For the Love of Real Estate: From Flipping Houses to Helping Buyers Find Their Dream Homes - Feat. Mindy Jensen

I love looking at houses. I love looking at dumpy houses. I love looking at amazing houses. I love looking at cookie cutter houses and unique houses. I just love being in a house and looking around and seeing what people have done. 

My husband and I flip houses so I might walk into somebody's house and say, oh, look what they did to their kitchen. This is so cool. I'm going to take a picture because the next time I do a kitchen, I'm going to incorporate that into my kitchen because it's so interesting. 

Hello. Hello. Welcome to the I should have learned the sooner podcast. I'm your host, Tim Winfread. Together, let's take a dive into amazing stories of personal growth as my guests share their answer to the question, what is something you know now that you wish you had learned sooner? 

From overcoming impostor syndrome, investing money lessons and more. Join me and my guests as they share their stories of challenges they faced head on and how they came out on top. Today's guest is Mindy Jensen, the primary host of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, which it's really a cool awesome. 

I can't even express how starstruck I am that I got to interview Mindy because my financial journey was overwhelmingly transformed because of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast and all of the stories and guests that Mindy and Scott Trench have had on the show over the years. 

I started listening to the show in probably 2019 and have listened to hundreds. Of episodes. They release multiple a week, and they bring on expert guests and they bring on real life people who are trying to figure out their financial situations and just have questions for them. 

So this episode is super special to me. Mindy, thank you so much for joining. It truly feels like a full circle moment, so thank you so much, Mindy. This means so much to me, and I'm so excited for everybody who's listening. 

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I have a couple more episodes this season, so stick around, stay tuned, and let's dive right into it. Here we go. Hi, Mindy. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Hi, Kim. I'm so happy to be here. It feels like meeting a celebrity to me because the Bigger Pockets Money show is sort of what I would say is the podcast that changed my life and the one that I dug into the deepest. 

So we got to meet in person back last summer at the BPX Badass Real Estate meetup. And yeah, I just felt like I was meeting I don't know. Dwayne the Rock Johnson of Money Podcast. I get confused for him a lot. 

Well, I sort of gave a little rundown that intro, I guess, of who you are. But for anybody who might be unfamiliar, can you tell them a little bit about yourself? My name is Mindy Jensen. I am the host of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. 

Like Tim said, I have been investing in real estate for 1000 years. I'm a real estate agent in Colorado. I have two kids, and I'm married to my husband for 20 years. I'm really kind of boring. So for you to say how cool I am and then, hey, introduce yourself. 

Well, here's the real story. I'm super boring. Well, I mean. Boring sometimes means that you figured out a process that works for you. I have figured out a process that works for me. Not being exciting. 

Well, it's fun to have you on the other side of getting to ask questions. I love this side. I've heard you ask a lot of questions before. And one thing that I've mentioned your show a lot in previous episodes. 

And one thing that I like to say is, in my journey, I noticed after listening to it for several years, that you have a lot of guests and they come on. And speaking of repeatable process, it almost feels like there's like an 80% to 95%, maybe not 95, but 80% to 95% of the things that people come on and talk about are repeated things, while then there's like, that ten to 20% of flavor for each person. 

We have decided that it's not fun to share the sexy story, the wow story, the newsworthy story. Somebody wins the lottery. Fantastic for them. That's not repeatable. I can't give you the steps to repeat my lottery winnings if I never won the lottery. 

But if I had, it is pure luck. Whereas I have become financially independent. And I can tell you how I did it, because I know that you could do it, too. I don't spend every single penny that comes into my house. 

I put it in air quotes. All the extra money that comes in that I'm not spending, I'm investing. And that's something that you can do, too. That's very repeatable. So, yeah, we definitely are not looking for the newsworthy story, because people are coming to us for newsworthy story. 

They're coming to us to hear the repeatable. How did I do it? How did you do it? How did they do it? And the extra 10% flavor that you mentioned is the thing that people connect with. They may not connect with my story. 

I was a stay at home mom and I had a I don't want to say a tech bro husband because he's not a tech bro, but he worked in tech and so he made a lot of money. But we don't spend a lot of money. So somebody might identify with that. 

Somebody else who doesn't have kids and is on a different journey would identify with somebody else who is telling their story. That doesn't include being a stay at home mom. So I forgot the actual original question, but yes, which happens all the time. 

Well, your show in particular is sort of like The Beginner's Guide. And for people who've never had a money conversation ever, it's like a door opening to the fact that you're not alone. You're not the only person who hasn't thought about money in the way you have. 

And maybe you could even be in your sixty s and not thought about it sort of thing. And there's someone eventually on your show that maybe isn't an exact mirror but has a similar journey, like you said. 

I personally have chosen to skip over some of the family episodes because that's not my life at this moment. But whenever there's things such as house hacking and tech people, anything that I align with in any sort of small fraction, I'll listen to it and there's always new piece of information or hearing it for the 20th time finally makes it click. 

Like, wow, that worked for 20 people. If everybody started at zero and it worked for all 20 of them, then that means there's a high chance that it'll work for me too. I loved that. This is like a commercial for everything that I was trying to do with the show. 

I'm so glad it came across well. Thank you for letting me fan girl. Fanboy, fan. They fan person. All of the above for you. Keep going, keep going. Here, I'm waving my hands at the camera now. I'm fanning you. 

I'm going to send you black fan. So I want to jump into the first big question of the show. The whole premise of this show is what is something you know now that you wish you had learned sooner? So I thank you so much for sending these questions ahead of time so I could really think about this. 

And I was wondering, there's a lot of things that I haven't yet figured out that I wish I would have learned sooner. And there's a lot of things that I have always known that maybe other people haven't figured out that didn't seem to fit the answer as well. 

But when I was younger, I thought being a real estate agent would be super cool. But I could not get over myself and the fact that I would have had to split my commission 50 50 with my employing broker. 

And the way a quick overview when you get your real estate license, this is a very big deal. Even though some agents don't really think that way, it's a very big deal. You're helping people make the biggest purchase of their life. 

You are required in every state to hang your license under a more experience agent and they have a different level of education. They are required to give you guidance. If you have a question, you can ask them and they have to answer it. 

And in exchange for that, you give them 50% of your commission. And I thought, oh, I'm not going to do that. I wish that I would have become a real estate agent 25 years ago. I would have 25 years of experience. 

I would have had much money. Oh, my goodness. It's almost obscene how much real estate agents make. It is obscene if you meet some of them, like Jennifer. That is actually her name. The worst transaction I was ever involved with was against is not the right word. 

I don't believe that. It needs to be an adversarial relationship. We're both in this transaction together to get this property sold. My buyers want to buy the house that your sellers are selling. Let's work together to make it happen. 

And she was like, no, let's fight about everything. But I'm not telling you her last name was Jennifer, and she was really mean. And it doesn't have to be that way. I wish I would have gotten my license much sooner. 

There are different brokerage models now where it's not just split your commission 50% with the employing broker. And this isn't to say that the employing broker isn't a great resource. It's just that after a while, you have done a lot of things, and you don't really need to lean on your employing broker so much, yet you're still paying them 50% of every transaction you do. 

Kind of like a pyramid scheme. The more agents that you train, the more money you get without having to sell houses yourself or whatever. Yeah, I didn't finally get my real estate license until I saw this brokerage in the newspaper. 

It was like, at this big expose on this one brokerage, and they talked about having a I think it was like $300 per transaction was the cost that you paid them, plus like $50 a month for a desk fee, which is an air quote, because you don't get a desk, but whatever. 

So that brought my costs way down. And I thought, well, I could do this now. So I went and got my license. I hung my license under their brokerage for a few years, and then they changed to this. Well, we want you to have a mentor. 

You have to have a mentor, and that is 50% of your commission. I'm like, wait a second. This is Baited Switch. I'm going to go someplace else. So I did end up going someplace else. I think I met my third broke rich now, and I'm probably going to stay here forever because it is very low costs out of pocket, and I have control over how much I'm charging my clients and basically all aspects of my business. 

So with real estate, you mentioned money, of course, being a big driving factor in it. I don't know a lot of kids who get asked that question at age eight. What do you want to be when you grow up and say, a real estate agent? 

So aside from the money aspect, what sort of drove you and what inspired you to actually get your license? I love looking at houses. I once met a woman who said, oh, my real estate agent said she'd only sold me ten houses. 

I'm like, why? When you have your real estate license and you're showing a buyer houses, you could show them like, 500 houses. You get to go into all these different houses. Why would you limit that? 

I love looking at houses. I love looking at dumpy houses. I love looking at amazing houses. I love looking at cookie cutter houses and unique houses. I just love being in a house and looking around and seeing what people have done. 

My husband and I flip houses, so I might walk into somebody's house and say, oh, look what they did to their kitchen. This is so cool. I'm going to take a picture because the next time I do a kitchen, I'm going to incorporate that into my kitchen because it's so interesting. 

But I just really love real estate. I don't know if you can tell by me vomiting all over you. I really love real estate, and I love seeing houses, helping people. This is another thing. I would sit here and talk about real estate, but I think that there are some really great real estate agents out there, and I think that there are some really terrible real estate agents out there that are just in it for the money in their pocket. 

It doesn't even cross their mind that they're helping somebody buy an enormous house or an enormous payment. They're taking on this enormous payment. They don't seem to realize the enormity of their responsibilities. 

It's more like, Well, I'm getting a big paycheck. Woohoo. Let's get you into a house so I can move on to the next person and get another big paycheck. And I love helping people go through the house, figure out that they like it. 

Okay, now let's go back to at the beginning of the house and make sure that we don't hate it. What do you hate about this house? What's weird? What do you not like about it? Because it's easy to walk into a house and be like, everything's great, and you just kind of gloss over the fact that there's no toilets right at all. 

Yeah. Whenever I was looking for my first house, which I bought back in October of last year here in North Glenn, Denver area. My real estate agent was out of town, and I had an agent sub in, and I kind of got blinded by them focusing on some fixtures. 

Like, oh, this room has a really quirky light celebrating those things that were like, you can pop in and out easily, but that crack in the foundation not saying this one had that, but those bigger issues, if you're looking at those cheaper fixes or cheaper the bells and whistles, I guess it's really easy, as you said, for a real estate agent to try to sell someone on something just to bing, bang, boom, get. 

Closed and get my paycheck and move on to the next person who you have to text and call and communicate so much in that house. Hunting time. It's exhausting for me just doing it to one person. So I could only imagine, as the agent, if you have five clients at. 

Once I try not to have multiple clients at one time just because it can get really confusing and, oh, which house did I see with those people? Which house did with those people? I do have a lot of clients who are in the pipeline, but they're not actually actively looking right now. 

They're keeping an eye on the market. So I also love looking at houses. I feel like a lot of people take that step first. If you were to give advice to someone who, like myself, maybe a year ago, was in the journey of saving up a down payment or looking at houses online and sort of daydreaming about the possibility, a lot of people, like I said, start with that going on, zillow and clicking around and seeing what's out there. 

And are there any steps that you would recommend before looking at the catalog? I would say it's totally fine to look at the catalog, be comfortable with what houses are selling for and know your market. 

If you aren't sure what city you want to live in we both live in the Front Range of Colorado. If you aren't sure what city you want to live in, go check out a bunch of different cities. Look at what houses are selling for or listed for. 

Most houses are going to sell really close to the asking price. So if you walk into a house and you're like, $500,000 for this, that might not be the right city for you. Right. If you walk into a house and you say. 

This is only $500,000. That might be a better city for you. You should be saving up for your down payment. Your down payment is only a portion of what you're bringing to the closing table. Closing costs for a buyer hover between two and 4% of the purchase price. 

So $100,000 you're going to need $2,000 in addition to your down payment. Your down payment can be as low as 3% with a conventional loan, three and a half with an FHA loan. So on $100,000, you're going to need $3,000 for your down payment. 

Let's call it $4,000 for your closing costs. And then if you only have $7,000 in the bank, as soon as you buy that house, you have nothing. What happens if something breaks? I think you should have at least $10,000 in the bank on top the closing costs and down payment in case something breaks. 

And I have a rule of thumb that is pretty spot on. I was hoping you're going to talk about this. I know exactly something will break when you buy a house, and the cost of that repair is inversely proportionate to how much money you have in the bank. 

So this is Mindy's law of real estate. Mindy's first law of real estate. Something's going to break. I promise something will break. If you use every dime you have, you're going to get a roof repair, a brand new furnace, AC, your refrigerator is going to go out. 

Something catastrophically large like that is going to happen and you don't have any money to fix it. If you are well funded, then a light switch breaks or you kick off a tile in the floor that wasn't quite glued on properly. 

It's something much smaller. Every house I've ever bought, something broke as soon as I moved it. I think it also. Something that stood out to me whenever I was looking was what you're approved for, for your debt to income ratio. 

You shouldn't max that out, because then you won't be able to replenish that emergency fund if something does break. If you're approved for I mean, this is the reality of the world we're in. If you're approved for a million dollars mortgage, your payment will be what, at the current interest rates, like, $8000 to $10,000 a month. 

Just because you're approved for that and you can afford that every month doesn't mean that you should take that on. And maybe it's probably even smarter to take on 50% of that than you have that extra $4,000 a month to pay and save and make those repairs. 

I had plumbing go out in my house, hot water issue with 60 year old pipes. And, yeah, didn't know that in the inspections until the wall was cracked open and then had to pay or 1201, 300 for the plumbing and then the drywall repair and all those little things that come up. 

And it's a never ending checklist. So if you can't replenish it that's a good point. It's a never ending checklist. I said start with $10,000. But also, as real estate investors, there's this idea of capex or capital expenditures. 

And a really great rule of thumb for that is something expensive. Your roof, your HVAC, your appliances, your roof will last approximately 25 years. If it's 20 years old, you need to start saving for a roof repair in a roof replacement in five years. 

So a roof in my area is $15,000 starting. So in five years, you need to save up $15,000. That's $3,000 a year. That is I should have done this math a little bit faster. So 3000 divided by twelve is $250 a month. 

Now, if you maxed out your payment, you don't really have 250 extra dollars. You might not have 250 extra dollars to save for this future repair. And that's just one repair, right? Your water heater is eight to 15 years. 

That's about $1,000. So you're not saving as much. But if your water heater is nine years old, you better go buy one. How do you feel about the what is it my parents, for example, and my brother, who both own homes use, want to say it's like a warranty insurance or like a replacement insurance warranty. 

There you go. Where if your home warranties aren't worth the paper they're printed on, my experience is that whatever breaks isn't covered by the policy. Or if it is covered, you're getting an absolute bottom of the barrel repair person. 

And frankly, when I buy a house that has a home warranty, I just throw it away. I don't even bother calling. It's so frustrating. And I know people who have had success with them, and I'm so happy for them, but I think that you need to look into that before you rest your hopes and dreams on home warranty. 

So maybe I'm mistaken. I believe my mom has, like, an insurance policy that covers, like, if the water heater busts, she pays monthly, they replaced it, sort of thing. Is that the same as the home warranty, or is that a different product? 

No, the home warranty is usually a one time fee. It's about $250 or $500 or something like that her insurance policy. I wonder how much. The insurance policy is versus what benefits is she getting. I mean, if somebody wants to pay me $100 a month, I'll come out. 

And fix their water heater once every 20 years. Yeah, I'll come out and fix it once a month or once a year because I'm still making money. A water heater is 600, $800 at the big box store, and then to install it, I have seen a lot of people quoting $1,000 for the whole thing installed, like purchase and installation. 

It's cumbersome and awkward sized and kind of heavy, but it isn't a difficult install. Yeah, I think those programs are maybe for the people who are bad at saving or bad at planning for as you said, there's people who cash flow, for example, on rental properties and maybe their rental property. 

I don't know. Cash flow is $500, but as you said, if I have to replace that roof and have to save $250, suddenly your cash flow is $250. And then you take into consideration all the other maintenance and repairs and capex items, and that $250 that you have as cash flow, if you take into consideration all your saving, suddenly is $500 of net negative every month. 

So on paper, it might look good in a year to year, but you have one bad year, and suddenly it washes out the last five years, for example. Exactly. Which is why you have to be very careful when you're running your numbers. 

It isn't just, oh, rent is 2000, and my mortgage payment is 1900, so I'm cash flowing 100. No, you're losing money every month, I promise. Yeah. Is there anything that you've ran into with the clients that you've worked with where you sort of had to put them in check or scold them for an idea or what they I guess I'm. 

What I'm trying to get out of you is something that people have come to you with as clients that is like, why do you believe that? Where does that come from? And you have to change their mind on it. I actually have a really privileged position to work with people who are in the financial independence community and have come to me either from my podcast or from my husband's blog or from my local co working space. 

They already kind of know I don't have to dispel those myths. That's a good question. No, I don't think so. But I do know that there are a lot of agents who are like, no, let's calm down here. You can't really afford this. 

Or more to the point, they don't say that, and then that person finds themselves house poor for decades. Yeah. And I mean, once the agent closes and is gone, it's sort of like mutual funds, right? Like, you pay them for an investment, and whether you win or lose, at the end of the day, they still get the payment. 

So you have to do your homework just as much in finding a good real estate agent as you mentioned, there are some great ones, and there are some terrible ones out there. So if someone was interested in following your path and becoming a real estate agent, what would you recommend? 

I would recommend reading the book the Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller from Keller Williams. He writes, it's a really great how to Be a really Great Agent book. Pat Hyben wrote a book called Six Steps to Seven Figures. 

Being a real estate agent, is there's a lot of misconception? Oh, all you do is list my house, and you sit back and do nothing and wait for the offers to come in. Well, no, there's more to it than that. 

You don't just drive around and show a few houses, write a contract, and that's it. There's a lot of time management. Date and deadline management. When I was the buyer, before I was an agent, I would read my contract all the way through, and I would make sure that I never missed a deadline. 

And as an agent, I make sure that my clients never miss a deadline. Ultimately, it's on them. But I also feel that that's my responsibility. These are the deadlines that are coming up. Have you completed the work? 

Because if you haven't, a date and a deadline in the contract is the date by which you can cancel the contract and still receive your earnest money back. I don't want my client to miss a deadline and then lose their earnest money because something happens outside of their control, and now they can't close or something's broken. 

And they wanted to ask for a repair, and I didn't remind them that this is the inspection deadline, and there's a lot of things involved in a transaction. So first, be honest with yourself. Are you going to be able to stay on track? 

Are you going to be able to manage your time wisely? Are you a people person? Figure out what your state's guidelines are. We are the 50 United States, but each one of them has their own rules. And some of these states have very rigorous testing and education requirements. 

And some are like, Go ahead. You want to be an agent? Poof, you're an agent. Kind of ridiculous. There are a couple of states that have education requirements of 40 hours. And there are some states, I think Texas is 180 and Colorado is 168. 

That's a big difference. I took the Colorado license coursework, 168 hours, and I feel like at the end of it, they taught me nothing. I learned how to take a test. And then once you start working is when you really learn how this whole thing works. 

Yeah. So first see if you have the ability to do it. It does cost money to get your license. I think my first year out of pocket before I sold a house cost me about $3,000. If you don't have that money, maybe you should start saving for that. 

Yeah, there's a lot of career changes require money investments for education or certification of some sort. And I actually like, this is a mountain to some people, is a drop in the bucket to others. 

So this is apologies if anybody doesn't see it this way, but I think relative to a lot of other career options, $3,000 is minimal. I did a boot camp that cost $12,000. I got $1,000 scholarship, so $11,000. 

I went to four year university that took five years and spent almost $50,000. And it's interesting because it's sort of like your rule of reverse. What do you call it, mindy's first rule of real estate. 

Yeah. The cost of the repair is inversely proportionate to how much money you have in the bank. Yeah, that's sort of my experience with education. Like, I spent nearly 50K on a degree and made $32,000 out of college with that. 

I spent $11,000 on a coding boot camp and made $82,000 out of that. So spending $3,000, maybe if that rule continues, could be $150,000 a year. That's a really good point. If you do get licensed, you then have the ability to make unlimited income. 

It is rather absurd, the amount of money that you can make. As a bad real estate agent, as a good real estate agent, there literally is no limit to how much money you can make. Do you want to make a million dollars a year? 

You can fairly easily. It's easier in La. Than in the middle of Iowa, but there are definitely Iowa real estate agents that are making a million dollars a year. That's just their commission. Yeah. And it's sort of like whenever I was in my big debt payoff phase early in my financial discovery or financial I don't know, whatever coming to light. 

Something that I started doing was picking up, like, postmates deliveries to make extra money. If I was sitting at home on a Tuesday night or even a Friday night, those would be good nights as well. And unlike W, two jobs where you are salaried or limited to the number of hours you can work without asking for it, like we said, you only take on one client at a time. 

But if you did want to make significant amounts of money, you could do that, as you said, work as much as you want and push that $3,000 certification. What advice, I guess, would you have then? I know a lot of people who've transitioned from one career into real estate, and I think the hardest thing is getting your first client and meeting the people who will take you on for someone who is maybe interested in doing that or transitioning from I don't know, maybe it's meetups. 

Maybe it's going through your Rolodex of contacts. What advice do you have? The biggest advice that see in the real estate coursework, in all of the real estate agents that I talk to, my Facebook groups, et cetera, they all have this thing called your sphere of influence. 

That's your friends and family members and colleagues and neighbors and make sure everybody knows you're a real estate agent. And I say that with a bit of an asterisk. I bring this up first because that's literally our most common piece of recommendation that you see when you're becoming a real estate agent, hit your sphere of influence. 

Well, okay. How many real estate agents do you know? I know like 1000 of them. Like, just in my friend group, I know like a thousand of them. Only one agent can sell your house. Only one agent can help you buy a house. 

So which of your 15 agent friends are you going to use? That's not really, in my opinion, a great way to find your business open houses. When there's a house that's for sale, many times the listing agent will sit inside the house and have the door open, and anybody who wants to waltz through the house can waltz through the house. 

But not everybody who is listing that house wants to sit in that open house. I have listings fairly infrequently. I am more of a buyer's agent by choice, but I will list a house if somebody comes to me and asks if I will list their house. 

I'm not really looking for more clients at this time, although I will take them if they approach me. But I am at a different point in my life. I don't want to be a million dollar real estate agent. I don't have that kind of time. 

I like my leisure time. I've put in my hours. So I don't sit open houses in my property. However, I do have a real estate partner, Libby, and Libby was new and wanted to get some clients, so she sat an open house and then she sat another open house and another one and another one. 

I had a listing that didn't sell quickly, and I think she got ten or twelve clients from that open house because she's not pushy. She's very knowledgeable. She doesn't try to make it sound like she knows something when she doesn't. 

Oh, you know what? I'm not sure. Let me look that up while you look through the house and. Not pushy. Who wants to be sold to, right? Nobody wants to be sold to. So her approach was really novel. When you walk into an open house, sometimes the agents are all over you. 

Hey, would you sign in? Can I get your email? Are you working with an agent? Can I help you? Can I sign you up for listings? Can I? Can I? Can I? Can I? Can I? They're so desperate. And she wasn't like that. 

She was like, hi, welcome. Let me know if you have any questions, and then would talk. If somebody had a question, they would wander through the house as they were leaving. She's like, is there anything I can answer for you about this house or about long month? 

In general? Open houses are an amazing way to get new clients, and more experienced real estate agents who have the listings may not have the time to sit them. They might have three houses that are on the market right now, and they don't want to sit all three open houses. 

So as soon as you're licensed, ask agents in your office, can I sit an open house for you? There's a guy in my office that is known for sitting open houses. He will ask, does anybody have an open house they want to host this weekend? 

That's perfect. It's helping someone out who needs the help, and it's helping yourself out without I guess whenever you first said it, I was like, are you telling people to go to find open houses as real estate agents and just sit in other people's houses? 

No. You're hosting the open house with the permission of the listing agent. That's a brilliant hack. Yeah. And if your city has a median home price, 500, $600,000, don't sit in open house. That's a $950,000 house sit. 

An open house, that's 400,000, 500,000. The lower priced houses are people just trying to get in. More people are looking at those. Yeah, it's. What I think the Denver metro areas is in the mid 400, I believe, for the average cost. 

Or is it mid five, something like that? Maybe it's I think it's mid five. Yeah. And up in longmont, it's more like six. Oh, really? The the one I bought here in Northland was listed originally as a flipped house for 500, reduced like a week later to 470. 

This was the fall of last year, so right. Whenever mortgage rates were spiking and everybody was freaking out and then I was able to close on it for 457 with 13,000 in both inspection and pre. So I felt pretty good about that. 

Wow. Yeah. But with me looking with my agent, I went and started. I was like, oh, I want to go in and find the cheapest houses like you said. But there are things that come with those cheap houses. Like the siding on the first house that we looked at was like there was clear water damage and hadn't been probably taken care of in 20 years. 

So there's trade offs. Definitely. With those lower price homes. Are the people who are in a $500,000 market looking for a $300,000 home? Are those for a real estate agent who is looking at picking up maybe their first or an early client? 

Is that really the best sort of client to have? It sounds like maybe their expectations would be hard to manage. Well, that is a great observation. You do need to manage expectations. If houses the price longmont for single family homes starts in, like, maybe the high threes, but usually the low fours. 

And the high threes is going to be the dumpy house with maybe it has meth, maybe it has mold, maybe it has. Bare ceilings, like there's holes in the roof. It's not habitable. If you are coming to an open house and you're like, oh, my price range is 250, and I want a single family home on a half an acre, that's not something that is going to be found in my city. 

Not really all that close to me, but there are cities where you can find that. But how houses are getting very expensive and managing those expectations by just showing them what's available, showing them what has like on the computer, showing them what has sold recently and what hasn't sold recently can be very helpful in I mean, it's to nobody's benefit to put somebody in your car and drive them to seven houses that they can't afford. 

Right. That just frustrates them. It wastes your time and their time. It could be that they have the money for the 500,000. They just thought they could get in lower. So showing I don't think that you should talk to everybody at an open house, but you should manage expectations is a really great way to phrase that. 

Yeah. I am a victim of the house hunters mindset where they have a story to tell. And oftentimes people the story that they tell in those episodes is that, I don't know, a couple, the general archetype on that is like a male female couple who one wants to spend at the top of the budget and the other wants to spend at the bottom of the budget and find everything. 

And sometimes I feel like more often than not, they get sold on the pretty things and they close at the top of the budget just because in those stories, I feel like they maybe are twisted. Maybe that $700,000 that's the top of their budget was, like I said, maybe they got approved for a million, but the storyline wanted that $700,000. 

So for anybody. Is a House Hunter fan like I am. Don't believe the Hollywood Story type fully just because it's produced that way. Yes, it is 100% a lie. Yeah, it sort of breaks your heart, but I'm like you. 

I just like to look at houses. That's why I watch it. We've sort of been jamming through this and I just looked at the time and I've only asked you the first big primary question. You sort of mentioned books already, so this might be redundant. 

But the second question is, is there something, a book, a quote, a person, song, city job, conversation? Anything to that effect that's really impacted your life? Oh, so many things have impacted my life, but the one that I wrote down is my favorite quote by Coco Chanel. 

She says, I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all. I don't know if I'm misunderstanding it or applying it wrong or getting it spot on, but to me it says that your opinion doesn't matter. 

Your opinion of me doesn't matter, because if you think I suck, then you don't matter. At least you're thinking of me. Yeah. I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all. Your opinion does not matter. 

Yeah. Have you had to, I guess, to follow up on the manage expectations? And this quote seems like as a family, as a mother and a wife, someone who has other people who do think of you a lot, how have you managed? 

I guess your husband has his own financial journey and is probably pretty in line with a lot of your decisions. But is that not caring what other people think? How is that played into being a family person? 

I think that the best gift you can give your children is the gift not caring what other people think? And I have two kids and I've been 50% successful with that. And when you're a teenager. You really think that everybody just is so focused on you when in fact, nobody cares. 

There's a really amazing Xkcd cartoon where it says what you think people are doing, and it's this little stick figure who's standing here, and then everybody is surrounding, like, staring at him. And then what's actually happening? 

You're standing there, and all the other stick people are on their phone. Nobody really cares what's going on with you. And when you feel like everybody is looking at you, they're not. But as a minor public figure, people feel that it's okay to comment on my speech patterns, my hair, something that I said, the way that I dress, whatever they want to talk about, great. 

If you've got a compliment, I'd love to hear it. If you've got constructive criticism, I'd love to hear that too. But wow, you're fat and your hair sucks. Well, I don't care. That's your opinion. Yeah, I have something not safe for work to say to that, but I will just say forget you. 

A lot of that, I think, for myself. I had heard this really. I was on a plane flight and needed to relax and put on this meditation. And this guided meditation took me on this journey where it was like, okay, think about somebody who has passed away or somebody that you're probably never going to see again. 

Now close your eyes and imagine a conversation with them. And then what it took from that is you just not only did you imagine yourself an image of yourself, you imagined, especially in the case of someone who's past someone who could not even have, you know, those thoughts and feelings or those conversations. 

So you gave them morals. You gave them ideas about what you're doing and what they would talk to you about. And both of those both the vision of yourself, as you said, with that cartoon, and the vision of that other people are totally made up and entirely separate from actually the eye and the ego and all of that. 

So I just find it fascinating how we are able to focus so much on what other people think. And sometimes the negative, like you were saying, with you being a minor public figure, people chime in and say something negative. 

How do you, I guess, drown that out more so and focus on the positive? I never read the comments. There you go. I made a mistake of reading the comments once, and I was like, wow, here's 100 positive comments and three crappy ones. 

And I focused on the three crappy ones. Why am I focusing on these bad ones? Here's 100 comments saying, hey, good for you. Nice job. Congratulations, whatever. And here's three people pointing out that I had a booger in my nose or just being mean. 

And why do you focus on that? And I couldn't not focus on that. There's been a couple of times where people have said some pretty ugly things, and I am very blessed. I don't get nearly the hate that some people get, which is not an invitation to send them to I don't care@goforgetyou.com. 

But still, I'm a real person. And just because I choose to make a video on the internet doesn't mean that I don't have feelings. And for you to sit there and say, wow, you're such a moron. How could you think this way? 

Why would you waste your time? If you don't like what I have to say, just move on. You can hit stop on any one of my videos. You don't have to listen to my podcast. You could just continue about your day. 

I've never understood why people have to say mean things. Yeah, there's a lot of in the review world. Critic critics and stuff like that. But I think for myself, if people ask me, what did you think of that movie? 

My general opinion is not, oh, I hated it, or I loved it. It's yeah, I'd watch it again, or, no, I wouldn't watch it again. I wouldn't recommend it to someone because I like creating content, whether that's a podcast or a movie, anything like that. 

It's a creative endeavor and it's personal and all. And every the person who is critiquing you, in most cases, they aren't even producing anything themselves, so they have opinions from the outside. And there's so much the Rome wasn't built in a day sort of thing. 

All of the people who went into that and all the decisions that were made. So, yeah, I see it as if someone isn't creating or doing something, then hearing their opinion is less important to me than hearing the opinion of someone who I work with on a day to day basis and knows all the ins and outs of everything. 

Exactly. Okay, so we've got a few minutes left, so I want to get to the last question, which is my future thinking and present tense question, which is, what is something you're working on learning now? 

This is something that I think I will be working on learning for the rest of my life. It is how to say, no, I overcommit, which can lead to over promising and under delivering, which I think is a terrible, terrible thing. 

I stress about delivery and the over promise and how I can do that thing whilst still being present for my family. And it creates a lot of clouded headspace. And I'm working on saying saying no more frequently. 

And it's tough because it used to be. Can you? Yes, absolutely. Of course. I would love to. And then you get to the deadline and you're like, oh, man, I wish I wouldn't have committed to this. Right? 

I'm only halfway done. 30% of the way done, or it's due tomorrow, and I haven't even started it. I can't even tell you how many times that has happened. And if you had said no when they asked, they would have been like, oh, okay, thanks, and they would have found somebody else. 

But by you saying yes, you've taken it off their plate and put it on your plate. And if your plate doesn't have any room for one more thing, something's going to get pushed off the plate for this new thing to be on the plate. 

And then what do you do about the thing that got pushed off the plate? Which item gets pushed off the plate? Sometimes you can direct which item is getting pushed off your plate, and sometimes it just falls off, and it falls off on the floor, and now you can't eat it anymore. 

Or there's a lot of negatives to saying yes to everything, and there's not that many positives to saying yes to everything. I don't know who said this, but if it's not a hell yes, then it's a hell no. 

Okay. And I'm starting to embrace that. It is going to be a lifelong journey. Yeah. If someone asked you, do you want to get married? And your answer was sure, that's not a hell yes, they wouldn't be happy to hear you say that. 

So turning down opportunities that you don't want to be married to is key. And not only that, I heard something years ago because I am also a victim of saying yes in my career. It made me a jack of all trades and a master of none. 

And at some point, whenever I started saying no, it was because I had heard that sometimes you have to say no to get to the place you want to go and to make sure that you're like you said, you're not taking on too many things. 

And it's maybe pivoting your career or your financial decisions or whatever it might be. Yeah, it is hard to embrace that. An example is doing a podcast episode for somebody that I don't know. I get a lot of people who email me, would you like to be on my podcast? 

And in the beginning of my career, somebody wants me to be on their podcast. What an honor. I didn't ask how many downloads you get or how many episodes you've had or what sort of engagement you're getting, how big is your audience? 

I was just excited. Somebody wanted to talk to me. Holy cow, you want to talk to me? That's so awesome. And then I got to the point where I was getting requests all the time, and it was really hard to balance that with, oh, my God, somebody wants to talk to me. 

And I don't have any time to do that. So now I have taken a step back. And I feel horrible, by the way, when I say this, because I have a healthy dose of guilt with everything. But when I say no, I feel like I'm saying, your show isn't good enough for me. 

And that's not what I'm saying. I'm taking time back for myself. My time for me is a valid expenditure of my time, and spending time with my kids is a valid way to spend my time. And I could do a podcast interview every minute of every day from now until the end of time. 

And it is still hard to balance that. Somebody wants to talk to me with. I need to take a break. I need to do something else. I need to talk to my family, I need to make dinner. I need to do all of these other things. 

And it's not so much I want to spend time with my family, I want to make dinner. I like to cook. I want to do all of these things. So you have to say no to some things that you might actually want to do do. 

And it doesn't mean I don't have time for you. It means I'm prioritizing time for me. Yeah, but it's a hard place to get to. Yeah, it's the oh, God, why am I blanking on the word the opportunity costs, right? 

Saying yes to one thing means you're implicitly saying no to something else. Or many something else. Yeah, or many something else. Definitely. Well, we are at time, unfortunately. I keep going, but I'm going to give you your opportunity costs for other conversations. 

And I wasn't saying that about this. No, I know you said yes to this, and you said yes to it before, and I accidentally missed our recording session, and I'm going to beat myself up until the end of eternity for that. 

But here we are. I told you I have missed those too. Yeah. Thank you so, so much. Before we wrap up for anybody who wants to follow up with you, check you out online, or continue following your journey, where can they reach out? 

I am mindy at BP on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, but I don't really use Instagram that much. I love Twitter, so even with all of their problems, I still love Twitter. You cracked me up on Twitter, by the way. 

Your responses, you are like, I don't know, it's not quite trolly, but it's definitely sarcasm, but in in a fun way. Oh, good. That's what I'm aiming for. Yeah. I don't want to be a troll. Except for the guy. 

There was a guy who was like, oh, I always thought that men found women to clean their houses for them. I'm like, Yo, why do you have to find a woman to clean your house? Men marry women. I can't remember what exactly he said. 

I'm like, Why does the woman have to clean? And then he didn't answer. I'm like, hello. Why does the woman have to clean? Why can't the man clean? Mr. Yeah, there's so much if you don't know someone personally. 

Sometimes sarcasm or joking doesn't always come through in text, but that's a whole nother topic. Anyways, I think he's just a troll. Ah. Live it under a bridge on Twitter. All right, mindy, thank you so much for your time. 

It's been great. Kim, thank you so much for having me, and I'll talk to you soon. Take care. Bye bye. Bye. So that episode was, as I said in the beginning, super special to me and truly a full circle moment. 

It really felt like a crash course in what you need to do to become a real estate agent. I don't know if I'll go down the real estate agent journey myself, but I definitely learned a lot, and I hope you did, too. 

So if you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to rate and review on itunes. It will really help us out. And check me out on Instagram at contemporary and on Twitter at contemporary. It's like Contemporary, but more fun. 

Until next time, I'm Tim Winfread, and I'll talk to you soon. Take care. Music for this podcast comes from film music IO Acid Trumpet by Kevin McLead, Incompatech.org. Licensed by creativecommons.org licenses. 

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