Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I am your host, Justin Stoddart, and I have a treat for all of you today, I can’t wait to introduce you to an incredible lady in so many areas of her life. I’m going to make you wait to hear exactly who it is, even though I know you can see her already. Let me just restate the purpose of this show, which is to help you think bigger. Everything you want in life will come about as you do the right things and you will do the right things as you start to think about the right things. So, my purpose and my passion are to help you think bigger so that you can do the right things and then have the impact and life that you were designed to have. So with that, I would encourage you if you have not already signed up for the regular newsletter, which gives you updates and show notes of the amazing guests that I have, you can get to that at https://thinkbigger.real estate. That’s my website and I encourage you to do that. I’m honored today to have with me Michelle Bosch. Let me tell you a little bit about Michelle. I’ll just start with this, her businesses have been featured on INC, Fox, ABC and Forbes. She has really done some incredible things, let me tell you, about this as a real estate investor, entrepreneur and leader. She’s the co founder and CFO at orbit investments and a full time real estate investor since 2002. They’ve got a really unique strategy, we’re going to get into that, but she has bought and sold over 4000 pieces of real estate. Yes, you heard that right 4,000 with a comma, pieces of real estate and built the third largest land investment, investment and auction company, in the US. I told you this is impressive while bringing that company successfully into the eight figure revenues in a matter of 18 months. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m so excited to have with me today. Michelle Bosch. Michelle, thank you for coming on the show today.
Michelle Bosch
Oh my God, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. It is an honor to be here, I’m excited to be with you know, with your audience today. And, and provide, you know, a little window into, you know, the world of of investing in real estate.
Justin Stoddart
I love that. And before we get into all of that, we’re going to keep everybody hanging just a little bit about how in the world in 18 months, you created such an empire. I want people to know a little bit about your background. You are from Honduras, originally an immigrant and your husband is from Germany, also an immigrant.
Michelle Bosch
Yes.
Justin Stoddart
One of my mentors, as I mentioned to you previously is Brian Buffini, who wrote the book, The Emigrant Edge. When he grew up in Ireland, he loved, and still loves his homeland. But when he came to America, he saw and felt something different, which is the land of opportunity. It’s the coveted place where the ambitious want to come, entrepreneurs wants to come, because they realized the soil here is so fertile. Talk to us about that Michelle, howbeing in America has really opened your eyes to opportunity.
Michelle Bosch
Yeah, you know, both my husband and I, like you mentioned are, immigrants into the US. So I came here in 1995. Jack came here in 1997. And we pretty much walked into the US with two suitcases to our name. You know, we both came to study here with a lot of hardship and sacrifice. My mom is a single mom, she raised me as a single mom, my father passed away when I was very young. But she you know, she invested in me, and, you know, send me to a bilingual school back home, which is what allowed me, you know, to come to the US to be able to talk to you even, you know, right now, during this interview, she, she, she was she had so much faith in me and, and for jack as well, you know, he came from perhaps, you know, Germany is a much more wealthy society, let’s put that, you know, that way versus hundreds. But still, you know, he came from a background where his father was an elementary teacher, his mother a stay at home mom. So there was there was always money, you know, money, pinching counting money to make sure that you know, to make ends meet. And, and then you come into the US and, you know, we did what everyone did, which is to get a job, we work 60 or 80 hour weeks for, you know, for a big company as consultants traveling 100%. And, and, and we absolutely hated and then we realized, oh, my goodness, we are in a place where, you know, we we were following the traditional track, but we’re in a place where you can get us an LLC set up for $180 here in the state of Arizona, you know, you file like a three page paperwork, and you can get it done. And hundreds you have to go through an attorney in Germany, it’s like you have to have even financial backing, and so on to even start a corporation and so on and so forth. So there’s so much red tape and and I think the emphasis though that I want to bring is the fact that when we came here, or when an immigrant comes into the US, you come hungry, you come driven, you come, you know, you come looking for something better than what you had in the past and where you came from. And there’s opportunities everywhere. I think that because it’s also new to us we see everywhere, and because it’s it’s common for a person living in the US and raised in the US, they don’t see them anymore. You know what I mean? So I think it’s, it’s it’s seeing opportunities that others don’t see as a result of just coming from a completely different backgrounds, completely different context. So yeah. And now with my daughter, who’s now born and raised here, I’m always like walking that fine edge of like, how can I still keep her hungry? How can I still keep her driven? While at the same time? You know, I don’t want her to fall into poverty consciousness either, you know, so. So it’s, it’s a fine line.
Justin Stoddart
So powerful. You said that, you know, I spent two years of my life on a church mission in Brazil, lived a among them, I didn’t live as an American, I was really as a Brazilian, very humble circumstances, and it was amazing to me, the perspective that it gave. You know, many of my companions that I would team up with down there came out of extreme poverty and were returning to extreme poverty after their missions. And I was returning to a well known four year university, and it almost felt an unfair, right, and there were times that where I was, you know, felt like how can I do more to lift them. And I think if there’s, there’s one thing that we can all do, living in the land of the or whatever country you’re in, I know I have friends actually in Brazil watching this, I got a comment here from one is that is to take advantage of the opportunities that you have, don’t take them for granted. Don’t, don’t spend so much time recreating that you don’t actually take the time to work. Again, I think sometimes people, they’ll work just enough to where their needs are taken care of. Yet, someone like you who’s gone on to create significant, success through other people, we begin to extend the hand and send the elevator back down, like my friend, Lou Radja says, send the elevator back down. So someone else can also rise up. And I think that’s the responsibility of all of us to, you know, to that have great opportunities is that you know, where much is given, much is required.
Justin Stoddart
So thank you for sharing that perspective on kind of your background, and part of the reason I’m sure as to why you’ve done what you’ve done.
Michelle Bosch
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think also, that background was incredibly crucial for us, because like I was telling you earlier, we we went into an asset class within real estate, that is not common, but But for us, it was the simplification of real estate it was and for me, one of my commandments now is the key to prosperity is simplicity. That’s like my Michelle Bosch commandment, because we started looking into houses and and, and trying to flip houses trying to flip try plexus. And because we weren’t from here, we didn’t know anything about construction. We didn’t know anything about you know, contractors about mold, roofing issues, how to estimate repairs on a kitchen on a home, that was like, beyond our capabilities back then. And somehow we stumble into into this niche of land. And, and it was perfect, because for us, we’re like, okay, we don’t have to deal with tenants, we don’t have to deal with toilets, we don’t have to deal with termites with any of the complexities and moving pieces of off trying to, you know, flip our home, or even like us our credit, it’s not that we had bad credit, we just had no credit because we we, you know, we didn’t grow up here. And so and so that background, also of an immigrant, you know, really helped us see, okay, there’s, there’s something here simple, that, you know, I can flip for the same 510 15 $20,000 or more, you know, with higher priced properties. And, and I don’t have to deal with any of the complexities of houses. So I think that immigrant background was also instrumental in us, you know, looking at this other opportunity, you know, within real estate that is completely overlooked. That, in my opinion, isn’t it? It’s like a blue ocean, because everyone’s chasing after houses. And, and then and there, you have a piece of land, and people are like, Oh, my gosh, but what am I going to do with a piece of land? You know, it doesn’t even cash flow, what, what can I do with it? And, and even even that, you know, we we’ve been able, over the, you know, over the course of our of our careers, you know, we’ve been able to have those 4000 deals, and you just mentioned, I would say a good half of them, you know, we’re so in flipped using seller financing, where, where someone was paying us 300 400 $500, you know, every month on a note that we created, because we offered seller financing, so we became the bank. So even though I’m going to say, you know, land cash flows, so it does come to an end eventually. But it’s it’s a, you know, it’s an asset class, that you can definitely create passive cash flow for a specific period of time,
Justin Stoddart
I want to put this, this vein that you’re going down, into a kind of a more broad context, me, which I think was very powerful, which which are the four freedoms, right? You have, you’ve explained to me, there’s money, freedom, there’s freedom, there’s relationship freedom, and there’s purpose freedom, I want to I want to delve deeper into the money freedom, which you started to talk about, which is through, you know, real estate investing, specifically flipping land that then folds into, you know, multifamily, etc. Let’s talk quickly to maybe help people understand that, obviously, real estate agents that watch this professionals that watches, understand that there are great opportunities to invest in real estate, but sometimes, again, we we need to have almost a context of of why we need to do that, of why it’s important to produce more than just what your day job creates, right? Because Talk to us a little bit about time freedom, why that became important, and how real estate investing. kind of played into that?
Michelle Bosch
Yeah, absolutely. So so. So yeah, so there’s these four freedoms, freedom of money, time, relationships, and purpose. When we had our corporate jobs, and we were exchanging hours for dollars, you know, we didn’t have the time to go and visit our families in our respective countries. And we certainly didn’t have the money because we were living paycheck to paycheck. I mean, we had payments. I remember in our first home, on our mortgage, of course, on our house, on our sofa, on her laundry machine, on our bed, I mean, you name it, we have payments on our car on everything. Yeah. So it was, it was like if, if if for some reason, you know, we would lose our jobs, you know, we we would be toast. So, so we’re like, there’s got to be a better way, you know, we’re both we both came here, you know, to, to study, we’re both, you know, majored in business, and we’re like, we, there’s, there’s got to be something that gives us, you know, the ability to do this location free in case where, you know, outside of the US, that can give us ongoing cash flow, passive cash flow, ideally, and we’re, we’re Yes, to an extent exchanging dollars for hours, but higher point, I want to say, in a higher quality way, where I’m able to make say, with maybe three or four hours into purchasing a deal, and in putting together a deal and making, you know, 2030, grand, you know, Park profits. And so that that was our beginning, our beginning thoughts were, you know, it was money and time, that was our biggest, our biggest pain points in that moment. Yeah. And, and it wasn’t until we were, you know, at some point two years into it, you know, flipping land, we’re like, okay, we can’t work much more than we’re working, we’re now finding ourselves working the same 80 hour, 80 hours a week, we’re working in that other company. And, and it’s time for us to start expanding, you know, beyond just my husband and myself. And so that’s when we brought in a team, and we understood the freedom or relationships, you know, that we could, we had a choice to bring people that, that we liked, that we respected, that we admire that aligned with our core values, and, and help them grow as well within our company, while they helped us grow our company. And that’s kind of how we went from maybe 100 to 120 deals, you know, in the second year, to 18 months after that second year started, us being able to bring our business to a an eight figure business by I flipped land in a in an auction format, where we, you know, all of a sudden, instead of selling, buying or buying and selling one at a time, we were having an option here at the Phoenix convention center with like, you know, 600 people, and we were able to sell 200 pieces of land, you know, in one day, and so we went from being able to sell 120 pieces and, and, you know, in the course of the year to 200 pieces in one day, and that’s in there is when I think starts the freedom of purpose, when we decide, oh, wow, this is something that is incredibly transformational. We’re not just being a win win, to the people that are selling to me the piece of land, there’s an incredible win that I’m creating for the people that I’m you know, selling to now that is my buyer, you know, and I’m in. And eventually, that turned into how can we teach others to do what we do, which is land flipping in transform the lives just like this asset class has transformed ours, you know, we were able to retire my husband, I remember, within the first three years, my husband’s father, who was had been teaching for like, almost 35 years in Germany and, and his health was deteriorating, we knew that if we didn’t retire him quickly, that, you know, he would probably, you know, survive maybe a year after retirement and then die, you know what I mean? So, so, so So, so you start injecting you know, that that’s the reasons for making money and for and for and for, for having freedom of money and time you start injecting you know, the purpose behind those as well. And and and i think it comes from first taking care of your needs, and then you can start looking outward you know, taking care of your then your, you know, your immediate family, then your community and then re circulating you know that that wealth, and that generosity and those blessings with others. And that’s I think, the stage where where we find ourselves now, which is now teaching others you know how to flip land and do what we do.
Justin Stoddart
This is so fun to hear this, I tell you, my possibilities are expanding this listening to you. And I’m sure the same is true of others. I want to kind of make mention of a couple people here that I’ve said a few things. Good friend of mine, Diana McCready, is a fantastic real estate agent here in the area. She says, so true, make a living, selling real estate, build wealth, owning it, what a great point. And I think any real estate agent, this listening to this, or professional from any industry, is to realize the power of being an investor, right? I think we can, we can look at this through the eyes of us personally. But also taking the principles that Michelle’s teaching us and becoming an educator becoming a consultant with them, so that the hundreds of people with whom you have direct contact on a regular basis, can start to have their possibilities expanded, right, you see this ripple effect, where someone like, Michelle speaks to us, our possibilities are expanded, we then take that information, begin educating other people, those that have ears to hear will hear it and do something with it. And then they can in turn impact. amazing people, maybe you’re familiar with the book, The Butterfly Effect, how, you know, the wings of a butterfly, right can create a hurricane on the other side of the world, they’ve tracked, like how these little tiny molecule movements can have this massive repercussion in other places, right, and doesn’t always have to be a destructive one, like a hurricane. But the point is, that oftentimes we we underestimate how powerful us just having a voice and being an educating and lifting and offering opportunity to other people. And, again, I you know, what, you shared powerful let’s, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, obviously the relationship quadrant, right, we’ve got the four freedoms, money, time, which you’ve spoken about relationships, how does this being a real estate investor, even to the scale of magnitude that you guys have, and or even smaller scale? How does that give you freedom of relationships?
Michelle Bosch
So So when when we had, you know, our jobs, and we were consulting, we had no, no choice. But to go to a client in a customer that was chosen for us, we had colleagues that were, you know, that we may or may not have liked to work with bosses that we may or may not have liked, and all of a sudden you find yourself as an investor in an entrepreneurial journey, really, you know, or as a, you know, as a real real estate agent, you are in an entrepreneurial journey, you know, and, and all of a sudden, you find yourself with the ability to choose, you know, what kind of who you want to be a hero to what kind of client Do you want to serve? Who, you know, what kind of sellers, do you want to list properties for, you know, what kind of buyers you want to help. And so you have so many more choices, you know, and so that’s, I think, Where, where, for us, the freedom of relationships, you know, started in as we expand it, and as we grew, it meant also, you know, bringing people in our team, on if there is anything that I, I would say, something that I learned that I wish I would have focused on earlier, you know, because I was so busy on the freedom of money and time would have been on the who, you know, business has four pillars, it has the why, the WHO THE what in the house, if you think about it, and we were so busy in these two, and the one in the in the how, that into why, you know, we knew why we were doing this, but our whole, you know, investing in our who’s even recognizing what do we stand for? What do we stand against? What are our core values? How can we bring people into our group, you know, and into our business, that are incredibly core values driven that take bold action, like we do that, you know, whose whose core values to be, you know, of everything that I do, that would be excellence, of integrity of being transformational, I wish my emphases on that would have been so much sooner would have saved me a lot of headaches when you know, with people bad Miss hires, you know, and just wasted money and time on on training that that, you know, where my team didn’t fit those, you know, because we didn’t we ourselves, were not clear on what those core values were for us. So that that freedom off of relationships has to come with some clarity on your end as to what you stand for know, and who do you want to be a hero to and what kind of values you know, you, you you embody and you want to surround yourself with, whenever you know you’re doing business, whether it be with a seller or with a buyer.
Justin Stoddart
I love it both with your teammates, as well as with your customers. I love the concept. Jody Rettenhouse, a friend of mine from LinkedIn, although I’ve actually never met her before, but she shared this quote super powerful, she said “The customer’s always right. Yet not everybody has to be your customer.” Yeah, exactly. I think there’s great power in that of being very clear on who it is that we serve and being okay with the fact that these people, they don’t meet our standards doesn’t make them bad people, but they just don’t fit who we want to serve or who we can best serve. I think when you start to do that you start to actually fill your life, both your employees or teammates, and you and your customers, with people who who resonate with you. How much further are you able to go when you eliminate that friction of pulling in separate directions?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and it’s it’s normal at the beginning, you have to say yes to everything, you know, when you’re starting as an entrepreneur, as an investor, as a Realtor, but eventually, you know, it just as important as the Yes, as far as who do you say no to, you know, and what do you what things do you say no to in order to focus on the main thing, you know, and keeping the main thing, the main thing? And, and yeah, and so for us, you know, it’s been, you know, this, this vision of what we call for our cash, which is passive cash flow. And now we are, you know, our our last freedom is bringing that same, you know, that same mindset, or that same vision and helping transform the lives of others. And
Justin Stoddart
that’s, that that quadrant, if you want to call it that, is that fourth, freedom is the freedom of purpose, correct? Yeah.
Michelle Bosch
Yeah. And, and you know, what you it, it’s almost like a natural progression, you know, I earlier I was telling you, you know, you you first started with kind of, like, you know, we were talking about the four C’s, and we can talk about that later, we’re talking about the four C’s and, and you start by having first, you know, confidence in yourself, you know, and trust in yourself or faith in yourself. And then from that you extend that to having, you know, faith in the goodness of others. And then from that you extend that to having faith in the unknown. And, but it but it has to start with with yourself first, I think, yeah,
Justin Stoddart
yeah. Believe in yourself. You start to get a glimpse of, of how you can interact with other people, including the unknown, right? Yeah, exactly. Now, the universe, whatever you want to call it. Yeah.
Michelle Bosch
And something that I wanted to bring back a little bit, you mentioned a quote earlier about a lady that says, you know, real estate is great. And in the best part about it is owning to create wealth. And I so resonated when you said that I even I need to take notes on who said it, I think it was a gal that you mentioned, the
Justin Stoddart
common enemy, is actually watching the broadcast.
Michelle Bosch
Because, you know, we, you know, your audience is mainly realtors, we we have here in in, in a vehicle that produces both both cash flow in and wealth, you know, and it’s just a matter of, of how can we transition from being, you know, just the exchange of hours for dollars and being income statement wealthy, to transitioning that into how can I own those assets, so that I can move from being income statement, wealthy, to being balanced, being wealthy, and having those assets start producing. I mean, you guys already everyone, you know, that has a real real estate license is already incredibly knowledgeable in the area of real estate, and it’s just using that knowledge and all those gems that are everywhere anyways, you know, already in your path, you know, and start seeing them from a different perspective, start seeing them, you know, from the perspective of like, Well, yeah, I can, I can sell it and make a living, but if, you know, God forbid, that, you know, the truck run meal runs me over, I can no longer be doing that. But if I have, if I own a property, you know, I can, you know, that is something that can outlive me that can help support my family, even when, you know, once I’m gone. And that’s, that’s kind of like, you know, going back to the freedom of money and time, you know, that’s, that’s what we have, what we have focused on, and we now even try transition from using our cash profits from our land, and moving them though, into single families, moving them into apartment investing, you know, and, and, and the more I think, the more we kind of like step up that ladder of asset class or complexity within the asset class, I feel like the more people that I can bring towards that freedom or purpose, you know, I can create first in class communities, you know, with with C, you know, C class properties, and turn them into the best community in a neighborhood, you know, where kids that are, you know, have hard working parents blue collar, all of a sudden, I’m able to provide, you know, tutors within an apartment community where I can provide, you know, a mini library within them. So it’s, it’s all like, it’s all like, beautifully tied together, you know,
Justin Stoddart
it’s amazing, kind of what, what you can do when you start to think bigger, right? When you start to be around people like you, Michelle, excuse me, your possibilities truly expanded. There’s so much you could teach us right about your strategies, kind of the finite stuff, I’m going to leave that to I know you guys have a very popular Facebook group. And and in there, people are sharing a lot of really great free information. Tell us how do people find that Facebook group?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so the name of the Facebook is called the Land Profit Generator Real Estate Investing Group and it’s a free Facebook group. And there’s in we are, again, we take pride in having attracted an amazing community of over 5500 you know, land investors that are incredibly generous with their time and their knowledge in helping someone a beginner that wants to transition from just exchanging hours for dollars, you know, at you know, making a commission as a as an agent, to start investing in something that is incredibly simple. And in and just, I’m blown away every day, bye, bye, the success of people saying I have, you know, someone so many properties on their country, correct. I just close a deal and make $30,000, you know, in profits. And it’s it’s a daily, it’s a daily thing, you know, so that would be a place where people can go and learn more about it. Yes, you have it correctly, their land propaganda real estate investing group on Facebook, or you can go to land profit generator calm. But by land profit generator, real estate investing is, is I think, a good place to start. If somebody is remotely interested in this, in my opinion, Real Estate’s best kept secret when it comes to simplicity when investing in real estate.
Justin Stoddart
Another thing I love about this, that you had a conversation with prior, which is this group, even your course, right, the CO creator, you know, your co creative land profit generator program, but that’s not your business, right? I mean, that’s your path. That’s your purpose, right? Yeah, your lead as a business because your time is very valuable, and you have to be compensated for your time. But you guys have created an eight figure business in real estate. And now that you’ve got money, freedom, you’ve got time freedom, you’ve got relationship freedom. Now it’s about how do we create purpose freedom, in the sense that how do we give back to your people to create a similar situation for them. And so I want people to know that that I genuinely sense that that’s kind of who you guys are that you know, your core values that this is about giving back and lifting other people, it’s kind of sending the elevator back down, right? Yeah. And I’m appreciative of that you’re the kind of person that I want to bring to this audience because that’s who that’s who we are. Right? That’s, it’s people that think bigger, not just for our own well being but because want to have a massive impact in the world. And so thank you for that. I want to end with this signature question, Michelle, which is, which is what does this somebody like you, right? Who is a big thinker? What do you do on a regular basis to continue to think big to not to not stop, but to continue to to expand your own possibilities? What does that look like for you?
Michelle Bosch
Uh, huh. Um, I think the very first thing that I that I do is, every morning, when I wake up, I have been doing now this since 2010, I have been practicing yoga meditation, and it’s my way of feeling strong and powerful for the day, you know, if I have a choice to go and start my day, weak or powerful, let me start a powerful, and that’s one way that I have found makes me start my day be powerful. You know, for some others, it could be a walk in the woods, or a hike or whatever. So that’s one thing I do in private. And when it comes to, you know, to thinking about my, my inner world, when I think about my outer world, because we are also the product of our outer world is I always love to put myself in situations where I am actually the little fish in the big tank, you know what I mean? And, you know, I joined groups, you know, of, you know, where I, I invest in myself, and I, you know, big money to be part and surrounded of, you know, of a mastermind of entrepreneurial women here in town. And that really, you know, think bigger than me, I also am part of another group called a 10 x ambition program. And so surrounding yourself with others that are going to hold you up to a bigger standard, that have that already have a bigger mindset that think about bigger futures for themselves. Because what I have found is that when I put myself in this, you know, in the company of these people, people that have a bigger, bigger future, and also have a bigger income, you know, so it has they have a bigger income, because they’re thinking not just a bigger futures for themselves, but they’re thinking about bigger futures for others, you know what I mean? And so and how can they solve solutions for many more people, and it almost seems like the bigger income is just a byproduct of them having in mind for themselves a bigger future for themselves and a bigger future for others. So I think, yeah, so those are the two things that I do something that is an intimate and personal and it goes, you know, you know, add it from the inner world out and the other one is from the outside in, because you are the product of the people that you hang out with, and I want to hang out, you know, with people that also think big, and that also have my core values. I love it.
Justin Stoddart
I love it. That’s so powerful. Michelle, I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed having you on the show today and sharing you with this audience want to thank those that have comments and actually have a friend out of Brazil. He said a good energy reporter Justin will say al Qaeda Now those of you that speak Portuguese will know what that means. But he’s he’s sharing a nice compliment to today’s
Michelle Bosch
So did you learn to look to to speak Portuguese while you were there?
Justin Stoddart
I did. Yeah, I was. I was completely immersed in Brazil, so I speak Portuguese. Yeah. Anyway, I want to thank you, again, so much, Michelle. I wanna thank the audience for tuning in today. And I want to I want to end with the final charge, which are three very simple words, but with Michelle’s leadership and help, they even get easier, which are these Go Think Bigger. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in today. Thank you again, Michelle. It’s been a total pleasure.
Michelle Bosch
Thank you very much.