Tips and Tricks for Property Management with Becky Emmons

Intro (00:02):

What's up everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Loop It in the DoorLoop podcast where we pick the brains of experts in property management, real estate and investing tech. We cover it, marketing that too. So whether you want actionable tips or the insider scoop from top performers in their industries, this is one show you won't want to miss. Be sure to subscribe so you won't miss out on any future episode.

Muhammed Abugosh (00:33):

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Loop It In podcast. Today I'm joined with Becky Emmons. Now, she and her husband started in real estate in 2019 and they have a successful business right now, highly diversified, and I can't wait to learn more from her today. So without further ado, welcome Becky.

Becky Emmons (00:50):

Welcome. Yes, very exciting. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting today.

Muhammed Abugosh (00:56):

Awesome. So I know I gave a little bit of an introduction there, but I think that doesn't do it justice at all. We'd love to know more about how you got started and what interests you in real estate in the first place.

Becky Emmons (01:07):

Thank you. We like to say we think we're big, but we're really not. We're pretty small potatoes, but we're learning and we're growing each day. So my husband and I are from the same town in Chardon, born and raised in the same area in Chardon, Ohio, and we went to high school together and known each other for a long time. He is a dairy farmer by trade, so that's his backstory. So a little different than real estate, I would say. He has a degree in dairy science and I was in healthcare business with a local hospital here in town, and we are just really just kind of trying to diversify and see what's what we could do. And really in the agricultural field, he was getting a bit burned out. I just finished my MBA in 2019 actually right before we started the business. I had my congratulations.

(02:07):

Thank you. I finished my MBA and he was getting a little burnt out and he said, what if we started listening a couple different podcasts actually, things for financial independence. BiggerPockets is a big one. A lot of people utiliz in the space and just trying to figure out what our next step was. We were married, no children at the time, so we were able to be a little bit flexible. We sold our forever home and we were actually living in the upstairs of a barn at the time and it was a legit apartment and we just decided let's jump in and buy our first duplex. So we bought our first duplex in 2019 in the local town, one county over, and we house hacked, if you've heard that term is you live next to your tenant and kind of started the business. He left his job in 2019 to start it, and I was still working full-time at that time, and we just kind of jumped in and started, really just started looking to see what kind of opportunities were to come up. 2019 was a little bit easier. We could still buy some properties on the MLS and so that summer we scaled and bought three small condos locally after that. So 2019 we bought four properties that we kept as rentals and a little bit of work on them, not a ton and all the time living in a duplex next to our tenant. So that's how we started and we've tried to scale since then.

Muhammed Abugosh (03:48):

That's a pretty impressive story. I mean, seeing us how you guys didn't necessarily have any real estate background, did you have any family that were in the business or any friends that could help you out along the way? Because pretty scary to get started out in.

Becky Emmons (04:01):

Absolutely. I mean, to this day there's not a person that we don't encounter, friend, family acquaintance that comes up to us and says that they haven't considered or wanted to start at least have one or two rental properties in their portfolio, in their investment portfolio. And everyone always says it's a great business to get started in. It's not the easiest. It's not that it's difficult by any means. We do have great tenants and we're really happy with the ones that we do have, but you have to be able to be flexible and you have to be able to work every single day and constantly talk about the business and reinvest into the business. And so that's what we've been trying to do. And so I mean, we knew one family friend who was a previous landlord years and years and years ago, and we sat down with them early on and they're more of an acquaintance than they are that close. And we

Muhammed Abugosh (05:02):

Received there. This was before you got started, before you got the first property?

Becky Emmons (05:05):

No, no, not at all. Not at all. We actually acquired, no, yeah, we actually acquired our tenant. That was the first property we ever had. They were there before us, so they lived there longer than we did and they just stayed and we just adopted their lease and we just kept them on and they're still there and great family. Yeah, so we knew a couple that had done it years and years ago and they had a lease packet and they walked through us what kind of information they've learned along the way and we kind of adapted and looked at what was in their lease packet and what makes sense to you today. I mean, of course what they did back then was a lot of paper and a lot of cash and checks and so bringing a little bit to today's times we've adapted a little bit more.

Muhammed Abugosh (06:05):

Could you tell me a little bit more about that? How you adapted to modernize the business a little bit?

Becky Emmons (06:10):

Yeah,

Muhammed Abugosh (06:11):

Why was that necessary? Why not just keep doing things the way that they were?

Becky Emmons (06:14):

First few properties that we bought, there were I would say two of the four properties. We had tenants that were already there and we bought the properties with 'em. One of 'em, they were doing checks, actually both of 'em were doing sending checks and the other was, and then we asked them, can you start doing Venmo? Which is to do something different a little bit to make it a little bit easier for them. And one of 'em was just like, check seems to be simple, but the problem is is that they had to mail it out in time before the first of the month, and then if the post office was delayed, then that was an issue or we'd have to go pick it up. I mean, there was just always something that came up, not that they weren't paying, but it was a complexity of trying to receive the cash in and how to set that up.

(07:07):

And even when we first started, I mean I think I was accepting Venmo into my personal Venmo. I didn't know should we create a separate business one? And so we are just receiving this income, not really knowing how the whole process. And so we try to figure out, okay, what is the next thing do we do? We create a business, Venmo, okay, we create a tax id, we have to register with the state. I mean, we did this kind of all after the fact. We didn't really know how big we were going to scale at that time or what our next step was going to be.

Muhammed Abugosh (07:40):

Yeah. I do wonder if you knew how much was going to go into it and how complicated it was going to be. Would you have still gone for it or do you think that not knowing enough about it, would that kind of helped?

Becky Emmons (07:52):

Oh yeah. Well, we're entrepreneurs by nature. We've always been, when my husband was a farmer, we brought farm implements like tractors and sprayers and stuff to, if you know that world to like, okay, so if we buy this and then the farm paid us for this, could we partner with them in the future? And then when I got my MBA, the whole preface was what is our next step with that? Can we create another business venture that we can do alongside our W2 incomes? And so we're always just trying to think of a thing. When I said we lived in a barn, we sold what was our forever home and we lived in the upstairs of a barn because we said, let's try to buy a farm. And it didn't work out. And that's where we landed for another year and we were able to diversify, able to be a little bit easy because it was just the two of us at the time. And so what is the next thing for us to, but yeah, we're definitely always business mindset. And so for us, I think we still would've for sure tried it at least. I mean, the worst thing it is, it doesn't work and you go back to working a nine to five.

Muhammed Abugosh (09:09):

Wow, I hear you keep bringing up you and your husband and the partnership that you have together. How important is that? And because for some people maybe working with a relative family member, a close friend, it can have its ups and downs, but you guys have seem to have done very well with that.

Becky Emmons (09:27):

Yeah, thank you. Mean, well, we've known each other since high school and I think we were married for over 10 years before we started the business. And so we really knew what our mindset was going into it. Like I said, we just really are business minded. And so he's where I'm the business behind it, trying to make sure all the i's are Dot and the T's are crossed. He's the dreamer by nature. I mean, he constantly is thinking, what's the next thing? What's the next avenue we can take? And I'm like, okay, hold on. Let's make sure we're set up for that before we do it. Okay, do we have the right account? Do we have the account for it? Can I make this work before we dive into the next project? So I mean, we're still doing that today. It's only, like I said, it's only been 2019, so it's not been many years, but we're constantly thinking, okay, what's the next avenue we can take with the business? We know how to be landlords. We started flipping houses recently. Okay, why don't we look into short-term rentals? How do we partner with other people? What's our long-term goal? And I mean, it changes day to day. And I think that's the beauty of this business is that you have the ability to think outside the box and come up with new ideas and structure it differently and be able to be okay with the change.

Muhammed Abugosh (11:04):

Yeah, I mean, that's one thing I like about the approach that you guys have as well. You're willing to try different things and experiment and go into other avenues of the business, find other ways of making money, whereas a lot of other people, they might find something that works or that they're good at and they'll double down on that. So where do you think that comes from, the desire to try other avenues? Like you said, residential being a landlord, flipping houses now you want to try short term. Could you speak a little bit about that?

Becky Emmons (11:30):

Right. No, absolutely. I think that wasn't our intention really going into it. We really thought we would stay with the rental business and just keep adding properties to our portfolio. And along the way, I mean obviously as we know, the interest rates started increasing and we were kind of going with that. If you've heard of the B method, that's what we were doing. Buying and then rehabbing and refinancing and renting. Well, a little hard to do the refinancing aspect of it when your appraisals aren't coming back and the interest rates are high. And so we really had to diversify a little bit at that time and think, okay, not our first idea was to sell properties. Any of 'em. We just love the idea of adding new, I mean, they're like our little babies at this point. I mean, maybe someday down the road, we won't know 'em so personally, but right now they are. And so it was hard for us to kind of release some of them out of our portfolio, but in order to remain flexible and stay with the times we had to. And so we sold a property in 21, we sold a property in 22, and we, we've sold, and this year all of our properties we've been selling, I hate to say that we're landlords and flippers. Sometimes they have such a negative connotation.

(13:00):

Whenever I go to business meetings or chamber events, I'm always like, yeah, we're landlords and flippers in town, but we're not like your standard landlord and flipper because

Muhammed Abugosh (13:12):

You have to qualify it,

Becky Emmons (13:14):

Get to know us, know that we want to stay local and reinvest into the community that we grew up in. It's really important to us. And we are only covering two counties at this time, the county that we live in and the county right next door. And we haven't added on from that at this point. Haven't needed to maybe down the road, but we're just really proud of being local and staying local. And so being flexible and being adaptable and being okay with changing your model. And so now I think to going back to changing the model, it's okay, now that we know how to landlord and we know how to update and rehab homes, why don't we look into this short-term rental business? Why don't we consider any sort of additional partnerships with other businesses? Locally is locally. And so that's what we're trying to do to just kind of diversify our portfolio even more.

Muhammed Abugosh (14:09):

Amazing. Let's see. You spoke a little bit about needing to find reliable tenants and how the tenants that you took on in the beginning, right? They were already in the property. I think it was two of the properties, right? Already had tenants in

Becky Emmons (14:26):

Them. Yeah, actually we have a couple, but yes.

Muhammed Abugosh (14:28):

Okay. So how do you go about finding good tenants? I remember when we spoke earlier before this podcast introduction call, you told me that for the most part you've had very low turnover, right? Right. So how do you go about securing that? Because I know a lot of tenants, they'll deal with difficult or a lot of landlords who deal with a difficult tenant, they'll come in, it'll be hard to get them out, maybe they're not paying rent, they're not taking care of the property. So what steps do you have in place to make sure that that doesn't happen?

Becky Emmons (14:57):

So a few of our properties, we still have the original tenants that we bought the property with, which is fantastic, and we appreciate it with the turnover that we've had or the new properties we've added, just really being upfront. A lot of, I think locally, I mean, there's such a shortage of rentals I think, around here locally, so that when you find a good one at a decent price, I mean, we get multiple applications. There's actually times when I don't even actually have to list 'em because I already have someone who knows somebody that's looking and they qualify, which is fabulous. And we love that because it gives us the opportunity to put someone in that knows somebody. And that's already one line of screening them at that point. But we are really upfront when we list, let's say we do an open house or whatever for a new property that's coming available.

(15:56):

We're upfront that this is our family business and that we're local to the area. And if it's not me that's, I'm the one that's going to answer the phone and take your call if there's an issue. And it's my husband that's going to show up and fix whatever the issue is. And if he can't fix it, he's really a jack of all trades. So he usually can, but if he can't, then he will call somebody to have come in and fix it. And so I think our tenants really appreciate that, that we're very upfront with them and that it's not an out-of-state investor or someone that can't, or property management company. We property manage our own properties, and we just take a lot of pride in being responsive and having a nice quality home. I mean, really at the end of the day, just having something that they can raise their family in and then they want to stay. And then the other thing is when we start their tenancy with us, we always ask for a one year lease upfront, but we tell them upfront, as long as you guys are paying rent for a year and all's going well, and the house is looking good and you're happy with everything, we will put you on a month to month after a year. Some of 'em want to do that, and some of 'em want to secure another full year.

Muhammed Abugosh (17:20):

Going off that I'd like to know, what are the biggest red flags that you would look for that would make you turn away a potential tenant?

Becky Emmons (17:30):

One of the things we adopted, and I will have to plug DoorLoop here, one of the things we adopted is that we started all of our applications when we added DoorLoop into our process, we really wanted to start systematizing how we were receiving rent, how were we billing out utilities, if we were, how we were accepting applications. And most recently using the e-sign platform, which has been really great for lease renewals, but we really wanted a place where the tenants could apply, have their security deposit put in, pay their rent, and it was like a one-stop shop. And what we find too, when I am showing a new property, if I let one of our prospective tenant know that the application is online and there's a fee to process it because it runs the background check and credit report. If they text you or email you and ask for the application and then fill it out in a timely fashion, that's your first screening that you know have a quality tenant to review their application. And then we're upfront review our qualifications on the front end, and then we always take the first qualified applicant. I mean, we tell them upfront that that's what we're going to do, and it's worked out just fine for us. But really it's that application process. If you know that if they ask for the application, which is, and this is through DoorLoop and it's online, and they fill it out in a timely fashion, that they're someone that you want to consider even further.

Muhammed Abugosh (19:19):

Yeah, I think little indicators that are so powerful. I remember my brother was working at a company where he had to hire people, and in the application he put a little math problem, and it was something super simple anyone could solve, and a lot of people ignored it, wouldn't even read it. And that's how we knew those people weren't really paying attention. They're not detail oriented, and they didn't necessarily really want to work in the company. So that was another qualifier that it's a little unconventional, but it works.

Becky Emmons (19:49):

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And even furthermore, when we're showing the properties, I'm the one that's showing them, so I'm meeting them. So really, I mean, the application obviously is great because it gets the information that you need, but really all that information is from me having a conversation with the prospective tenant while I'm showing it. I mean, you learn a lot about 'em. And so that's a whole other screening process. It's just by getting to know them, are they showing up on time to their appointments? Are they talking about the property? Are they looking at the property? Are they asking questions? Those are all screening again to get a qualified tenant.

Muhammed Abugosh (20:35):

Amazing. And then another question I wanted to ask, you don't have to share this if you don't want to, but have you had a very difficult tenant or a situation that was really hard to solve? Maybe you had to evict someone? What's your horror story with a tenant?

Becky Emmons (20:55):

So we have had one eviction in all honesty, but we really, and we gave this person every opportunity in the world to make right on the rent. And I think that goes again to the qualifying the applicant at the beginning, because at this point right now, we have, I don't know, just under 20 tenants that everyone is staying, everyone's happy to stay, continuing to stay. And so we really don't have horror stories. The one eviction was, again, we gave him every opportunity and it was kind of like the last straw and it worked out fine. And the property he left in a great situation, which is exactly what you want. It doesn't happen all the time. I mean, certainly with an eviction, you run the risk of what's the property going to look like when they leave. We've had some properties where tenants have moved out and we've had to deep clean, I guess it doesn't happen to us, but the stories of the toilet bursting in the middle of the night now, first of all, whose toilet bursts? But that kind of stuff, that doesn't happen. It has not happened for us. We've had where a toilets overflowed and we've gone in, but it was like a 9:00 PM and we handled it. And because we're local, it's right around, all of our properties are within 30 minutes of us. So we're the ones that are going to respond and take a look at it and then see what's next to be done.

Muhammed Abugosh (22:32):

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, we did host a podcast episode here where we talked about some horror stories, and some of these are almost too ridiculous to believe.

Becky Emmons (22:42):

We lived in two of our properties in duplexes near our tenants. So we like them. I mean, if you can live next to a tenant, I mean, then that means that you actually appreciate them and like them. So I think we don't live next to a tenant now. We do live in one of our rentals, so we aren't in the forever home yet. But again, we're still growing and we're still new to the business. And our accountant just said recently that he thinks that we might be out of that startup phase, which is really exciting for us. Oh,

Muhammed Abugosh (23:18):

Congratulations.

Becky Emmons (23:20):

Which means I think we're kind of going over that hump a little bit about what's next, but we're still learning and growing. And I think you need to be, like I said from the beginning, you got to be adaptable and you got to find what's the next avenue to take.

Muhammed Abugosh (23:34):

Yeah, I mean, over 20 doors within just a couple years, it's really impressive. And even just the timing of when you guys started in 2019, pandemic is just around the corner. What was that like for you guys?

Becky Emmons (23:48):

Yeah, it wasn't actually bad, but what happened is I was still working full time at the beginning of the pandemic and at the end of, so that was really like 2020. We were living, we starting to scale. We kept our tenants. There wasn't a single tenant that paid late because of it. We were just upfront with them and said, let us know if something goes on and we'll try to figure it out together. And everyone just appreciated that from the beginning. And then I think we actually enjoyed the fact that we could go work on these properties. We could get out of the house and we were going to work at another house, and we weren't exposing ourselves to anyone or anything, but we were working on properties in the middle of it and growing our portfolio. And so it worked out fine for us, but at the end of 21, I decided to leave my W2 job.

(24:51):

So now we are both full time in the business. I'm not sure if we mentioned that at this point, but we're both full-time in the business have been for almost two years now. And again, it's not easy, especially not easy when you go for a financing or you have to be creative because not many banks like the non W2 person coming to them, and even commercial lenders we're not old enough or seasoned enough to be able to dabble into some of those opportunities at this point. So we're just learning as we go and hence why we're changing our model constantly.

Muhammed Abugosh (25:42):

So how did you go about receiving your lending opportunities with the challenges that you do face?

Becky Emmons (25:47):

Yeah, when we first started, of course I was working full time, so we were able to, our first few properties, they were just residential investment properties, different little bit higher interest rates or down payments, but they were just standard investment loans. And then once we both kind of left the world, we have just kind of learned or met other people within the business and got hooked up with different commercial lenders that take really the value of the property into consideration. Sure, you're guaranteeing the property at the end of the day, your businesses, but what they're doing is they're looking at just the after repair value and the initial investments as the collateral for the loan. But one thing that kind of hit us, and I mentioned that when we decided to sell one of our properties last summer when we really didn't want to was because we weren't getting our appraisals for those refinances.

(26:52):

And so after much discussion and even discussion of who's going back to work full time and the scariness of, oh, maybe this wasn't a good idea for both of us to quit at this point. I mean, we had some long discussions about that. We decided, okay, who do we know that does creative financing and private lending? And so we started reaching out to different private lenders that we knew locally and kind of asked what their models are and tried to adopt a structure that would make sense for us. And we were able to secure one of those almost a year ago, and it's been great because now we can really position ourselves even more marketable when going to make offers on properties. We have the cash behind it to buy the property. So not at all how we thought we would do it from the beginning. And we had to learn that we had no idea how that process worked. And so it was scary. It was scary upfront, like, okay, how do you go to a title company and say, you have a private lender backing your loan, where's my appraisal? So it was just a very different process for us to do, but it's worked out. And after that property, we had to sell thinking who's going back to work. We were able to buy three more properties right after that and add 'em to our portfolio.

(28:27):

One day you're thinking, who's going back to work full time and how are we going to make the credit card payment and buy groceries for the house? And then next day you're going, we could probably add another property. We could probably buy another one.

Muhammed Abugosh (28:43):

Yeah, I mean, because it's a lot less predictable than just having a stable income for sure. Up down one day. You have no idea.

Becky Emmons (28:50):

Yeah. Oh, for sure. And then even things, even when you're going to file your taxes, I have no idea how that works. And with just business income, I mean, gosh, how do you position your business income to a lender to say, oh yeah, we, there's deductions and stuff, and we reinvest back into the business and Oh, yeah, it looks like we make nothing. And I'm still learning. I still don't even know how to read those. And so we've actually had to have a few different accountants and some worked and some didn't, and now we've had one for almost two years now. And so it's really just trying to find what's the avenue that makes the most sense. And again, we're happy to learn, we're happy to try something different. We're excited to try something different because you never know what the next opportunity is going to come up if you just kind of put yourself out there a little bit

Muhammed Abugosh (29:52):

More. And I think that humility is so important. Be willing to learn, be willing to say that you don't know how something works, but trying it anyways. Also, I really like how you shared the difficult time that you guys went through where you're trying to decide if someone has to go back to work. I think that vulnerability is important, especially to show people that if they're struggling, so are other people. It's not as easy as it looks from the outside. You hear about all the successes, but not necessarily the parts where things could have gone wrong. Would you say that was probably the hardest time that you guys faced in starting this business?

Becky Emmons (30:27):

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's been different roadblocks along the way and things that have come up. But for us, I mean, that was one that we said, wait a second, maybe just keeping to add properties in our portfolio isn't the way we need to go. So now what do we do? Do we just break even on a house and just get our initial investment out of it and just break even? That's what we have to do. And I remember sitting on the floor of our office a year ago last summer, and what was that in 22? And going, okay, so if I have to go back to work, how is that going to work? And let me remind you, or I didn't even say this at the time, I was pregnant also with our second kid.

Muhammed Abugosh (31:19):

Oh,

Becky Emmons (31:20):

Wow. So I was like, okay, so if I go back to work, even part-time, how am I going to be able to go back out on maternity leave a couple months later? So I mean, it

Muhammed Abugosh (31:34):

Was say, adds a whole nother challenge,

Becky Emmons (31:36):

A

Muhammed Abugosh (31:36):

Boy or girl, by the way. It's a whole nother

Becky Emmons (31:37):

Challenge. But at the same time, it would've made more sense for me to go back because if it's not him working on the property every single day and he is actually doing the manual labor on these properties, just he's insane. I mean, the things that he can do, I'm not going to do that. I don't know the different Makita tools that he has. I don't know what those things are. I mean, he tells me what they are all the time, but I don't use 'em. So it would have to have been me that went back to work. And so I think just being able to be vulnerable and go, okay, so if we just extend ourselves a little bit more on our credit for this month, which is a very tough thing to say, and then we start talking to some other people in the area that know about creative financing options. Let's see if we can think of a new way to structure these, because obviously just refinancing isn't going to be the way that we're going to do, and let's just take our licks and sell the house. And we did, and it worked out, and it worked out just fine. And then we said, oh, wait, selling houses isn't that bad. Let's add this opportunity. Let's add this into the mix of things that we do. So let's not just be landlords. Let's sell a few. So yeah.

Muhammed Abugosh (33:04):

Amazing. And the success that you guys have, I feel like it keeps coming back to that you guys are part of the community. You're upfront, you're honest, you try to build trust, you get to know the tenants on a personal level, which I think is for some landlords, they may be apprehensive about doing that. I've heard cases where, and I'm sure it's pretty common where the landlord, they might pretend that they're not really the owner whenever they go visit the property, they'll pretend that they want to add a little bit of a buffer in place. But you guys haven't done that at all, and it seems like it's worked out well for you.

Becky Emmons (33:42):

Yeah, we haven't. And I hear that. So I go to a lot of real estate meetings or chamber events, certainly no other people within the field now. We've grown a good relationship and network with other investors. Everyone does it a little bit differently. I think we have opportunity to learn from each other. I really think that we should be working together as opposed to being competition, because we all need to learn what this business is, especially the people that are trying to invest, really invest into the community. But I think it's just, we've learned, and I've heard, don't get so close to your tenants. And I wouldn't say we're not best friends. We're not hanging out with them on the weekends or anything like

Muhammed Abugosh (34:31):

That. There's some boundaries in place.

Becky Emmons (34:33):

There is some boundaries. There are definitely boundaries in place. But some of our tenants, no, we have children and we'll ask how they are. Some of 'em, it just kind of depends on the situation. But I think just the fact that whenever I say show a new property and I say we are the owners, yes, that might create a different level of complexity of, oh, okay, so you own the property and you're the landlord. But I think really it's been the other way where they're go, oh, thank God. I mean, they just appreciate the fact that they have a face to the name though our business is Holstein Homes and people call us Mr. Mrs. Holstein all the time. That's not our last name. So we have a buffer there because our last name isn't in our business

Muhammed Abugosh (35:33):

Name. So that was intentional. That was intentional.

Becky Emmons (35:36):

That's intentional.

Muhammed Abugosh (35:40):

Oh, wow. I love it. So I think we've learned a lot here, but I want to ask you if there's any advice that you'd give someone who's maybe just starting out, maybe they've got a few rental properties they've been struggling to grow, and that could be for a lot of reasons, it's hard to find the time to look for opportunities or whatever the struggle is. What advice would you give them because you've grown pretty fast in a very short amount of time.

Becky Emmons (36:09):

So I mean, we want to learn from you as well. So what do you know? So teach me if you're new to the game and you have some ideas, I want to know, so feel free to reach out to me. But really, I think trying to systematize your process the best you can, makes the most sense. When we started going back to our lease packet, have a standard lease. Obviously it changes a little bit based on the property, but know who pays the utilities for each of 'em, have it set up the right way and know that packet really, really well because they're going to hold you to that should something go awry. So know that very well systematize if you can. The way that you collect rent. We've been very fortunate utilizing DoorLoop for us, it's made sense. Our tenants all appreciate it just because it's just like a one place that they know they can either set it up automatically, they can go in per month, and they feel, and they're very comfortable. I mean, a lot of people pay things through online platforms at this point, so it's not like it's weird or scary for them. But systematizing, however you choose to do that, whether it's Venmo, whether it's checks, whether it's a software, have some sort of standard process of how you do it and use that throughout all of your properties.

(37:41):

It gets some sort of bookkeeping for sure. As you add additional properties, it gets complex. So I think adding some sort of standard bookkeeping and a good accountant that understands what you're trying to do, an accountant that actually understands real estate is really important as well. And then learn to be adaptable and be comfortable with the uncomfortable, because you will be very uncomfortable, especially when you get a call that says, Hey, the washer's not working, or Can you replace it? Or, I mean, the horror stories don't usually happen all the time. Sure there are, but I think they're, there's

Muhammed Abugosh (38:25):

No exploding toilets every week.

Becky Emmons (38:28):

Yeah, they're more minimal than you think. But be comfortable with trying new ideas and new things and meeting people in the business. It's important to gain those contacts and those relationships because they're your teachers. Tenants that are historic tenants know a ton about the business, probably more than you will ever know because they've just been tenants for a really long time. So if you can learn from others that have done it in the past and take their advice, and you'll go a long way with it. It's not the easiest business. Sure. You can add real estate to your portfolio of investments. Absolutely. It makes sense. Real estate is a fabulous investment tool, but if you're going to go full bore and do it like we have, just learn to be adaptable and be comfortable with the uncomfortable. There's going to be times you're sitting on your office floor going, okay, who's going back to work full time? And then it turns out and it works just fine. Yeah.

Muhammed Abugosh (39:37):

Nothing to worry about. Amazing. I love how you summed everything up there. You mentioned you were pregnant at the time during the whatever. You had to make this huge decision. Was it a boy or a girl?

Becky Emmons (39:48):

Oh, okay. So of course, I love talking about my children. It was a boy. So we have two children. So we have our daughter and we have a son, so two and almost one. So they're very close in age. But I mean, another thing, we grew a family during starting a business, and so it can be done. It can be done, but

Muhammed Abugosh (40:12):

They love, which probably just as difficult.

Becky Emmons (40:14):

It's just as difficult. Sure. You know what? I think we love bringing our children around our business, and certainly they're young right now and they don't understand it, of course at this point. But the fact that we can be flexible with our time, be able to wake 'em up in the morning and put 'em in bed at night, that on the weekends we are visiting properties that we're visiting properties that we're working on, or ones that are in transition and they know them. I mean, our daughter mentions knows the names of the properties that we're going to. So we just build that into our weekend and it's super fun.

Muhammed Abugosh (40:54):

She'll be helping out with the accounting in no time.

Becky Emmons (40:56):

Oh, oh, she's going to be marketing. Yeah, she'll be marketing. I'm not sure. He'll probably be the one swinging the hammer for sure. And using all those tools that I don't know what they are.

Muhammed Abugosh (41:08):

Yeah. I think before we wrap up here, do you have any final thoughts or anything else you'd like to share?

Becky Emmons (41:13):

Feel free to reach out. We're on Facebook and Instagram. This is a great opportunity to be collaborative versus being competitive.

Muhammed Abugosh (41:19):

Amazing. Well, I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing your story, giving us your valuable time and telling us all the advice that you have. And I'm sure you're going to keep learning and growing along the way. And now that you're out of that startup phase, who knows what can happen. The sky's the limit. You never know. All right. Well, thank you everyone for watching. Tune in next time for another episode of Loop It In. We'll see you soon.

Outro (41:46):

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. Don't forget to give us a good rating on whatever platform you're tuning in from. And we'll be back soon with another new episode. We hope to see you there. And until next time, this has been Ed in.