HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown
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HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown
Ep. 29 Emma Powell - Retire before 50!
How does a real estate photographer transform into a seasoned real estate investor with a mission to retire her husband before 50? Join us as we sit down with Emma Powell from Rise Capital, who shares her incredible journey of achieving financial independence and internal happiness. Emma opens up about her ambitious goal, successfully reached in 2022, and discusses the importance of fostering a deep relationship with oneself rather than seeking joy in external accomplishments. With a passion for real estate that grew organically, Emma provides practical advice on navigating the real estate market and offers a philosophical perspective on genuine happiness.
In this episode, we also dive into the essentials of diversified real estate investing and the power of specialization and teamwork. Emma shares her insights on mitigating investment risks through a diversified portfolio and highlights the significance of focusing on areas of expertise while partnering for other tasks like property management. Discover her stress management techniques and the balance between work, play, and relaxation. Emma also offers invaluable advice on raising capital and the art of networking, underlining the power of meaningful connections. For more insights and to connect with Emma, visit investwithemmacom. This episode is brimming with actionable strategies and inspiring narratives you won't want to miss.
Welcome to Heather Ewing, the CRE Rundown this afternoon. I have an excellent guest that you are going to be excited to meet. It is none other than Emma Powell of Rise Capital. Emma, welcome, Thank you for having me on the show. Of course my pleasure, and it was so fun just swapping stoolsools per se and being on yours yeah, it's like uh, I love being a guest.
Emma Powell:I used to hate hosting a podcast, but now that I've been doing it for a while, it's like. Now I can see like there are differences between the two, and so some I like this and some I like that, so it's actually been fun to switch back and forth definitely so for people that don't know you.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Emma, please share a little bit more about yourself so my my group can get to know you a bit more yeah, so I am a full-time real estate investor.
Emma Powell:My husband is a full-time real estate investor. He left his job when he was 48 I think that was the end of 2022 and that was a big goal of mine was to retire my husband. We have six kids. I homeschool them, and I felt like our time, location freedom was kind of being impinged by him having a W-2 that he had to report to, both time wise and being having to commute, and so I made this goal that we were going to retire him before 50. And then we did, and now we travel full time and I realized that life is not that much different than it was before, because it's it's more about our internal state of mind than it is about our external situation. And so now I host a podcast called Passive Income Adventures, a YouTube channel where we share kind of our travel adventures.
Emma Powell:We're really just trying to get real about what passive income and real estate investing is all about. And it's not this pie in the sky beach, mai Tais in Mexico. It is about doing the work, putting it in, getting the knowledge, education, making confident decisions, getting your money invested wisely, being able to live off that passive income and then taking the time to really discover who you are, what you want, what makes you happy, because there's no thing that you can do or accomplish that's going to make you happy. People talk about, oh, true happiness comes from accomplishments and not luxury. That's all great, but I feel like true happiness actually comes from your relationship with yourself and your decision to be happy. So that's really what we're working on right now from the stay at home, mom, soccer, mom of six kids, photographer on the side, all the way up to figuring out the key of choosing to be happier.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Which is huge. It's a decision and I like that you clarify that, because so many people are. I'll be happy when right, and so I think that's an important designation. So how did you get into? I mean, how did you get into investing? Where did you learn about it? What sparked your interest in it? And, for all the guys listening, I'm sure they would love to have their wives retire them too, if you're not already in the game, but give us a little insight into how you even heard about it. What triggered you to want to get into this?
Emma Powell:Well, I mean just to be clear, like my husband now works for me and my business, so maybe the retiring early shouldn't be on your goal list, because now I'm like a little bit like his boss. So the pros and cons to everything, right. So I got into a little on accident. I was actually a real estate photographer. I live next door to a realtor and I was doing weddings, family photos, things like that. And I was doing weddings, family photos, things like that, just a way to bring in extra money. I was teaching graphic design online and she asked me if I want to come photograph her house because she was selling it. I was like, photograph a house Really, like I had sold houses before and they didn't want photo of the front and that was good enough. But apparently in those years that we'd since bought our house, that real estate photography is a thing. So I went over, I shot her house and I loved it. I thought I love houses. I used to. I learned how to draw and do graphic design on the computer, drawing floor plans. So I actually really like real estate and that's the point I remember as a kid we'd drive by and they have those big signs up like this new development's going up or the store is going, I get really excited. Even when I was very, very little, I remember, like four and five, six years old, as soon as I learned how to read like what's being built over there, what are they doing over there? So, looking back on that, I love buildings, I love properties, I love real estate, and so it's really important that you like the business that you are running. Real estate has a huge income potential and you can blow the ceiling off of any other kind of income that you're doing. For most people fund managers, capital raisers they really just the wealthiest people in the world are entrepreneurs and and they can raise capital, managed funds so people get tied into it because it makes a lot of money or its potential to make a lot of money. You really have to like what you're doing. So I just really loved real estate.
Emma Powell:And then when I shot her house, I was a real estate photographer for 10 years and my husband got laid off again, right, and we moved across the country and I was like I don't know, I'll start my photography business again. What am I going to do? And so I started just attending business networking meetings, because I'm an entrepreneur At least I thought I was and then I discovered investing. I'm like I actually don't love running businesses. I love investing and watching my money grow and watching my bank account grow and I love not having to worry about money. It's like when you're really into fitness and nutrition, you kind of have to count calories and watch, watch closely what you're doing, and I don't want money to be like that. I'd like money when there's enough that I can live like a normal person and not have to worry about pennies. I don't want to count that, so for me that's a huge motivator.
Emma Powell:So I showed up at these business networking meetings and some of them were those things where they're like run to the back of the room and buy our program and I'm like, oh man, how did I get roped into this? So I went home and I just started researching real estate, investing, and I came across BiggerPockets, started reading in the forums. They mentioned the National REIA town. So I joined all three of them. I just started going to the weekly meetings and it was all down from there. We had some money from the house we sold when we moved and I said we don't need this to buy our next house. Just put a down payment and I can take the rest of them. I'm going to go start a real business, like a real estate business that makes good money, where we don't have to worry about you getting laid off anymore. And it was just a few months into it that I was like actually, I think that we can let. I want to lay you off next time.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Right, right, no, that's great. So what kind of mindset do you think is required for investing?
Emma Powell:Confidence, confidence. My investors a lot of my investors when they first come to me are very nervous and I will not take nervous money and so I need to make sure that they are confident that they can make a decision and that they're confident in their emotional fitness to be able to weather the losses, the ups and downs. It's not as volatile as a stock market where you're logging on every morning, kind of freaking out, looking at like I know what's going on. It's definitely more stable than that, but sometimes when a deal goes bad, it can go bad and you're losing more money than you would say in the stock market. So, even though it's not as volatile in the valuations because it has more zeros after each investment, you just have to be able to look at it.
Emma Powell:So that confidence and that ability to go in and do something hard and something where you're losing a little bit of control because I don't control the economy, I don't control the market. And if you're a a little bit of control because I don't control the economy, I don't control the market, and if you're a passive partner, you also don't control the deal itself. It's just like the stock market you put money in and other business people run that business on your behalf. So that confidence and that ability to to the weather, the confidence in yourself to whether that is, in my opinion, number one, because I wouldn't have tried if I didn't believe I could do it, and when it got hard I would have quit. So that confidence is.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Where would you say there was a particular person, or was it a couple of people that really had a pivotal moment? Or would you say it was the, the networking, yeah for real estate.
Emma Powell:Specifically, it was the networking and going to the RIA and seeing people that were doing it, because they're going to parade people in front speakers and some of them are doing notes and some of them are wholesaling residential, some of them are doing multifamily, some of them are doing triple net industrial leases. It just is all over the place. All the ways that you can make money doing real estate, and some of them I really identified with and others I was like I don't really ever want to do that right and so finding something that I would get excited about, and I tried a couple of things. I always say six months to try it. So the people presenting there, also the people who are raising capital because they're going to be more out there, they're going to be more out there on social media, they're more likely to welcome your phone call. So they're trying to raise capital from me because we had, like I said, some of that capital from the house that we sold and how much time they spent with me, educating me and inviting me to events, giving me free tickets to their conferences or making sure that I had all the discount codes or whatever. So when I was at the beginning and I was like I didn't really want to spend a lot of money at it because I just didn't really know if this. But they made sure that I had the information I needed and they put out all sorts of you shouldn't pay for information anymore, right, everything's for free on the internet. So what I was paying for was their time to help me execute, and so that willingness to put themselves out there and share with me and educate me. That had a huge impact on me, my respect for them and also the feeling that I had like they changed my life. There's no doubt about it.
Emma Powell:In a five year period of time, I went from stay at home, the homeschool mom taking photos, you know, for some extra income, to now my husband no longer has to have a W2. And even though they were trying to raise money for me and they wanted me to invest in their deal, so they had this, if you could think about it an ulterior motive, right, the outcome was the same and now that I'm in their same industry, we are legitimate friends and I remember that. I have to remember that because I feel like I'm oversharing on social media, oversharing online, spend a lot of time talking to people on the phone and sometimes it just doesn't feel like I'm oversharing on social media, oversharing online. Spend a lot of time talking to people on the phone and sometimes it just doesn't feel like anything is working. And why am I doing this? And I just remember like they stuck it out and changed my life and I know that if I stick it out, I have the power to change other lives and that's really what keeps me going.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Definitely Well, and I think it's neat too.
Emma Powell:Definitely Well, and I think it's neat too that it came full circle in the sense of these people that helped you, even if you didn't invest with them at the time, that you do have those relationships now and you know, I'm sure it's a matter of connecting them with other people, and I've invested with him and vice versa. I had one, somebody I issued him a loan at the beginning. I did a hard money loan and he was a house flipper and he's since gotten into commercial real estate and he said, oh, I'll never go commercial. And then he did and he was all never syndicate. And then he calls me one day. He's like how do I syndicate? I have a deal. I don't have enough money and my private lenders are not going to be able to cover it. I've got to go raise some equity partners. How do I do it?
Emma Powell:So those types of give and take have been really fun, because it's kind of like with a parent when you become an adult and you're an adult professional and suddenly your dad is able to tell you about his profession. But then you're able to tell him about your profession. He doesn't know anything about it and now you're sharing like two, two peers. It's like they started out. Here you were. You were down there, but as you get different specialties, you can really trade information on equal footing.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Yeah, no, that is really neat. And within the investment realm, what's an area that you really like to invest in, or is there one that you're just like hard pass on it.
Emma Powell:Oh, it's important to understand that real estate investing, like what I said before, I'm not actually an entrepreneur, I'm more of an investor. To understand that when most people say real estate investing, what they really mean is real estate business, transaction, business, and the reason like if you're a realtor or broker, you don't say you're a real estate investor because you never own the property itself, you're the you're in between the transaction. But I think where it gets confused is like somebody will buy a property right to fix and flip it, and because they own it for that period of time, they call themselves a real estate investor. Investing means you invest your money into something that's going to compound and grow over time. That's what investing is. And so if you're running a fix and flip business or a wholesale business, that's a business that's not investing, and so it's really important to say what it is and what it isn't. And you're putting your money in in the truest sense of the word. You're a silent partner is really what it is, and you're investing with somebody who is running the business. So the reason I say that is because I run a business raising capital from investors to put into projects that will find, vet and manage for them. That is the business.
Emma Powell:So what I'm investing in is everything else, because I'm only gonna do one. So what I'm investing in is everything else, because I'm only going to do one thing, and I'm going to do one thing well right, and that is finding and marketing real estate properties. That's what I do. I'm not even actually that great at managing them, which is my dirty little secret. I have partners who my GM and my partners, who we really have our finger on the day to day, and they keep me, but I'm more on the front end. So what I invest in is broad.
Emma Powell:Right, I invest with other people. We do private notes. I sold a few houses to the renters and now I'm holding that mortgage. I have a couple of rental houses and those are nice because they just pay me very consistently. I own several multifamily apartment buildings, and those are more long term plays because our investors get paid first on those and I get paid last or when we sell it. So I have a lot of different things that I'm invested in, but I don't need to be an expert at all of those things. I really just need to be an expert at what I'm doing, which is finding and marketing great deals to our investors. And then I have a wide portfolio because I don't want to be that person who gets caught when something turns and I was overexposed to it and now I'm sorry. I really like to have a diversified base because I don't think I'm a genius to be able to say, oh, I'm going to outperform the market, or I, I'm such a specialist and expert that I can put all my eggs in this basket.
Emma Powell:That's not me, I invest in most types of real estate.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Yeah, no, that's perfect. And I think to your point also of you don't have to know it all, and I think that's a common misconception of you can know a part of it really well, but then supplementing your team with the people that are experts in the different areas. That that's how you create a really solid team, which is neat. What would you say? You know, with the big money deals and things of that nature, it's definitely stressful. What's a way that you de-stress or decompress?
Emma Powell:I don't like admitting this, but I love to watch TV. I'm a TV watcher. I remember when I finally got over my embarrassment of watching TV and now it's back again. I think it was a young mother and we took our kids out to an activity. Our neighbor actually had a telescope in his backyard, like one of those white dome style, and he was taking all the kids there and we were there with I don't know if it was a scout group or youth group from church or whatever it was, and I was sitting there with I don't know if it was a scout group or a youth group from church or whatever it was, and I was sitting there with one of the other moms and I'm telling her about all the stars and the constellations and the way the planets move and how the moon does this. And she said where did you go to college?
Emma Powell:And I was like at that point I had not been to college. And I said PBS. I mean I realized like, wow, all this useless trivia that I know from all this TV watching and the ability to learn, no matter what it is you're watching. I could be watching Spongebob with the kids and I'm still learning something, because I'm learning about color design, the business of marketing a kid's show like anything. It's all valuable and so I got more respect for TV at that time and now I'm kind of embarrassed about it again. But yeah, I love to watch TV. I love to just learn random stuff.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Well and to your point. You know, it's really the how you frame it, and I love that you frame it. With that you can learn something from everything, because you can, and I think so. Frequently you hear about people being bored or it's like this is the same and that's the same. It's like, well, if you open your mind a little bit, you might see more opportunities of things that you're not seeing or you're not linking together, and it really does provide those opportunities.
Emma Powell:Yeah, but the things that I do because they're fun, like I go after my hobbies hard, like they're a job. So I have a lot of, you know, athletic hobbies, musical hobbies, art hobbies. I'd love to travel and go on vacation, but that that's fun. I don't necessarily find that relaxing and that's not how I decompress. With the one exception I really like hiking you just out there and you're looking at the mountains and you're doing your thing. But even sometimes I need to go home and watch some TV to decompress from the hiking, so to just melt and kind of turn my brain off. It's not from any of my hobbies or any of that kind of stuff. It's that that takes more out of me than it puts into me. And that's where I make that distinction Am I relaxing or am I working or playing?
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Right, no, that's so true, it's energy in, energy out. That's what it comes down to. But you have, yeah, so you've got this really cool story and just life experience of the six kids getting into, investing, retiring your husband per se from the W-2. And you're just a wealth of knowledge. So it's so nice to have you here. But before we take this for a quick wrap, because then I want to make sure that people know where they can reach you to learn more to you know, get a referral, maybe invest with you, whatever it might be, just to connect, before we do that, what would you say? What does living fully mean to you, emma? What would you say? What does living fully mean?
Emma Powell:to you, emma. It's choice and it's play. I used to say freedom, right, but I recognize that that word, freedom, was stressing me out. I felt like a freedom fighter, like I was fighting something. I wanted freedom to get away from something, like you're escaping something. So one year, when you're picking out the word of the year, I went with playful. Because why do you even want freedom? It's so you can play more.
Emma Powell:So your work feels like play. The work that you could choose feel like play. The people you choose to have in your life feels like fun when you're together, whether it's your kids or a work colleague. I just wanna have the choice to turn more things into play. Watching TV is a perfect example. I want to watch a non-fiction, educational type of thing and I want to learn something from it. Most people wouldn't see that as play, right, but so you're doing things and everything feels like you're playing. So, to me, living fully is having that choice to find wonder and playfulness in everything that we're doing. So we're traveling full time right now and people are looking at oh, your husband's retired early and you're traveling full time. You guys are living the dream. It has nothing to do with any of that it has to do with that choice to be happy and that choice to live a more grateful and playful life.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:I love it, perfectly said.
Emma Powell:And before we end it, how can people connect with you? Okay, so I specialize in raising money. So if you want to invest money, get ahold of me at investwithemmacom. That's Rise Capital. You just get right on my calendar, let's talk. Are you want to be an active investor and run a business? Do you want to be just passive and put in money, like we talked about before? So investwithemmacom, let's have a phone call. That's how you get stuff done in this business. You got to network right and people like oh, I know you're putting on an annoying email list or any of that Like, no, just let's have a conversation. But if you are raising money, I can help you out with that too. I do pitch deck design. That's my professional background. I stopped doing it for a few years and I really missed it, so I added that back in. So if you are raising capital from investors or you're an investor with capital, go ahead and get a hold of me at investwithemmacom and we can talk about what you need to get your project done.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Perfect. Thank you so much, Emma. It was so nice having you on.
Emma Powell:Thank you so much. This is fun. I love these fast ones.
Heather Ewing, CCIM:Exactly All right, thanks.