Liz Faircloth and Andresa Guidelli share a mission. They want to help women invest in real estate and live the lives they should be living. Their podcast was created in that light, as well as a mastermind meeting. Today we’ll hear a lot about how to form a successful partnership like theirs, obstacles they have faced, and how they overcome some inherent potential downfalls of partnering with a friend. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!
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Liz Faircloth & Andresa Guidelli Real Estate Backgrounds:
- Liz
- Co-founded DeRosa Group with husband, Matt Faircloth in 2005
- Manages 370 units of residential and commercial assets
- Based in Trenton, NJ
- Andresa
- Began investing in 2012 after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad
- Co-founded Corsa Home Solutions, focuses on gut renovation projects and building new construction SFH’s
- Based in Philadelphia, PA
- Together they host The Real Estate InvestHER Show
- Weekly show details the journey of some of the most amazing women real estate investors
- Say hi to them at www.therealestateinvesther.com
- Best Ever Book: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
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TRANSCRIPTION
Joe Fairless: Best Ever listeners, how are you doing? Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless, and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any of that fluffy stuff. With us today, Liz Faircloth and Andresa Guidelli. How are you doing, Liz and Andresa?
Liz Faircloth: Great.
Andresa Guidelli: I’m doing great, thank you, Joe.
Joe Fairless: Great, I’m glad to hear that. A little bit about Andresa – she began investing in 2012 after Rich Dad, Poor Dad, co-founded Corsa Home Solutions. They focused on gut renovation projects and building new construction single-family homes. Based in Philadelphia.
And Liz co-founded DeRosa Group with her husband, Matt, in 2005. They manage 370 units of residential and commercial assets. Based in Trenton, New Jersey. With that being said, will each of you tell the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and your current focus? And perhaps, Andresa, you can go first?
Andresa Guidelli: Sure, of course. As you mentioned, I started in 2012. We do full gut rehabs here in Philadelphia. We basically can save much during the rehabs. We started doing new construction a couple years ago, and we usually like to do several at the same time, so we can leverage both supply time and the price itself.
My focus right now is to manage the construction process, since I create systems that can integrate everybody that is working with me, and I can also provide service for other either local or outside state investors that are looking to have a construction manager in place, but either don’t have the time, nor the experience needed to get things done and scale the business.
Liz and I also are working on the Real Estate InvestHER community, and we’re gonna talk more about the podcast later on. We are looking to build a community for women and support and inspire them to create a financially free and balanced life.
Joe Fairless: And Liz?
Liz Faircloth: My husband and I started investing back in 2005. We bought a duplex really after obviously reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which many people — I think that’s the number one book that people read to get into this business. But more importantly, taking it one step further, we actually played — Robert Kiyosaki has a game out there called Cashflow. To describe it, it’s like Monopoly on steroids… But anyway, it was a great game to start getting me and my husband (my fiancée at the time) introduced to the idea of passive income, and all the different things… It’s a great board game; I recommend it to people. If they’re looking for something different to do, it’s a great, great game to get your head around the concepts that real estate investing involves.
Anyway, we got inspired by that, we took a lot of courses and got involved in educating ourselves, and then bought our first property. Then we moved to Jersey, got married, and started really investing heavily here. We’ve since extended our reach. We’re doing various projects with Andresa and her company, and we have rental properties in Pennsylvania, and now North Carolina as well.
So we’re definitely expanding our buy and hold strategy in terms of geographical areas, but we’re kind of focused on growing our multifamily portfolio, and as well doing (I call it) capital gains activities – fix and flips, as well as some new construction projects; we always have those going on as well.
Joe Fairless: The reason why we’re interviewing both of you at the same time versus individual interviews is because, like Andresa mentioned, but didn’t get into the details yet – we’ll get into it now – you two co-host the Real Estate InvestHER Show. It’s a weekly show that details the journey of some of the most amazing women in real estate. That is at therealestateinvesther.com website. You can go check that out, Best Ever listeners. And you two also partner up on rehabs, have been doing so for a couple years, and right now have three new construction deals in progress.
First, how has the partnership evolved to this point where you two decided “Okay, now we want to do a podcast and build a community together?
Liz Faircloth: Sure. I’ll start, Andresa, and you can jump in. We actually started a mastermind group, Joe, about the same time — no, actually we started that first. So we met on Bigger Pockets, Andresa and I; we kind of always supported each other, just like a lot of relationships begin. We kind of became friends first, went to each other’s kid’s birthday parties, things of that sort.
Then we got to talking, because we were just kind of sharing war stories in this business, and we said we really need to create or join into a mastermind group, and “How cool would it be to just have a great group of women to connect with?” We have nothing against men, we love men very much, but we just thought [laughter] — we love you, Joe, of course! But we just thought it would be really neat to have kind of like a women’s circle that you can kind of share not just what’s coming up in real estate investing, in the business, but also just the things that women deal with and that are unique to women, just like men have their own unique things.
So we formed this – what, three years ago, Andresa?
Andresa Guidelli: Yes. We couldn’t find one, so we formed one.
Joe Fairless: I love that.
Liz Faircloth: Yeah, which is still going on, and we really appreciate still… And then through that experience, I think Andresa you had that project that you were either gonna wholesale to us, or partner with us. That was our first project.
Andresa Guidelli: Yes, that was our first one. We had to close very quickly, it was a big project. We [unintelligible [00:06:50].06] the back of the house and the top of the house, and there were only three walls in our property… [laughter] It was cool… Our inspector came the first time, for the first inspection, he took one step in, and he’s like “I think I’m done.” I was like, “Yeah, there’s nothing else for you to see.” That was it. That property sold in 24 hours, above asking price, so it was a great project.
Joe Fairless: Wow, great starting out. With a women’s mastermind group versus a co-ed mastermind group, what specifically is the difference in terms of content?
Liz Faircloth: That’s a great question. The way it’s structured is it’s a pretty classic mastermind. I know mastermind gets thrown out a lot. I googled it and there’s so many versions of it. But this is really kind of the “Think and Grow Rich” kind of origin. In essence, we all kind of share a win in our businesses, and then we really talk about what’s coming up for us in our business, whether it’s a challenge, whether it’s an idea we wanna process, or if it’s just something we wanna share with the group and get some feedback on.
In terms of the actual content, when we look at our meetings month-to-month, I wouldn’t say there’s a huge difference from the content perspective, but I think it’s more of the way of being, Joe… I don’t know, Andresa, how you would answer this, but I would say when I connect with women and women are getting information, they tend to be a) more open, and they tend not to be as stand-off-ish, so to speak, so they’re less shy when it’s just women, in my experience… In general, of course. I’m talking super generalities. I see it in conferences – when it’s more of a women’s group, women are more open up-front about their opinions, and they’ll get more information, and they’re just a little more hesitant when there’s a lot of men, especially if it’s not an area of their expertise.
So I find that women are just a little more open, but in terms of the content itself, I would say it’s just like any other mastermind in terms of brainstorming… But it’s just the comfort level, I think.
Joe Fairless: What would you say, Andresa?
Andresa Guidelli: I tend to agree with Liz. I will add that I’m a big believer that you are the average of the five people – or six, I’m not sure what the number is – that you surround yourself with, so when we were building this mastermind, we hand-selected other ladies around the country that had bigger goals and even bigger values, and we connected with them. It’s an extremely solid group, and I can name the benefits of being in a mastermind group.
The content – we talk about things that are not working; sometimes we don’t wanna talk about it, but that’s exactly why we have to talk about it… Because either somebody went through the same thing, or knows somebody that did, and can give me exactly what I need to do. It’s not a chit-chat. We are not there to chit-chat and just give ourselves opinions. There are a lot of questions… Because sometimes during the questioning process, that answer will emerge from ourselves. We come to the conclusion that we already know the answer or how to get that result.
And there’s also accountability. We are very solid, and we make commitments to each other to take actions, besides an excuse that we might have or a fear that might occur… So it helped us to take our businesses to the next level, definitely.
Joe Fairless: Okay. The mastermind group, based on how you just described – it’s not a local meetup… Or at least I don’t think it is, based on what you’ve just said. It’s national, therefore it sounds like it’s a phone call, versus in-person. Is that correct?
Andresa Guidelli: That’s correct. All the ladies are in different states, so we meet once a month, on a Monday night, for two hours on Skype, and we discuss different subjects.
Joe Fairless: And is everyone on video, or is it just audio?
Andresa Guidelli: No, we are on video, too.
Joe Fairless: Okay. And how many ladies are on the call at once?
Andresa Guidelli: Six, total.
Joe Fairless: Okay. And help me with technology, what that looks like… Are you able to see the other five individuals’ faces?
Andresa Guidelli: Yes, we are. Everybody is — even one of our members, April Crossley, she was traveling in her RV for I think two months, and she was in Arizona, changing states every time that we spoke to her, and she was still able to make it happen. So sometimes they are on their phones, but still, Skype works very well, it’s free, and it’s been working for the past three years, so we’re continuing.
Joe Fairless: So when someone says the following: “I wanna start a podcast/meetup, and I know a friend or I know someone who I met on Bigger Pockets, and I’ve discussed with him/her starting a meetup or a podcast. Do you think that sounds like a good idea?” My response is always no, and the reason is because you don’t want your platform to be dependent on someone else’s priorities, someone else’s schedule, someone else isn’t prioritizing as much as you are… And you want to be able to have the show not be dependent of someone else. What would you two say to that?
Liz Faircloth: It’s a great question. In a lot of ways, when Andresa and I got together and we would be kind of sharing what’s coming up for us – we had a strong relationship… This podcast is not about us, it’s about the women we’re serving. When we talked and we had coffee, I just said “We are dealing with young children, or aging parents, and just the life of balancing it all. Wanting to be financially free, and grow your wealth, but also just be same and not be nutsy all the time in your life.
When we chatted about it, we said, what if we put together a community – and obviously, start with a podcast – of helping other women do the same? So our vision for this became a lot bigger than me and Andresa. So I would say to that person that comes up to you – or even comes up to us – it’s a lot of work, but it’s not about us. I think that’s really big for us – inspiring both of us to carve out… I work part-time, Andresa has got a million things going on… If you looked at both of our lives, how do you get this done?! I get up at 4 AM. Joe, I get up super early, because this is a mission for us. This is not just like a random thing that we have nothing else to do. This is a big thing for us – help other women get what they want out of their lives.
So you wanna inspire people through it, and really not just move your own business along, then don’t do it. But if it’s something that’s meant to really be a mission for you and be something bigger than just a business, or to hear yourself talk, or whatever the reason is people do podcasts, I would say don’t do it then, because it’s not the easiest thing to do.
Joe Fairless: Were you gonna follow you up anything, Andresa?
Andresa Guidelli: Yeah, I was just gonna say that it’s cliché, but you’ve got to know your Why. If my Why was not aligned with Liz’s Why and her values as well, it probably wouldn’t work. Sometimes people get into partnerships very quick, and I would not recommend that. Liz and I had a very strong relationship prior to us doing our first deal; I think it was about two years… So we knew exactly what we were dealing with when we started this project. As Liz was saying, it was beyond us. It’s us looking at our future and bringing that future to now. This is who we want to be for other ladies, inspire other ladies, get inspired by the ladies that we are interviewing, and living life as it should be.
We are very passionate about it. If you don’t have passion, if you already have a lot and you just want to do a podcast or something else to have fun, I would say that’s not your best bet.
Joe Fairless: I’m gonna ask a question here in the second… The reason why I’m gonna ask this question is because as our conversation has been unfolding, it’s gonna be really helpful for listeners who are thinking about taking a potential partnership with someone to a larger level. Because in real estate, we come across potential partnerships all the time. You go to a conference, “Hey, do you wanna partner on a deal?” All the time. So this is great, because you two met 2-3 years ago, and your partnership has evolved into something, so clearly you two saw certain things in each other that made you feel comfortable to go do more and more things together… So the question is you two have partnered on deals before – describe a circumstance on a deal that didn’t go according to plan, and then what did you see in the other partner that made you think “Okay, this could be more of a long-term partnership” versus “Ugh! I don’t like how they just approached that.”
Andresa Guidelli: Oh, many things… So many things…
Liz Faircloth: I would say, Joe, I think so much of a partnership, because like you and Andresa, being in this business for over ten years, we’ve had some amazing partnerships and we’ve had some disastrous partnerships. And I would say what we saw in Andresa and our husband when we partnered together on our first deal, we really said — it was like this “Do whatever it takes” attitude…
Joe Fairless: What was the deal?
Liz Faircloth: It was a gut renovation in Philadelphia.
Joe Fairless: Okay.
Liz Faircloth: One of Andresa’s roles – again, knowing all of our roles was critical, but one of her roles was to really manage the construction. That was something harder for us to do; we don’t live in Philadelphia, we’re 45 minutes away. We visited the project, but it was nowhere near anywhere that was to be managing it on a day-to-day basis… So Andresa was tasked to manage the GC and the team day-to-day. So I would say – and Andresa, jump in if I’m off – we had a couple… You probably know more specifically, because you were there every day, but we had a couple things that just didn’t go down the path that we wanted them to.
Andresa Guidelli: Yes.
Liz Faircloth: I’m sure you can name them better than I even can… Because she just did whatever it took. “Hey guys, this is what’s coming up. This is how I’m gonna handle it. I’ve got it”, or she would say “Guys, this is what’s coming up, and I need some support.” I think what we got from Andresa and what we got from this partnership early on was you were like literally one of those upfront and honest people who have a high level of integrity. So the trust was already there for us. I trusted her, because we were friends, we worked together on the mastermind, I saw how she interacted, I knew who she was as a person, so that was never a question.
But in terms of partnering together on an ongoing basis, [unintelligible [00:17:17].25] and she’s a very forthright person; I’m never worried about “I’m not sure how Andresa feels about this.” [laughs] I’m more like “Let me think about how I feel about this. I don’t know how to say it, I don’t wanna hurt someone’s feelings.” Andresa is just “Bingo-bango”, tells it how it is. I’ve found that to be hugely complementary… Both me and Matt, quite honestly. Neither of us are — I can be like that, but it’s not my strong suit.
So that was huge for us, Joe – in the midst of day-to-day construction things that happen, Andresa was super straight with us, and it was almost like we were there with her, but not with her, because she handled it and did it with such grace, but directness.
Andresa Guidelli: From my point of view, I had the support from my partners. If things were not going as expected and I gave them the feedback, they gave me the support, “I hear you. Do you need any support? Do you need anything from us? Can we do anything to help you on this?” So knowing that I have their back and vice-versa – it just motivates me to just get things done.
When there are other people involved, like a private lender involved, my responsibility kind of like goes even higher, because I want to make sure that everything is just as clear as possible, and we are returning the investment on time, and there is not damage with the relationship. That’s very important to me.
Joe Fairless: As it relates to your experience as real estate investors, Andresa, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?
Andresa Guidelli: Well, in your future if you’re thinking about scaling your business, if you’re thinking about replacing yourself, you must start doing your SOPs – standard operating procedures – right now. I think that’s extremely important.
Liz and I have been working on improving that right now, and I think that everybody that is doing real estate in some shape or form is not looking to do the same thing when we are 65 years old; that’s not the goal. So I think that will be my number one priority right now.
Joe Fairless: That is something that I am focused on in my business right now, so certainly top of mind for me, too. We’re gonna do a lightning round. Are you two ready for the Best Ever Lightning Round?
Liz Faircloth: Yeah.
Andresa Guidelli: Yes.
Joe Fairless: Sweet! Alright, first, a quick word from our Best Ever partners.
Break: [00:19:44].09] to [00:20:34].14]
Joe Fairless: Okay, best ever book you’ve read?
Liz Faircloth: Think and Grow Rich.
Joe Fairless: Best ever deal you’ve done?
Liz Faircloth: Probably the deal that Andresa just mentioned. In terms of selling it for over asking within 24 hours – it was probably one of the best wins we’ve had.
Joe Fairless: What’s a mistake you’ve made on a transaction?
Liz Faircloth: It’s not so much on a transaction, but a mistake in general I would say was not getting niche-focused early on in our business.
Joe Fairless: Best ever way you like to give back?
Liz Faircloth: I give a lot back to my church, because I feel like I’m getting spiritually-fed.
Joe Fairless: And how can the Best Ever listeners get in touch with you two and listen to the podcast?
Liz Faircloth: Sure. We’d love for people to learn more about what we’re up to – it’s called TheRealEstateInvestHer.com. It’s a weekly show, it comes out Friday morning, and we’ve got some great women we’re interviewing. Also, we’ve just started an InvestHer community on Facebook. I think if you just put in “InvestHer”, you will find it.
Andresa Guidelli: Yes, The InvestHer Community.
Liz Faircloth: And then we’re also rolling out in the future (actually, short future) other ways to do masterminding and groups of women for them to get together across the country. That’s kind of our six-month vision, so stay tuned on all that.
Joe Fairless: Outstanding. Well, thank you you two for being on the show. This is certainly a template for what to look for when we evolve partnerships, and that’s why I’m glad that we got into the evolution of your relationship with each other… What you look for from a resourcefulness standpoint, a communication style standpoint, and shared values. Also, having defined roles at the beginning, and then seeing how that continues to evolve. The podcast certainly I will be excited to listen to some episodes. I know I won’t be interviewed on it for obvious reasons, but I’m excited to be listening to it… [laughter] Congrats on launching it; I’m looking forward to your continued success. Thank you for being on the show, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Andresa Guidelli: Thank you, Joe.
Liz Faircloth: Thank you so much for having us, Joe.
