The Wisconsin Investor
Each week, we bring you interviews with some of Wisconsin's top real estate investors who share their tips, tricks, and strategies that you can implement right away. This show is dedicated to helping Wisconsin real estate investors elevate their game. Along with interviews, I'll also dive into hot topics in solo episodes and feature experts from various real estate sectors across Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Investor
The Couple's Guide to Building Wealth One Flip at a Time
What does it look like when a full-time cop and a transaction coordinator on the iBuyWI team decide they’re done waiting for retirement?
Andy Lade and Vanessa Ring are a Wisconsin couple flipping their way to financial freedom, while working full-time, and figuring it out as they go.
In this episode, you’ll hear how they went from zero experience to confidently managing multiple flips and rental properties. From using home equity to fund their first deal to learning how to invest as a couple (without killing each other), Andy and Vanessa open up about the wins, mistakes, and mindset shifts that helped them build real momentum.
If you're juggling life, work, and the dream of building wealth through real estate — this episode is for you.
💡 Inside This Episode:
• How they funded their first flip with home equity
• The mistakes they made early on (and what they learned)
• The transition from DIY to hiring professionals
• Tips for investing as a couple — and keeping the peace
• Building a buy box, running numbers, and refining your strategy
• Stepping into BRRRRs and building passive income
• Honest talk about fear, balance, and flipping houses in Wisconsin
🎧 Whether you’re here for tactical tips or just need a reminder that you can do this too — you’re in the right place.
👉 Visit wisconsindiscountproperties.com to join our buyers list and mention this podcast to receive our BRRRR for Beginners course — a $3,000 value — completely free.
Hey everybody, we're back with another episode of the Wisconsin Investor Podcast and I'm excited because I have another couple here with me today who I'm going to introduce in a second. But before I get into that, as I always do, I'm going to talk about our sponsor, wisconsin Discount Properties, and last episode you guys heard me talk about something new that we're doing In lieu of giving you guys FOMO on every episode, we're going to give you a freebie today, and so what we're doing is we're giving away our Burr for Beginners course. This is a course I created a few years ago and we used to sell it for $3,000. Now I was one-on-one coaching people along with that, but we started selling it for $1,500 or $1,900, somewhere in there, and now we're giving it away for free just for being a just a listener of this podcast. So all you had to do to get that course go to wisconsindiscountpropertiescom, put your information in to join the buyers list and Connor Reese from our team will reach out to you, have a little conversation with you and just mention that you're interested in getting the free burr for beginners course. They'll hook you up with that discount code and go get started on burring your way to wealth today.
Speaker 1:With that, let's introduce one of my favorite couples. I've got vanessa ring and andy lade with me. What's up guys?
Speaker 1:hi morning morning uh, you guys are have a beautiful background here for those of them that are watching this on YouTube. Where are you guys at right now?
Speaker 2:We are located at the Wisconsin Discount Properties headquarters right now. Wow.
Speaker 1:In office. I'm not even there and you guys are there. This is embarrassing in some ways, but also incredible at the same time. So I'm excited to have you guys on. I always love having couples on because, as we were kind of talking a little bit before we hit record, I started this business with Carrie or Carrie started this business with me, however we want to say it and, um, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that work really well with couples in this business, and then there's a lot of challenges with couples in this business. So I always love interviewing couples and talking about it, and you guys are. Although you have different last names, soon you will have the same last name, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct, yeah.
Speaker 3:She plays her cards, right yeah.
Speaker 2:The countdown is on. We're under 300 days now.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm sure you know the exact amount.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we want this to be evergreen, so we don't want to date stamp it because people may listen to it later. But, yes, so you guys are going to be getting married here soon. Uh, and you guys got started in the real estate investing business. Talk a little bit. First of all, I guess, vanessa, let's start with you. How did you decide, when was that moment where you decided like, hey, I want to get started in real estate investing? What? When was that? Do you remember?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if I would say this was my plan at any point. It kind of fell into my lap. Luckily I was in the corporate world working my nine to five job, not really loving what I was doing. So I was starting to kind of look around see what else was available and I came across a friend of mine who had posted a job opportunity here at Wisconsin Discount Properties and Fox Seals Home Buyers I buy. So I kind of thought, okay, maybe that's something I want to get into. I knew some of my friends were realtors and that kind of stuff. So I'm like maybe this is where I'm supposed to go. So I did some interviewing and here I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you now did you just cross the two-year threshold with us?
Speaker 2:I did Yep. It was two years, in May, that I've been here.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's tough to do with us. I mean we must kind of like you. I guess we'll keep you. No, I'm just kidding. We have great people on our team, andy, what about you? When was that moment? Was that kind of a nudge from Vanessaessa that was like, hey, we should start real estate investing? Or was this on your radar any at any point before she started really getting in the industry for her nine to five?
Speaker 3:no, I think that just because I knew she had the business side knowledge when it came into that, that would. And I tell people all the time like, when you're explaining this, this business, to me, please talk to me like I'm a child, because I don't understand like the business side of it. Yeah, so I, fortunately enough, I was in a position where, you know, I had some, some equity and some properties and stuff like that and I had the ability to figure out how to put the money forward and I said, hey, no one, we discussed it and she had talked about. You know, there's other people, um, that she works with, that are dabbling in real estate and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So it's, it's one of them things where we just like, hey, if we're ever going to do it, um, let's do it. And you know there's some other reasons why we wanted to get into it. You know we maybe you know my career, I would not. So for my career I'd have to work until I'm like 65 to retire and I'm like I need a different exit strategy here because I can't do this until that age. So ultimately, we're trying to get into something a little bit more so we can find a more comfortable life.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. So let's go to the goal then, andy, because you brought that up just now. For you guys, the goal of doing real estate investing is it more so of a longterm retirement plays and more so short term, like let's build up some cash. And then longterm goal Like what? What was the original? Like hey, let's do this real estate investing thing. What was the original? Like, hey, let's do this real estate investing thing. What was the original? Like this is why we want to do it. Goal for the immediate first buy.
Speaker 2:I think it was more looking at retirement um for us originally. Uh, you know, we have, I have one child, he has two children. We wanted to have something that we could leave our kids when that time comes and comes. And we heard a lot that real estate was a good way to kind of have that retirement that we could enjoy and you know, leave behind something for our kids to maybe get them a jump start on it too yeah, for me.
Speaker 3:Originally I'm like listening to other people that are doing they like we just made 20 grand off of this property or whatever and I'm like, well, I'd like 20 grand so originally, but then, you know, once we started learning more about it, then I'm like this could really be an exit strategy for me to get out of. I'm in the law enforcement field and the way that culture goes and is continuing to trend, it's something that I think I want to stay in for another 15 more years or whatever. So I'm thinking that, well, maybe this is a different exit strategy. And also, you know, if we get to the point where we have enough I mean equity and other properties under our belt, these could be form of a 401k, basically, or a retirement process.
Speaker 3:Right, I would imagine, in law enforcement you would have a decent retirement program there right to well into my 50s and 60s and if, if I could, you know, get to where I have properties that are making money for me and investments that are making money for us with minimal work? Yeah, and she mentioned that, uh, um, you know what the children and stuff like that is. I always knew that with that profession, that I was going to miss a lot of things and I didn't think it was going to be as big of a problem than it turned out to be. Just other things, just overall time with our kids. That, um, it really has become an issue. Okay, if I can control my own schedule and I can be more present for a lot of these things, especially as my daughter just turned 13 today as a birthday, oh, happy birthday, um, birthday. So, um, if you know, if I can be more present for for all three of our kids, then I think that's important at this point?
Speaker 1:yeah, for sure, it's so interesting. I feel like, like I always talk about this with carrie's like growing up I always thought like as we get older it would be harder in life. But I think like 20s to 30s, like those two decades are some of the hardest decades. If you're raising a family because you're trying to start a career, then you start a career and you're like, oh, I really don't like this career, I got to go start somewhere else. Right, you're kind of starting all over. Then you're, at the same time, you're trying to raise kids who are growing. They don't stop, they keep growing and then they get into stuff.
Speaker 1:And then your time just seems like you're like well, how did I have time in my twenties, like before he had kids, like what did I even do with my life? And then all those those two decades. It's like trying you're trying to figure out adulting in your twenties and thirties. I feel like and now I just turned 40 this last year and I feel like I'm finally at a place where, like I don't have it figured out, but I feel like I I know the game now a little bit better and I understand the priorities. Right, like andy you're talking about like the kids. But one day you wake up and you're like holy crap, my daughter just turned 13. How did that happen? Right, it goes a little fast, right.
Speaker 3:And then with that right now. That is a big problem because, you know, with phones and everything these days, you keep getting these memories that pop up. And we're like how are we at this point now, compared to this little baby picture that I remember from yesterday? I'm like this is going way too fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you're like shit, I only have five more years left, if I'm lucky, right. If she even wants to hang with dad at all, Five years, right, and so it is. It's a challenge, man, and I'm I applaud you guys for starting to do some things, you know, um, proactively, to give yourself more freedom and choices, right? Not that, vanessa, I ever want you to leave our company, but I want you to have the choice.
Speaker 2:Andy and Andy the Right, and I'll just keep working you know I still need her in this business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she doesn't get to stop working, I'm yeah.
Speaker 1:That is all about Andy. This is all. Yeah, that's what this one.
Speaker 2:I'm still in my thirties, so I'm okay, oh you got time, girl.
Speaker 1:You better grow because it's in your thirties, right, but I think for the younger audience that listens to this, you know, listen to these two stories and like, if you can start now, in your early EFC or your early twenties you're still maybe graduating high school listening to this or something Like, if you can start this game now when you're in your thirties and you're struggling, like when all your peers are struggling because they're having little babies and they're stressed out because they got to work all these hours and do all this stuff, you can have that freedom to be able to, you know, be there for your kids, like a lot of us didn't get to have when our kids were young because we were working and grinding and trying to, you know, climb the corporate ladder and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:And I think it's a really important lesson for the younger audience out there to hear you guys talk about you. You know we hear like from the old people all the time like, oh yeah, like time flies. You know, just wait, your kids are going to grow up so quick and then they do and you're like, holy crap, those old people were right.
Speaker 3:I think that uh, and we talked about sometime is like I'm actually pissed off that we didn't do this a long time ago. Like what were we so scared?
Speaker 1:of.
Speaker 3:Failure Okay, but why was I so scared to risk my? It's not like I have so much wealth that I'm going to lose my entire. I was a poor public servant. I don't have much to lose. It's like what was I so scared of to begin with?
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that because I think that's important. This is one of the reasons I love having you know. You guys are newer to the game and I love having newer people to the game because the wounds are still fresh right For me. I've been in it now seven or eight years and I kind of forget some of the struggles. Sometimes I think of when I was starting and some of those things, those things. So it's always interesting for me to talk to people who are newer to it, like what were some of those big fears you know before you bought that first property? What were some of the things going through your heads? And I guess I want to hear from both of you guys on this. So, andy, I'll start with you on that.
Speaker 3:Sure, I was like well, what happens if the first one goes bad Like?
Speaker 3:you know, we started a flip up north a little bit, our first property where we just kind of jumped into it and like I mean, well, am I gonna have to file bankruptcy or am I gonna lose my house? Am I gonna? You know, it's just you. All you think about is the negative, right. So, yeah, it's like plus, it's just not knowing, not being an expert in the business, was a real anxiety thing for me, like, okay, you know, I don't know, and we're still making mistakes every day. We're dealing with some right now that we're kind of messing up. But it's like how is this going to affect my personal life? Because I'm putting my personal I guess my personal wealth on the line.
Speaker 1:To start out here, Sure, because you're pulling, you're using equity from some properties, is what you're saying, so you're putting that in that room.
Speaker 3:And that's how we started out. Obviously, we want to get away from that at some point, but but that's how we started out. Is, you know, taking some equity from a line of credit on my personal house?
Speaker 2:to help a little bit.
Speaker 3:So you know, like, if this goes backwards, like I don't know, like, do I have to? Take my house away from me. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Living under a bridge. So now that you've been in it a little bit, you've gone through. You guys have flipped one and Vanessa, I want to get to you next on the anxiety piece of yours but you flipped one, you flipped another one. That is, or you flipped and sold one. You flipped one and it's sold, just waiting to close. You've got one in process of flipping that you just got started on, and then you have another one under contract ready to rock and roll. You just we just got started on and then you have another one under contract ready to rock and roll. We just got to wait for the close date on that one. So you guys are experienced.
Speaker 1:Now You've been through some of these things. Right, andy, now that you've been through a few of them, like okay. So you said fear was like the home equity line. Maybe your house is up. Are you still in fear mode of that or have you now kind of come to some other realization that's helping you guys, you know, accelerate and buy some other properties well, we started trending in the direction.
Speaker 3:That I wanted to is let's start getting some higher value properties where you know maybe the profit margin is a little juicy juicier right, and but that comes with his own anxiety, like the last one we just uh put off for him was almost four hundred thousand dollars, that's.
Speaker 1:That's hard for me to swallow a little bit so, yeah, that, I mean that's an escalation, is what we call that? That escalates quickly. Yeah, yeah, vanessa, still gives you a little. Yeah, vanessa, what about you when you were before you bought that first one? Leading up to that, like, what were some of the big fears around making that leap and getting that first one?
Speaker 2:yeah, my big thing was failure. You know, sitting and being in the position, I am in the company. You see all these people succeeding around you and you want to be one of them. That shows, hey, I went, I did it myself, I succeeded and I had that fear of failing and I didn't want to do that in front of my peers. But also the money thing, you know, making sure that we had money to do this, that we weren't going to put ourselves in too much debt, that we couldn't get ourselves out of it if we needed to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and now that you've done a few, is that fear of failure still there? Has it gone down at all? Has it gone up, like where is it after you?
Speaker 2:I mean, we're not that far enough in where I think um that. That fear is gone yet. I mean it's still there, but slowly we're, uh, we're getting better at it. I think we're really finding, figuring out what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong. We're trying and you are.
Speaker 1:I wonder so many things. I was just on Steve Trank's podcast, who has called Disruptors, and he was asking me some questions about what are some of the early lessons you've learned, or like, what did you learn? I'm like I don't know, like you just kind of keep moving forward, right, you learn these things, but it's not like you're sitting there documenting like, ooh, next time don't do this. It's like you and I, vanessa this morning and so Vanessa, for those that don't know know is our lead transaction coordinator, so she handles all the messy stuff From the time we get under contract to the time it closes. She's the one in between, making sure everything goes as smooth as possible.
Speaker 1:And we had one that I just messed up because it was a foreclosure and I changed the close date on it and shifted a couple properties around to try to play with the lending a little bit, and turns out now we got to get all new payoffs for this property and foreclosure payoffs take forever to get back, and so now it's screwed everything up. Mental note for me today I'm like, oh, don't go changing close dates again on a foreclosure, just leave it alone, right, and everything will go smooth, right? So that was a little lesson, but I'm not going to like probably write that down anywhere. It's just something I'm going to remember and then the next time it comes up like, ooh, yeah, remember that it might not be perfect, right, I might make the same mistake again, but chances are I'm going to learn from that. That, you know. Jab and the gut that Ooh, that was my fault, shouldn't have did that, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the things that we say we want to learn from, we're still making those mistakes. We told ourselves we weren't going to do another property up north, and here we are with another property up north.
Speaker 1:Well, why did you guys do that? Well, let's talk about that. What was the thing that got you guys to say yes to that one, when you said, no, we're not going to do another one up north?
Speaker 2:This one was. It's actually about 10 minutes from my parents' house and they're watching me or us over the last couple of years get into this and I brought it up to them and I said would you guys be interested in kind of doing this with us?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll kind of be more of like the what general I wouldn't say general contractors, but we're kind of the, we're the money, and kind of the.
Speaker 3:We're the risk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're the risk.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And they were like yeah, why not? You know, my dad goes hunting every year out in Colorado, so he could always use some extra cash to pay for that or their trips, to pay for that or their trips. So they saw it as an opportunity for them to make some money, and we saw it as an opportunity for us to make some money without doing all the work on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first one you guys were doing all the work on up north.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our first one that we bought, we thought, okay, let's just do all the work on it ourselves, let's not try to hire out unless absolutely needed to save money. And that's where I think was our first failure was thinking that we could have a property an hour and a half away from where we are and do all the work on it while still having two full-time jobs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2:That did not work out the greatest.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:That was always the goal in my mind is let's get one under our belt so we can have a little backing money and then we don't have to do the work anymore and hopefully, after the one that's supposed to close on the first that one's done, then we don't have to do that anymore. Because it real, we realize that we, we just can't.
Speaker 3:we don't have the time, the time or, you know, we have kids, both full-time jobs. We I just don't have time to or the energy, right frank, to like to sit here and do all the work on everything. So that was the. The idea of why I would agree to the the one up North again is that that was supposed to be supposed to be all hands off and we were just a silent partner in this. Okay.
Speaker 1:And that's not how it's turning out now.
Speaker 2:Well, we, uh, once you start getting into a cabin, uh, you'll start finding that maybe the electrical is not correct or there's more issues than you originally expected. So that's kind of what we're running into right now on that property and just trying to figure out, I guess you could say, the cheapest way to go about it, but at the same time you got to have it done correctly, or?
Speaker 3:yeah you're gonna be stuck with it. Lesson two of what we learned yeah, make things are done correctly, because they come back to bite you yeah, well, I mean, you guys ran into an interesting spot.
Speaker 1:So, for those that don't know the property you guys bought, we had a full-blown inspection down on. This right inspector looked at everything and it seemed fine, but then, once you started ripping apart stuff, that's when you guys found out it wasn't okay. Is that what happened? So it'd be really hard, I think, for anybody. I doubt, if you guys walked through that property yourself that you would have ever found that right.
Speaker 2:They didn't find these issues until we started tearing off paneling.
Speaker 3:We open up walls and it's. We learned that from our first property. The more you open up, the more problems you might run into. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So don't open walls, leave them alone, don't mess with them. Yeah, that is true, though Knob and tube wiring is a pretty expensive thing If you have to replace that, and you don't have to replace it unless it's exposed. And so if you open a wall now, you got to replace it. If it's behind that wall, you leave that wall alone. You don't have to replace it if it's there, right, which is another another good thing to know. But I want to make that point because one of the things I hear, like our process at Wisconsin discount property is we do an inspection and we do a video walkthrough, right, and some people have an issue with that because they want to go there and actually physically walk through the property. That being said, and the goal is what I hear from them is so that they can prevent something like what you guys are running into with that up North property Well then I could be able to see all this stuff. It's like 90% of us are never going to start like peeling back a wall or like trying to like climb up and examine the plumbing underneath the shit. You know like you're never going to do it anyway. So you just have to understand when you buy off market properties or value add properties, even if it's listed on the market, you would go through that same process. You'd have an inspector. Inspector is going to find what the inspector can find. It's not perfect, they're not going to catch everything and you just got to kind of know. Know, that's the deal.
Speaker 1:The most successful investors I see out there we call in the stock market world dollar cost averaging. Have you guys heard this term? So you buy the same stock or ETF or whatever and you just buy it at different points, whether it's up or down or whatever. Eventually you buy enough of it. It continues to go up and you're good. You're buying on the low side, you're buying on the upside. It's kind of the same thing with properties. If you only bought one property ever, you need that one to go perfect to hit your goals.
Speaker 1:But say, you guys had four of these that you were working on. One's a dud might break even on it, but the other one's a $40,000 pop, the other one's a $30,000 pop, the other one's a 10, right, not great, but it's okay, right, overall you spread that out. You know you made $20,000 on each of those if you average it right. So it's one of those things like I see that happen. Sometimes People get so caught up with like, oh my gosh, I bought this one property and then I found this issue and now I'm ruined, right. And it's like, well, if you just had a couple of them going, you may be one. It wouldn't, you wouldn't. Yes, it sucks, but you've got three other ones that are going to be winners. Right, not every investment is going to be a winner. It's like the stock market you bought five stocks. You're not expecting all five of those most likely to be going to the moon, right?
Speaker 1:Well, we hope we do, but but one goes bad and the other three are good. All right, we're still, overall, making money, right. If you put all your eggs in the one basket and that stock goes down, you're screwed, right. I love that you guys are just continually moving forward and you're doing multiple deals and you're just continuing to and you're you're just continuing to learn and grow and some are going to be winners, some are going to lose. I think your first two we had something similar, right. The one that you guys did a lot of the work on maybe wasn't so great.
Speaker 3:The other one, that you guys had ended up being a really good one, right yeah, this one that we're supposed to close right now should be very I mean not very good, but I mean it was much smoother to close right now should be very I mean not very good, but I mean it was much smoother this time around. It was a better choice of property.
Speaker 3:That's another lesson that we learned is how to pick the ones that we want right, or location's huge. But you know, just, you know some of them, you know we get some. I know there's some investors out there that would really like the ones where they just go right down to the studs and basically start over. I don't think I like the ones where not so much turnkey, but it's just a little bit more. Just, let's just update it to these times and then put it back out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, more cosmetic stuff than the old ones. But yeah, there's different people that like different stuff. For sure, just depends. But the good thing is, you guys are figuring out what you like, where you like it and what you don't like. So now, as you guys continue to grow, your buy box tightens up a little bit, right, and then when you see one that fits it, you guys can just strike without emotion. It's just like yep, that one fits. Boom, this is our buy box box. Right, it takes all the emotion out of whether or not you should or shouldn't and move forward.
Speaker 1:Going back to the fear thing, though, one thing I want to comment on that I don't think it ever goes away, right, and and it's a good thing, right, I mean, we think about why do we have fear in the first place? Right, it's our caveman brain trying to connect, trying to protect us from, you know, the, the saber-tooth, tooth tiger that's going to eat us. Right, we have fear over that. It's healthy, right, and there should be a level of healthy fear. When we're spending a couple hundred thousand dollars, right, for most, most people, jeff Bezos don't give a rip. Right, right, the most Americans, we, you know, we're going to go put our name on the line for a couple hundred thousand dollars. We probably should have a healthy level of fear. But I think, like, as you guys are seeing, maybe the anxiety drops a little bit now that you understand, like it's not so scary, like once you get into it, it is what it is, you're going to be fine. You're not going to live under a bridge and be homeless like it'll all.
Speaker 3:It'll all work itself out, right hopefully hopefully I think, I think we'd like to get a little bit bigger of a nest egg here, a little bit more of a backing, and that would you know. So if something does go catastrophically sideways here that we have the ability to, okay, we could take a loss on one, it wouldn't be bad. But you know, okay, obviously we don't want to. We're in this business to make money, right, but we don't want to. But it's not going to put our LLC in the dumps, you know Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, as you guys go, what it sounds like right now, what you guys are doing, is you're you're doing flips to build up the cash and then the goal with owning rentals, or is that? Am I off base on that?
Speaker 2:That's our goal. I think we just want a nice little nest egg before we kind of get into that. So I would hope I maybe. I think my goal is end of next year that we have one under about the rental, but we'll have to see what the accountant also says, I think that's my opinion and, once again, I'm hardly an expert in this field is I think that should be a market specific.
Speaker 3:You know if, if the selling market is still strong?
Speaker 1:sure.
Speaker 3:Let's. Let's sell them and make money Right. If the market starts to struggle a little bit, maybe that's the time to hold a rental. Um and in in my big dreams, I also want to get my rentals to be a little bit higher quality. I don't want to. You know, the the nicer the place you have, the, I guess, the more attractive renters you're going to have.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Wise, but you know just money wise and right Lease problems. You know, in a perfect world if we could get into some sort of apartment building it'd be great, but I need a lot more cash to be able to back that.
Speaker 1:Or you just got to know somebody who does Andy. Right, that's it.
Speaker 2:You have a who problem there I was just going to say it's the, it's a who problem is that your? Oh, that's a book we just read yeah not how, which we, and that is a big thing, that, um. We started out with the how do we do this, how do we do this, how do we do this? And now we're getting is who can do this for us?
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, I love it that. That book to me, vanessa, we re-read it. I read it a few years ago and it was good. I was like, oh, yeah, I get it. You need somebody to do this stuff for you. Yeah, get it. We already doing that stuff Right. And now for some reason I don't do that.
Speaker 1:Because of this I'm like, wait a minute, who do I know that I could talk to, that could help with this. Like I just met a guy this morning out at some land. I've never done a land development subdivided anything right. I had a guy on a few weeks ago, uh, talking about land and flipping land and developing land and stuff like that. This is a different guy that I've kind of met around the same time as this dude. But I was just like, hey, I have a lead on a bunch of land. I don't know how to do this, but I know somebody who knows how to do this. Let's just partner up and let's figure out, like, how to split this up, if we can even make it work, and let's just do it together. And then I don't have to know anything about land. I have the guy who knows about land, who knows all that stuff. I just have to find the deal and that's what I'm good at, right, and so it's always a who problem is what I find out in most cases of uh of the issue. Like you guys talked about getting in there and having to swing the hammers on your first one right, what you guys had was you guys had the mindset of like we got to do this cause we have to make the most money possible, but of like we got to do this because we have to make the most money possible. But really, if you guys could have hired that out, made a little bit less, but had like three of those going at the same time, you're going to again same kind of thing You're going to make, your dollar per hour goes way up when you guys start doing that and it's a lot less stress and time and everything else when you start hiring it out.
Speaker 1:We had a mastermind a few years ago and we had Mark and Kara Truckee who were on early on in the podcast, and so, for those that haven't seen that episode, go way back to the start. They did a great job. But Mark was one of the exercises we had was what's your time worth, and so we had them compare two different properties that they had, one where they were in swing of the hammer and one where they hired everything out, and either a rental, where we said how much equity did you create after rehab, or a flip how much did you profit on the flip? And Mark was using one where they made more on the flip than the other flip where they hired everything out. When he calculated it out it was rough, roughly his hours.
Speaker 1:We, you know he didn't log it, but he just kind of did some math on it. He's like, oh my gosh, he had this huge. I'll never forget this. This is like light bulb you can see like hanging over his head moment where he's like look at this. He's like, oh my gosh, we made $40,000 on this flip. But I only made like $300 per hour, which is still really good. $300 an, which is still really good. Right, 300 bucks an hour still get good wage. But he's like here's one we made 20 on and I made like 1500 an hour because he wasn't doing all the work. He was directing traffic. He was getting people there to do the work and then he was making sure the quality was where he wanted it, but his profit per hour was like way higher, and so he made the realization hey, if I just can get more properties going and have my teams doing it all, I'm going to make way more money with less time, right, which is what we all want.
Speaker 1:A lot less stress too. Now, contracts can be stressful, let's be honest, but that's a whole nother lesson that people learn as they get into this. But it is, generally speaking, a much more efficient way to run a flipping company than trying to be in there swinging hammers yourself, right.
Speaker 3:That goes to. One of our issues that we're dealing with is the speed at which we've put these first two out. It is not where we want to be taking way too long, so we're trying to get more efficient at this. I'm very OCD when it comes to efficiency. I got to do things the most efficient way. When things don't go the way I like it, it takes longer. That drives me nuts. So we have to be able to speed these up, because the longer they stay out there, the more interest we're paying on financing and everything, the more it's costing us. We got to get better at moving these along.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, bang them out, get them out Right. Right, talk about as a couple. So now for you guys as a couple what are some of the big challenges you guys had or have, uh, starting this new venture together? Because you know, andy, you're law enforcement, so your thing is completely separate than Vanessa's 9 to 5. Now that you're blending these two together and you're in a business together, what's that dynamic look like?
Speaker 2:So for us, I don't really do much of the hammer swinging. I'm more of the. I'll get all the paperwork together. I'll make sure this closes. I'll cash the checks at the bank. I'll get all the paperwork together. I'll make sure this closes. I'll get you know. I'll cash the checks at the bank. I'll do that kind of stuff. Andy's more of the. He knows what he's doing in there. I don't someone tells me this electrical issue and I'm going to look at them like great cool, don't know. Don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:I'm the painter. There you go, don't know what I'm doing. I'm the painter.
Speaker 2:There you go. So as far as us working together, I stay kind of in my role and he stays in his, and we try not to get at each other too much, but try not to. We do.
Speaker 3:I mean there's yeah, I mean obviously there's your share of disagreements and she knows the business end of it and that's why I think we make a good team with this. But it goes back to, you know, some of the REI meetings that we went to. You talk about the pillars of the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I would be more on the phone getting people to the properties to been on a job or whatever. Um, I'm obviously the, the finance person you know, the money backing person, the, you know, and more of the who's gonna make decisions on what we need to do and what we don't need to do. Okay, and she handles the hey, this, we should take a look at this property, or whatever. She's got the more of the expertise on the, on the I guess the, the business side of it, sure, um, so that's a struggle is you know where we stand on stepping over each other, because sometimes we don't agree on that and yeah, um, she doesn't really. Um, she doesn't value the risk as much as I value risk okay, so she's a little bit more, gasped a little bit.
Speaker 3:Right and I always say it's like, well, if this thing goes under, you walk away unscathed here.
Speaker 2:That's why we're not married yet.
Speaker 3:So, like if this thing goes bad, I'm the only one at risk here. You don't understand the value of risk here, yeah. That's a big thing that we have sometimes Okay.
Speaker 2:Another thing that Andy doesn't always see is like the little things, like hardware on cabinets. I see that where he sees the big items and I see the little things that we should switch. Let's put a new faucet in here, let's switch out this. All the light bulbs should be the same color, like that stuff. Where he's like whatever, it's fine, just move on to the next thing and I'm like no, these little things are what's going to. This is the first thing they're going to see when they come in yeah, so that's created a little.
Speaker 1:That creates a little friction for you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but usually I get my way with it, so it's okay.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the things that create friction in a, in a couple, in business, are exactly the strengths that you guys both have, right, it's what makes you guys a good team, right Cause, again, like you're saying, but as a year, catching all the little details, stuff, I'm like Andy, I'd be like whatever, just get it done, let's move on. Let's get the next deal Right, where Carrie would be like, well, these things like it's not going to look good, it's not going to look finished, you know, and I'm like whatever, so that they can look past that. It's a nice house, you know, get another market, let's go right. So I think that's great that you guys have those two different strengths, and you know we talk about communication a lot in the office and, uh, sometimes just about how you guys communicate it too. That can can be all the difference, right, and understanding each other's strengths.
Speaker 1:We went kerry and and I read Rocket Fuel, which is another great book, years ago and that really helped us understand each other, because I'm much more of the gas pedal, she's much more, not much more of the brake. She's got a lot of gas pedal in her too, but she's much more of the detail. We got to make sure our I's are dotted, our T's are crossed, do all these kinds of things and we would cause friction all the time because I was like let's just go let's just go, let's get another deal.
Speaker 1:And she's no, we have to understand where our deals are coming from and we have to do this and all the details. Then I read that book and I was like, oh, she's like the integrator and I'm the visionary, oh. And then she understood oh, this is how Corey's wired, he's a visionary and I need to be like the integrator, like putting all the crap together behind the scenes here to like make it all work Right. And so once we did that, we kind of understood each other. We still, you know, not perfect, but it really did help us a lot, like I remember after that we had a good discussion about our roles and what we're good at and what we're not good at, and we had kind of a mutual respect then of each other for those two different roles. So for you guys, uh, marriage counseling, premarital counseling here, as your premarital counselor I'm going to highly recommend you guys read rocket fuel together.
Speaker 3:There it is there is that's top to bottom, left to right. Group words as a sentence. I don't book.
Speaker 1:You know you can do it on audible, andy, it's okay I think I'm like a child I need somebody to read to me we'll see if they have a coloring book for you as well, where you can just color things in and and and learn that way, whatever way is best for you.
Speaker 1:I'll just give you a summary you know what's funny about that, though? Literally that's what happened. I read the one chapter I needed to read in that book about the integrator and the visionary role, and then carrie read the rest of the book and had all the details. It was so funny I was like, oh, I get it. I got two chapters. She's like read the whole book. So more like Wednesday movie. That's awesome. What would you guys give so if you had to start this over? What would you give other couples out there that are similar to you guys that are looking to do this business together? What kind of advice or lessons would you have them do if you guys had to start fresh from day one?
Speaker 2:I think our biggest thing was time. We really make sure that you have the time to do it, but at the same time you don't have to. That's kind of a hard one because we don't have time, but we do yeah. Prioritizing, but you have to make sure that you keep everything on a timeline.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know you talked about the who and everything like that, and and that reminds me I'm a big. I don't know if you follow, uh, or watch any videos or inspirational speeches by simon sinek. He talks about why yeah, I'm a big guy and then not the what, but the why. So what's the real reason you want to do this? What's what's your why? That's what really sells to people. Um, understanding you know what the money. That's the what. Why, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to get into this business? What's what's you know you talk about. What's your end goal here?
Speaker 3:and understanding, um, just what you're really trying to accomplish here, um, and then please pick a good one to start.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's. You know what, though? Everybody's journey is different, andy, and sometimes starting with that rough one is the thing you needed to do to put you on a path to get the rest of the ones. It's just whether or not you give up or not, like my brother's a good example of that. He shared his story on here, his first one, I think he lost 15 or 20 grand on, but he didn't give up it just for it like motivated him to go get another one, to pay for the first one. So he could have easily just been like ah, real estate investing doesn't work. I'm hanging it up. I don't know how these guys make money. This is a scam, whatever. Instead, he was like all right, I see other people, like you said early, andy, I see other people are having success with this. It's not that it can't be done, it's just maybe I didn't do things right on this one. So what can I learn from that and go do another one? So it could very well vary.
Speaker 1:But the Simon Sinek thing, going back to that one of the questions I usually have when I ask people who come into our ecosystem and they fill out a thing on our website and they want to become a buyer. We go through, we try to understand them where they at, what are their goals? And we go through, we try to understand them where they at, what are their goals? And the what question is what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? Right? And then the next question is why do you want that? Why is that important to you? And it's really interesting to hear some of the answers of the why behind it. And a lot of times people never really sit and think about this. I think your advice here for couples is so spot on. Like if you can have this conversation before you start making offers and making the contacts and that kind of thing, I think it's going to help propel you that much further, that much faster, if you know your why behind the what.
Speaker 3:And the key is putting the why in front of the what. You know. What should be last? It should be why and how, and then what, right? So if you are just thinking, oh, I want, and then what, right. So you know, if you're just thinking, oh, I want some money or I want this physical thing, then you, you really don't, I don't think you have a passion for because it has to be a why. You know the wise that's all about, that comes from your heart, that comes from deep on on, why you want to get into this business. For sure, I'm doing it because I want money, okay, well, why do you want money, right?
Speaker 1:why is that important to you, right, yeah? And and then what happens is when you guys face challenges, right, if you're strong on your why and you go, you know what the long okay, so short term is, we're going to flip these properties. Oh, we just ran into this issue with this electrical and this plumbing Easy to give up. But then, if you go, why am I doing this again? Oh, yeah, it's because I want the freedom to be able to not have to work till I'm 60 to retire. This is the best vehicle I can find to do it. All, right, we got to push through this, we got to get done and we got to move on to the next one and just keep chugging away. But it's really easy, like you said, and if you're not clear on that of why you're doing this in the first place, you just throw in the towel and you're back to your nine to five and just going to give up and wait until you're 65, get an RV, drive around the country for a couple of years and die.
Speaker 1:Yep, and that's not a fun life, maybe for those couple of years, but other than that, not so much. All right. So one of the things. Guys, as we wrap here, we always ask a fun question. All right and this is one of the reasons I started doing this at the very first episode is I wanted to reach people outside of Wisconsin who want to invest in Wisconsin, and so I'm going to know a little bit about Wisconsin and what this place is all about. So for you guys, I always ask favorite place to visit here in the great state or favorite Wisconsin tradition. Andy, let's start with you.
Speaker 3:My whole world is cheese. I don't know she makes me because I eat like a block of cheese before I go to bed.
Speaker 2:I eat it like a snickers bar he literally has a knife and the block of cheese and just cuts off chunks and just sits there you gotta have you do.
Speaker 1:You couple that with a douse of uh stool stool softener as well, so you're on the can for hours. Be regular, yeah, okay, okay, there, you go right, vanessa, what about you?
Speaker 2:I will say, my favorite tradition is actually hunting.
Speaker 1:I enjoy hunting.
Speaker 2:We're getting our kids into hunting. Andy's a big hunter.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 3:So having you know we go up to deer camp, you know kind of thing, so I think that's one of my favorite traditions very bad you have to celebrate the seasons in wisconsin, like if you do not about this, the different seasons then go to florida, I mean that's what I do like yeah, but like I, we enjoy like snowmobiling, like winter sports, we like all like hunting in the fall. I mean we could do without spring around here because it's terrible. But I like all the different things in Wisconsin. As far as season-wise Summers are reasonable. I don't know how you do summer in Florida. No.
Speaker 1:I was just down there for our mastermind. I think it was the second week in June and, oh good Lord, it was hot and humid. And then I was in Arizona the week after. It was 119 on my dashboard and uh, I mean now that was like a sauna. So it was a little different hot than Florida, but it was still in Florida. I'll take. I'll take the Arizona heat, though over the florida summer nastiness like it's just humid and girls we have the greatest football team on the face of the planet ever and probably ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's no question about. There's no question about that. Yeah if you haven't been to lambo. What are you doing? You know right ends of a no-brainer yeah, yeah, I mean, you haven't lived yet. You know these rv people. They're working too hard. They can't get out of their nine to fives to come up here to visit Lambeau. They got to start investing in some real estate so they can afford to get up here and spend some time, right.
Speaker 3:You got level one coming up around Lambeau.
Speaker 1:You know what, if they're not on our buyers list, andy, they're never going to know. So that's a great segue. I appreciate that, andy. If you guys are not on the buyer's list and you want to get on there, as I said at the start, go to wisconsindiscountpropertiescom, plug your information. And if you're not ready to get on the buyer's list yet and you're just kind of curious about this whole investing thing, you can just fill out, you can go to contact us on the website and just put your info in there. We're having a little phone call coming in. She's got work to do, so we're gonna wrap this thing.
Speaker 1:That sounds like and um no, I appreciate you guys being on. This is awesome. Like I said, I always love having couples on. I always love having people who are newer to investing, because I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned there. So anybody that's still listening to this, if you're a seasoned vet, go back and re-listen to these newer ones, the newer investor people, because you can always learn so much from you guys. So I appreciate you guys being on. If anybody wants to be in touch with you guys, they're like, I really related to you, vanessa. I really related to you, andy, on this episode. What's the best way for them to get in contact with you?
Speaker 2:Well, me, you'll probably talk to me first. Um, you can give me a call here at the office or, uh, find us on what Facebook we're on. So, um, but yeah, probably the office would be the best, Um. I can throw out my phone number there if you want it's your office number is 9 2, 0, 4, 8, 5, 9, 9, 2, 7.
Speaker 1:And she knows that because she just got a call on it about two minutes Awesome, guys. Well, thanks for being on. Guys. Thank all of you for listening.
Speaker 1:If you got some value out of this episode, go share it on your socials. Again, it's it's not necessarily just for us. It does help us. It allows us to continue to bring great guests on here, but it also helps you as we talk about on every episode.
Speaker 1:If you want to raise private money, you want deal flow, anything you got to let people know that you're doing this real estate investing thing. And if you're not letting them know that stuff, or you're not posting or you're not sure what to say, sharing one of our episodes is a great way just to let people know that you're involved in real estate investing or you want to be. And we've had tons of people now share this episode or these episodes and they're telling us they're getting great feedback on people hitting them up about hey, I didn't know you were doing that, or I'm interested in getting getting to know more about it and maybe partner with you on certain things like Vanessa's parents, great example, right. So again, appreciate you guys being on, thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.
