Creating Space For Women In Real Estate With Jennifer Maldonado

 

In this day and age, women have been permeating their spaces and industries more and more, but even so, there’s still work to be done. The experience of women in real estate is a very specific one, and it’s something that should be processed with other women who are familiar with the experience in the community. Jennifer Maldonado is a business expert and high-performance leader who’s been recognized by some of the world’s top companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Nestlé. Lisa Hylton speaks to Jennifer about making it as a woman in the business of real estate. Let Jennifer and Lisa lead you to the success you deserve!

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Creating Space For Women In Real Estate With Jennifer Maldonado

I have another amazing guest with me. Her name is Jennifer Maldonado. Jennifer has been recognized by Fortune’s top 500 companies like Johnson & Johnson and Nestle as a business expert and high-performance leader. In 2012, she decided to take a leap of faith and change her career trajectory to become a real estate investor. After her first year in real estate investing, Jen found her passion for successfully raising capital to fund real estate equity projects, acquisitions of nonperforming notes, rehabs, multifamily units, and other private loans that totaled $65 million in assets. In 2015, a Huffington Post Journal interview recognized Jen as an inspirational and revolutionary real estate investor, consulting business owners and entrepreneurs to reach their full potential by tapping into owning their power and create wealth through real estate.

As one of the executive leaders and speakers of WREN Inspires, Jen has impacted the lives of its members, consisting of over 7,000 women real estate investors. Jen has been honored by the National Association of Female Executives Award for Women Who Rock in 2020 in Los Angeles. Jen co-authored the 2019 book, You Got This!, which was ranked a number one release on Amazon. In her influence as a capital raising strategist, she has earned two consecutive nominations as a corporate advocate and rising star at the Women’s Summit lead by Los Angeles Business Journal. Jen continues to inspire and be a guiding light by authoring books and speaking about women’s causes in the field of real estate, self-help, self-care and community. I am excited to have Jen on my show. Welcome to the show, Jen.

How are you, Lisa?

I am good. I totally remember when I first met you. You came to one of Monick’s events that she had for some of the women in her mastermind for which I was in. I remember seeing you and hearing your story. I was inspired. I’m happy to be able to share your story with my audience.

Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here with you. Every time we can get together as women to help other people out there, especially in the real estate arena, I’m in.

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To get started, can you give our audience a little bit about your background?

It’s interesting that when I’m sharing about my story, what I did because of the profession, I’m an industrial engineer. It’s not normal that people go and quit their job to go directly into something new that they haven’t done before. What I can share with you is I was at that time that you stopped for a second, your standstill and you look into your life. It’s like watching into a mirror and tried to understand why you do what you do. At that moment is when you start defining who you are, who you want to be, and you embrace that and advance. That’s what happened to me in 2012. In order for me to live on my integrity and lead from who I am, I needed to make a change and that change was to start something different. When I was eight years old, my mom asked me what I was going to do when I grow up. I told her that I was going to have the best job ever, which was working in a chocolate factory and in a place where they do baby lotions because babies smell good.

From there, I advanced. I ended up working in Nestle and Johnson & Johnson for a decade. I saved them millions of dollars in a short period of time. At that moment when I’m looking at the mirror, I say, “I want to take a different approach to my life.” I remember in 2012 when I got promoted to manage one of the biggest facilities for Nestle. I decide to follow my heartfelt mission and to get out there and do real estate. I quit my job and it was nerve breaking. To give an idea, I didn’t tell my parents until 2.5 months later that I quit my job. My parents were crazy. It’s something that is important too that people are surprised.

I don’t come from a wealthy family. My parents didn’t have money. They believe that you work hard for money in a secure job. You pay your bills. You retire with a decent lifestyle, pension, Medicare and Social Security. That wasn’t on my agenda. That’s when I talked to my brother and share with him what was going on to get some guidance. It was very important to talk to other people about what you’re dealing with. We talked for hours about what we do. We laugh together. At that point, we remember great amazing memories from our childhood and one of them was playing Monopoly.

This reminded me that I told my dad that I wanted to have properties one day as I was playing this game. I’m like, “I want to have that many properties.” He laughed at me. He told me one of the biggest myths out there, that you have to have a lot of money to invest in real estate. I believe that for a long time. As I’m learning more and I’m talking to my brother, he told me, “Jen, you need to read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” the purple Bible I call it. I have to tell you I read that book in three days. I enrolled in a real estate class and started taking classes. I got right away three months into it, into my first multifamily in Southern California. That’s how I got into real estate. I fell in love right away. I was there at the right time in 2012 when I got this amazing duplex in Burbank, California. I bought it. I got $250,000 in equity and I was living on one side, renting the other one. The other side was paying 70% of my mortgage.

That’s how you first start into the real estate investing. When you decided to buy that duplex in Burbank, how did you find it?

I read this book and I’m like, “These are the elements that I need to find a deal. I didn’t even mean much about numbers. I knew that they needed to pay for your mortgage. I was working at Nestle at that moment and Nestle headquarters was in Glendale, California, which is fifteen minutes from Burbank. I’m like, “Burbank sounds more reasonable. Glendale is too expensive.” I decided to go to Burbank and I already knew my budget. I’m like, “I can only put this much money.” The reason why I knew that it is, first of all, I didn’t have too much money because California was very expensive.

I have a 401(k) and I knew that if I will borrow my money for the first house that I was buying, I was able to do it and pay that money back little by little. Taking that money and a pre-approval letter of a lender, I knew how much I could afford. I started there. With my limited mindset, I needed to have X amount of money, without going to other creative ways, I learned that later but that’s how I started. I’m like, “This is what I know right now. This is what I have and this is what I could afford.” I went ahead and bought a property. I followed the rules of the game. I bought another book from one of the advisors from Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. He talks about advance real estate investments.

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I followed step by step all his recommendations. I did my research and I say, “This is how much the property should cost. This is how much I can rent it.” I went ahead and started reaching through realtors. When people say that there are no deals in MLS, there are still deals in MLS. You have to look at them from a different perspective. I find that in MLS. I didn’t need science or anything like that or marketing. I did that later. In my first deal, I follow the traditional way and use my 401(k) to buy that property.

How do you play in real estate now? Why do you play the way you play now?

First of all, I play with teams. That’s my favorite thing. I’ve been solo for a little bit and it gets challenging and overwhelming. You get overworked. I got into another job, let’s call it that way when you go into a solopreneur. I’ve become a team with different partnerships. I’m developing four units specifically in Koreatown or any place that is close to LA City. I don’t deal too much with LA County for permits issues. It’s a little bit longer to process. I’m doing that development. I’m about to acquire some portfolios in East Texas with some other partners too.

I also do tax deeds. A lease option is my favorite thing in any creative finance. When you quit your job and your good salary, finding yourself not being approved in the traditional way, that was an oops for me. I ended up learning much more about how to do a lot of creative finance, seller finance and lease options that allow you to do all the things. That’s when I became an expert too on how to raise capital. That thought that my dad gave me when I was playing Monopoly that you need a lot of money shifted from me having to have the money to me learning how to have access to capital. That was a completely different shift that took my business from having one multifamily or a duplex to now I own multiple units in and out of states. I’m in development projects, tax deeds, that’s liens, nonperforming notes, you name it.

 

I would like to dive into some of this. First of all, you invest in LA. Let’s start with that part first. You also caveated that it sounded that you don’t do a lot with LA County. You do the outskirts of LA. Can you dive into your strategy when you’re looking at investing in LA?

This doesn’t apply only to LA. This applies to all the states. For me, the LA permitting process because I’m doing development with my partners, the LA County process is slow for many reasons. In LA City, we already have a relationship. We already know the entire process and things go smoother. As you know, real estate is about timing. Every time that you have a couple of weeks past is monies that we are paying, monies that we’re not keeping in the projects and it’s getting more expensive. How do I look at the projects? I like LA City, specifically Koreatown and the surrounding areas because I love to invest in emerging markets. I do not like to be a pioneer of a market. Can you be that pioneer? Yes, I just don’t like that. I get into places that I see different factors like employment growth, affordability, decent.

I’m not investing in Beverly Hills because it’s a different project. It’s an entirely different process. I have some big investments with some projects in Newport Beach, but that’s an entirely different story. LA City surrounding areas, the emerging markets of what’s happening there, how the tenants are changing, the tenancy you’re having there. We are developing new properties that fit that target market. We think when we’re building this, that is going to serve 10 to 15 years in transformation for these new tenancies. We are building fourplexes and triplexes there. It’s still reasonable. It’s still a sweet spot for a lot of investors. They love the four units and below because it’s still residential. The financing is more accessible and you need to come up with less money than if you’re building twenty units and you have to buy it. That’s the main business that we keep in that area. We got away from flipping and all of those details because the market is a little bit flat or stagnant, but there are still deals out there. It’s just we to put our efforts into developing because we see more value there.

Those investors would be buying the whole four-unit complex. It’s not like you’re selling each unit. You’re selling the whole building.

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It’s something interesting with our investors. I have a lot of partners that come, but most of our partners when we are building these units, they’re partnering from the ground up. After that, they’re buying us out. That way they’re getting a sweet deal so they are investing with us. They’re making money in the process because we also give them some interest. When we sell them the property, they keep it. We are keeping some of those now too, but we tend to sell them.

The role that you guys play is that you all are developers. You have the relationships that you talk about with the city so you can know how to push through the things that you need to get pushed through to get the job done quickly.

We also have a lot of good relationships with lawyers too that help us, especially we’re dealing with tax deeds that we need to clean those titles and make sure that these properties are ready to do something with it. It’s those relationships. Real estate, if you have money, that works too but it’s about the relationships. If you want to be successful in real estate, you have to network and you have to build long-term relationships. I do not like the one-time date thing. I believe strongly in building a long-term relationship, become a resource, a partner and work together. That’s the thing that I do in real estate. That’s why I have been accelerating so much quicker in a short period of time. When you understand that, that’s when you start excelling.

Can we explore the tax deeds? What does that process entail? What is that all about?

 

First of all, not all states are like tax deeds. There are some states that there are tax deeds and tax liens. The difference between a tax deed and a tax lien is in a tax deed, the county has the right to foreclose and the tax deed state will go ahead. Once you buy that in an auction, that property will be yours. You have to still work with the title because there are a lot of legalities that come when you are buying a tax deed. When you’re buying a tax lien, you’re buying debt from the county. It’s not that the county owes us, but the person who bought that property hasn’t paid taxes so they have a debt with the county and we’re buying that debt.

When you buy that debt, I love this strategy because in reality, you are paying or helping the firefighters, police officers, and schools because that’s how the counties pay for all of these services. You are providing a service. In the end, after X many years, depending on the state, you’re capable of buying that property or foreclosing on that property and that property is yours. Those are the projects that I work with. They can be interesting. You’ll learn a lot about real estate and about the city. You have to have a good relationship with the city too because there’s a big complexity in every process when you are acquiring. Once you acquire that, then you claim the title, you can do whatever you want with that property. There are challenges from title insurance, from property insurance that comes with them that you need to know what you’re doing. I love tax deeds.

For people who are interested in learning more about tax deeds and tax liens, advice on places that they could go to learn more about that.

I create a video. I have to post that because she specialized in this. Me, I go and do it and buy it, but I don’t teach this. I will look for people who teach tax deeds and tax liens strategies, real estate strategies. It’s a unique thing. It’s not the regular go buy a property out there and you flip it. Can you do it after you acquired a property? Yes, but while you’re buying this paper. This is a completely different world. Real estate has different ramifications. For example, nonperforming notes, performing notes, tax deeds and tax liens fall under the paper world of real state. Flipping, wholesaling, retail, turnkey properties, development, that’s in the structural thing.

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Do you also do non-performing and performing notes?

Yes, I buy them. That was my fourth deal. I bought it out of ignorance. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was risky, but I partner up with someone who did it for many years, and that saved me a lot. That process itself was scary. After you do it, you’re like, “This is a great real estate strategy.”

What is great about it?

There’s a lot of money to be made. Here’s another thing though. With nonperforming notes or with performing notes, but with nonperforming notes, it gives you the opportunity to either own the property if you are into that, but also help other families. Sometimes what happens is these family situations change. If you can get into an agreement with them where you can restructure their loan and help them so they can make the payments and they’re not behind anymore, you have the opportunity to help these families keep their homes and that’s valuable. It depends on how you want to play it. Personally, when I did the portfolio, we bought a bunch of them, but we only foreclosed on 5% of them. Everything else, we restructure their loans. When you have that capacity to help their family keep their homes, that’s very rewarding and there’s money to be made still.

 

I love how you have all these different experiences. It’s rich.

Here’s the reality, Lisa. I did play that shiny object thing. I would say, “Non-performing note, tax liens, wholesale.” I started playing that. Sometimes you have to go through that process to find what is enjoyable for you. Through that process, everything leads me to one thing. That discovery was that the biggest challenge for all of the real estate investors and why they were not being successful is because in their mind, they were dealing with money issues. In reality, it wasn’t money. In reality, it was the ability to get access to capital. It doesn’t matter what strategy you are in. That’s the number one thing that will make a huge difference if you want to be successful in real estate. Because even if you are doing wholesaling, you need some amount of money to put it as a down payment. If you don’t have those monies, it’s difficult for you to move forward. Learning the ability to raise capital, it turned into a completely different thing because it can make a difference. Your ability to raise capital can be the difference between getting into million-dollar projects or smaller deals. That applies to any business too.

That brings me to the next question I have for you, which is raising capital, tips and advice for new investors as they think about this.

A lot of investors think or believe that finding private investors is difficult. I have a free report at JenMaldonado.com. They can go and download the free report because finding your investors is not the issue. That’s simple. Getting the investors into your deals is the biggest challenge. How do you do that? I share with them where to find it. I educate people on how to lead the investors to get into a money relationship with you. Some of the tips on that when you’re bringing in investors. There are different ways to find those deals. There’s the institutional lending, which are the banks like credit unions and all of those that are insured by the FDIC.

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There are the high-money lenders. They’re pretty well-known in the area of development, in the area of flipping. There’s a private lenders world where you as an active investor looking for a money partner, you need to understand the laws of this state and the federal law. The first thing you have to do is in the rules. What does that mean? Depending on how you are structuring the deal with your money partner, you might have to learn the state laws and make sure that you involve either a lawyer or a broker when preparing the paperwork.

If you’re working with more than one investor and you are what I call mingling funds, then you need to talk to a syndication lawyer. The moment that you start mingling funds and the project is not structured in a certain way, you can start getting into the Security Exchange Commission Law. A lot of people get intimidated about that. When I start talking about that, it’s like “What? How do you raise capital?” I’m like, “Don’t worry. My lawyers are my best friends.” While other people say that lawyers are deal-killers, for me, they are deal savers. They tell me how to approach things to manage risks and that’s how I see a lawyer. When you’re raising capital, learn the rules. That’s the first thing. The second thing is if you’re going to approach investors, have in mind what is going to be the structure? It’s a question that they’re going to ask you.

The third one is to know how much you can afford. Set your price. A lot of people care about the interest, “I don’t want to pay 12%, 13%, 14%.” Seriously? You’re making 50% of these projects. Does it matter? Get the project done. I know we’re trying to get a deal. That’s great. I understand. Sometimes that’s what it takes to get into that high interest with that partner. As you build that, those interests get lower. Can you find that 6% and 8% of people? Yes, you can but you will need to know what you are looking for. Those are the most fundamental things I can share about raising capital. There is much more about how you pitch your deal. What do you say? How do you say it? What can you say? What can you not say? The first step is to find an investor, make sure you know your structure, talk to the lawyers and learn the rules. That’s it.

My next question is scaling into larger real estate investments and development deals. What are some of the things that investors should know as they think about doing that?

It’s interesting because as it turns out, it’s a matter of zeros. People look at me, “What? You’re talking about $1 million.” It’s a few more zeros. It’s still the same complexity as managing any other projects. When you’re scaling the business, you’re replicating what you’re doing. You will have to potentially bring more people to the table to assist you or become more efficient. That’s my favorite thing. How do you become more efficient when you are managing multiple projects at the same time? There’s the scale of the business in terms of volume. There is a scale of the business in terms of price points. There is the scale of the business in terms of getting into out of states. It depends exactly on what you know, but you will need a better team.

You will need more access to capital. If you are planning to scale your business, no matter which business you are in, you need more capital. The other thing, and this is interesting, especially if all your life you have been a solopreneur or small. Escalating your business also requires delegation. You can’t do everything by yourself and even if you think, “I can do it myself better,” you will have to let a little bit of that control. You will have to learn how to lead. It’s a completely different challenge because now you become from being an operator, working in your business yourself to teaching other people so you can scale up. A lot of investors struggle with that. I love delegating things. I’m trying to help other people grow personally and professionally. At the same time, I’m helping them and I’m growing myself too.

I even think about myself learning to lead and delegate more. Did you always delegate more? Was there a point when you tried to do a lot on your own?

There are times still that I’m doing my own. I’m like, “I don’t want them to do it because I can do it better. They’re going to miss this and that.” At the same time, as an engineer, even when I was in college, I already learned those skills and I started developing how important it was to assist other people. What I learned about myself is the reason why I didn’t want to let go of that control is that I will always think, “What about if they messed up? What about if they missed this? What about if they do it wrong? I know how to do it. It’s faster.” I understood that I wasn’t using my Industrial Engineering degree to create systems that assist them in executing, reducing the number of mistakes, and also allowing them to grow.

What I find now is the moment that I started coaching them, a lot of them have started doing it better than me. We have this little thing inside of us that we’re supposed to be the only person that knows how to do this and we don’t want to let go. It’s a development process. At first, it’s going to be painful because you are coaching them, you’re training them to do an effective job. If you can put systems together to assist them too, you will find out that you will have a lot of rising stars. I applied that to every business. I always had the rising star, including my network too. We have a rising star process too.

That brings me to the network, WREN, Women’s Real Estate Network. Can you talk to us a little bit about it, the role, its mission and the impact it has on you and others?

The Women’s Real Estate Network started because one of my girlfriends, her name is Deborah Razo, the founder, she felt lonely in this world as a woman. She wanted to meet other women that were accelerating and were very successful because she needed to find someone that she can relate to. She invited me to lunch. There were twelve of us that got together. As we’re talking about us, we found ourselves sharing knowledge, resources, experiences and how to handle things. We enjoy it and there was wine involved. We were having a blast. As we’re speaking, we say, “Let’s do it every other month,” and the ladies said, “No, let’s do it every month.” We’re like, “Okay.”

What happened with that is as Deborah and I were talking, we come up with a mission. Our mission was to help women excel and thrive in real estate and help them grow personally and professionally. We put that mission together. As soon as we put that mission together, we got together and we started like women who were successful already. We call it the VIPs that have a lot of experience. I started inviting some of my girlfriends when I started investing that they were taking it slowly, but they need a lot of help. We noticed that there was another entire group of women that need someone like us to help them grow. I talked to Deborah and I decided the first chapter in Los Angeles and that was the first chapter founded a few years ago.

That was the moment that everything started blowing. Suddenly, women started hearing about the LA chapter and they wanted to open one in Seattle, Washington, Phoenix, Arizona, San Diego, Orange County, and Atlanta. We have another twenty upcoming chapters because the word is going out there because of all the things that are happening at the Women’s Real Estate Network. That mission of you go to these community and you feel like your women have your back, how powerful that can be. That’s how the mission started helping other women.

One of the things that Deborah and I are always talking about and laughing about is that we have that saying, “If you hang out with us for too long, I will brainwash you until you believe in yourself and knowing you can achieve anything.” I don’t know any other way. That’s what has been happening. We have seen women that started with no idea how to do real estate do their first deal or women that were doing 2 to 11 deals in a year in a short period of time. They feel like they can borrow our confidence or come together and ask us about anything. That was the mission of the Women’s Real Estate Network. We started with the LA chapter and now we have expanded officially to six chapters.

You have an event coming up too.

We call it Ignite Your Fire Within. It’s one of the most empowering, inspirational and educational events out there because we have authentic conversations of things that we deal with as women. We show you meat and potatoes. It used to be one day, and now we have to extend it to two days because women were like, “We need more of this. We need more meat and potatoes. We want to be surrounded by all of you.” We talk about twenty ways that you can make money in real estate. It’s to expand your vision about what real estate is. It’s not flipping only. It’s not making houses pretty.

There are many other ways that you can make money in real estate. We talk about those things and you get to talk to women one-on-one. Normally, you go to an event there. You see them on the big screen. We have that. We celebrate it normally around April, but if they want to find some more about it. It’s Ignite Your Fire Within. We are expecting around 300 women. We started with 100. It’s going to 300. Last time, we’re sold out. Tickets started selling like crazy. We’re like, “Great.” If they are interested, they can go and we celebrate this every year. We started putting waiting list so people know right away when it’s coming out because it’s getting big.

We are in the level-up round of questions. It’s the last couple of questions. The first one is what you are grateful for in your life?

I am grateful for all the friends, girlfriends who I met in the Women’s Real Estate Network because they have been my support, not only professionally, but personally in many ways. Having that, it’s been one of the most amazing things in my entire life. In a world of men like for me, I was an engineer, all the time I have to be watching my back even from women. Now I feel like I have girlfriends watching my back for me and helping me succeed. That’s one. I’m grateful that I’m healthy and all the abundance in the world and all the opportunities. One of the things real estate made me realize is that this universe has much to give when we are willing to give. It makes your life a completely different experience.

Lessons you have learned on your journey so far, one lesson that you want to share with people.

There are three things. In real estate, do your due diligence. It doesn’t matter how cool it looks like or how amazing that person is, believe but verify. I have a lot of experience in a partnership that I wish I would have done more due diligence and it would have saved me a lot of trouble. Always do your due diligence. If it doesn’t feel right, the second thing, don’t do it. You need to differentiate between being scared and when your intuition is saying you don’t do it. The few times my intuition told me don’t do it and I decided to push forward, I got in trouble. It was a complex deal because I didn’t listen to my intuition. That’s the second thing.

The third one, find something that you enjoy in real estate. If you’re going to do it for the money, be aware that it’s going to be a vehicle for something else, but find something that you enjoy. I enjoy the fact that I can create wealth for my friends and family. People come to me that they want to invest in real estate. They might not have the knowledge, but they start learning with me. Honestly, finding that thing that you love the most make your job or your journey so much enjoyable that it creates a completely different experience. I will say those three things.

What do you believe is key to your continued success and growth?

Two things, one is having a why I’m doing this and a deep understanding that it’s not just the money. Money is a tool that comes with it. It’s a blessing that comes with it, but why I do this. In the end, it’s to contribute to people’s life. The opportunity to have a home or the opportunity to create wealth for themselves so they can secure a legacy for their family. For me, it’s that too. I want to secure a legacy for my family and give it as a gift. They can go out there and money is not an issue for them and they can pursue their dreams. That’s the main thing. It’s having that why.

The second thing is understanding and I learned this the hard way coming from an engineering background. You think that you know it or that you know better than other people. You learn how to handle your ego. I’m open about that. I become this person that used to be the smartest girl in the room to understand that all of us have such an amazing experience and knowledge that we can learn from each other. That right there, coming from a humble background to know that I don’t know everything and we can learn from everyone has completely shifted my entire success in many ways. Every time I go to our room, even if I heard the message 100 times, I know the numbers and sometimes I feel like I know better than them. At the same time, there’s going to be that little thing that they will share with me, that it will create this completely different perspective about how I’m approaching things. Always have that ego in check and know that you can learn from other people no matter who they are.

The last two are what do you wish you had known at the beginning of your real estate journey that you know now?

It’s raising capital. I wish I would have known about this since I started because it would have changed those things. That was one. From my heart, I will tell you that’s one. The second thing is the ability to negotiate and understand people’s needs so you can do creative ways. Being a successful real estate investor is not always about the money. It’s about your ability to understand the other person’s needs so you can negotiate and find this place that you can do something together. I get my best deals with zero money down. The seller is super happy. I was able to give more wealth to them. I was able to give more wealth to my partners. That’s how you do it. Real estate investors are problem solvers.

The last question is advice you’d give for people who are interested in starting in real estate?

First of all, go network. Don’t jump into crazy real estate classes and pay $40,000. I’m saying that from experience. It’s okay. I’m grateful because it took me to where I am now. If you can go to a few real estate network events, meet the people who are doing it. Ask them questions, how they’re doing it. That’s the first step. It doesn’t matter you have money, no money, go to the network event. That should be some time that you must invest. That’s one. Second, get educated. A lot of people say, “I’m going to learn on my own.” They don’t want to invest in education and I have seen it many times. They get into the first deals. They mess it up and they lose a bunch of money.

Make the investment. It might look a little bit expensive because we’re not used to it, but if you look into education as an investment that you’re going to get that knowledge and you’re going to go out there and implement, it’s going to save you time and money. Money, you can always recover it. Time, you can’t recover that one. Do that. The third one is going out there and if you want to do it, find yourself a coach or a mentor. I will prefer mentors. A mentor who is doing the deal in your state, go and do it with them because people learn better when they’re doing it. Go out there and do it with someone else. You don’t have to do this alone. For women, we don’t struggle with that much. For guys, I know they struggle much because they want to be successful by themselves. Go and learn because you will be able to be more successful faster than you going and falling every time trying to get the deal.

Jen, thank you for coming on. I am happy. There are so many nuggets. For me, it’s been a rich show. There’s much information and you’ve done different things in your life. I appreciate it. At this point, can you share opportunities if people want to get in touch with you, learn about your events or anything that you have going on? How do they go about doing so?

I love it when people contact me by email because I get to answer them or on Facebook. If they want to contact me by email, it’s Jen@JenMaldonado.com. I also have a group on Facebook. I call it Investing with Jen – Savvy and Elegant Moves in Real Estate Investments. People can join there. They will see my projects. I share nuggets too as I’m doing different projects from the most fundamental and basic ones that I have learned. I never deal with septic tanks. I have shared routine mistakes to development projects where I share why we’re doing the phases. That’s a way to connect with other communities. I love to bring people together to communities, talk about real estate and share about that. Also, if they want to come to the Women’s Real Estate Network in Los Angeles, they can go to Meetup.com or WRENInspires.com. They can find me there to connect with me. I would be happy to meet with them especially if they told me, “I heard about you with Lisa.”

Thank you. I appreciate it, Jen.

Thank you for having me.

—

Thank you, Jen, for coming on the show. I hope that everyone was able to get many nuggets from this particular episode. Jen laid it out there. There was much out there to learn, to hear and to feel inspired and to take action on as well. Some of my insights were real estate is a relationship business. It’s super important when you’re looking at relationships to come from a place of thinking of the long-term. She also talked about raising capital, the whole process of getting out there and understanding that the amount of money that you have doesn’t limit your ability to do deals and to be successful both in real estate as well as in business as a whole.

You can network and meet with other people, get to know and understand what it is that they’re trying to achieve. Together, you can accomplish the goals of being able to achieve what they need to see in terms of how they want their money to grow, as well as how they want their money to play. The good you want to do in the different neighborhoods or the businesses that you’re trying to execute. Having in mind that real estate is a team sport. She spoke about that like understanding what you bring to the table and working with other people, being able to delegate, as well as to lead. Those things hit home for me personally as I continue to develop as a leader myself.

She explained letting go of your ego. As you come in, you know that you’re a smart person, but being willing to learn from other people to ask questions and to continue to be a student of the business, that’s super important. She also spoke about scaling into larger deals, getting into development and ultimately becoming more efficient in terms of managing multiple projects. You need a better team, so you need to get people on your team that understand and know the different processes of whatever type of project that you’re getting involved in. More access to capital is also super important.

We then also spoke about WREN, which is the Women’s Real Estate Network, how the network came about as she is also a founding member of that group, and the kinds of events that they have. What I will say is getting out there and meeting other people especially as a woman, going out there and meeting other women who are doing amazing things and who are willing to help other people grow and develop is beautiful and important to your personal growth. It’s beautiful that Jen, her team, the other co-founders and the other people who are inspired, created these different clubs all over the US so far. It’s amazing. Come out if you’re in town and come to the events. By all means, check it out.

Two more things, one was the advice that she gave for real estate investors and people who are interested in getting into real estate. One, she talked about the importance of networking and how important it is to invest some time to get out there and get to know people. Get to learn about what it is that they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Number two is from that, you start to develop a sense of what it is that you would be most attracted to and where you want to ultimately spend your time. From that, investing in education to learn. You’re either going to learn the hard way out there getting stuff done or you’re going to learn from getting the education and also going out there and taking action. You need both in my opinion.

Lastly is finding a mentor. Working with someone who knows and who is doing what it is that you are doing. It’s super important to be around other people who are doing the same things that you want to do because there’s a blueprint. That in itself is super valuable. Her tips on what has contributed to her personalized success and growth, having a good understanding of why she pursues what she does pursue. It’s super important to have that deep understanding. Lastly was learning how to handle your ego. We come from a place where you’re smart and people understand certain things. Always coming with that mind of being able to learn from other people and being open to understanding, seeing it from a different point of view and ultimately being able to solve problems. It’s a beautiful episode. Thank you, Jen. I hope you enjoyed it and took a lot away from the show as well. Until next time, keep leveling up and I’ll see you later.

Important Links:

• Jennifer Maldonado
• WREN Inspires
• You Got This!
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• JenMaldonado.com
• Ignite Your Fire Within
• Jen@JenMaldonado.com
• Investing with Jen – Savvy and Elegant Moves in Real Estate Investments Facebook group
• Meetup.com
• WRENInspires.com
• http://IgniteYourFireWithin.com/jennifer-maldonado/

About Jennifer Maldonado

For the past decade, Jen has been recognized by Fortune’s Top 500 companies like Johnson & Johnson and Nestle as a continuous improvement business expert and high-performance leader. She managed and led challenging projects as an engineer resulting in millions of dollars savings in short-time periods. In 2012, she decided to take a leap of faith and changed her career trajectory to become a real estate investor.

After her first year in real estate investing, Jen found her passion for raising capital. She successfully raised capital to fund real estate equity projects, acquisitions of non-performing notes, rehabs, multi-family units & other private loans that totaled $65M in assets.

In 2015, a Huffington Post Journal interview recognized Jen as an inspirational and revolutionary real estate investor, consulting business owners and entrepreneurs to reach their full potential by tapping into owning their power and create wealth through real estate.

As one of the executive leaders and speakers of WREN Inspires (fastest-growing nationwide women’s real estate network), Jen has impacted the lives of over 2,000 aspiring and professional women real estate investors. Jen has been honored with the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE) award “Women who Rock 2020 in Los Angeles”.

Her influence as a capital raising strategist, while mentoring women to develop high-performance skills in real estate, earned her two consecutive nominations as Corporate Advocate and Rising Star at the 2016-17 Women’s Summit lead by Los Angeles Business Journal.

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