How to Take the Fear Out of Investing in New (or Bigger) Deals w/Bestselling Author Kindra Hall

David:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 565.

Kindra:
Maybe you would say, I’m never buying a house on a corner ever again. And like you said, maybe you’re like I’m done. I’m out. I can’t do this anymore. Keeping those stories in check, they happen to the best of us. They probably even happen right now, even with all of your experience, those negative stories are going to be creeping in and it is up to you to keep them in check.

David:
What’s going on, everyone. It is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets podcast, the show where you learn how to harness the power of real estate to live life on your terms, whether you dream of quitting your nine to five, wanting to retire early, or just want to back a plan, you’re in the right place. We help you do this by bringing on other successful investors that have found financial freedom through real estate, so you can learn from what they did, help avoid their mistakes. And then at times gain the mindset of what successful people have.
In today’s episode, we are speaking with best selling author, Kindra Hall, who is an expert on the stories that we tell ourselves. She’s also a real estate investors, so we get some really good information about how people sabotage their success, as well as how to tell yourself the right story to find success. Here with me today is my good friend and co-host Rob, Robuilt, Abasolo. Rob, what’s going on?

Robert:
How you doing, man? Man, I’m so excited to get into today’s episode, because I think Kindra really brings a different approach to real estate investing. A lot of us get so wrapped up in numbers and nuts and bolts and details, but she really helps open up a different way of thinking, I think, when you’re wanting to get started in the game.

David:
When we were talking to her, I started to conceptualize like, well, how is this actually tactically applicable? I started thinking about how so many investors just live in a spreadsheet and they let the spreadsheet make the decision. And so they try to move forward based on what the numbers are telling them in the spreadsheet. But then when it comes time to pulling the trigger and actually moving forward, there’s fear, there’s apprehension, there’s doubt, and they never do it.
Kindra has shifted away from the spreadsheet and into, what’s going on between your ears? What’s making you take action or not take action? How are you actually setting yourself up for failure in certain ways? And so this is a really impactful episode, I feel like, for anybody who’s listening, who either wants to get started, or maybe who’s already started and is looking to take the next step.

Robert:
100%, man. I think spreadsheets are a very useful tactic obviously for analyzing and everything like that. But today was a really good way to understand that the inner voice in your head that stops you from getting into that deal can be tamed and can be trained to help you think a little bit more positively about just jumping in and making it work.

David:
I like that. How to tame and train your own mind with, Rob Abasolo.

Robert:
I know. I just came up with that like yeah.

David:
Yeah. That’s very Brandon Turner esque, making something that rhymes or creating an acronym on the spot. Very good. In today’s show, you want to pay attention to a few things that will really help you on your journey. The first would be how the stories you tell yourself affect the way that you pursue your own goals. We also get into how Kindra took action when others didn’t, because she told herself a different story than other people were telling themselves. Maybe most importantly, the four steps to recognizing the story you’re telling yourself and then how to change that story, so that it’s something that would fit.
Kindra’s books are very good. She actually has a recommendation from Seth Godin on her book, Stories that Stick. And he says, “Whatever you do, wherever you are in your career, this is the book to read right now.” That’s a pretty compelling endorsement. Make sure that you stick around and listen to the show because there’s some very good content here. Rob, anything you want to say before we bring in Kindra?

Robert:
I’m just honored to be here as always. Actually something just occurred to me Dave, has anyone ever dubbed you Seber? Because I feel that’s a great nickname for you.

David:
I love it. This makes me feel Brandon’s here. No, I’ve never heard Seber, but that’s actually very funny.

Robert:
I’m going to get you a family crest for the wall behind you.

David:
It’ll be full of frozen emblems of coldness for bur. I like it.

Robert:
Which is very topical, because we do get into frozen.

David:
That is a good point.

Robert:
… at the very end of today’s episode.

David:
Make sure you listen all the way to the end, so you can hear exactly how this will come full circle.

Robert:
Let’s do it, man. Okay, well let’s bring in Kindra.

David:
All right. Miss Kindra Hall. Welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast.

Kindra:
I am so happy to be here. David, Rob, thanks for having me.

David:
So are we. Now, rumor on the street is your husband is actually a really big fan of the podcast and we should give him a little shout out before we get started.

Kindra:
You should. He’s definitely in the other room right now, listening. He might have his ear up against the door right now, but that is Mr. Michael Hall. Huge, huge fan.

David:
That’s awesome. We love when we get fans.

Kindra:
I think he’s more nervous. He was definitely more nervous than I. Was very nervous for me. He kept coming in this morning as I was getting my thoughts together. He’s like, make sure you include. You need to leave. You’re making me very, this is very stressful for me.

Robert:
He’s like, hey, I’ve prepared some jokes.

Kindra:
I know. He actually did. He was like, say this. I’m like, I don’t know the terms. He was going to print out a glossary for me. We’ll talk about that after we’re done recording.

David:
Well, we’re going to make sure we do him proud. Now I understand the two of you are actually real estate investors yourself, and you’ve written a couple books. Can you give us a brief background on your history as an author and then let’s jump into how you guys bought your first investment? I know you have a funny story about that.

Kindra:
Yeah. Well, my background is, my entire expertise, my study, my field of work is in the power of stories. The stories that we tell outwardly as we grow brands and businesses for sales, for marketing and the stories that we tell ourselves inwardly. The stories that are and repeat in our minds all the time, really dictating the way that our life shapes out. I write books. I talk on podcasts. I speak sometimes at live events, sometimes from my bedroom, as the case has been recently all about the power of storytelling.
In terms of investing, my husband, Michael has been interested in real estate since as long as he was allowed to have access to, he’d been saving from his paper route. He’s one of those guys. Saves the money from his childhood paper route. And so investing was always something that he wanted to do. He had a property before we met, I bought a house, gosh, I signed the paperwork the day before our wedding. It was, gosh, that would’ve been in 2009. But our first investment together was shortly after that. As a matter of fact, very shortly after that, I was at a happy hour at a girlfriend’s house, she had just moved in. It was a really hot and up and coming neighborhood.
This is in 2009 in Phoenix, everything was hot and up and coming. I was at her house. He was back at our place. We were just visiting. My girlfriend said, hey, there’s a really great house across the street for of us that’s going to be going up for sale. And again, it was hot. If you had any insider information, it was a really big deal. Similar to where we are right now. The numbers were a lot lower 10 years ago, but a similar feel. I never thought I’d say that, but here we are. And so me and my two girlfriends left her house, walked across the street, we’re appearing in the window. She’s like, no, I know the neighbors. They’re going to sell that house.
Then we came back to her house. I called our agent. We had just wrapped up a deal on a different one. No, no, no. First I called Michael. That’s what happened. I called Michael, hey, there’s a great house available, but he didn’t pick up. Again, this is a hot market. I called him again. He didn’t pick up. I called our agent and said, please put in this offer. I listed the offer exactly how I wanted. I was feeling pretty cool, because we had just finished a house. We had just bought a house. She put in the offer. Michael finally called me back. He was in the shower. He takes very long showers.
I said, I was just calling because I put an offer on the house and he was shocked. I told him what the offer was. He said, that’s actually pretty good. We eventually got the house. That was the beginning of our career of investing together, if you could call it that.

Robert:
Okay. You were getting married, and around that time, the day before you actually were going to get married, you go to a closing. I got to imagine that was somewhat crazy, right? To deal with the whole extravaganza plus closing.

Kindra:
Yeah, it was. The house that we bought, it was something with, now I’m going to get my, he will fact check me afterwards, but it had something to do with an $8,000 tax credit if you were a first time home buyer. Does that sound familiar from 2009?

David:
Yep. It does. President Obama put that in place, it’s like $8,500. Yup.

Kindra:
Yeah. Okay. 8,500. Hey, I get 500 bucks back or something. I thought it was eight. And so I was still a single woman. Right? I’d never bought a house before. We found this house. We were like, hey, we got to buy it. But we have to sign the papers before we get married because I won’t be a single woman anymore. And so the house was in Phoenix. We got married in California. We had a doc presenter come to my in-law’s house. We’re sitting there, people are running, getting the wedding dresses, flowers are coming in and out, and I’m sitting at the dining room table signing documents for a house. We like a little chaos in our lives. Who doesn’t?

Robert:
Pretty low key wedding, I would say. Right?

Kindra:
Yes.

Robert:
I’m curious, we’re like, hey Michael, I put an offer on this house. Was this a surprising thing? Or are you one to just put offers in houses when the right opportunity pops up? How did he react to that?

Kindra:
I, in our relationship have always been the crazy idea one. Hey, let’s just let’s do this. Let’s go with this. I don’t think he was necessarily surprised. Because one of my positive stories that I hold true, as we’re talking about the stories we tell ourselves, is that things will work out for me. I just have this, things will work out for me. Why not put in an offer on the house? I know that there’s multiple steps in which they could reject me, I can reject them. Right? Michael on the other side was dealing with a lot more limiting belief stories and the things that you’re supposed to do and what is risky and what you should do and what you shouldn’t do.
The clash of those two things at once, I think it probably took him aback when he realized that I had done it. But overall it has served us very well, and it’s helped him, I think, overcome some of those limiting beliefs and push him forward into making decisions that have served us and our family very well.

Robert:
That was one of the first purchases in your overall portfolio?

Kindra:
Well, no, it wasn’t. He had a first one which was a condo and we can talk about the condo a little bit later. But that was a condo in Scottsdale, Arizona, at about that time was as far underwater, it could have discovered new sea creatures at that point. It wasn’t a success from the get go. But that was one of the first things we did together.

Robert:
Can you give us a little bit of the nitty gritty financials on those deals? Because I’m a really big fan of the mentality of let’s get the offer in. We’ve got many opportunities to walk away from this if it doesn’t work out. You ended up closing on this house and moving forward with it. Can you give us a little bit of the top level of how that deal ended up panning out?

Kindra:
You know what, I remember about that deal panning out or not panning out, the house across the street from my girlfriend’s house is, we had put in an offer and we heard back from the family that was selling the house that they already had an offer in. They were going to honor that offer because it was in first and whether or not ours was better, it really didn’t matter. It was one of my first experiences of the heartbreak of putting in an offer and it not going through, especially once you’ve decided that you love the place. You start creating the story of what your life will look like in that house.
I wasn’t looking at it as an investor. It took me a while before I started thinking about these things as an investor. It was a lot of, we lost it. We tried to put more money down, but we only had so much cash that we could put down. And then I remember we actually worked together. We were working together at the time. I was sitting in my office, the deal was done. It was over. I was on a conference call and he walked around the corner and was holding a little sign that said we got the house. Apparently the first offer it had fallen through, they went through all of their rights to cancel it and were dragging their feet. And so then our offer came together.
Now as far as the nuts and bolts of the financials, that I can’t remember, it would’ve been, it was like 2009, but it was the beginning of the entire emotional roller coaster of what it is to buy a home.

David:
That’s a good segue into your area of expertise, which like you mentioned earlier, is the stories that we tell ourselves. At this stage in your investing career, were you already looking at the world from that lens or was this something that came up later?

Kindra:
This was something I hadn’t realized actually, David, to be honest, that we were weren’t seeing these properties as stories at that point. We weren’t necessarily aware of the stories that we were telling ourselves that were serving us, nor were we aware of the stories we were telling ourselves that were holding us back. But now looking back on our 12 plus years of investing, I realized that the single greatest thing that has happened to us is our ability to crush those hesitations, those things that you tell yourself, I can’t do this, or why you can’t or why you shouldn’t.
Anyone who has a dream of investing and is listening to this podcast and is wondering, how do I even take the first step? The first step up really is recognizing that you have these stories holding you back. And as I look back on our 12 years, our success in it has accelerated only because we have shrunk the amount of time that we spend stuck in these limiting beliefs. We’ve gotten really good at telling ourselves the stories and reminding ourselves of the things that have gotten us to where we are, so that we have the faith in ourselves to take the next step. Wt the time, no. Now, definitely. That’s what was going on.

David:
Would you mind sharing what it was that happened in your life that caused you to be aware of this aspect of telling ourselves a story and maybe how much control that has over the outcome we ended up getting?

Kindra:
I started this passion for storytelling in general at a very young age. I told my first story when I was 11. It was an assignment for fifth grade. I had to go tell a story to a room full of third graders. I remember exactly what the classroom looked like. I remember the teacher sitting in the back of the room. I remember the third graders bouncing off the walls. I remember putting the book down and just telling the story and holding these third graders in the palm of my hand, and realizing that, hold on a second, is nobody else realizing what’s happening here? All I’m doing is telling a story and I could get these kids to do anything that I wanted them to.
My interest in stories started there and throughout my lifetime I started, I was telling stories. I was studying stories. I was practicing stories. My research is on storytelling in organizational culture. I worked in sales and marketing and was recognizing even in real estate, the difference telling a story can make in having a house sell or getting a buyer to say yes to you if you’re an agent. There’s nothing more storied than the homes that we live in or the homes that we buy and sell. And so my first book actually was about that science and skill of outward storytelling and how you can use stories in your sales, marketing, et cetera, to capture an audience’s attention, to influence their behaviors.
Now what’s interesting, and I will say that I was planning to keep developing that. I was like, I should write a book about stories and real estate, because it’s such a 360 experience, right? There’s so many interested parties, so much story happens there. But then as a part of my work, I do a lot of keynote speaking. And so I’ll speak on stages. I can see the audience there in front of me. I was going through various transitions in my career, my personal life at this point. I was at the top of my professional game, traveling, speaking 75 times a year. I was a mother. I had young kids at home.
I felt this conflict about what counts as being successful. Can I be both a business owner and be a mother and be successful at both? The stories I was telling myself about that in particular were holding me back, or at least siphoning off the joy. Anytime I mentioned in a keynote about storytelling in business, the importance of the stories you tell yourself, that is what the audience would stop me for afterwards. That’s what they wanted to share their stories about. And so from that interest, I started to backtrack and realized that so many of my decisions, personal and professional were focused on the stories that I told myself. I dove into that research and here we are today.

David:
You have four steps to changing your story. Do you mind going over those with us?

Kindra:
Yeah, I think that that was a really important part of this whole process, is I don’t want to just say, hey, you can change your life by choosing better stories. The next question is, how? And that’s why people tune in here too. Right? They want to hear that they can be successful. They also want to hear exactly how. There are four steps on this path. The first step is to catch these automatic stories that we have in the act. I feel if it’s okay, we pause there even just for a second. Because a lot of times we don’t consider, we don’t even realize the fact that we are telling ourselves stories all day, every day, they are automatic and we don’t even know it’s happening.
It’s as automated as the breath in our lungs, the blood in our veins, the stories in our head. Depending on how these stories play out, they can allow us to take action towards the success we desire or hold us back. The first step in the methodology is to pause and catch these oftentimes limiting stories in the act, so that we can’t address them. The second step then is to analyze it, where is this coming from? Why is it here? And probably most importantly, is it true and does it serve me?
This third step then is really simply, if the answer is no, the story isn’t getting where I want to go, I need to choose to tell myself better stories that do. And then finally, to install those chosen stories so that they become the automation instead of the negative stories that your brain often prefers.

David:
Now, I’m curious, it seems like someone could take this information and manipulate themselves into telling themselves a story that they want to be true, even if it’s not true, you could actually create delusions of grandeur. Is this something that people should be worried about or does that not happen?

Kindra:
Well, you can. Any storytelling can be twisted to serve a delusion. We can take a look at Theranos, that is an ultimate storytelling example, right? However, if you know where you want to go, right? For example, my husband and I knew that we wanted a successful real estate portfolio. We really had a divide and conquer plan in our lives. I was going to handle the upfront, revenue, generation of money with is speaking in keynotes or books and keynotes. He is managing the long term game with our real estate investing. We’re very clear that that’s something we wanted to do.
However, being clear about it and believing that it’s possible, we all have those doubts. We all have those inner thoughts that keep us from moving forward. And so, is there a chance that we would’ve gone down this path and it’d been a disaster and we both work at Best Buy for the rest of our lives? Fine. Yes, of course. But if that’s what we really want, then why not tell ourselves stories to at least play it all the way out.

Robert:
I wanted to ask, because we’ve talked about it from the conceptual level and I think it’s fair to say that you know a thing or two about stories, right? We’ve got our four elements of this stories. We have catch, analyze, choose, and install. Now what I’d love for you to do, if you have a story that can maybe anchor some of these elements down for the listeners at home, that maybe can help us understand each one a little bit more on the conceptual level, starting with catch.

Kindra:
Happy to. And actually as we go through each of the four steps, I have a house, an investment that illustrates each one of them and how each one of these four steps played out. The first one is catch, as I mentioned, it’s to stop the automation and become aware of the possibly limiting stories that are holding you back. I want to take you to the end of 2010, 2011. Again, we are in Phoenix, Arizona, and there is, I feel there’s always a lot going on in Phoenix, Arizona, when it comes to real estate. I used to say the real estate agent was the state bird of Arizona. You couldn’t throw stone without someone being involved in real estate, including ourselves.
And so my husband had this suspicion that now is the time. Now is the time to really start picking up some properties, making a difference, a long term plan. However, he had some stories playing in the back of his mind. One was from a family member who said, one night at a dinner, which we don’t even see these family members that often. But Michael could tell you exactly where he was when he heard this comment. One of the family members said, man, that foreclosure stuff that is risky business, you just never know. I wouldn’t touch that with a 10 foot pole. That is scary stuff. That one story right there, from a guy who doesn’t even do real estate investing.
He’s like, okay. So he gathers that. That’s a story that’s in Michael’s, in the back of his psyche. Then there’s also this story that you hear so many people saying, other financial experts, and it’s not necessarily untrue, but it’s this dogma of whatever you do, do not touch your 401(k), do not mess with your investment or your retirement. Don’t go there. Nothing is worth it. Well, we had this healthy 401(k) that would serve us really well if we were to parlay that into real estate, but I can’t do it. I don’t have that cash. Yes. I have the cash in the 401(k), but I can’t touch the 401(k).
And there was another story. There was so little stories, but here are just a few of them that are, again, keep in mind, playing in his head. He doesn’t even realize it’s there. They’re just in the back of his mind. One of them is, you have a baby on the way. Yes, I was pregnant. I had just quit my job. Because I was going to pursue a path as a professional storyteller, which we had no idea what that was, but we fixed our family finances so that I could pursue this passion. We found out a week after I quit my job, that I was pregnant. And so here, he’s got a wife at home, no income, pregnant, and he has this itch to buy a foreclosure, because in fact there was a foreclosure, there were several of them.
One of them was just down the street a little bit. And it was 1400 square feet for $47,500. I’ll say that again, 1400 square feet for $47,000. He was like, what? I can’t. All these stories were playing. But he had this like, wait, what if this, what? I can’t imagine you can’t rebuild this house from the ground up for less than that. He was really struggling with taking action, the action he knew he should take. And so it was in some of our conversations, that we paused that automation and he was able to realize that, yeah, he had his relative story playing in his mind. He had all the stories of the financial advisors, but what retirement is supposed to look like.
He had the social story of having a baby on the way. We decided to pause all those stories. We broke open our 401(k)s. We made the cash offer, bought the house and he renovated it. He rented it for a while, was able to sell it several years later and parlay made, oh man, he’s going to be mad at me that I don’t know how much he made. It was a good amount of money. We parlayed that into another project. But that right there is catching those stories, all these beliefs that he had of why he couldn’t do it. And once you identify those, now you’ve got a place where you can move forward.

Robert:
It feels like it’s pretty common for the bad stories to be a little bit stickier than the good stories when you’re starting out. Because for me, when I’m teaching people how to, for example, Airbnb, I tell people that I do Airbnb and I’ve got a pretty big portfolio doing that. Everyone is very quick to say, well, what about the housing crash? Or what about all the big parties that happen every day? I’m like, that’s never happened to me. I know someone who’s done it, but I think that just comes with experience in recognizing that, yeah, do the bad stories out there exist? Sure. But with a little bit more experience, I think it makes total sense that you can start to cancel out the bad story, the bad inner monologue in your head that stops you from making an investment

Kindra:
Well, and to know that A, our brains are programmed to collect and focus on the negative stories, because our brain is program and to keep us safe. It’s no wonder that he’s got his first child on the way and his brain is going to be like, don’t do anything that is going to put you out in the cold. And your brain is as people around you, we love telling negative stories. Of course people are going to tell those negative stories more often. It’s this combination of two wrongs, make it worse.

David:
What about the second stage in analyzing? I understand you also have a real estate story that goes along with that.

Kindra:
This goes back to that condo that I told you about. The analyze phase, once you realize that you’ve got some stories at play, these stories that are maybe holding you back, the next step is to take a closer look at them, to figure out where they came from, to figure out why they’re there. And ultimately if they’re true or not, and do these stories serve you in the ultimate goal that you’re seeking. I had mentioned that Michael had a condo, which for a long time in our lives was a four letter word, even though it is five letters. Essentially he bought the condo in 2005 in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was super cool, open concept. He was just single guy living it up. He painted the walls maroon, got a matching maroon couch at Costco. He was living the life.
And then it was 2007, 2008. There was the crash, the value cut in half. And the HOA went up like 200 bucks a month. This sustained for an extended period of time. It was costing us three grand a month. The most we could get for rent was 1500. Again, just this open wound that on a monthly basis, we were just, blood was gushing out of our financial accounts, right? You have something like that happen and you just think there is nothing you can do about it. You’re so far under water that you can’t see the light of day. We just did, we just bled out the money and assumed that this is just how it was going to go. There were a lot of those stories around us at that time, Right?
It was just chaos. It was mayhem. It was a disaster. We were listening to those stories and then one New Year’s Eve, I’ll never forget. We were talking about our goals, because that’s something that we love to do on New Year’s Eve. Everybody else goes out and gets drunk. We get drunk at home and look at our goals. So it’s great. We decided to take a closer look at this condo and the stories and ask ourselves, well, is it really true? Are we destined to bleed money indefinitely until the market corrects? Or I don’t know what else. By taking a closer look at that story, that just seemed so definite.
Is it true, led us to ask ourselves, well, are there other options? Is there a way we could make this a one time pain point instead of a monthly pain point? For us, I should say, because we had future real estate investment goals, foreclosure really wasn’t an option. We just didn’t see it as an option for us. We couldn’t walk away. We wanted to maintain a clean record. And so at that time rates were coming down a little bit. We had a little bit of cash. And so we decided that maybe the two of those things could come together. We put in the cash, we had the rates work on our side. We were able to keep the condo. We are now breakeven. It’s breakeven, we’re not bleeding.
And we can carry that thing until the end of time, which I don’t think we would’ve made those decisions, I know we wouldn’t have, if we hadn’t just stopped and analyzed what the situation and the stories really were.

Robert:
Awesome. Can you give us an example of moving in through this four elements, going to choose, because as I understand it, this is around the time where you considered actually building a house instead of acquiring a house for the first time.

Kindra:
Now we’re in the present day. Since this time we’ve bought homes, we had that first one that was the happy hour house, right? It is now long term rented. We’ve had renters in there for a long time. We actually left that house. We lived in it for a while, moved to a different house that we bought. It is now long term rented. We used the house from that cash buy. Remember I said, we sold it. We used that cash to buy this pristine house on golf course that we remodeled. And then on a whim, we decided to move to New York City. We rented out the house on the golf course. There’s been a lot of things that have happened over time.
And of course you start to think, what can I do next? And the bug in Michael’s ear right now is I want to build a house. I want to build a house. I’ve never built a house. I’ve remodeled homes. I’ve fixed them up. I’ve been the general contractor to not necessarily have the flip in mind, but be able to take a dilapidated property and you either live in it ourselves or rent it out to someone else. But I’ve never built a house. Now, of course you start thinking about that. The old stories come up, you’ve never done this before. Who do you think you are? Think of all the problems that could happen.
And it’s in those moments that it’s really important that you start choosing what stories you tell yourself. Now, David, this is where that idea of delusion can come in, right? Just start telling yourself fantastical stories. But what I recommend is to rely on the stories from your past. One of the strategies is to reroute. True, Michael’s never built a house before, but we have made real estate moves for the first time. There was a time where he never bought a house for cash. There was a time where he never bought a house from an opposite side of the country. We’ve done things we’ve never done before and we’ve figured it out.
Rerouting some of those experiences can help build up the belief that, all right, maybe the same is true for this opportunity. Maybe I really could do it. There’s another strategy which is to research, which is to look for other people, which is one of the reasons that this podcast is so great, who have done it. We have a friend who is a designer all the way to a builder. That’s his business model. He buys the lot. He designs the home. He builds the home, he sells the home, that’s his job. And so Michael’s seeing that as a success from someone else, he can use that story to at least bolster the belief that maybe he too could do it.
And then finally, one of the other options for choosing a better story is simply to write one for yourself. Prepare yourself, create the story you’ll tell yourself if it all falls apart. We’re sitting here. This was actually just this New Year’s Eve when we were like, no, this is something we’re going to pursue this year. 2022, let’s try to build a house. The question comes up. Well, what if it fails? We decided that if fails, yes, we will lose, but that’s the price of the education. You would pay more than we could lose on an MBA at Columbia. Right?
Being ready with the story, all of those things put together, we’re ready to start pursuing that in a way that we put probably wouldn’t have if we hadn’t been applying this self storytelling approach.

Robert:
100%. I feel that. First of all, let me just say that you guys have to build a house. I think you can do it. I know you can do it. When I was getting started in real estate, one of my very first deals, my biggest project as someone who’s in this space now was, I moved to LA from Kansas city where the cost of living was a lot more than Kansas city. About four times more. We bought this house and I wanted to build a tiny house in my backyard. And my wife was like, do you know how to do that? And I was like, no, but it’s two by fours and plywood. How hard could it be? It was very hard. I learned a lot through the process though.
I had breakers in the electrical panel blow up in my face, water leaks and just a bunch of different things that I’m really glad. For me I think it’s really important to embrace all the mistakes and all the bumps and bruises along the way, because at the end of the day, I think it makes for a better story. I’ve gone on from there to, we picked up on a whim and moved to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to build a tiny house village out there. I built a tiny house in Joshua Tree. Every single project that I’ve ever taken on, I had no idea how to do that.
I think it’s actually really quite exciting to take on a project that you’ve never done before, or a new construction, because at the end of the day, the worst that can go wrong is you learn a really good lesson I think, a very expensive lesson.

Kindra:
They can be expensive, and that is certainly the case. But even if you’re playing a long game, that is, again, that’s the expense of the education. And each one of those setbacks, each one of those things that blows up in your face, hopefully not literally, though that does happen, becomes then another story that you can tell yourself after you’re on the other side of it. Listen, if I can handle this thing blowing up, I can handle whatever unknowns there are ahead of me.

Robert:
Absolutely. I think it’s the long game. Real estate is the long game. Very rarely do I meet someone who’s been in the industry for 30 years, who absolutely hates their job. Right? Because they’ve seen it all. And at the end of the day it’s something that you can laugh at. Granted not everything is funny, but for the most part, when I’m talking to a pretty seasoned vet, if I come to them with a problem that I’m having, they’re always like, yes, I remember back in 73 when that happened to me. It’s always just remembering that at the end of the day, 30 years from now, all the different mishaps that you might have had on your journey really just end up making you a much, much better, stronger investor in the long run.

David:
I think if you tell yourself the right story though, there’s a lot of investors that have something and go wrong. I tell the story in the podcast of this crazy mindset that I had, the second house that I bought. It was on a corner. Some drunk driver missed the turn, drove over the front lawn and crashed into the fence and went into the backyard of the tenant’s house. When my property manager called to tell me about it, I started blaming myself. I was like, what an idiot. Why would you buy a house on a corner? You should have known that something like this would happen. Only an idiot investor would ever buy a house on a corner.
I started thinking I just want to sell these houses, be done with it. I don’t want to do this anymore. In the middle of that I thought, what are you saying? You’re actually going to blame yourself because there’s a house on the corner? All these corner houses, they don’t have that happen. You just need to have lower expectations for what you can control and what you can’t control. Instead of being mad at myself because I didn’t get the right insurance to replace a fence if some drunk driver went into it, I just thought, okay, I’m going to lose a little bit of money this month.
A couple months later I realized the house had appreciated $100,000 and that $1,500 fence really wasn’t. But it was the first moment that I recognized my mind will just go on these ridiculous tangents, telling myself all kinds of crazy stories that are not rooted in reality at all.

Kindra:
Yup. That is a perfect example of what that is. If you aren’t paying attention to that, maybe you would say, I’m never buying a house on a corner ever again. Like you said, maybe you’re like, I’m done. I’m out. I can’t do this anymore. Keeping those stories in check, they happen to the best of us. They probably even happen right now, even with all of your experience, those negative stories are going to be creeping in and it is up to you to keep them in check.

David:
I see this all the time with the clients that we’re helping on my real estate team. When they’re buying a house in one thing goes unaccording to plan. Rates go up a little bit, because they took too long to get their paperwork turned in. Or they wanted a house but they needed to ask seven people what those people thought, by the time they came back, the house was gone. What we’re looking at is we tried to talk to you about getting your criteria lined up before we got into this situation. Now I hope you understand why that’s important. Let’s adjust and move forward.
And you know what they say? You know what, this is just God’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t be buying this house. Right?

Kindra:
Gosh. Yeah.

David:
I get that one all the time. Fate just didn’t want me to invest in real estate because it didn’t work out.

Kindra:
That’s a story of delusion too. That can split one of two ways. Maybe they didn’t really want it, and so that’s an easy out, fine, take the exit ramp and go on your merry way. Or two, if this is something that they really want, then that’s a really sad way to let it go. Actually one of the things, instead of, this is fate telling me this, one of the more useful I think perspective, is to say, well, look at this middle of the story. The middle of the story is messy. It’s confusing. It doesn’t make sense. The middles of stories are where things go wrong.
But if what you really want, now, again, if you don’t want to be a real estate investor, if you’re just doing it because, and make no mistake, to do anything, to write a book you have to really want to write a book. There is nothing easy about the entire process. You have to really, really want it, because it all comes with so much crap. It really does. And so if it is something that you really want but you’re stuck in one of those setbacks and you feel the old stories coming in, whatever it is, to pause and say, this is an interesting middle of the story. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

David:
Very cool. Now, have we got into the fourth element yet? Do you install?

Kindra:
No.

David:
Okay, let’s hear about that story.

Robert:
The resolution.

Kindra:
The resolution. Really the installation is the insulation. This is where we reinforce where we’re changing that automation so that we take that control of it. You do have to be an active participant in doing this at first, because soon it will become the automation. Your limiting beliefs are going to pop up from time to time. That’s the way our brain is programmed. But this is also something that we, so a story for that, is still for us a story that hasn’t happened yet. In addition to wanting to build a house, we have the other interest in buying real estate in New York City. Right now we live in New York city. We rent in New York city.
There are so many stories about why you shouldn’t do it. The yields are so low. There’s so much red tape. It’s really just a money pit. These stories are everywhere, right? However, and it could end up that, like we were just saying about the exit ramp, it ends up being a goal that we want to exit. We’re like, no, we don’t want it that badly. We’d instead rather do this or that. However, now knowing what we know, having been through all these experiences, we already know the storytelling process. And so we’ve already gone through catching it. We’ve analyzed what our hesitations are. We’ve chosen better stories.
We have a lot to choose from and now it’s installing them, carefully curating the stories that we’re telling ourselves anytime he starts looking online at properties that are available. We tell ourselves the stories of the things we haven’t done before. We tell ourselves the stories of people we know who have successfully bought real estate in New York City. It’s one of the big reasons that he’s such a fan of this podcast, is taking in other stories of creative thinking and keeping your mind in that space, because the rest of the world is going to tell you no, is going to tell him no, at this point.
Because these stories, they will dictate your actions. You have to be very cognizant of which ones you’re putting in. For example, he told me, he was like, remember when I used to always watch. Here’s two different real estate approaches, right? He can listen to this podcast or he used to watch Holmes on Homes. Do you know the show Holmes on Homes? Right?

David:
Yeah. He’s a bald guy, a little bit shorter than me. Not quite as good looking and he [crosstalk 00:42:40]. Not quite, not quite, but close.

Kindra:
Not nearly as handsome. But basically what the entire show is, is buying homes and they’re complete disasters. The ceiling. It’s for TV, but he would watch that show and want to invest. This was way back in the day. It still haunts him today, and think, but all these things could go wrong. Well, A, it was in Canada. At the time when he was really watching it, we were investing in Phoenix. The problems are not the same. Right? But carefully curating the stories and then retelling them to yourselves, the stories that get you to your goal versus the ones that don’t. That’s where we are right now.

David:
Tell me about the Montauk example that incorporates all this into one project.

Kindra:
Montauk. I think really what Montauk is, is as an example of, of course the title of the book is, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life. I recognize that that is a bold title to suggest that you could change someone’s life. But this Montauk investment really is an example of applying this method over and over and over again, and how you can quickly move from a place if you’re stuck to a place of action, to a place of prosperity. It was March 2020, I’ll remember those days, we have our real estate portfolio, it’s very healthy. But a big chunk of our income as I mentioned, that’s our retirement.
And our money, our liquidity is from me giving presentations to large audiences of people, multiple times a month, sometimes multiple times a week. March, 2020 was chaos in so many ways. But as a person whose job is to speak in front of large conferences, it got really ugly, really fast. Events were postponing. Events were canceling. They were moving forward a year, in some cases, two years. The liquidity was frightening. We had post-its on in our kitchen door of how much money we could spend at the grocery store to pull it off. It was a dire situation. We realized real quick that while real estate investing is a great long term strategy, when you need cash, we were hurting.
We decided to sell that first house that I bought as a single woman. Remember that house?

David:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kindra:
We sold that house. There was a ton of equity in that house. We’d had it for 12 years. 10 years, there was equity there. We had some cash. I also had a two book deal, just signed at that point. It looked like some really good income. These two things combined, looked really attractive to a bank and they were real. This was right. We were able to then pull a HELOC on another one of our investment properties that had a lot of unused equity. And now we were on track. These were our defense moves, right? We had the cash to pay for rent, to buy the groceries, to do whatever we needed to do until whatever was going to happen with my business, which is the front end, which is the liquidity for us, until that sorted itself out.
I would love to say that it has fully sorted itself out, but 2022 is just 2022. Here we are, we are doing good. We’re on the defense. We’ve got our thing. And then all of a sudden in late April, Michael looks at me and says, hey, do you remember that house we looked at in Montauk two years ago? Montauk is this little beach server town at the end of the Hamptons, you wouldn’t call it a Hampton. I don’t think it refers to itself as a Hampton. It’s at the very end of the Hamptons, epic surf break, and there was this shark. Talk about Holmes on Homes, there was mold in the basement that was furry.
It looked like a wallpaper texturing. The mold was so thick. Nobody was touching this house. It was such a disaster. They had it listed for 1.3. In 2019, we offered 1.2 and they turned us down. We’re like, all right, we went on with our lives. We had other things to do. But here we are late April, 2020, we had the cash. And usually what our stories would’ve done, was say, we got to play it safe. There’s so much uncertainty. We don’t know what’s going on. We have our cash. Let’s sit on it so we’re safe. But we already know what those stories are. And we know that we don’t want to be defense people. We want to be on the offense as often as possible.
And the fact that we carefully monitor our stories, puts us in a place that we’re able to mentally at least get there. We call the people back, the house is still available. We offer under a million dollars. Ocean view, it’s two blocks from the beach, and they took get.

David:
Yay.

Kindra:
I know. If you can believe it. We got an automatic discount, but we would not have taken that chance, made that investment at that time, if it hadn’t been for the practice of already being able to know what the negative stories were going to be and how to get rid of them to move forward on something that we really wanted to try.

Robert:
Wow. That really is the full circle house, right? Because you said that you started with your house, the one across, you sold it and then that ultimately all just snowballed into the Montauk beach house. Can you give us a little bit of context about where you are in your portfolio? How much have you grown? What are your aspirations moving forward? Do you plan on expanding it pretty significantly here in 2022?

Kindra:
Yeah. We like doing the single family homes. Renting them for a while, maybe selling them, letting the equity grow. I know that we have, ready for this? Five doors in Arizona. One in Montauk, and depending on where we either build or if we decide to buy and renovate in the city, we’ll go from there. Eventually some of those homes in Arizona are extremely under built at this point, and with the way the market is going, that could be one of the builds and build those up and sell them. It’s the slow game. It’s not the massive of multifamily, but for right now it’s serving our desire as well.

Robert:
That’s awesome. I’m mostly single family myself. Super jealous, because I love Arizona. I think there’s a lot of opportunity there. And just in the last year I’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth.

Kindra:
It’s insane. It’s crazy.

David:
I think it’s going to continue. I would encourage you to buy Arizona.

Kindra:
Just keep doing that.

David:
All right. Well that was fantastic. We’re going to move into the next segment of our show. It is the world famous, famous four. All right. These are the same four questions we ask every guest on every episode. Your husband, no doubt is very familiar with these. Don’t worry, none of them are very hard. Question number one, what is your favorite real estate related book?

Kindra:
The real estate related book that I have read is, Rich Dad Poor Dad.

David:
Very nice.

Robert:
Awesome.

Kindra:
It’s classic. Right? I remember meeting him at a holiday party once and being like, oh my gosh, you’re Rich Dad Poor Dad. It was embarrassing, but that was a good one.

Robert:
It’s classic for a reason.

Kindra:
It is.

Robert:
Question no number two, favorite business book.

Kindra:
I would say so, most people maybe wouldn’t think of this as a business book, but I believe that it is, and it is, Big Magic by Liz Gilbert. It’s more the creative side of business, but I believe there’s a lot to it there of paying attention to the magic in it.

Robert:
Awesome. Question three. What are some of your hobbies?

Kindra:
I need to get better at that. I would say a hobby is building Legos. I love Legos. That is one of the things that I enjoy a lot, and going to Broadway musicals when I can. I have a secret desire to be in a Broadway musical. I will first have to learn how to sing, but from there, sky’s the limit.

David:
That’s funny. Tell yourself the right story. I’m sure you’ll get there. Right?

Kindra:
Exactly. Who knows? I will. We’ll see.

David:
I think you could play, what was the lead character in Frozen? Was it Elsa or Anna? I always mix those up.

Kindra:
Yeah, there was Elsa. They were shared leads actually, which was controversial.

David:
The one that had the magic that all the little girls want to be.

Robert:
Wicked.

Kindra:
No.

David:
She wasn’t that.

Kindra:
No, that was Frozen. It was Elsa. Let it go.

David:
Did I not say Frozen?

Kindra:
You did say Frozen.

David:
Okay, good. Yes. You could play mean Elsa on Broadway. That’s what I was saying.

Kindra:
Mean Elsa. I should. They just-

David:
Not like an angry Elsa, but a very good Elsa is what I was trying to say.

Kindra:
I’m going take that. I’m going to work on my upper range. She’s a belter that’s for sure.

David:
If you listeners are not listening on YouTube, make sure you check out the show and you can see just how much Kindra resembles Elsa from Frozen. All right. Question number four, Kindra, in your opinion, what sets apart successful investors from those who give up, never get started or fail?

Kindra:
Well that’s easy. What sets them apart are the stories they’re telling themselves. Come on. That answer, right?

Robert:
Come on, that was [crosstalk 00:52:03].

David:
All you had to do was slam it.

Kindra:
It really was. It really was. I’m going to say, the stories they tell themselves. No, but again, back to that middle, I think that’s what it is. Even if you dip your toe in the water, there are going to be setbacks. There are going to be things that go wrong. Actually just today, Michael was talking to a guy that he found on Craigslist, because there was a ton of rain. We just had to put a new sewer pipe or something in the Montauk house. The guys who did it, didn’t level it out right. We had water pouring into the basement that wasn’t moldy anymore. Because we fixed that. But now it was going to be moldy.
He’s on the phone with a guy from Craigslist. The rain’s coming in. They’re leveling it out. It’s going to be a mess on some days, but as long as you can be like, well, this is going to be a good story to tell someday. That’s the difference between the successful ones and the not.

Robert:
Awesome. Last question and maybe the most important, Kindra, can you tell us exactly where people can find out more about you?

Kindra:
Yeah. Kindrahall.com is my website. Kindrahall. Of course my books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere books are sold. I am on LinkedIn, Twitter. I spend the most time personally though on Instagram at kindrahall.

David:
That is awesome. Instagram at kindrahall. Rob, where can people find you?

Robert:
They can find me on the YouTubes at robuilt, Instagram, robuilt. TikTok, robuilto, because someone took robuilt. Any of those you guys can me on.

Kindra:
Robuilto.

David:
Right on. I am davidgreene24 on all of social media. Kindra, I’m going to give you the last word. Anything you want to share with our audience before we get out of here?

Kindra:
No, I think it’s really, I remember being at the very beginning of it and how scary it was. There are a lot of things that would keep you from pursuing this. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, if this is the first time, if you’ve been listening to it for a long time, I would say, go ahead, choose the right story. Take the first step and we’ll be cheering for you.

David:
Awesome. Well thank you very much for your time. Rob, anything you want to say?

Robert:
No. Thank you. That was very impactful. I think you have given the listeners an opportunity to think very differently how to approach real estate investing. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

David:
Kindra, what was your husband’s name?

Kindra:
Michael Hall, the great.

David:
Michael, thank you for being a great-

Robert:
Michael.

David:
… BiggerPockets fan, supporter and listener.

Robert:
Is he there? Is he still on the other side with the glass?

Kindra:
Well, yeah, he had to go get the kids from school. So now I think he’s back though. At least I hope he went to get the kids from school. One never knows.

David:
Hopefully somebody is at least, right?

Kindra:
I know. I hope so.

David:
All right. Well thank you very much for your time. This is David Greene for Rob, Robuilt, Abasolo, signing off.