Hello and welcome to the SunLeaders podcast. My name is Whitney Smith and I am the owner and attorney of your rental property Attorney pllc, which is a real estate law firm that focuses primarily on landlords. Due to my firm’s unique niche, I I spend the majority of my time thinking about the real estate industry, landlord tenant relationships and the affordable housing community.

I find both positive and negative factors that affect the real estate industry are interrelated with and co affect the housing community and likewise trickle down to affect our relationships. I believe through effective leadership we can make more positive changes in these industries and therefore I wanted to focus my episodes for the Sun Leaders podcast on female leaders in either the real estate industry or the affordable housing communities that are specifically leading a team or community to
betterment. And so I am very excited to introduce my next guest, ladonna Smith, another Smith A. Smith.

A powerhouse in the real estate industry, ladonna Smith is a dynamic force in real estate knowing for guiding individuals toward double digit returns backed by tangible real estate assets. With a wealth of experience participating in over 1600 real estate transactions and a significant track record as a residential redeveloper in multiple states, ladonna is not only a seasoned professional but also a dedicated educator. Having trained over 5,000 individuals in the past five years, she empowers
entrepreneurs to shift their money mindset through passive real estate investing.

Welcome ladonna. I’m so excited. Thank you so much for having me.

It’s the Smith podcast. It’s the Smith podcast today for sure. So I, I kind of, I’ve read through all of your bios.

I’m. I mean, you and I have hung out. Yeah.

Personally, I’m totally in love with you, but I want the audience to know kind of where you began your own personal. Do we start in second grade? Not that far. Okay.

Just with the real estate investment. So as I understand it, you were interested and then you ended up taking a course at some point. Yes, I actually started as a real estate agent 2007.

I was representing real estate investors who were buying properties and fixing them up and reselling them and completely interested in the business model. So spent a lot of time learning from my mentor who I was doing that for. I was representing him on the sales side, but also got into his project management.

And then two years later, 2009, I’m like, I’m ready to do my own flip. So bought my first property in 2009. Flipped it.

I think I bought it for like $26,000. Because you could back then I Know, I probably put, you know, $10,000 into it and sold it for 70 something thousand dollars. And I felt safe doing that because of the experience I had with this mentor of mine.

And I had an agent who brought me a buyer. She’s like, if you fix this house up, I have someone who will buy it. So, like, all the components were in place.

I just had to take action. Right. So that was my first flip.

Right. And then from there forward, was the trail as easy or were there some bumps in the road or. It’s always a learning experience, and it still is today.

I think I put myself in positions where I’m trying to learn something new. I get bored easily, so I’m not doing the same type of flips, but I did a couple more. And what I found is that I was spending a lot of time in the business.

You know, I was going to Home Depot, putting a toilet in my sedan and driving it to the job site. So I found some mentors and coaches that were teaching people how to run this as a business. I feel like I was.

I was doing it, but I wasn’t running it as a business. Right. And I actually think that a lot of entrepreneurs come to that.

Well, hopefully. Hopefully they come to that realization that what you want to run is a business and not just a job. Right.

I think a lot of especially small business owners are stuck where if they were to leave, the whole business falls apart. Well, that’s just owning your own job, in my opinion. Yes, but there’s so much skill, and then that is where you really have to develop being a leader, because you have to delegate.

Right. At some point, there’s someone who can do this job better than I can. Right.

The great book that really helps with that is the E Myth. That’s so funny. I literally just put that on my.

Read it. Michael Murgrau. I’m the Goodreads app, I promise you.

Last night, there was three attorneys in a Facebook group that recommended the E. Myth. Yeah.

So you read it? Yeah, no, I read it. It’s how to work on your business side in your business. Okay.

And if you want to run a business, it will help you with getting to that mindset. Right? I feel like. Yeah.

And so one of my mentors wrote the E Myth for real estate investors. Oh, okay. So fan Merrill.

So he took the E. Myth and specifically applied it to real estate investing. But I think that’s the mantra I keep in my head, is working on the business, not in the business.

Right. I don’t drive toilets to job sites anymore. Right.

So what. In speaking of that. So when it comes to running the business as a business and delegating, what specific leadership skills do you have to develop this? I mean, I’m assuming.

I mean, asides from delegating even that skill in itself, now you have to acquire letting go of control. You know, that’s exactly what I was going to say. I think with the people that I’ve taught, I spend a lot of time teaching people how to start a real estate business.

It’s that desire to control everything and control the outcome by doing everything yourself. And if you can get to the mindset where if you let this go, if you take this task and give it to someone else, and probably someone else who can do it better than you. And the example I’ll give is like, bookkeeping.

So I am the world’s worst bookkeeper. I will gladly take that badge and put it on. And so what happens when you’re the world’s worst bookkeeper and you’re doing it? The first thing you do is you procrastinate.

So you like, I’m going to do it tomorrow. I’m going to do it tomorrow. It goes on the list every single day.

And then when you finally get around to doing it, you do a really crappy job because you’re trying to get through it, because you really don’t enjoy doing it. So why would I pay the world’s worst bookkeeper to do my bookkeeping? Right. Yeah.

So that’s an easy task to outsource. It has to get done in your business, but it’s not working on your business, it’s working in your business. Right.

So getting people to the mindset of. Even though, like, someone’s like, no one’s going to do it better than me. Like, if you want to grow and if you want to scale, if you want to get out of having this as a job, if you want to go on a vacation, if you want to spend time away from the business, you’re going to have to change your mindset and bring other people in to do those tasks.

Absolutely. And to go back to the bookkeeping, I am notoriously the second world’s worst bookkeeper. Notoriously.

Definitely an attorney and not an accountant. So I have to plug in our book. My bookkeeper that I am hiring from SunLeaders, his name is Adam Morris from B Smart Accounting.

So I’ll just give him a little plug. So you had mentorship and then you had. Reese had six.

You went from six homes to scaling to 26 homes after acquiring that coach. Yes. Your business coach.

That one step is having that coach allowed me to figure out how because I didn’t understand, like I saw people doing 50 houses a year, 100 houses a year. And at 6, I was at max time capacity. I didn’t have more hours in the day.

I was working from dark to dark. And so I’m like, I clearly don’t, I know how to rehab a house. I clearly don’t know how to rehab multiple houses.

So hiring that, having that coach, having that mentor showed me how I could scale, how I could take myself out of the day to day activities and grow a business, Right? Absolutely. Oh, and I would say on that, going from six houses to 26 houses in one year’s timeframe, I also did it with a lot less time. So instead of working from dark to dark, now I’m working, you know, 30 hours a week.

And that goes to the fact that you were developing teams to handle the work. Yeah, correct. So how did it shape your approach? So, and I imagine that you’re also handling different sets of teams.

I mean, I’ve never done what you’ve done, but I can imagine you have, you know, your construction team and then like you said, your business managerial team, which would be the bookkeeping and your accountant and whatever else you need. So how do you, how do your skills, how do you adapt to each team? Are you a different, do you feel you’re a different leader for one team than you are the other or. I don’t feel I’m.

Well, that’s a great question. I don’t feel I’m dramatically different. I’m probably a lot more firm with the construction team.

And that’s coming in from spending years of dealing with contractors, which is 99% male. Right. And them having a perception of a female in the business.

So I come in a lot firmer with that. I come in a lot harder. I’m actually fun, happy person.

But if you’re a male contractor, you’re probably not going to see that. You’re not going to experience that Ladana. So I have to come in with a.

I know what I’m doing. I have objection. I usually let my paperwork stand in front of me.

Like, here’s the contracts that we’re going to use to do business together. So I use the paperwork to communicate how we’re going to do business together. Where with a bookkeeper, an admin, a cpa.

It’s more of a verbal communication style. How can we work as a team to Like I don’t want to be the leader, I don’t want to be el jefe. Like I get annoyed when someone calls me that.

I want to work together to get to our common goal. But with contractors, I do come in pretty firm. I don’t say heavy, but just firm.

And I use my paperwork, my structure, my contracts to dictate how we’re going to talk. That’s what’s so interesting is that. And do you find it maybe sets a boundary as far as you are authoritative, you have this connection that gives you the authority and this is the guideline that we’re going to go by and even with the paperwork.

So let’s use a piece of paperwork used in the business. We need independent contractor agreement. Here’s when the job’s going to start, here’s when it’s going to end, here’s how much it’s going to cost.

Here’s what’s going to happen if you’re late, here’s what’s going to happen if you’re early. And here is connected to. That would be the scope of work.

Here’s exactly what you’re going to do. And so if we get off track on anything, it’s the contract that I go back to. It’s like, oh well, we sat down and we agreed.

I didn’t actually dictate that we would start this date. It didn’t dictate that we would end on this date. We agreed.

I see. So what are you going to do to get back to our agreement? As an attorney, I love that. Are you tearing up? You just spoke directly to me.

Are you a little nasty eyed? Yes. And it’s so smart. It’s, it’s so.

It seems common sense maybe to me as well because. But the way you’re approaching it is so rare. No, I, but it’s completely true.

It’s an agreement between the two of you. And I would have to say that make sure that if there are change orders that it is in writing. Correct.

Right. I mean we do a payment milestone. It’s not with my contractors.

You don’t get paid because time has passed. You get paid because a line item has gotten completed. So let’s say we have four line items in payment schedule one, but you only did three of them.

I’m going to pay you for the three and then we’re going to move the other two to the second payment and we’re going to adjust the payment amounts. But you’re not just going to get paid because time has passed. So has this skill been developed through a poor experience with specifically, like, with a male.

I mean, you don’t have to out a male construction worker, but, like, can you think of Darrell? No, just kidding. I don’t own any Darrells. I don’.

Morning Darrells. I’m sorry for all the Darrels in the world. Can you think of an example of like a time where you had an aha moment of I need to change how I’m approaching this situation? Well, I would say so.

My mentors are the ones that gave me my critical documents. And I’m. I’m very much.

I’m not a. I have a better way at all mentality. I’m very coachable is what I would say.

So when they told me to use the critical documents, I use the critical documents. Now there’s been times where I was hoping I just use the critical documents and life goes on. It’s easy peasy, right? But there’s still conflict that arises even though you have everything in writing.

So it would be like a payment schedule is a great example. Like, oh, well, it’s Tuesday. It’s.

It’s payday. And, you know, the payment says, you owe me $18,000. I’m like, well, it says I owe you $18,000 for these line items.

So these three are done, these two aren’t. So I’m going to pay you 12,000. And then that’s where the discussion begins.

Like, oh, but I have to pay my guys and insert excuse and, you know, whatever happens. And I still have to have the calmness to just go back to, this is what we agreed to. Right? Yeah.

I’m sorry that you have to pay guys, but this is what you. And that’s your business. My business is that I pay you for work that’s done.

And this is the work that’s done. This is the work that isn’t. Absolutely.

I think that’s amazing. And you mentioned before that you are. That you have, you are coachable.

So you are continuously. Is it safe assumption that you’re continuously learning? Oh, my goodness, yes. I am in year whatever.

I don’t know what 2009-20, 23, what that math is. I think it’s more than 10. Neither one of us do.

And that’s what the bookkeepers are for. 10 plus. Let’s go with that number.

I’m in 10 plus years and I am always still learning. I still go to conferences. I still, I mean, there’s a lot that happens at a conference like, oh, okay, I know that.

But there’s always something I’m going to pick up. There’s always something I’m going to learn. There’s always something that I can do to improve and be a better version of myself.

So 100%, I’m still learning, right. I’m still reading books. I’m still, like I said, going to cars.

I’m still networking and talking to people. And then, and then you take that and you pay it forward, right? Like you’re paying for it. Other women to get into or encouraging other women to get into real estate investing.

Yes. And then. So how do you approach what you’ve learned? Mentoring and coaching others to build.

To build other, to help others build their successful ventures. Like, what role does leadership play in that process? And your mentorship role. In my mentorship role rule, what I, I think what I’ve learned is I can be a strong personality in a good way.

But what I, what I will do when I’m talking with someone today is I’ll do, I’ll spend more time better understanding what their goals are instead of pushing my agenda of what my goals are. Like, you don’t have to do what I did. You don’t have to be who I am.

What is it you want? What is it you want to do? What is it you want to be? And let’s figure that out. And honestly, on the way here. So I drove up today, I was in the car for two hours and I was talking to a fellow female investor and she’s newer and she was really struggling with where she’s going to focus this year.

She has a W2 job, a full time W2 job. So she’s doing her real estate investing on the side. But what we came up with is she really needs to, instead of focusing on wholesaling or flipping, she needs to find a rental property.

And that I think gave her a lot of relief because it just sounded like what her goals were that was the best fit for her to step into next. So instead of saying, you have to do what I’m doing, I’m doing this number and I’m, you know, this is what I’m doing. Like, what is it that you want? Right.

So I think what I’ve learned to answer your question is to listen more, right. And then coach and mentor based on what their needs are instead of just here’s what I’m doing, you should do it too. That makes perfect sense.

And I’m hearing that through that conversation. You’ve decided or you two decided together. Maybe rental properties are best because it’s like a longer pause in between projects.

Right. Well said that Flip and rehab, she, she had joined another mentor program and again, I think you know, their agenda is like, here’s the path you should take. Right? This is the path.

And their path was you should get into wholesaling and spend a bunch of money on marketing and talk to sellers directly. It honestly just wasn’t a good fit for her. She’s also a private lender, so she was looking for a more of a passive income.

And I’m like, why aren’t you buying rental property? And she, you know, told me her some of her limiting beliefs about that. We worked through that and she was just like, this just makes so much sense. So we went from her spending money on marketing, trying to talk to sellers directly to she just needs to get some rental properties.

Right. How did you get into, I understand now a little bit of your background of how you got into investing for yourself, but how, when was your first time that you decided to mentor? It’s that same program. So once I had success as a student, I didn’t, I don’t think I purposely, I didn’t do this on purpose.

Someone else tagged me. So once I had success as a student, they asked me to be a coach. And the funny thing is I wasn’t a good coach in the beginning because.

And they told me we would have these 30 minute one on one coaching calls. So you’re the student, you would call me up at designated time and day and we would get on the coaching call. And typically where I failed as a coach was being empathetic.

So let’s say it’s your second call and I gave you homework on the first call. And so the first thing I’m going to ask you on the second call is did you do your homework? And if it came out remotely as an excuse that you didn’t do your homework, my response was, well, then we don’t need to do today’s call until you do your homework. Call me back when you’re ready and prepare.

Click right. And so the person running the coaching program was like, you can’t hang up on students. I’m like, they can’t come to a coaching call without doing their homework.

I was like, I think we’re at an impasse. So they’re like, we’re going to move you over here into this part of the program. So actually I started doing public speaking.

Not public speaking, but educational speaking for the same coaching program. And that way I think I was more impactful that way. Right.

But it’s interesting because you’ve obviously grown because your prior story was about talking to this woman on your way here and you had developed that empathy. Needed to. Because I think a part of empathy is knowing what people want for themselves and putting yourselves in their shoes and then working towards that goal.

So, yes, that was. Yeah, 10 years ago. I’m a, I’m learning, I’m growing.

Right. I’m a more mature, calm person today than I was back then. Back then, I didn’t want to hear your excuse.

I didn’t want to hear anything that. I mean, I felt like you joined a coaching program. You paid to be here.

I was giving you the tough love, like, you need to do your homework or you don’t need to be here right now. I’m like, okay, let’s understand what works for you. I’m.

Yeah, I’m more empathetic. Thank you for tuning in. Do you like what you’re hearing? Have you been thinking about starting your own podcast for your business? Well, we here at Neiman Creative can help with our audio services ranging from custom music scores, sound branding to podcast production, and so much more.

We can add elevate your business needs with our audio services. So feel free to reach out to us today and we’ll be happy to help you get something started right away. You and I met through a woman’s group for real estate investing investor and Is that how we met? I know we met through the girl boss.

Girl boss and then still a woman’s group. Yes. So I know that you mentor a lot of women and I’m assuming in the past you’ve also mentored men.

Is that true? Yeah, I don’t have anything against men. No, No, I don’t think so. But my question was, is there a difference there? For example, you.

There’s a difference when you’re in front of a male dominated industry, like the construct your construction guys. Right. Is there a difference when you’re mentoring a male opposed to a female? There isn’t a difference if they have the right mindset.

So the males that I mentored in the past came to me through that coaching program. And that coaching program very much is a room full of growth, positive mindset people. And so if you have that mentality, it’s male, female, doesn’t matter.

Right. Um, I, I probably wouldn’t coach male or female if you didn’t have those attributes. Right.

So. Right. It’s.

Yeah, I don’t think there’s a difference between male and female. It’s more of their approach to the coaching. Are they coachable? Right.

So throughout your career you’ve, you’ve been in different facets of the real estate industry, right? Investing, sales, marketing, real estate coaching and then the redevelopment, like residential rehabs. What leadership skills? We’ll start one by one. Like, what leadership skills do you feel are crucial for real estate? Is there a difference between real estate and marketing? Like, is there a different crucial role that you have to put in front as far as leadership? I don’t think so.

So here’s my leadership style. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but what I have found that works for me very well is understanding who. Let’s use like say I have an acquisition person.

What I have found and actually I have an exercise for this now. It’s very. And we’re going to do it in the women’s group in next Saturday.

But what I have found is if I understand what motivates you and what your goals are, then we can be in alignment and we can work together. I’m like, here’s my goals and like, here’s the business goals, here’s your goals. And if we can find an alignment, then we both win.

So when I took time and there’s this exercise I use, it’s called the perfect day. So I have every. And a mentor did this with me and it works so well.

I think it’s a deeper version of a vision board. Vision boards never really connected me to an emotion. They were flat, one dimensional pictures and I would do them.

I cut out and put up pictures and then I would look at it and just wasn’t inspired. Just didn’t connect. So the perfect day is where you come in and you craft what a perfect date looks like.

Time and money doesn’t matter and you get very detailed. And I’ll give you a couple examples. Like in my perfect day, I woke up to the smell of bacon, but there wasn’t like a chef in the house.

And they’re like, how do you make bacon? I’m like, I don’t care, we’ll figure it out. But bacon’s cooking and I wake up to the smell of bacon. So again, it’s my perfect day because people are like, oh, well, don’t you want a chef in the house? Like, no, I don’t want to wake up to someone in the house.

I just want bacon. Right? I just want bacon to be there. And then I wake up and I’ve got three little foster dogs running around of different sizes and we take the coffee and the bacon.

We go outside and we play. So that’s a version of my perfect day. And so when I have someone that I’m working with, I can understand what their perfect day is, that I know what motivates them in any business.

But I know for sure in real estate, it’s a business of no’s. You’re going to hear no repeatedly, a lot. Just get used to it.

You can’t take it personally. So it can be easy to get demotivated if you’re on your 27th no. But if you know why you’re doing it, then you’re going to pick up that phone and get your 28 no, or maybe your first yes.

So if I understand what motivates them, then I can align our goals together and we can move forward. Right. It’s interesting that Perfect Day exercise is interesting too, because I feel like it applies to a lot of times.

For instance, I have adult children that are trying to figure out what to do with their life. But also I’m a second career attorney, right. So it’s like at some point I’ve had to make a decision a lot like that.

And it’s not what do I want my job to look like, but like, what is to what, what do I want my every day to look like? And that’s a really good exercise to reach. Even for the prior story about the woman’s, you know, which way she should go for her goals. How busy do you want to be during your day? Right.

That has a lot to do with what, how you’re going to run your business. Or like, for me it was, do I want to be in an office? Absolutely not. That’s exactly what this perfect day does.

You know, one of my mentors, he was very, he was very much, he loved to work and build a business. Hustle was a word that he used a lot. I am not a hustler.

I have a how can we work 10 hours a week type of chick, right? And he had, he had a lot of T shirts and marketing. One of his T shirts was, you know, crush it eight days a week. And I was like, how about we crush it like, you know, three, three and a half, like a solid, like, I’ll work all the way to Wednesday at noon.

So we just weren’t like, we weren’t in alignment. Because his idea is he would build a business and he would love working 60 hours a week. And then once that business was up and running, he would go do it again.

Where I just really wanted to like do something that produced income with as little money, little time as possible. So I could do all the fun things. All my hobbies, like, my hobbies are more important than income.

Right. And, and I can assume that you that in that mentor, like, knowing so much about yourself, I, you, you know, yourself. Yeah.

So you’re able to make those decisions. I think as far as like being prepared to hear a lot of no’s, it. You must be able to tell your, your students as well to know when to say no.

Right. Because that’s a lot of what you’re saying right now. Yeah.

Boundaries, like maybe saying no to something, even if it’s somebody else’s idea of what your, your life should look like. Well, I think the perfect day gives you clarity. And when you have clarity, it’s easy to have boundaries.

And this happened two weeks ago. Someone was asking me something and in mid sentence, and I didn’t mean it to be rude, I just said, no, I’m not doing that. And she’s like, well, one, she goes, you should have let me finish the sentence.

Two, she goes, I love that you knew with like, without hesitation that you weren’t doing it. It wasn’t like, oh, let me think about it or I’ll get back to you. I’m like, no, I’m not doing that.

Right. And she goes, but let me finish the sentence. I’m like, I was pretty clear where you were going that I wasn’t going to do that.

So it just gives you a tremendous amount of clarity, which I think saves time. Right. Like, I can make decisions quickly because I know does that work with where I want to go or does it not? Right.

So I guess that brings it in. I mean, it answers partially, but maybe there’s more of an expansion of how you balance the demands that you have running your own business, you know, as a real estate investor, and then, and redeveloper and then leading a team while continuing to personally engage. Like, how do you balance it all? Your mentorship, your business, the work life balance question.

I think this exercise is so powerful. That’s why we’re doing a workshop this month on it is that perfect day. Clarity, you know, lets me know.

Like, I don’t, I don’t want to go to an office. I don’t want to manage 30 employees. I want to work in, you know, on my business, but not, I can’t imagine doing it eight hours a day.

Like, I don’t even know how to think that way. I’m a morning person. I get up fairly Early.

I want my morning to have a very specific routine. I want to. I’m.

I’m most mentally clear in the morning, so I want to do my work stuff in the morning. And then the afternoons, I want to do all my hobby things. Right.

So just having that clarity of I don’t want to hustle, I don’t want to manage 40 employees. I don’t want to work. I don’t want to work 30 hours a week.

And I will in ebb and flow. But in my lifestyle, that’s not the lifestyle I want. Time.

I. I feel like I have a great relationship with time and a true appreciation of time that I respected a lot. Right. And yourself.

You respect yourself. Because I think for me personally, I have overbooked myself or I’ve said yes to things that then I have said yes to things because I had nothing booked that day. Right.

Like, well, why not? Why not? And then that day comes and it’s like, why. Why did I say I didn’t? Like, why wasn’t it okay to just have a free day? Right. I just, I felt the obligation to fill this up with something, you know, and I did.

And then. And then I end up regretting my past self. Wow.

We can fix that. Come to the workshop. We’re get you a whole bunch of calendar.

Perfect. No, I’m excited by that. I can help with this.

And go ahead. Since we’ve been talking about it. Go ahead and.

Do you want to go ahead and say where the workshop’s going to be and plug in a little bit? Oh, I wish I knew. Is that Erica Blosser’s insurance company? I don’t know the location. Well, at the end, we’ll be January 20th, 10am To I think 1pm we’re doing a free workshop.

And basically I’m going to take you through the framework that I use to have tremendous amounts of clarity doing this exercise. Literally, the first time I did it, you know, one of my perfect day visions was I was in wine country drinking wine with my friends. People were coming to visit me.

I had rented a house, and that came to fruition within three years. Wow. So I was standing outside this house I had rented in Sonoma.

Some friends had come in to visit. The house had an apple orchard. So I’m standing.

I mean, this is like out of a movie. I’m standing in the apple orchard with my basket collecting apples, talking with my friend John about what we were gonna do that day, like where we’re gonna go wine tasting, what we’re gonna have for lunch. And then I was just like, this is my perfect day.

Oh, my gosh, look, it’s happening right now. And so that same year, I went kiteboarding in Dominican Republic. So it was like having that just tremendous amount of clarity of what I wanted.

Just like I said, it sets you free. It’s easy to say no. It’s easy to say yes.

And all that saves time. So you can accelerate achieving your goals. Because when you can say yes or no, easy, it’s truly a time saver.

Do you think that this skill is something that you’ve. Because it’s very brave, right, to say. I think so.

Especially, you know, I just started my firm, so you have. So I still. I have to fight.

I do say no. Well, but that’s also because of my age, I feel like. And my personality, and I just don’t like doing things.

But it is. When you’re starting out, it is scary to say no because you don’t know when your next payment’s gonna come in, what the future is going to look like. You’re unstable.

So is this something that you had developed or. I mean, or did you have it always? I mean, I think we all have that struggle in the beginning of saying no to a client. I mean, there’s been clients.

You know, as a real estate agent, there were clients that I took on that I regretted. Right. That, you know, in the beginning, I would.

I took them on, and I didn’t have enough clarifying questions to understand that I was going to regret them. And so it created a good framework to ask better questions in the beginning. But in the very beginning, I took on clients that I regretted.

They became what I call time vampires. There was nothing that you were going to be able to do to satisfy them. And there was that fear of, like, oh, well, if I don’t do this, then they’re going to leave.

I’m not going to get paid. I feel, though, that I transitioned out of that pretty quickly. Like, I realized, like, I’m not going to deal with time vampires.

Right. And I would tell people, I’m like, I’m going to have to fire you as a client. We’re just not a good.

It’s me. It’s not you, it’s me. Right.

It’s not a good match. Exactly. I. I’ve had to do that, too.

I’ve been fired as a client. Yeah. So I could.

Like, when it happened, I was like, oh, it’s me. He’s firing me. I’m not a good match.

That is so funny. Yeah. I don’t know if he too.

He’s like, well, we’re just, you know, scaling, scaling down, and we’re going to reduce our workload. I’m like, I’ve said those words. Yeah.

So I’ve been the client fired, and I’ve fired the client. Right. But it’s important.

It’s important. It is an important skill develop. And I do think that it takes a certain maybe brave or like, a certain amount of confidence in the universe, maybe that things will work out.

Yeah. I think, like, if you’re. If you can get comfortable with knowing exactly what you want, you won’t have this fomo.

You won’t have the fear of missing out. Like, well, what if I don’t take this opportunity? I would look at it as, like, if I don’t take this opportunity because it doesn’t align with what I want, it’ll lead space for the opportunity. That does work.

Absolutely. And. And you’ve worked in many states now.

So California, Illinois and Florida. Is there a difference there in between states? I mean, I hear we’re. Quite honestly, I hear that, like, especially Pinellas County.

I know you’re not always in Pinellas County. Correct. That we’re mean.

And I think that’s adorable because I’m like, I guess it’s all perspective. I think the toughest place I worked from a regulatory standpoint was Chicago. Right.

That was tough. And I don’t know if I can say this, but basically it came down to how much money are you going to spend to get what you want? And so, you know, I come from Florida to Illinois, and so I didn’t understand that at first, like, oh, we could reduce this process from 6 weeks to 10 days if you’d like. And I’m like, oh, I would like.

And then they were like, oh, my God, where do I sign? And they’re like, well, you write us a check, right? I was like, oh, that’s what I have to do. So I think it’s all perspective. I don’t find Pinellas county that tough so far.

Also, I think kind of goes back to who you align yourself with. You know, I’m working with a builder right now that has a good reputation in the county. I know they’ve built a lot of product.

They do good, solid, quality work. They’re not trying to cut corners. They’re nice people.

So when you, you know, nice people want to work with nice people. If you go down to the county and you’re, you know, showing up with a bunch of attitude, you’re going to get that in the mirror, you’re going to get that back. Right.

So I think for someone who says it’s tough, maybe look at the mirror. Right. Maybe you’re the client that’s been fired too many times.

Right? Yeah. So what’s the common denominator there? Right. So have you put in, in your career, have you put certain systems in place to find those, those people that you align with? I feel like I’m just gonna keep quoting books.

Good. Because I have. I’m.

All right. So the E myth was the first book. The second book would be Mindset by Carol Dweck.

Okay. It’s also on my list. Is it? Yep.

Awesome. So the third book and all, I can really tell. And here’s the thing.

I have a horrible memory. I have a good absorption and I apply, but I couldn’t do book reports. But the book called, it’s called Good to Great.

Okay. And what I took, what I took from that book was beside the title, good companies that are good that go to great and some don’t is getting the right people on the bus. So I’m going to go back to personality.

Like if you. For example, I used to work out with a personal trainer and I would meet him at 8:30 in the morning at the gym. His first question was like, why are you here at 8:30? Like, my other clients are here at 5:30, 6:30 before they go to work.

What are you doing that you can just lollygag walk in here at 8:30. I’m like, well, I’m very busy at 6 o’, clock, you know, having the coffee, playing with the dogs. And so he’s like, well, tell me more about what you do.

Well, he had, he was very coachable. He had a good discipline and he had a positive attitude. So he had no real estate experience, but none of us do in the beginning.

Nobody’s born a real estate investor. So I brought him into the company and in the book Good to Great, they’re like, you know, get the right people on the bus and then get them in the right seat. And so I brought him in as acquisitions.

It turned out he was better project manager. So we transitioned him to project manager. But he just had the right attitude.

He had the discipline, he had the coachability. Yeah, I think that what that is so important. I feel like I just said that on a different podcast, but that specifically, of course, you want to hire somebody for a position, but once they get in there, you have to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

Right. And it’s so important to put. Set them up for success.

Right. I think that we’re all. We are all valuable.

Right. And you found something in him that you were like, he’s going to be great, but then you have to figure out exactly at what. Yeah, he was a good acquisitions.

He was a great project manager. Yeah, that’s super interesting. That’s really great.

And zero experience coming into it. Yeah. So when you think about.

So when you think of when you have people come to you with zero experience, what is, like, what is your piece of advice? Where to start? Be willing to do more than expected of you. Like, so when I started, I was a real estate agent working with an investor. But I told him, I’m like, I will take on project management.

I will do these other tasks because I want to learn the business. I wasn’t asking for to be paid as a project manager. I was asking for the ability to learn.

Right. And so I did more than I guess was expected of me because my job was a real estate agent. My job was to list the property and sell it.

But I’m like, I will go manage these contractors and tell them to go to the store and get the toilet. But, like, if you let me. So he allowed me to learn from him while taking part of the business off of his plate and learning how to do it myself.

And in that way. And why was that important to you? To. To learn the business so you can grow from there.

Right. I went to. Not just pigeon hole yourself.

Yeah. I didn’t want to be a real estate agent forever. I liked what he was doing.

I liked his business model. So I want to replicate it. I want to duplicate it.

I have people who will say, well, aren’t you afraid when you open the books and show someone, they’ll go do it themselves? I’m like, I hope so. I absolutely stinking hope so. I’m not a gatekeeper.

There’s enough real estate in the world for all of us to buy the same thing. When I coach or mentor someone now for free, they’re like, why aren’t you afraid that they’re going to become your competitor? I’m like, let’s do it. Let’s join venture.

Let’s. Here’s the neighborhood that I’m buying in. Here’s why I think it’s a great idea.

There’s enough real estate for everybody not to have that scarcity mindset. Right. And for women specifically, do you think that there.

I know that you’ve stated before in this, in this conversation that man or woman, you know it. You have to have the same mindset, the same discipline. But is there a specific attribute that women need to develop or that you would encourage women to develop to deal with the, the, you know, real estate, redevelopment, the industry, investing? Yeah, I would think.

I guess the advice I would give is don’t take it personally. It’s, you know, figure out what you want, figure out what your goals are, figure out what is going to drive you and then just do that. There’s going to be people who come into your arena that aren’t the best fit, but there’s going to be people who are.

So just do the best version of you. And if you have clarity and focus, you’ll know who’s going to be a good fit to work with and who’s not. But you gotta know what you want, right? Else you’re gonna, you know, do anything and everything.

You’re gonna get in the wrong crowd. Exactly. This is like 13 year old PSA.

Like, don’t hang around the wrong kids in the neighborhood. Right? It’s true. Birds of a feather flock together.

Yeah. Yeah. You are who you hang out with.

You are the 10 people or whatever. Yeah. You’re the sum of the five people you hang around the most.

All cliche things really are true. They are. Like I used to, when I used to do a weekend coaching program, I would put up all my favorite quotes and by the time, like the students got there, there’d be like 15 quotes around the room.

And so I would ask them, like, absorb them over the weekend and then I would have them go put stars, you know, on their top two. And, you know, every single one had a star of some sort because something spoke to somebody. But all those quotes are cliches.

But they’re. They work. They’re true.

They are true and they’re easy to remember. I feel like we should have you on again this hour went. This 45 minutes went way too quick.

Okay. For sure. I mean, you are just a wealth of knowledge and super inspirational.

So where can we find you the best place to find me? Because I’m getting better at social media. There you go. Is champagne.

Ladonna. Don’t hate the name on Instagram. I actually have a social media strategist who is assisting me in developing this community of women.

And we’re going to be, I’d say be announcing it or getting information out to the world via Instagram the most. I am super excited. I am one of those women that I want to be in that community.

I love everything that you have been doing. You and I went for. One of the activities you and I did that you invited me to was just a walk with six other women real estate investors.

And even though I’m not a real estate investor, I learned so much. I’m so excited to like embark on the journey. And that’s because of you, ladonna.

Yeah, but wasn’t that a fun way just to meet people? It was. It was great. Let’s just go for a walk.

Someone bring a dog. I know. That’s what I was going to ask you.

You definitely need to bring the foster dog too. What is her name? Heidi. Right now.

Well, Hazel just went back and I’m picking up a new one tomorrow. Nice. Yeah, Hazel was super sweet.

Nice. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ladonna.

This was so. Thank you for having me. Sa.