KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Optimizing Wealth: Tips for Building Passive Income in Real Estate and Side Hustles

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Welcome back to the Abundant Investor podcast. I'm your host, Beth Rooney, and I am so happy to be here today with Christine. We have another great topic in store for you today. We are going to talk about how to add passive income into your life and why that is so important. It's a way to really look at your income and how you're making money and asking yourself, is this the way I want to continue making earning income for the rest of my life or would I like to add another opportunity

to build a secondary income stream? Absolutely. I love this topic so much. I think everyone these days is talking about how to add different income streams, revenue streams, passive income is a big buzzword. I think we get to break that down a little bit today and talk about what's truly passive. Most work has some effort involved.

so we'll be real about that. And also, you know, I think that life, we always talk about living your rich life. It gets to be fun. And for most people, that's a diversified life where they're not doing the same thing day and day out. People want to always, people are always coming to us, wanting to explore other opportunities. Some people say, I think I want to change careers or I want to do something different, but I'm not sure what. So today we're going to talk about also like ways you figure out what those things are. And I think where there's interest in a will and you know, you're willing to put some effort in, there's an opportunity to make a life a little more interesting and make more money while doing so. So we want to help break that down for you guys

and show you that it's absolutely possible. Absolutely. I think on that last podcast around being the CEO, you talked about how millionaires typically have income streams. So this is not about like, okay, I'm going to just, you know, quit my job and start a new career. This is saying, just like you're talking about, what do I love to do? What comes naturally to me? And how could I turn that into an income stream to supplement what I'm doing? And of course, Christine and I love real estate. So real estate investing is going to be a big topic here, but it's not the only way. So, you know, if you're listening and you're a stay-at-home mom or you have a nine-to-five kind of corporate job, this is for you.

If you are a 1099, especially a real estate agent who really is your only income stream right now is transaction-oriented, listen up because there is a lot you can bring to the table to supplement that transaction income, especially in. After years like 2023, we saw so few transactions, there are lots of opportunities for you to supplement your income stream, create some passive income that may last beyond your transactional business. Absolutely. And I think that you can take something like real estate investing and make it as passive or as active as you want. And just speaking from experience, my first real estate investment was intended to be pretty passive. We ended up buying a fixer-upper, and anytime you're buying something that needs work, whether you're doing the work or you're hiring people to do the work, there is some labor involved, for sure. There's some effort involved in that. It is somewhat active. There are real estate investors out there who are completely wanting to be passive. We have a client that we're helping who is closing on a property where everything will be outsourced, and she will be paying other people to help her manage the property. She's found, found a great property and it's out of state and she's got the boots on the ground in order to manage that so that it is a very passive income stream for her and over time that real estate will

appreciate initially the cash flow might be a little lower if you're outsourcing all of these things but maybe that's what you want maybe you know for some people that's the right way to go so it really gets to be whatever you want a lot of people get into real estate investing and they start to build a portfolio that enables them to retire their W-2 job. So they might be working a corporate job and realize that they're just not as happy there as they used to be. And they want the freedom that comes from being their own boss. And now they've built up a real estate portfolio that allows them to do that.

So I think your point, Beth, about this is something you can pick up on the side to begin with. Or maybe if you're, maybe you're not working right now because you're a care. as a mom or otherwise, and you want something to do to start to bring in some extra income, it's a great way to complement what you're already doing and how you're spending your time. And I think, you know, there's so many proven ways out there to make some extra income. It's very much within reach for anyone. Absolutely. And we're all, I just want to say, if you're listening to this podcast, you're full of gifts and skills and experiences that

other people simply have not had, that they're ready for you to teach them. So you're sitting on a treasure trove of resources just based on who you are, what you've done. And I think sometimes we forget what's in plain sight. So it's really funny, Beth, because right before we got on the podcast today, we started talking about a topic that I realized, oh, gosh, like, that's something I completely would enjoy running a course on or coaching on, right? And it's just such second nature to me. And I'm not going to say what it is right now, but it's second nature. So I thought, like, oh, I forgot that not everybody can see that.

So you have a lens on the world that is so different from so many other people. So maybe you're awesome at making graphics in Canva. And you can make templates like, like it's really fun. for you. There's people that find that very painful and would be happy to pay you to make templates for them in Canva. So, you know, honing in on what are those things that are really fun or that you think could be fun for you and starting to monetize those simply by letting people know that, I mean, I say simply and really in the beginning it is this simple and there are ways to scale and grow. But in the beginning, it's just letting other people know that you provide

that service, putting a price on it, and then putting it out there and offering it. Right. So you just talk, you just cover a lot. Let's break that out into some components, right? Because that's, that's really the, that's really the crux of it. So let's talk about, let's, let's dive into real estate investing a little bit. And let's just talk about the spectrum of from really what's passive to really what's hands on. So let's take that and, and dig into that a little bit. And then let's come back to this topic about you and your skill set and what could you offer the world if real estate investing isn't in your short-term horizon.

So starting with real estate investing, let's just talk about the spectrum. So you gave some great examples there, right? So I would say from a hands-on standpoint, probably fix and flage. are going to be your most hands-on. It's just something that it's even, as you said, like you're going to outsource, obviously, to contractors, but someone's going to decide, you know, what door handles to pick and what kitchen color,

you know, what color your kitchen cabinets are going to be. And so I would say having built a house from the ground up and got renovated a house that fixing and flipping a home or building a home, is definitely something that is not passive. You're really got to be on top of other guys showing up. Are they doing the work that they said they were going to do? All that kind of thing.

So you have that. I think next on the spectrum is sort of the, in terms of involvement is maybe like the short-term, mid-term rental. And let's talk about that a little bit. You've had a lot of experience with that. Would you agree that that's sort of, next on the spectrum of moving from active to passive that next would probably be vacation type rental? Yes, if you're going to be managing them yourself specifically, there is some work to get

that set up. So there's the effort to set up the space, furnish the space, make all the decisions around how are you going to rent it out, where are you going to rent it out. We cover all of this in our A to Z Airbnb class, right, for investors who want a vacation home. There is quite a bit to think about. You can do that on your own. You can take the course. You can work with us for coaching. So again, there's like different ways to think about how much am I going to roll

at my sleeves and learn this from scratch versus learn it from a coach. And I would say like since we both are big advocates of coaching and have invested in coaching ourselves. We know that by hiring a coach, you get usually, you know, somewhere 10 times faster right. Exactly. Then you would have if you try to figure it out yourself. So yeah, there's, there's definitely different speeds that you can move at. But I'd say with the short and midterm rentals, there's also a range there. But yeah, it is hands on. And even if you're getting it set up on Airbnb yourself and you're going to manage it for the first six months and then hire someone to co-host for you, there's still a good amount of getting it up and running.

Yeah, that's great. And then you're right. Then within some of these asset classes, there's a spectrum, right, of hands-on to hands-off, right? By hiring co-hosts and all that kind of great stuff. And then I think you get into sort of the long-term rentals, which obviously you're only annually maybe moving tenants in and out and sometimes longer than that. And then you could, again, you could property manage it yourself or you could hire a property manager that's going to get that phone call if there's something wrong with a property or what have you.

And then I think from there you start to get into some of the more truly passive investing, like syndications or lending. A lot of people these days are using their assets to lend to other folks and then, you know, charging an interest rate on that. So yeah, there's a, there's definitely so many, there's a wide spectrum of options and then within each option or asset class, you can really decide how much you want to be involved in this or not. Exactly. And I think even just within the, like, let's just take the short term, midterm space, for example, there's a lot of opportunities for, we talked about real estate agents or people that know real estate to pick up a side hustle here. So maybe you're a great stage. or maybe you're a great designer. You could design people's Airbnbs.

You could help them set them up. There's a lot of people that want to invest and they know that they're going to get a greater return by setting up an Airbnb, sometimes twice as much as a long-term tenant, but they don't have the desire or the skill set to go in and furnish a place. Maybe you want to have an Airbnb someday

and you know that you've got great client skills. And you just don't have the, for whatever reason, you're not ready to invest yourself. You're not ready to buy the place. You could go co-host for someone else. You can be their co-host, manage all of their guests, and that could be a whole separate conversation because that's a great way to build up your own profile on Airbnb

so that when you do get ready to start putting your own properties on these short-term rental sites, you've built a reputation as someone else's co-host. So there's all these opportunities within real estate investing for, I think, people with real estate experience, but really anyone, right? Like I was in client services in the tech sector. That serves me well when it's time, you know, that serves me well in all of real estate, particularly when I'm working with guests who are staying at my Airbnb's. So, you know, I think, you know, just think about what skill sets do you have and what are you

really interested in and you can find ways to pick up work as a, you know, as a side hustle or you know, in investing in real estate, you can find what's, what's going to suit me best? Maybe I'm really busy and I own a business and I want to be very passive, but I want to start to buy properties and then have somebody else manage the tenants. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's really, I think that's really the crux of what we're here to talk about really is the next. So we've, you know, moving on from real estate investing, sort of, okay, you like you're saying, you may not be quite ready to be the investor, but what are all the tendential businesses around real estate?

estate investing that maybe you could start today. And I think, I think breaking it down for our listeners of what would be the first few steps for them to take to say, all right, I'm in a, job, whatever that is. And I'd like to start a side hustle or I'd like to start thinking about a long-term secondary income stream or passive. We were talking about this before we hopped in the call. I think the first thing for them to do is to think about, What brings them joy, right? What are they interested in? What would they like to learn more about?

What comes naturally to them? Right. What's fun? What do you want to dabble in? Because either you've done it before and you really enjoy it or because it's something that you think would be really interesting to you. So I love that and I love leading people through exercises to get to that, to visualize.

What can you see yourself doing? What is your future self doing, six months, 12 months? from now that feels just really fun for you because, you know, we're going to spend a lot of time working most of us. And it gets to be fun if we want it to. That's a, you know, it's a, I think it's a very limiting belief that work has to be a hard thing and it has to be something that we don't want to do. Instead, I mean, I love that for the past five or so years, I've woken up and I'm just like, I love Monday mornings. I love getting back into one. Yeah, that's great. You get to, yeah, you get to enjoy your work.

So getting clear on what it is that could be fun. And then thinking about, so you ask what are the next steps, I think thinking about, okay, what is your brand look like? You know, in a very simple way, you want to start a, you want to start to co-host for other people and maybe you have no experience and it feels like, well, how am I going to break into this market? Well, what past experience do you draw from that makes you a great co-host? Use that to write a description of your co-hosting services and start to put a

put that out there and start to let people know that you're available to co-host. Maybe you have some friends or family members that own an Airbnb or that are going to be buying one. Offer to do it. Offer to do it and put a price on it that feels right to you. And if you're not sure what that is, then think about what your hourly rate is. What's your hourly rate been in the past? What feels right to you now? And put a price on it. And if no one's biting initially and you're having trouble, you know, get feedback and find out why. And you might even offer to do the first one or two, you know, on a trial basis. But you've got to be willing to be flexible and you've got to be open-minded and you've got to believe that it's going to happen. So that's, you know,

that's so important that you have to believe that you're, if you've got the inkling to do it and you're starting to put yourself out there, you are meant to do it. And you really do have to keep sending the message verbally and otherwise. And this is in fact how the first real estate investing client came to, came to us is just putting the intention out there. And really, the first time it happened, there was no distinct offer in place. But I asked my potential client, what is it that you want? We talked about it. And then we came up with a structure and a price that worked for both of us, kind of on the fly. And in the beginning, that's fine. You're testing. It's test and learn, test and learn.

If there's anything I learned from being in tech startups that move at a very fast pace, it's constantly testing what people are responding to and how. And there's a lot of psychology involved in it and a lot of just, you know, seeing what sticks and what works. But I do think it's possible. And you get to put yourself out there and offer the thing, offer the thing that you know you can do and own it. Be confident that you can do it really well. Yeah, absolutely.

So what I'm hearing you say, Christine, you know, start with what's fun, right? What do you want to, what are you interested in? What comes natural to you? And what do people need in that space? So we just gave some really great examples, right? We gave an example, you know, earlier in this call of someone said someone owning an Airbnb or a vacation home that they want to rent out, but being uninterested in being the person in charge of managing the guests. Well, for every yin, there's a yang, right? And so there's somebody that loves to be managing guests.

And like you said, is really exceptional at client services and is interested in that. So thinking about, you know, what is interesting to you, what's fun to you, what are people, who's your audience in that space? And what does that audience need? And then how can you fill that need? And the other thing I heard you talk about here, Christine, and you and I have talked about this a lot is don't wait to have a perfect business plan and to have everything buttoned up and go take, you know, a year long class and, you know, need this certification and that certification. Just start. Like you're saying, test, test it. See how it goes.

Start. And then improve. You've heard we talk on this show a lot about Kaizen. It's continual improvement, but you have to start before you can improve, you know. And I think a lot of people get into this analysis paralysis. I have to be perfect before I put anything out on Instagram or anything like that. And I think that you and I have been great examples of saying, we know there's a need out there. We have a skill set to share with the world.

And let's put it out there. and I think that's what we're encouraging here is for people to say, okay, I know I have a skill set. And you can, we're talking about this in real estate right now. But, you know, let's just, there's other examples. Fitness, for example. I see this a lot in the fitness industry where somebody maybe isn't a nine to five job, but they're an awesome fitness instructor because they love it. They're good at it.

They're great teachers. people are attracted to them. They love to talk about it. People are always asking about it. And it makes it really easy for them to start a side hustle of helping other people with their health, whether that's, you know, fitness instructing or maybe through dietary. There's lots of people that are really good with like how to create a really healthy balanced diet. So there's lots of people, even like, you know, maybe attorneys, right?

somebody that has this really great skill set that people are always asking, maybe younger attorneys are always asking, like, how can I do what you do or what are my options? So being a mentor to other people is another really great way to start. If you're finding, this is something that's really important to note, I think. If you're finding that people are always seeking out your advice on a certain topic, you may want to think about that a little bit and find out why are so many people attracted to you. asking you about that all the time. What skill set do you possess that is attracting that? And then how could that turn into a side hustle? I love it. That's, it's so true. It's so true. And we were just talking about how there's a couple of people who have reached out saying, I want to teach people how to do this. And, you know, someone just asked me, what school do I go to to do this? And I said, wow, that's so interesting, right? This person is looking for school to get better at, to learn how to coach people on this. Yet when I think about, you know, the topic that she's talking about,

I already think she's a pro, right? So like a lot of times we think we have to go get the certification or we have to go back to get our masters, right? And yes, for some fields, that is a requirement. And for a lot of, you know, a lot of fields, it's not. And I think you have to really like give yourself credit for everything that you've learned and everything you've figured out on your own. There's things that you've spent a lot of,

time doing that you have the expertise in to offer to others. And it's a gift to be able to offer that to other people. And I actually love to spin it this way too for the people that say, yeah, but who am I to go out there and show other, show new lawyers, for example, how to do law like a law career or law path differently. Who am I to do that? I'm not saying this person said that. But like, and it's like, who are you not to? What if you don't do it? Think of all the people that you cannot help. because you're not putting yourself out there and offering that to people. It's almost selfish, right? So when we put ourselves in a position to be of service to other people,

we're actually extending the olive branch and showing people how it's done. And by them paying you, it's empowering them to take action. And you get to receive that and continue to do it and build the business around it. Whatever you want to do, you can do with that. So I think that's so important to keep in mind. And like it doesn't have to be like I love your point, Beth, about perfectionism. Like please start imperfect. Please start imperfectly because the world just needs you out there and you're going to learn

faster if you start rather than if you try to button it up and make it look amazing because then you'll never put it out there. Then you put it out there and the energy behind it will be really diluted by that point that you just won't see the same results. Right? It's continuous improvement. Kaisa, I love it. Yep, I love it. And I think, you know, thinking about a lot of our listeners are real estate agents. And I just, I just wanted to, you know, we just gave an example, right, of somebody that maybe, like we talked about fitness or attorneys. But real estate agents also oftentimes have skill sets that they don't even realize that they're so good at. I'm going to give you two or three examples. Some agents are really, really good at networking with other. agents and getting referrals from agents outside of their area, right? If you know you're really good at that and you've had of this track record of always getting like three or four referrals from other agents in your network that

aren't necessarily in your local market, why don't you teach other agents how to do that? Because everybody would love three or four transactions a year that they're getting. Like you, you just think about what is it that you're doing to create that. activity and then what could you teach another agent to do? You brought up earlier Canva. Canva is a skill set that is, you know, many, many agents would love to pay somebody to handle for them because it's probably not in there, you know, in general, having managed agents for a really long time, they're not necessarily the folks that are going to be best at Canva. But if you're an agent and you're really good at Canva and it comes natural to you,

and you'd love to talk to people about it and show people how to use it, put your skill sets out there because I'm telling you right now, agents will buy it because they, especially, you know, agents that are busy with a lot of transactions, they don't necessarily want to learn a new skill. And if you have that skill,

bring it to the table and make it really easy for them to find you and to hire you. And that means you have to put it out there. And Instagram is the perfect place to do that. You know, we have, you don't, it's not like, you know, you have, you don't have to recreate the wheel here. We have all of these ways to get the word out there. And so social media is a great place to do that. And then crafting your offer that makes it really easy for people to understand what it is and how do they get it? And you're off and running.

Right. Exactly. I love that. And I love also going out there with this mindset of how can I serve other people and fit a need in the marketplace that I'm naturally very good at. And if you master that, then you take it to the next level and you can make it even more passive. So let's talk about the Canva example for a second. You start working on the side to help other agents or other people create templates so that they've got these awesome looking collateral that they get to put in front of their clients.

Eventually, you start building templates so that people can buy your templates without you having to even be awake. So you wake up the next morning and you've got $500 in your store because overnight, five people bought your $100 template bundle and off to the races, you just made $500 while you slept. Isn't that awesome? Like that is, that is so great. Last night I was in bed. I went to turn my phone off and it said, ding, Airbnb said, you know, so-and-so is coming to your apartment and it's a $500 transaction. Isn't that amazing? I'm about, about to go to sleep and I just made $500 by when I turned off my phone, right? Yes, I love it.

Yeah, you want to think about for the long term, how do you scale these skills and scale things? If that's truly what you want is for it to be very passive. I really see it for most things. It's building towards a passive income. First, by mastering the work, mastering your brand and getting yourself out there, which again could be a whole other podcast. and then we, you know, we templatize things, whether it's literally creating templates or it's creating these packages of content that people can use so that they can get better.

Or maybe you have an awesome referral system, right? So that that referral system is just working for you in the background all the time. But this is, I mean, I really believe this is the path to what everybody ultimately wants, which is freedom of time. Money is awesome, but really what we always. really want is freedom of time so that we can go spend our time the way that brings us joy and the way that fulfills us. So maybe that spending time with family, maybe it's traveling. There's so many things, like maybe you just want to, maybe you want to be volunteering. Maybe you want to be training for an

Iron Man. You want to be buying time so that you can go then do the things that you really want to do. And that's what building this other revenue stream, this other side, you know, this other income stream, that's what this is doing for you. So that's why we're such proponents and we really want to help see more people do it, especially women, especially to build wealth. And it just aligns with what we're doing, what we, you know, we see a lot of successful people doing these days. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great way to, you know, if let's just go back to the example again with real estate investing. If you want to invest in real estate, but maybe you don't have the, You need to save an extra, let's just say, $10,000 a year.

Is there a way that you could take your skill set that you have it available to you today with a side hustle to create that $10,000, put that aside, and then use that next year to start investing in real estate or whatever it may be? So this doesn't have to be like an all or nothing. One can lead to the other and can get you to that longer-term goal of having that passive income. So yes, I think I think thinking about this in, you know, one year increments, five year increments, and even maybe 10 years, like where do you want to go and taking that time to take a step back to say, okay, what can I start doing? How can I start taking action now? And what can I do now to build to where it is that I want to go in the future?

And I think that, you know, real estate investing, if you're there and you feel like, okay, I'm ready, but I don't know where to start. We have a great bundle available for people. It's the real estate investor beginner bundle. It's up on our stand store. We'll put a link to it in these notes. But it's a great way for you to start to say, okay, I think I'm ready to start investing in real estate. How do I analyze, you know, what's it going to take? we provide you a workbook to give you some, you know, questions to ponder and some steps to take.

And then we actually give you a spreadsheet so you can start to plug in some numbers and play around with like, what would it look like if I bought, you know, in a property that cost X amount and generated Y amount in income. How long would it take me to be cash flowing positive? And what does that look like? So there's lots of ways for people to get educated. And we love being part of that. I think that's something that you and I are really enjoying, Christine, is helping people see the possibility and then helping them get educated on it. And then just like you said, we had a client this week that just got her first property under agreement.

It's been so fun. We coached her on this. We worked with her. We helped her pick a market. it and now here she is. She's about to be a real estate investor really, really soon. So she's had an offer accepted. So it's really exciting. It's so exciting. So yeah, I think that that's a great example, Beth. And I think that a great way to start is with that bundle. If people are curious about investing, it's really the entry way into getting started with us as well.

and I just love this conversation and the opportunity that really anyone has to start building a passive income stream. So I would encourage anyone who has more questions about this or ideas and they want to just get thoughts. We love hearing from you. Write to us. Let us know what you're thinking about and send us any questions. And if you aren't sure about how to really get started, really reach out. we reach back out to everyone that reaches out to us and we'd love to be in touch with you. So I think that this is a good time to wrap up and to just say if there's, if there's any more you want to learn, check out our store.

We've got some other resources in it. And please go dabble. Go find the thing that lights you up and start telling people that you offer it. You'll figure it out along the way. Absolutely. And most importantly, have fun. Thanks, everybody.