get into. And luckily, a self-storage facility fell into our lap. So, that's kind of just what got us onto that path.
Abigail Thomson 03:27
That's a great, just lucky moment of being able to just say, Oh, here we go. Passive Income could be self-storage. That's really awesome. I love how you mentioned you work with your husband, is he part of your business as well?
Stacy Rossetti 03:40
Yeah, so I so basically, the way our business is now is we have an acquisitions person that like finds all of our facilities for us. And then I work on funding them, right. So I'm the I'm the Money Magnet, I'm the one that goes out and finds the money. And then he my husband, he runs them is what he does. So it's fine. So basically, what I teach my students is like finding them funding them and running them. And the goal is essentially to just you know, delegate all that off. But we were in the first part, we're delegating the acquisitions off, I do. I do the financing, and then my husband runs them is what he does.
Abigail Thomson 04:15
That's really awesome. That's a great team. You mentioned you do you're the Rainmaker, I like to call it that's what we call it in our business. Yes, yeah. But that's really interesting that your focus is to transition your own business into passive income, but you're also trying to find your own passive income. How does that really work for you guys in in your business?
Stacy Rossetti 04:38
Yeah. Essentially, what I always talk about is that like, if you want to get into Self Storage, investing or any passive income and passive wealth and build passive wealth, like you should really make it passive. Yeah, right. You know, I'm saying so it's like you don't want to like especially like I buy, I buy like storage facilities from owners where they just get up every day and they just go work. Their storage facility, you know, or you know, and like my husband and I, in fact, we haven't even we don't even go to our storage facilities. It's completely passive. I mean, you know, we get that we get the payments every single month, but we just we work on really trying to make them automated and systematized.
Abigail Thomson 05:17
That's awesome. That's really great processes and procedures are the key to any entrepreneurship and business. I wholeheartedly believe that.
Stacy Rossetti 05:26
Yeah, I know, I'm like my Luckily, my husband as well, too. We're both like super automated systematize, like very technical type of people. So trying to make it as hands off as we possibly can, is the best part. And the truth is, honestly, is that there's a there, you really just get us you get a software, you get a property management software, and that property management software just kind of manages everything. And you know, you know, I always tell everybody is like, you know, the cheaper the software than the less it's less automated it is, right? So you want to kind of go for like, you know, a little bit more expensive one, one that's really nice. It's got all the bells and whistles, and then you can utilize everything that best software offers. And then when you utilize that, then you can really automate most of your business. And that's kind of what we do.
Abigail Thomson 06:08
Absolutely. So we're talking a lot about how real estate investing can be almost seemingly easy. But what are some, like major hurdles you found in getting into real estate investing as an active investor?
Stacy Rossetti 06:22
Well, I mean, in the very beginning, it's really just getting your first your first deal done is always the hardest. Yeah, and I and I tell everybody you have to be you have to be out there, you have to be marketing and looking for deals, if you're not, you're not looking, then you're never going to get something right. And we you know, and if you don't and like if I find if you find yourself, like not doing that, essentially, for me personally, when I find myself not doing something where I'm like, I really don't want to do that, that's a surefire sign to me that I need to be delegating it to somebody else, right? automating or getting it out of my mind at one of my priorities, and just getting somebody else to do it. And having them manage that. So I've gotten really good at delegating anything that I don't want to do, I just delegated to somebody else. And I think this is kind of the key to I think all entrepreneurs being successful is, is like I said, systematizing and systematizing, everything that you know that you possibly can so that you don't you can really truly make it passive income and then delegating as much as you possibly can to somebody else. And that's I think that's the hardest part of being, you know, a business owner is just letting like relinquishing that control, and letting like letting go of the of these tasks that you know, you think you can always do better. My husband and I always have this discussion, too. I always say, even though somebody does it does it differently, doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just different. You know, you just got to have that in your mindset. And, and then also another, I think a huge hurdle that a lot of investors don't understand is that you have to have credibility in this business. Especially if you want to scale up and you want to do a lot of deals, you have to have credibility. So what are you doing right now focusing on trying to build credibility so that you can, you know, find more contractors or find more money or, you know, or whatever you need to do to grow your business? What's what is your credibility. So, I always say that three biggest hurdles are systematizing, your business, delegating what you don't want to do off and then building that credibility, so that you can scale your business up.
Abigail Thomson 08:20
So, I'm going to talk about number two really quickly, because I am learning that very much. So in my business right now. I'm young, and I work with a lot of people here. I'm a college student, and I hired some of my college friends to help me do my business. And it changed my life, I was the one doing everything. And I still to this day struggle with the, oh, I could do this better, but they're doing it and it's getting done. And I in our business, we have this motto of like, if it's done, it's out there, now revise it, and you can build on it. But you can't if you're always like saying that you need to be perfect in a certain realm. It's never going to happen. So delegating has been a major in my business right now. So I love that you said that.
Stacy Rossetti 09:10
Yeah, I completely agree. And my coach tells me this too, as well. He says, you don't have to get a perfect, you just have to get it going. Yeah. Always revise like you said, always revise. And that's what you're doing, essentially, you know, I mean, anything that I do, you get it out into the world, and you're like, Oh, I need to tweak this and do this and change this.
Abigail Thomson 09:28
I think that's definitely a very big motto for a lot of entrepreneurs is just it at least it's out there. And now you can fix it if you need to, or tweak it however. Now I want to move on to your third one, which is credibility. So I think it's really interesting that you mentioned credibility, because that's a major, major piece in gaining relationships throughout real estate. But if you've never had your toe in real estate, how do you recommend that people gain that credibility to begin with? Would you recommend it to people passive investing in an already active investor or investor or syndicator? Or would you recommend a different way of doing that?
Stacy Rossetti 10:10
That is one way that you can do it definitely partnering or figuring out a way that you can, you know, get your name out there. Because I mean, like I said, the first deal is always the hardest, you know, so, you know, do it, you know, getting out there, maybe partnering or work with somebody else's is, is key. But what I always what I always say is you, I mean, you have a platform, you have like, a gazillion platforms out there right now where you can really, truly build credibility. I mean, that's social media. And I think a lot of investors do not do not utilize social media. And it's probably the most powerful, you know, way to get your name out there and build credit credibility that you can I mean, you know, and so it doesn't really matter which platform that you're on, you just pick the one platform that you're usually on. And then you really, what you do is when you're going out and looking for deals, whether it's storage facilities, or rental properties, or whatever you're trying to do, you need to be like posting that on social media, he would say like, you know, I always in the very beginning, I always went out to houses, and I would just take a picture of myself in the hat and in front of the house, or take a picture of the house, even if I was buying it or not buying it, I still took a picture and posted it out. And I'll be like, Hey, I'm thinking about buying this, you know, this house, you know, What color should I paint the door, now, and then you just get like, all these people like red, blue, or whatever, you know, something like this. And that is like a sure that's a sure way of really starting to build credibility, because what you're doing, especially with social media, is you're planting the seed, as I like to say you're planting the seed, and you're just, you're just making people become aware of what you're doing. And so if you're not utilizing social media and putting yourself out there, and just, it doesn't have to be extravagant or anything like that. But just like when you're going out to look at any type of property, everybody in the world needs to know that you're doing that somehow, either you post a picture of the property without you in it. Or if you want put yourself in it, then you put yourself in it as well, too, you know, but yeah, this is what I tell my this is what I tell my students is just put yourself out there on any platform that you're on, or all of the platforms, I really like Instagram, because like you can use, you can syndicate to Facebook, right from Instagram, you know, that kind of stuff is really is really good too, as you just have one post, and that goes out there as well, too. So something like that would be, I think, a great first step in building credibility.
Abigail Thomson 12:34
That's really interesting. I like how you brought in social media, because I think a lot of people, like you said, Forget about that key piece, and it can really alter what your business is doing. And I want to actually bring that into your business. Are you seeing that you're finding either deals or investors through your actions on social media?
Stacy Rossetti 12:52
Absolutely, that's why that's why I'm all over the place. I'm on like, luckily, you know, luckily, I have a team now to kind of manage all that and delegate that out because I'm rarely on social delegate, you know, because I'm not on social media that much. But yeah, no, I've, I have actually, I've actually bought houses off of social media, you know, off of posts or whatever, I've sold houses from posts, I've bought, you know, properties from wholesalers from, you know, from, you know, post or social media or groups or whatever. Do you know, I, you know, I had somebody that just contacted me a while ago, and it's actually a friend of mine that I studied in Australia with, and I hadn't talked to them in like, 20 years. And like, out of the blue, she was like, Hey, I just want you to know that, you know, I've been following you for the past, like, whatever, 15 years and, and she's like, you're like, Oh, you know, she's like, you're doing so, so good. She's like, we're interested in lending to you, like some, right? Like, I had not talked to this person from since Australia when I was like, you know, 25 years old or whatever. And she's like, Hey, we want to lend to you. And I was like, you've been following me for how long she's like, for, like, 10 years or so. And then she just randomly I don't know, just post like, like, messaged me and said she wanted to lend to me and even for like other like school, childhood friends and stuff, they've all, you know, contacted me about lending to me. So you know, you just have no idea what you're going to get from really putting yourself out there. And social media and it does not happen overnight. It doesn't. But if you get out there and start planting the seed, you know, then you know, over time, it'll start to grow and grow.
Abigail Thomson 14:19
That's definitely a long game. That's for sure. 10 years. Wow.
Stacy Rossetti 14:25
That was crazy, huh?
Abigail Thomson 14:26
That's insane! I don't even think I've had people follow me for 10 years this point. That's so funny. But moving into a we've been talking a lot about the more active investor role moving into a passive investor role. What are some of the things that you're seeing that passive investors are looking for in the real estate deals that they are wanting to be a part of?
Stacy Rossetti 14:51
Well, I would say, you know, it's a long term investment. So, you know, for me too, like I'm 100% privately funded, and so what I'm looking for When I go out and look for deals is I'm actually looking for lenders that are willing to lend on longer terms, right. So that's kind of key to especially in the like, in any type of like rental or you know, long term passive income, you need to have, you know, lenders that are open to like longer terms, you know, and that's outside of, of hard money lenders. So like, you know, any sort of private lender, you have to convince, which actually is not a big deal. In the very beginning, I was really worried about that. But actually, you know, you know, my lenders now that lend to me, that used to lend to me for a year, like on a rehab, and now they lend to me on the on, like, facilities, they're just like, you know, you know, they love this monthly income that they get every single month, and they don't want me to, like pay them back. You know, they want me to pay them back. You know, so finding, finding lenders that are willing to go for, you know, to go longer terms with you, that's number one. And also, I wonder if you know, getting the owners to owner financed to you, is also something that I think a lot of a lot of investors Miss, I mean, I get that I get facilities owner financed to me as well, too. And that means that I don't have to go to a bank and get alone, I just, you know, I just get the money from the from the owner, they sell or finance that. And then what that means is that I have more money to leverage outside of those deals, right. So I think a lot of investors really don't think about creative deal structuring and you can do creative deal structuring on any type of property. I mean, you can own or finance you can do subject to I have a student right now, that's, that's doing a subject to on a storage facility, you know, so you have to think about that as well, too, is like there's ways to find money for properties outside of just going to a bank to get that financing. You just have to educate yourself on that. And a lot of investors, unfortunately, don't do that.
Abigail Thomson 16:52
Right. Yeah, exactly. I think that's really interesting that you brought up owner financing. I think a lot of people don't really, especially people new to real estate, don't think of that option. Or even private lending. I've seen so many people that are like, Oh, I want to go purchase real estate and they go straight to a bank. And it's like, well, that's not may not be the most effective way for you to purchase that property.
Stacy Rossetti 17:17
Well, especially in a downturn, a lot of sellers are open to creative deal structuring.
Abigail Thomson 17:23
Yeah.
Stacy Rossetti 17:23
it's our I mean, you know, when it starts to when the start when the market starts to go down, you know, just that's why I said now is like, now's a good time to really educate yourself on Creative bill structuring or creative financing; all the different ways that you can come up with deal structures, because especially in a downturn, owners are open to hearing you out on terms like this.
Abigail Thomson 17:44
Absolutely. I definitely agree. And what are some of the advantages you're finding for your private lenders that you mentioned that they're like, Oh, I don't want you to pay me back at the end, I want to keep these monthly or quarterly payments, whatever they may be. What else? are they seeing there? They're always getting this constant stream of income. But are they getting other advantages, like taxes or anything else like that? coming along with the advantage of we call it mailbox money?
Stacy Rossetti 18:14
Yes, yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you're a lender, if you're interested in lending, if you have money, and you're interested in lending, just keep in mind that you know, you are you are getting income. So you do have to pay taxes. So it's really not. So the you know, you make money, but you're also going to pay taxes on that. What advantages I mean, I think advantages is really just higher in the high interest rate is kind of the biggest advantage. You know, um, you know, I pay my lenders, you know, eight, you know, 8%, at 9%, you know, and, you know, so that kind of, that's what really triggers them in, you know, in order to lending is that they know that they can get like a higher interest rate. Yeah. And then, you know, and then like I said, My lenders, I mean, after they kind of understand how it works, and the long term, you know, you know, the long term notes that we have, they don't want to give that money back. You know, they don't want to, you know, they know that they're making money off of us.
Abigail Thomson 19:07
Earlier in the interview, you mentioned that the reason you transitioned your business and really started focusing more passively is because you had your daughter, I really like to find out for me personally, I like to understand people who are a little bit ahead of me, how did having children and wanting to be more focused on your family? How did that change your business? Was it for the better did what struggles did you go through things like that?
Stacy Rossetti 19:34
Yeah, so actually, I mean, you know, when you have children, you just know like, everything is about them. Yeah. All of a sudden, everything just changes. It's not about you. It's about them and my husband and I just decided that you know, we really want to Lilly, our daughter, her name is Lillian, kind of like an experiment. You know, we really want her to, you know, to be, you know, the best person that she can possibly be. We want her to be empathetic, we want To be compassionate and generous, and to learn how to serve others. And so really like all of the bonus stuff that we have with all of the facilities and everything that we're making for and we're doing for her is really kind of just extra bonus, you know? So and actually, when we take her over to the storage facility, she's just like, Oh, this is so boring. I'm like, this is your future. But she's like, Well, I'd rather watch Peppa Pig but um, but yeah, so but like, for us, essentially, what I love passive income. And we've been focusing on passive income now and growing our portfolio for five years now. And actually, last year was the very first year where we kind of felt like, wow, like, it's really working for us. So I was like, maybe four years into it. And we actually we took out we took a four month vacation. So right when COVID started, everybody was figuring I was like, freaking out. And we decided to go on a four month vacation, and we went like MSC May, June, July, August, we did a 16 national parks in 16 weeks. Wow. And actually, the reason I wanted to do that is because I wanted to prove to my students that you could actually run your storage facilities from anywhere in the world. So that was my that was that was the point of the, besides spending family time that was kind of the one big, big features of it. And but yeah, we went traveling, we decided that we wanted to travel and just spend time together. And we traveled all around the country and just kind of stayed in Airbnb and things like this. So no, we do not have an RV. But and then after that, we came back and worked. I was like, that was May, June, July, August. And then we came back September and worked for about a month and then in the month of October, we went to Tampa for a month and spent a month there. We rented a house and just stay there. And then and then we came back in November worked a little bit. And then we went to Maine for two months. Oh my gosh. And because like well I Lillian for uh, for Christmas, she wanted snow. Right. So we live in Georgia. It's really, you know, it's like Carlita. It does snow, but like rarely. And so we were like, okay, let's just go to Maine. And as soon as we got there was like, right. around Thanksgiving, it started snowing. And it snowed until we left in the first week of January. And we just hung out and played in the snow and like, you know, did our thing, we just decided that, you know, last year was kind of our first year where it was like, you know, what, if we're going to really make this passive income, let's figure out how to make a passive income is our goal is to travel with Lilian and really to have her kind of just be, you know, be worldly, you know, and, and so that's like, why I love passive income. That's the whole purpose of passive income, right is to really make it passive. I mean, why buy property, and you know, and then have to go and fix, you know, the toilets and stuff. And I will do stuff like this. So like, so that's kind of our goal is really make it true passive income and really build true passive wealth. And so hopefully, people take that to heart. You can make it passive if you want to.
Abigail Thomson 22:58
That's insane. How old is your daughter?
Stacy Rossetti 23:01
She's four.
Abigail Thomson 23:02
She's four. Again, my dad started doing real estate investing when I was about 10. So that's so fun. Oh, my gosh, what an incredible year!
Stacy Rossetti 23:14
Oh, it was awesome. It was so awesome. Actually, we're leaving. We're leaving the next week, and we're going to Orlando for a month. She turns a four on Easter. And she has no idea that we're going to Atlanta and we're going to take her to Mickey to Disney vacation.
Abigail Thomson 23:28
Oh my gosh. Oh, what a life for our four year old! That sounds fun.
Stacy Rossetti 23:34
And she's been to almost every state already. Isn't that crazy? Now, once we can leave the country and go out and do like more like traveling out there. We will. But yeah, like right now. It's just kind of like we can only do stuff in the United States.
Abigail Thomson 23:50
You've done so much already going to see all those national parks. That's ridiculous. Oh, my gosh, I want that life. That's what I'm building towards as well.
Stacy Rossetti 24:02
If you make it a priority to totally do it, you just have to make it a priority. And you have to do exactly what I just said, which is systematize delegate and build credibility. If we call those three things, you know, you know, the news, I think you can truly become you know, your business can truly become passive.
Abigail Thomson 24:19
That's, that's really inspiring. I also loved how you said passive income. You don't there's so many people that are like, Oh, I want to own property, but I don't want to be fixing toilets or having to deal with tenants or maintenance or anything like that. And I think that's a really awesome way to get that investment of real estate without having to deal with real estate.
Stacy Rossetti 24:44
Exactly, because I do I know many investors that they'll they have, you know, 2030 4050 houses. And that's what they do is they just manage their houses. And you know, and so we have we have roughly around 100 And, you know, I haven't been to any of our facilities. And in years, my husband does run them. So he goes every once in a while, but we basically have boots on the ground people that manage our facilities for us. We have an office manager that manages like, you know, the internal, you know, stuff that needs to get done. And then we have the boots on the ground person that manages the facilities for us. And so we're really just kind of, you know, worthy. We're the directors is what we are, you know,
Abigail Thomson 25:29
That's similar to what we do with Multifamily.
Stacy Rossetti 25:34
Right.
Abigail Thomson 25:37
That's really awesome. Well, my last question for you, and you're already living it truly, is, what does the American Dream mean to us specifically? And then what steps or actions are you taking in order to take it even more to the next level?
Stacy Rossetti 25:57
Yes, exactly what you said, like exactly what you heard. For us, it's travel the American dream, my American Dream is to be able to see America, because the truth of the matter is, like we drove around America for four months, and we barely saw anything, and, and you know, and everywhere that we went, I was completely awestruck with how beautiful America is. And you know, we only got to go, we went to like the all the major, like we did, all the major parks is what we did, you know, like Yellowstone, and Yosemite and things like this. And you know, and along the way, I wish we would have had time to really, truly get in and see like all the other stuff that's involved with America. And so that's our, that's our American Dream. So is to travel as much as we can and to see as much as we can.
Abigail Thomson 26:44
I really love that answer. I think that's one of my favorite answers as your American dream is to see America. And you kind of already answered this question a little bit throughout our interview, but what actions are you taking in your business to now make that dream possible?
Stacy Rossetti 27:01
It's exactly what you said, it's all about, it's all about delegating, and systematizing. And, you know, getting out there build credibility, and that's why I'm on you know, I'm on your podcast is because, you know, the more credibility that I have, you know, the bigger My business is going to grow, I'll be able to scale it up. And yeah, so that's basically that those three things I think, are exactly what we're doing. That's amazing.
Abigail Thomson 27:25
So, where can our listeners find you or learn more about you and what your business is doing?
Stacy Rossetti 27:31
Yes, please go to www.stacyrossetti.com - that's my website. I got lots of free trainings, not just not on self-storage, if you're interested in self-storage, there's lots of stuff there. There's also even beginner real estate investing information. So, www.stacyrossetti.com is where you can find out all about me, check me out.
Abigail Thomson 27:51
Fantastic. We'll put that in all of our descriptions and things like that for people to have easy access to what you're doing if they connected with you. Thank you so much, again, for coming on the show with me. This is a wonderful interview! I feel like I learned a lot personally. So, I hope that our listeners got the same out of it as well.
Stacy Rossetti 28:09
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for let me come hang out!
Abigail Thomson 28:12
Absolutely. 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.