HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown
Are you intrigued by Commercial Real Estate? Join Heather Ewing, CCIM each week as she dives into CRE trends, Deals, and Developments throughout Madison, WI. Learn the crucial role of Mindset in CRE and Marathons! Success leaves Clues.
HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown
Ep. 55 Cyndi Peach - How to Cultivate a Winning Mindset in Real Estate
Join us as we dive into an inspiring conversation with Cindy Peach, a former tech professional who boldly transitioned into the multifaceted realm of commercial real estate. She shares her captivating journey of recognizing the potential for creating additional income streams, navigating the ups and downs of economic cycles, and cultivating a resilient mindset that empowers her and those around her. This episode explores the misperceptions surrounding real estate ownership, emphasizing that exceptional opportunities exist for those willing to step forward.
Cindy's insights on the importance of diversifying income sources are particularly timely as she recounts past market fluctuations. Listeners gain valuable perspectives on overcoming challenges and embracing change, no matter their starting point. The episode also highlights the intersection of technology and real estate; hear how Cindy utilizes AI to enhance productivity, expand marketing efforts, and better serve her investor community. Moreover, she emphasizes that the positive use of technology is key to harnessing future growth, encouraging individuals to engage in learning through accessible platforms.
The conversation circles back to the beautiful blend of personal freedom and professional fulfillment. Cindy reflects on how her career allows her to prioritize family, travel, and passions like singing, showcasing that a lifestyle rooted in purpose leads to genuine happiness. This dialogue encourages listeners to re-evaluate their life choices and consider how they can embrace new paths and opportunities to live fully.
Connect with Cindy through LinkedIn or visit her website, investwithpeach, to explore more about joining her community. This episode is a reminder that embracing change and cultivating a winning mindset can lead to extraordinary possibilities. Tune in, and don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this enriching conversation with others seeking inspiration!
Welcome to Heather Ewing, the CRE Rundown. I am your host, Heather Ewing, and today I have the exceptional Cindy Peach. She is from Next Phase Investment Community out of lovely California. Welcome, Cindy.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Heather, and thank you again for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a pleasure. So we began connecting through LinkedIn, like many of my podcast guests, and it's really a wonderful emporium to find all these great, talented people throughout the country. And since we've been getting to know each other, please share with my audience a little bit more about yourself, so they can get to know you too.
Speaker 2:Great. Thank you, heather. Well, I started out. I didn't start out in real estate. I started out working in the tech industry and I did that for about 30 years and the first part of it.
Speaker 2:If we all flash back to the 2000 period, where we had the dot-com burst with the internet, there were a lot of big changes in the tech industry and I saw a trend that we had these peaks and valleys of the business cycle and there was also layoffs that were involved and we've just seen that in the last 2024, a lot of tech layoffs. And so my husband and I were talking. We decided that we needed to find additional income streams and so we'd look towards real estate to develop that. So in early 2000, we started out, there was a need for California for housing and we started out actually building out spec houses.
Speaker 2:I got my real estate license and I was selling the houses and, of course, then we got another bubble that burst and that was my real estate license and um when I was selling the houses. And of course, then we got another bubble that burst and that was the real estate bubble, um. And so, going through that um, a lot of key learnings from that Um, but we continue to move forward. Um made lemon out of lemonade and um continue to move forward. And then we moved into commercial real estate, um and started out with um, general service administration, which is federal buildings that we were leasing getting income from the federal government, and we moved into that and branched out into retail strip centers and that's where we continue to move forward in the last 10 years as we're building out that portfolio for our investors around retail strip centers. So that's kind of my journey.
Speaker 1:Yes, which is the true pivot right. And that's where it's interesting, because in talking with so many different people through the podcast, networking, other venues, that people either get into real estate they knew they wanted it or it's that wild pivot where you start branching out and looking at where your skills, your resources, your talents are in creating that new path. So congratulations to you for trailblazing that.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people get hung up on the fact that you can't branch into that in commercial real estate. You have to have a lot of money to do that. And if you actually look at and you know this, heather, being in the industry most of our retail strip centers, 90% of them are owned by couples mom and pops, if you want to call it that that are actually owning and managing those. So there is great opportunity for people to get involved in that.
Speaker 1:Definitely. And that brings up a beautiful point. Is that I think so much of it is mindset right? Yeah, whether it's commercial real estate, whether it's other areas, that people have these notions right, that it's for the 1%, and sure you hear about that, but it's really there's so many different opportunities, different dollar amounts, amounts, and when you are resourceful, such as yourself, and in my experience too, it creates a really great path for personal growth, for investing, for development, and it's a true gift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're right about the mind shift part of it. There's a point where you know we buy that house and then we put our money in our 401k and then you know magically, and you know that time frame, that we want to retire we'll have all this money. And it doesn't usually work out that way. You have to have different multiple income streams to offset because you know I just spoke about you know we had the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000, I think it was 2000, 2001. And then, you know, following that there was another one, that was the real estate bubble. You know, we've seen these.
Speaker 2:You know different shifts I will call in the economy, whether it be even, you know, if we go just recently with a pandemic, that's made a big shift. You know, if you look at office buildings right now there's a huge vacancy rate there. So you have to be able to pivot and adapt and move along with these different changes. You just don't know what's going to be thrown at you. And so, in having different multiple income streams and you can ride out the wave of those down times in those certain areas, yeah, definitely, and that's where, too, we take our mindset with ourselves.
Speaker 1:24 seven, yes, and definitely something I've honed in on over the past decade, and I think, in commercial real estate. Real estate, if you want to either sink or swim, right. And I also bootstrapped my way and I paid for everything you know it wasn't family money, it wasn't investors, all these different things.
Speaker 1:So I really did have to be scrappy. I had to really want it, which I did and still do. But things shift and change. When you have a clear direction and you don't accept not getting there right, that you will be resourceful and cultivate what you need to get there. It does happen, as illustrated by our stories and so many others within the arena. What would you say really helped you to cultivate that winning mindset and the abundance mindset that it requires?
Speaker 2:I, you know, I think it's just a uh, a lot of uh. You know what? I how I wake up in the morning. I get up, um, I'm. I love my coffee, I'm drinking it now while we're on this podcast.
Speaker 2:Um, so I love my coffee, so I I what I do in the morning. I'll get up, I'll bound out of bed, as my husband calls it, and then I'll I'll run down, I'll make coffee. And as I'm making coffee, I use that time just to sit there and think about how I'm going to start my day, what I want to see happen. If you kind of envision what you want to see the outcome to be, you'll always work towards that. So I really try to have a positive mindset, in the sense that I put out those positive affirmations in the morning, I think about the outcome of the day and how I want to see it happen, and then then I start my day out. And so then now I know what I want for the end result, and then I think you can do it on a day by day basis. And you can also do it if you're planning in the future, right Five years from now. We talk about that.
Speaker 2:But you know when, when I was working in the corporate world, they go what do you want to be in five years? I'm like, oh, I don't know. Sometimes you don't know. So breaking it down on a day-to-day basis. It just makes it easier, um, and then you'll start building out. You know what you want to do, but just starting out, I believe what you put out there you get back, um, and that's you know. So you, if I want to put out positive thoughts about where I want to be and what I want to do and who I meet, even with LinkedIn, how we met, I got started on the LinkedIn challenge and here I met you. So I mean so, just taking that step in that leap, that's something I wasn't maybe comfortable with. I'm now branched out and I've met all these great people from the sitting here at my desk. I've been able to meet a lot of great people and interact with them.
Speaker 2:So it's all in how you put it out there and I always go with a positive mindset and just starting my day out that way of how I wanna see the outcome in a positive way.
Speaker 1:I think that's great and it's interesting, cause I ask that question of so many people that I talk with and there's definitely continuity among people, different little twists and things of that nature. But to your point, it's envisioning, feeling it and, yeah, how do you want it to unfold? Because our conscious, unconscious, work together, whether people are aware of it or not, and that's why neuroscience is truly fascinating.
Speaker 1:And to me, and that's why neuroscience is truly fascinating and to me, the more we know about it, the more we can cultivate it. Dr Andrew Huberman has a great podcast. So, yeah, human performance is a big one for people in commercial real estate or really any industry. So, as we shift from mindset, let's think of technology, right of AI. Everyone's hearing about it. It's coming into all the different arenas, disrupting. There's fear, there's excitement. What are your thoughts? And take on AI.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to pause on that for a second. So I being from having my background being in technology, I'm excited about AI. When I left Intel, I actually worked for the Intel Research Lab and we were doing early development on different AI technologies. They won't be able to distinguish what is real and what is not, and so there's a lot of technology out there it's called deep fake which looks at videos and can tell actually if it's AI generated versus a real video, as we're doing now today. But, moving forward, I think AI is exciting.
Speaker 2:There's an opportunity right now for people to be able to be more productive using AI. And look at real estate, for example, ai is being used to analyze deals and do the underwriting on it. You know we've used AI for creating content. We've used AI for, you know, delivering out marketing materials. We're using AI right now to make notes for this transcript marketing materials. We're using AI right now to make notes for this transcript. So you know there's all these great things that we can do with AI. I think with anything that's new technology, there's always this unsettling unease about it. You know what will happen, the unknown right, and I think it's the same thing that we saw as a kid growing up watching television, you know we're going to be in my parents called the boob tube you know, because you're just going to you weren't going to learn anything, right.
Speaker 2:But you know we've seen with technology advancements that we get to learn more, even with, you know, the Internet Everybody was scared about oh my God, people are going to be able to see what I'm doing or I won't have any privacy. But the positive side is that we have YouTube where we can go out and learn a bunch of different things. You have this medium now that you can actually go out and you know, from your comfort of your office or home. You know you can create a podcast and we can. You know we have different avenues of where we can collect information. It's not just the encyclopedia for people who remember those days where you had to go look it up at the library. You know there's so many different areas.
Speaker 2:So I think I'm excited about what AI will bring to our world. I'm sure that there's always there's a yin and a yang with everything, but I think that's how we work it out. You know, we've adopted new technology in the past. Yeah, there's some things that maybe people don't like about it, but the overall, I think is good.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to be great for everybody. I agree completely and you nailed it on the head, cindy of people oftentimes fear change and it's learning about it, understanding, and we all know that change you're going to go through it, so you can either go through it kicking and screaming or, like you are, seeing the benefits, integrating them, and really it allows you and your community to help people on a farther, quicker, wider realm. So that's a true gift. And yeah, you have. You know, with YouTube, as you reference, that what a great opportunity in life for people to learn. And it's free, really, if there's an interest.
Speaker 1:Going back to mindset, if you have an interest, it's as simple as from the comfort of home, your cell phone, wherever, of just plugging something in and beginning to educate yourself, understanding who in that realm you can learn from in addition to and other ways. So that's great. In that realm, you can learn from in addition to and in other ways. So that's great. So commercial real estate is busy, as we know a lot of ups and downs and arounds the bend.
Speaker 1:What do?
Speaker 2:you do to de-stress, whether it's during the day or even in the evenings or weekends. So I have I like to work out Now I'm not as diligent as you heather out there running at what? 4 30 in the morning, getting ready for a marathon but that was.
Speaker 1:It's a real bless you.
Speaker 2:But I have, um, I go, I, I work out, um, I do, um, I actually have a, a group of ladies that I go to.
Speaker 2:It's called fusion, but it's a dance workout class and I I do some weightlifting, um, I take opportunities to walk, um, usually what I'll do, there's my de-stress for my daily thing, where I, you know, just some personal, um, me time that I take, and it may be going lifting weights and listening to an audible book, um, or or taking a walk and just kind of let my mind wander and, and, because I find when I do that, those that's when the answers come to me, and then when I'm not, when I'm not at home, if I'm traveling, you know, if you want to go, just get away from it all completely. My husband and I have a 51 foot catamaran and we sail, and so we've been doing some sailing in the Med, our boats over there now, and then we plan to do a crossing across the Atlantic. In November we're going to bring it over here to the US. Yeah, so that's the adventure, cindy part.
Speaker 1:I love it To your point. We are multifaceted individuals, right, and with commercial real estate, like I joke that you can take us anywhere. But we are going to be looking at these little points and I think I see it as a good thing because all of us that are in it I mean it's been years and it's just, it's in your blood, it's a lifestyle and it's something we all enjoy, and I think that's the other really nice thing about it is that, you know, I see some of the older crew in their late seventies, even mid eighties, that are still in the game and what I love about that is that there's a community. They're still keeping their mind fresh, the relationships and all these different things. So to me that's just beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it, you know it isn't uh, it isn't like being an athlete in real estate, right? You don't? You don't burn out at 40. Right, I really think you really turn it on as you get, you know, the longer you are in the game because you've learned from different those learning lessons along the way that you've built up a whole I call BKMs, or best known methods of doing things that you can share with other people. So the community is great and I want to emphasize that.
Speaker 2:I started this a few years ago with a woman. I officially left my W-2 and we created next phase venture partners to help tech professionals like myself go out and be able to create alternative incomes. But you know, the deal is that I've been so welcomed in this community. There is an abundance mindset, there's plenty of room for all of us and I've been the. The friendships that I've created, you know, just even via LinkedIn, has been wonderful, very helpful, and people are there to reach out and you can have conversations with them. So it's been a great, warm community to join.
Speaker 1:I agree completely, and I think one of the really nice aspects I like too is I'm also a very creative person. Aspects I like too, is I'm also a very creative person and I think there's a great opportunity that everyone can be who they are and that is accepted right yes so many different industries.
Speaker 1:It's like you have to dress this way, you have to, you know, reply this way. Where it's so structured and in commercial real estate, it's kind of like you show up, you bring your best, you help people, you have an abundance mindset and it's kind of like filling the gaps of we're all looking to. How do we all move forward and helping people individually and collectively.
Speaker 2:So yes, really neat.
Speaker 1:So my final question this is always the big one. Yeah, oh, I know, brace yourself, I'm scared. Hold on, cindy. Okay, what does living fully mean to you?
Speaker 2:Oh, living fully to me is one thing is that, you know, I've created a life that I don't. I don't have to trade time for money. I have the freedom to get up and decide what I'm going to do every day, whether it's you know. And of course, I'm working, building our business, scaling out our investor community, and that's one thing I enjoy doing, but it's also spending time with family and friends, traveling and pursuing passions. I also sing in a cover band, and so I like to do music, and so that's one of the other things, and I have time to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:I can manage my own time. I think that's. What is so freeing for me being in this business is that, of course, we have to do what we have to do to make things work in the business side of it, but I don't have to do it in a designated time that someone decided for me. I get to manage that time, and every day I get up, I get to decide what I want to do, and that is priceless for me. I mean, you can't put a dollar on that.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, well, and to me, freedom is my number one value as well. And I think you know, what I've kind of distilled over the years is that if you're disciplined, it's a grand arena because to your point you can structure things around it, and especially with the investments, then that way too you're not bound by the time in the same way if you're not investing or at that stage yet. But the beautiful thing, as you've shared, is that there's different stages, people.
Speaker 1:It just takes one step, whether it's singing dancing to begin investing and what's a great way for people to connect with you so they can take that next step or increase their portfolio.
Speaker 2:That's great. Thank you, heather. So you can definitely reach out on me on LinkedIn. It's Cindy Peach which is on the screen C-Y-N-D-I Peach and just go linkedincom forward slash Cindy Peach. The other way you can reach me is through our website and it's investwithpeach. So very easy. Type that in. You can reach out to us. There's a form you can fill out. You can schedule a call. I'm always excited to bring people on and the first thing we do is try to educate. I'm not here to sell things. I'm here to help you decide what's the best option for you and some people. This isn't what is comfortable for them, so it takes a special person to come into the investor community. I like to educate people, bring them on board and then make sure this is the right fit for them.
Speaker 1:Which is perfect, because everyone has to make their decision right. And that's why I love your approach and in your level of professionalism because, you provide everything, you answer the questions and each person knows their self so they can make the appropriate choice with your wisdom. So exactly, yeah, cindy, thank you so much for joining me. It was great to talk with you and I look forward to connecting more on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too. Heather, Thank you again for having me on your podcast. I so much appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You bet Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.