No Broke Months For Salespeople - Building Multigenerational Wealth Through Real Estate - Nicole Rueth

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Nicole Rueth is a powerhouse in the real estate industry. Despite growing up on food stamps, she has defied the odds and now owns 24 investment properties. Her journey to success began when she bought her first home at 30 and made her first investment at 40. As a mortgage professional, Nicole is passionate about helping others achieve financial stability through real estate. She shares her expertise by teaching about the economy, finances, and real estate, empowering others to reach their financial goals through property investment. Join us in this episode as Nicole discusses how you can build multigenerational wealth through real estate!You can find Nicole in the links below:The Rueth TeamInstagram To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan Rochon

So if I was talking to a real estate agent today, what I'm helping them do is to stop talking about interest rates, stop talking about today's pain, and start creating a vision that's so strong that it literally creates itself. So how do you paint this picture for each one of your clients? Welcome to the No Broke Months for Real Estate Agents podcast. Working as a real estate agent can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it can also be frustrating if you aren't making the money you deserve. So if you're ready to end the stressful cycle of working hard for no results, then get started with a proven step-by-step system so that every month

is no broke months. Nicole Ruth is a powerhouse in the real estate industry. Despite growing up on food stamps, she has defied the odds and now owns 24 investment properties. Her journey to success began when she bought her first home at 30 and made her first investment at 40. As a mortgage professional, Nicole is passionate about helping others achieve financial stability through real estate. She shares her expertise by teaching about the economy, finances, and real estate, empowering others to reach their financial goals through property investment. Join us this episode as Nicole discusses how you can build multi-generational wealth through real estate. My name is Dan Roshan. I'm the host of the No Broke Months podcast,

which is a show for real estate agents to help you have no broke months. Thanks for joining me. Enjoy the show. Today, I'm talking to Nicole Root. That's R-U-E-T-H. Apparently, the E is silent. And Nicole is going to talk to us about building multi-generational wealth through real estate. Hi, Nicole. How are you? I'm doing fantastic today. I'm doing really good. Glad to hear that. Yes. So before we jump into the topic, tell me who's Nicole? Like you're one of the, I mean, you are a powerhouse in the real estate industry. What does that mean? So give us a little backstory about Nicole.

So I love that we have similar audiences, right? I educate a lot of real estate agents, especially here in the Denver market and certainly nationwide. We do a lot on YouTube and we have agents find us from across the country. I'm licensed in 37 states. So work with a lot of folks. And we did that. We got licensed because we help a lot of our clients and our agent partners in creating wealth. And sometimes it's not in Denver, Colorado because we can be a little expensive.

So we've chased our investors where they go. And that's how I landed at 37 states, because nobody's buying investments in Alaska right now. So, you know, in all of that, who I am is I've been in mortgage lending for over 20 years. I really doubled down in our industry when I started figuring out how real estate can change the trajectory of not only your life, but your children's life and for generations to come. You know, we can all say that we hoped to crush it with that right Bitcoin that we bought or that right stock that we bought. And you might hit it. You might have bought NVIDIA a year and a half ago and then you did hit it. But if you

didn't choose that one at the right time, what I can tell you is real estate gives you the consistency, the idea that you can fall back on income, the idea that you can create net wealth. And so that's, I mean, bottom line, who I am in this space is an educator, passionate to serve and to support and to talk about it. And then on the on, uh, outside of work, I've got three awesome kids. They are so funny. There's so much more, my husband than me, which is a blessing for them because I don't have a sense of humor. Um, but I've, I've been married, um, gosh, 28 years now, three kids, the oldest is 26 and all three of them own their first homes and the 26 year old owns his second home. So helping more people do that. Had I known at 21,

what I was able to do for my kids, I'd probably be in Central America right now hanging out. So, but I'm not, cause I learned it at 40. We'd be hanging out together, Nicole, if we both knew what we knew, what we we know now we knew what we knew then i don't know if that made sense but we both be in costa rica nonetheless right uh and i'm i'm an athlete i i believe in recovery time i think that that's how my business has been able to grow. An adventure racer, triathlete, just love to run, love to bike, do all the things. Adventure racer, that sounds extreme. What is that? It does.

So the biggest one, my claim to fame, there's no fame around it, but I can pat myself on the back, that I had done the Primal Quest in Utah a number of years ago. I'm going back at least 10 years. But this is typically with a team of four. It's usually three guys and a girl, so they can call themselves co-ed. And you go out, whether it's for 24 hours or six days, and you're kayaking, you're rappelling, you're traversing, you're biking, you're hiking, you're doing all the things and you take what's in your backpack and then they'll drop trunks of food along the way based on your navigation. It's a lot of fun. Like a fairy tale. It's intense, but man,

you can't think about anything else when you're out there. You're just knee deep in the nature. It's awesome. That's beautiful. So talk to us. So you mentioned, you know, your teacher, three, your three kids and, you know, 26 years old getting a second and the all three have homes less than 26 years old. So clearly you believe in multi-general wealth. But tell us about like, what is it that the listener or the viewer should know? Let's say if you're a real estate agent watching this right now, what is it that that person should know about, you know, multi-general wealth? That's a fantastic question. Cause right now, as we were talking about,

when we were getting to know each other, we're in an interesting time in the market, right? For real estate agents, for mortgage brokers or mortgage lenders. And so we're trying to figure out what is the value when people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for interest rates to drop and they're in this perpetual spend mode where they're renting or they're not owning is the bottom line because there's fear around that. So if I was talking to a real estate agent today, and I do a lot of presentations, I'm kind of a data geek and an economics geek in addition to the real estate. If I was talking to an agent today, what I'm helping them do is to stop talking about

interest rates, stop talking about today's pain, and start creating a vision that's so strong that it literally creates itself. So how do you paint this picture for each one of your clients? So by digging deep and having that real strategy session, not just an introduction to that client, but having a strategy session that says, okay, think of me as your financial planner for real estate. What is it that you need real estate to do for you in addition to the things that you're doing with your financial planner, if you're working with a trust attorney or anybody else that's your advisor role? Think of me as an advisor role for real estate. How can it fill the gaps from the kind of wealth that you want to have on a net income basis every single

month in retirement, pre-retirement, get to retire early? Or what do you want to have on a net income basis every single month in retirement, pre-retirement, get to retire early? Or what do you want to leave your children as far as a net worth? What would be your goals? So a lot of times I'll sit down with clients personally and somebody will say, well, I want to invest. I want to buy my first investment. Am I fantastic?

Why? That seems like it. I get a lot of crickets because I think I'm supposed to, because I know that that's the thing that I got to do in order to build wealth, because my real estate agent said I needed to talk to you, whatever that answer is, right? Or, you know, they want to buy that second home and leave that first one as a, as an investment. So by the time I hope anyway, by the time I get done with that conversation with them, then they're lit up about something specific that that ownership is going to bring them,

whether it's five years from now, 10 years from now, or 30 years from now, is it, can they plug in that decision, that piece of real estate into a larger plan that then also helps them identify other opportunities as they present. Because when that happens, now I've got a real estate agent that's a partner of mine who now has five or six deals with the same client instead of one and done. And they know they've changed that client's life. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen so many of my clients. I mean, I've been doing this almost 20 years as a real estate agent broker. And through the years, I had a gentleman came over from Africa. And he bought a lease option from me.

So I had to own the property. And he leased the option. And today, that's property he bought from me. So I had to own the property and he leased option it. And today that's property he bought from me. And then it's about 250, 300,000 of equity. Right. And this is a person that every single time I see him a couple of times a year and every single time I see him, he just gives me this big fat hug. And because now he's on to his fourth home. Right. And he owns still all four of them. Like, so he has more than a million dollars net worth, right? He came over to our country around 20 years ago, legally, and was able to, I helped him to purchase the lease option because he had some struggles with it.

And I was patient with him, make sure that he was able to do that. And then fast forward, you know, we're 20 years later, right? That's a long time. Guess what? A million bucks for an immigrant that, no, a million dollars for anybody, right? Like that's a ton of money. And he's done anything spectacular other than just buying, holding, and the rest is history. Right. So true. God, I love that. That's a fantastic story. And that's the kind of impact that every single real estate agent has the ability to choose.

Right. You have the ability, whether are you counting transactions? Are you trying to hit a number? Are you trying to go on the trip? Or are you trying to impact lives? I mean, different agents, different lenders, same boat, have different focus on the business that they're running. And so that's the ability that we have, each one of us. I tell the agents that I work with all the time, I was like, we literally have the best job on the planet. We have the best job on the planet. And we are more important than most financial planners to our clients, because most people don't have enough money to have a financial planner really make a dent in their net wealth.

Excuse me for interrupting my own show. You are freaking amazing. And because you're amazing, I'm going to ask for a quick favor. We'll just take you 30 seconds for you to leave a favorable five-star rating or review on your favorite platform. Then what I'll do is I'll enter you into a raffle where we can meet 45 minutes for a free coaching session. And I'll also give you a copy of the book Real Estate Evolution, which is the 10 step guide to CPI consistent and predictable income. Oh, by the way, I'm the author of that book. So if you'd like for me to coach you, give you some

nuggets and help you in your business, go ahead and leave a review and you can enter into the monthly raffle to win. What do you see is the challenge within the real estate industry that the agents encounter to be able to help be those advisors? Or lenders or lenders, agents or lenders? What's the holdup in having people do that? What do you think causes agents and lenders should not be that person, that person to be able to advise, that person to be able to advise that person to be able to be the resource? Is it just that they're too busy? They're too scared. They're too whatever. Like, what do you see typically? Gosh, I think it's so, it's so much fear. I have not heard the words imposter syndrome so much as I had in the last couple of years. right? I mean, we all think that we were faking it this whole time because all of a sudden it's gotten so hard that it's like, I can't,

I'm not capable. I don't, I don't really know how to do that. And I think the other part of it is for some reason, as an industry, we haven't taken our jobs seriously. We haven't taken them. Like when you're in a career, not only are you also required by some companies, but there's a lot of times that you go out seeking additional education. So you go out now, we all have our CE that we have to get done begrudgingly, right? And we do it. But how often do we go out to seek, how can I learn the facets of investing in real estate better? How do I know all the ways to communicate? I just had a class on assumable loans and purchasing homes with assumable loans.

So are we educating ourselves on all the ways that we can purchase and all the ways that we should avoid purchasing a home like we're hearing about? So I think it's, I think it's part of, we don't trust ourselves. Part of it is, is we don't seek the education and the knowledge. And part of it is, is we don't think that we can really make that big of a difference when we can make this outstanding difference. What, so you know, the only one lender in your state, Colorado, right? Or you're, yeah. Why? Like what, what, not why.

I don't think why is the right question. What, well, I want to know why too. But before why, what has caused you to be that woman who's the number one? I think it's passion. I think it's, I get so jazzed up now. And I also, people tell you that I work longer hours. I work harder and I do more than most people. And that might or might not be true.

I do, I am addicted to my job. I will say that I'm a workaholic. I'm bred that way. I do wake up at 3.30. So I have an extreme number of hours on everybody else. So then you run like 18 miles and then you start working. Is that what, is that what's going on there? Something like that. Right. But I think, I think throw all those other things out the window. I think it's because people really get the authenticity of my desire to see every person sitting at the closing table.

And it's okay with me if it's not with me, because there are some deals that aren't in my wheelhouse that I might not be the expert on, or I don't have the perfect product for, but I'll be the navigator. And if I've got a client that comes to me and they've got a better product somewhere else, I'm happy to congratulate them and make sure that they've got that better product. So that's that athlete's recovery that I don't get caught up in the loss. I get caught up in the excitement and the ultimate success. Yeah, I think for me, the only time that I get, I don't want to say upset, but anytime I have some sort of negative energy would be if I'm competing for a listing, for example, and the seller hires an incompetent agent. If they hire a competent agent, I'm good.

I really, truly am. Now, clearly, I believe they should hire me. Yet, as long as they hire somebody who I can, you know, and again, it's just subjective. It's my perception. Who cares, right? But, you know, I remember competing for a listing not too long ago, and the seller said to me, she said, well, I'm talking to this person, this person, this person, and you, four people. And I just looked at her deadpan. I said, well, if it was me, I'd either hire that person or me, but I'd hire me.

And I didn't say anything bad about the other two, right? But I'm like, and I really truly left there. I was like, I'll say the agent's name was Karen. I'll just say Karen. And I was like, seriously, I know Karen would have taken care of them. And really, ultimately, what I wanted was to make sure that that seller, you know, was taking care of them. They did hire me, gratefully. And, you know, but I truly would have been fine if they would have hired Karen.

Now, if they would have hired the other two, I wouldn't have felt good. Not because of me or Karen, but because I know, you know, they wouldn't have served that other, you know, wouldn't have served the client. And so I don't know if that's helpful or not, but that's sort of my perspective on that. Nicole, what caused you to get into this industry? Doesn't everybody say I fell into it? I hate that answer.

So I was in corporate America for 10 years. Doing what? I was a change agent. I worked for Accenture. Well, first I worked for Arthur Anderson. Then it became Anderson Consulting and for Accenture. Well, first I worked for Arthur Anderson, then it became Anderson Consulting and then Accenture. And I was actually working with a lot of the executive teams in creating change. So I started out on the technology side. That didn't last very long because I'm just not built that way. And so we would go in as a company

and revamp an entire system, a model, a platform. And then my team would come in and more get sponsorship and buy in and then create training around the new solution. So 10 years of traveling, of being amongst the C-suite, of working an intense corporate job was fabulous. I think it taught me a lot of the skills that I bring today in being a leader, managing a team, looking at things from the perspective of the larger perspective. It's not just about this deal. It's about the overall success. And then I stayed at home and then I quit my job because I had three kids under three that kept me very busy. And until I couldn't be on the floor anymore, I'm not built for being on the floor. God bless stay at home moms. I don't have the patience for it. They have a fabulously hard job.

And I called up a friend. I said, Hey, I need a job. And he goes, this is so beneath you, but I need a bookkeeper. Like he literally like kind of went like kind of quiet about it. I go, I mean, seriously, how hard could it be? Oh my God. QuickBooks sucks. It was hard. So, but I did it. So I became his bookkeeper. It wasn't long before I was running his business, then running bigger and bigger businesses. And then eventually I got into originating. So I've seen a lot of the upside. I've seen a lot of the corporate leadership side. I've seen a lot of going in and working with a C-suite. So no situation scares me or overwhelms me at this point. How big is your team? Right now, there's seven of us. In the height of 21, we had 40 on our team. Got it. So that's a pretty massive downsizing in a rapid period of time,

which is, you know, circumstance driven. What do you see for the future? I'm excited about the future. We've got the right size team right now. I'll tell you, I'd never had to fire anybody. Like, I mean, I'd had to fire people because they were idiots and I didn't have a problem with that, but I never had to lay people off that I loved. And so that was tough. So I think right now I'm looking at the future going, I've right-sized, we've got the right people in the right seats. We're doing good work. We're picking up volume, but I think that that's kind of almost beside the point Cause I'm a little, there's a lot of uncertainty the second half of 2024. Um, but I've got the right people in the right seats. We're doing the right work. So now it's just re visioning where are we taking our team? Cause where we were taking it was built for capacity. We were churning deals, which is how you

break the numbers that we were, we were crushing. But now I'm like, I never want to do that again. I never want to break those kinds of records and hit that same volume. What I want to do is be more intentional to go deeper and to really support our real estate agents and our clients hit that success two, three, five, 10 times, and really know that I'm changing the lives dramatically of those clients that we're serving versus ringing the bell. You already know 87% of all real estate agents fail in this business. And you also know it doesn't have to be that way. If you're a real estate agent and you're looking for consistent and predictable income, I invite for you to get your free copy of Real Estate Evolution,

The 10-Step Guide to CPI, Consistent and Predictable Income for Real Estate Agents. And you can do so when you visit www.therealestateevolution.com, I'll share with you your book that I authored to show you the way. Thanks. Tell me a time about somebody's life, whether it was an agent or a lender or a consumer that you impacted positively. Oh, gosh. So one of my favorite stories, I could go with 10 stories from this week. Sure. God, I love our job. But this one agent, she will probably forever be cemented in my brain and on my heart. So her father passed and her mom, she got some

money, not a ton of money, but she got some money and her mom wanted her to protect it. She wanted her to take the money and talk to their family financial planner who all intents and purposes, it wasn't a ton of money. So I was like, how good of a financial planner? I don't know. So at the same time, I was like, okay, you can go with the financial planner. And so she reached out to me and she goes, I want to know what you would suggest I do because I want to look at all options. So we actually created a plan where she was able to purchase eight properties. And so from going from not even owning a property at the time to then having her primary home and several duplexes and a condo that she could go to in Florida and to be able to grow that net wealth. Now I will say that she's had some issues along the way. She's had some squatters.

She has somebody tear up one of her properties. Like if there's any one person that I could say had all the tough things, she had all the tough things, all the tough things, but she kept coming back to me and it kept being that resource for her from the perspective of, okay, we can deal with this. We can deal with this squatter. We can deal with the fact that this person did this and we did. And each one we did. And now we're getting to a place to where it's starting to operate on autopilot. And now you look back and you're like, oh, that was worth it. And that's the part I love is that when they carry you along the way, not just leave you at the closing table. Yeah, I love that. And what I suggest to my investors, and this is from my own experience, is that 99 percent of the time as a landlord, it's brainless. It's no problem. And one percent of the time, it's a major problem. And when it's a problem, it's a major problem. Right.

And so you have to as a landlord, you have to be ready. And, you know, in that case, you know, it seems like she was at 1% maybe more than once. But you have to understand that every problem can be fixed, right? And it's seldom that there is a problem. And even when there is a challenge, there's a way to fix it. You know, just understand that that's true of any business. You know, that's true of the lending business, true of the real estate sales business. It's true of the property ownership business. But ultimately, I have seen, I have observed many of my friends, many of my colleagues, and many of my clients that through the 20 years that I been doing this, that have bought, bought again, bought again, bought again, just ordinary people with massive generational

wealth at their disposal because of the fact that they've bought real estate and they've done it again and again and again. And that's really, Nicole, what I hear you preaching. Yes. Yeah. And you can't just buy when everything's right, because if you're trying to time the market, it rarely works in your favor, but you keep looking for opportunities right now. There are some phenomenal opportunities in this market with assumable loans or with people who are in distressed positions. You hate to see that you don't want them to be distressed, but certainly getting them out are in distressed positions. You hate to see that. You don't want them to be distressed. But certainly getting them out of that distressed position

is also going to support their family. In 2007, at the peak of the previous market, from 2007 to 2009, there was a crash, as we all know. And then from 2009 to 2013, there was a recovery. So if you would have bought in 2007 at the peak of that market and crashed and then held down to 2013, that's a six-year period of time. That's a long time. But you would have been back to stable. And then from 2013 to 2024, there's been a massive growth and so if you would have held

out of that same property you would have had a um a two-year downswing a four-year recovery and then a uh what is that 2011 year growth from that from that point and you know that's the piece of of timing the market so even if you got your timing bad through time, you know, I have a mentor of mine who owns a massive amount of real estate. He's like, Dan, he's like, time heals all wounds in real estate investing. Right. Like, you know, you just hang on to it long enough. It writes itself up because it's a it's a it's an asset that they're not making more of. I mean, they're making more crop and they're it's an asset that they're not making more of. I mean, they're making more crop and they're making more, you know, buildings, but they're not making more land.

That's right. And so through time, it's going to, it's going to appreciate. So Nicole, last question. What do you value? Oh my gosh. That's actually, why was that a hard question? I think, I think I value the opportunity to educate. I think if I were to choose the parts of my job that I love the most, or even the times with my kids that I love the most, it's the new experience, the new eyeopening learning, the aha moments that I think I value way more than, well, a lot of other things. I was going to start naming things, but that's probably one of the things I value the most. The ability that we were put on,

I'm deeply spiritual. And I do believe that I got out of the mortgage industry for a little bit. And then I was drawn back in. And I do believe that I was put here in order to continue to serve and to help others learn the gift that it's interesting. There's one guy for everything I've done. One person changed the trajectory of my life because he believed enough to lead me down a journey to overcome all the obstacles and all the objections to buying that first investment property. I went kicking and screaming. I didn't want to buy it for anything. I mean, the way I grew up, I was just happy to have a roof over my head and the stability that my husband and I had found. And then he wanted to throw an investment property on there that just sounded like

maintenance and management and time and expense and all the things I didn't want. He helped me understand the opportunity. And that one man created an entire trajectory of business opportunities for lifestyles for my kids, their wealth. My kids are each worth $250,000 or more because of the timing of when they purchased their homes at age 21. All of these things, I wouldn't have known any of it. I wouldn't have known any of it. So how do we become that one person for hundreds, if not thousands of others? That's what I value is putting me in the position to do that. Nicole, I think that's something that I'm going to preach

and something I'm going to, that I'm going to take what you just said and pass it along. And that's the question. And anybody that's listening to this right now, anybody that's watching this right now, I want you to consider, just like what Nicole just said, how can you be that one person? And that's the question I'm asking for the viewers and the listeners to consider. Wake up tomorrow, go to bed tonight, go to bed

tomorrow night, and each time say, how can I be that person? And when you ask that question of yourself, whatever it is that your needs are, I promise you they'll be met because success leaves clues. All right. Nicole is one of the top lenders in the entire country. Right. Like success leaves clues. Listen, Nicole asked the question, how can I be that woman? And it's about how can I be that person? And then from that, the success comes, right? Nicole's not saying, how can I, you know, climb the mountain? It's like, how can I, how can I make an impact? And that's what I hear you saying. Is that, is that about right, Nicole? That's truth. In fact, I had, we had a poster of a Sherpa on our business wall for years.

It wasn't about us, right? It's like, in fact, I just read an article talking about the Sherpa that had the most climbs to the top of Mount Everest. She, it was a woman and it was like, it was just super cool. This whole article that was written. I don't know her name and I don't know that anybody, you know, until the article was written, cause it's not about her. It's it's about those that we serve. I love it, Nicole. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate you. How can the viewer and listeners get in touch with you? Well, because we're licensed in 37 states, I'd love to serve. You can find us if you Google Nicole Ruth, R-U-E-T-H, you will certainly find me. I have a very full YouTube channel. We do a ton of content on how to build wealth through

real estate, how to capitalize on today's market. I'm an economic geek. I do a lot of videos on that or check out our website, theruthteam.com, but we'd love to serve for sure. R-U-E-T-H, Nicole Ruth. Thank you so much. And everybody listening today, thank you. Have the best day of your life. Be grateful. Make good choices. Go help somebody. And ask yourself the question, how can I be that person that others look to? God bless you. Thank you, Nicole. Thanks so much for listening to the No Broke Months podcast today. Until the next show, I invite for you to be grateful, make good choices, help someone, have the best day of your life, and go find a listing. Hey, I just had the best 45 minutes interviewing Dan Rochon. He's from Virginia, right outside the DC area.

He's been in a stable market for a long time. Within 18 months, he created so much success where he was actually able to buy the brokerage as a real estate agent. Dan is a leader of vision, focus, and passion. His enthusiasm is truly infectious. He just came out with a book for real estate agents to kind of help people pivot. We went through and talked about how to succeed in adversity, some of his big traits out there.