Episode 10: Kathy Fettke | Passion for Real Estate Turns to Profit

Hey, guys. We just finished filming with Kathy Fettke. She is one of the trailblazers of real estate investing that you're not gonna wanna miss this conversation. I know that for sure.

Cathy specializes in teaching people how to build multimillion dollar real estate portfolios through creative finance and planning. She is passionate about researching and sharing the most important information in real estate market cycles and the economy. You might have seen her, on CNN, CNBC, Fox News, all of the things.

She's written a bunch of really great books, including her most recent that she wrote with her husband, Rich, called Scaling Smart. She is the host of a bunch of different real estate podcasts, and she's just such a kind human. So stay tuned for this, this incredible call we had with Kathy.

Hello, and welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast. I'm Mandy McAllister. And I'm Kelly Resendez.

Guys, we could not be more excited to, have with us today Kathy Fettke, one of the OGs broken all of the glass ceilings for female real estate investors. I I I admire this woman, to the ends of the earth. I I couldn't be more grateful for you to be here, Kathy.

Thank you so much. That means a lot.

Well, awesome. We had a chance to spend some time with you in Puerto Rico. That was, you know, incredible. Loved your talk. Loved the chance to spend some time with you. So thank you again for joining us there.

Oh, what a special group of women that I love what you are doing. Oh, awesome. Thank you.

Tell us, you know, kick us off here for the the people who've been living under a rock. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, only a rock that isn't real estate. Because in the real estate world, maybe I'm I'm known and outside of it, not as much.

But, I started Real Wealth about twenty years ago as sort of a desperate woman trying to figure out how to how to have enough money to live life on my my own terms, I guess, is the best way to say it. My husband had a health scare melanoma. The doctor told him he had six months to live. Thankfully, the doctor was wrong on that or Rich fought through it. Whatever it is, he's alive and well today. Although he does get scars all the time, he's still cutting the melanoma out almost every year, but he is here with us today.

Twenty years ago, our children were young. We had just bought a big house too big. Our expenses were too much for, basically living paycheck to paycheck, albeit really big paychecks. But it's amazing how quickly you could spend your money when you're not planning for your future or don't don't really know how to do that.

So I when we got this care from the doctor, I quickly I I had a broadcast career, so I changed my radio show that I had at the time in San Francisco to basically getting obsessed about how do people become wealthy. And and even more interesting, how do they create this thing called passive income that I'd heard about, didn't know anything about, didn't know anyone who had it? But I made that the obsession of my show that turned into my podcast, The Real Wealth Show. Still doing it today.

And now we have realwealth.com, which has over 80,000 members. We're continually, educating every single week, free education to help elevate others in, in their quest to to learn how to build wealth and passive income.

I love it. It's the giving back that that really fills me up, and I know that that's where your heart is too.

A big thing that we try to do in this podcast is, you know, you're at step a thousand, and we we wanna talk to the people who are in that messy middle. But so when you feel stuck at something you know what I mean? Like, when you're trying to figure out how to how to get to that step a thousand, you know, when you feel stuck, you know, obviously, I'm sure that there's been times in this big cap that you've been on that you have felt stuck.

How do you address getting out of feeling stuck when you do feel stuck?

I don't know if you ever don't feel stuck. It's really funny. I live in Malibu. I'm around the wealthiest, most famous, most powerful people in the world, and I see their inside lives and, you know, it's not really that different. I think there's always new obstacles, maybe even bigger ones as you go. And I don't mean to scare people, but that's just the reality of it. I think we're here on this earth to figure out how to get through obstacles. It helps us learn and grow, and, again, I feel like that's really why we're here.

So learning, knowing, that's almost like the slack line, rich nice slack line. I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like you get on this little tiny thing and you stand on it. And when we've got a couple in our backyard and when people come over and we put them on the Slackline for the first time, they're trying to balance it and make it stop moving. And you will never get that thing to stop moving. It moves. So you actually have to learn how to move with it and that's part of like slacklining is being graceful and and moving with the bumps.

So I think first and foremost is idea that you're gonna end up on a beach somewhere with a corona or a margarita and never have another issue that like that's the, you know, that's the goal in life. That's just not how it works. So we were, again, just learning how to move with these obstacles and move through them and know that you're getting stronger every day because of it.

It's it's the idea of you don't it doesn't get easier. You just get better. And I think you are breathing a life into miss Kelly Resendez's life right now.

Yeah. Cathy, that's amazing. I I think most people do believe, like, there's a destination that that they're trying to reach where they don't have to go through some of the challenges. And and like you said, it's continuous. It's the resiliency. It's the you know, you almost grow to expect that they're coming, and how do I how do I prepare myself for those?

So, like, really going back to the very beginning of when you started the company, because we have a lot of listeners that might be a w two. They wanna start a company. They're just at the very beginning. What would you say, like, the most important aspects of, you know, when you created a business? Like, where did you start?

You know, the thing about business is that it's really hard. And I just wanna just be honest. Like, you have potential lawsuits, and we have been sued. You have unhappy customers sometimes if you have a bad day, and you've been it's almost like being a parent. You're like a perfect parent, and then the one day that you have a bad day, that's what your kid remembers for the rest of their life. They have to go to therapy for it. So you know what I mean? I'm telling you. I got older kids and I'm like, are you kidding me? You don't remember the 20 birthdays that I did perfectly and the one I didn't? Anyway, that's just I've got similar stories, Kathy. Yeah. So there it's just it's not easy.

I think the for me, the only way I've been able to get through those hard times is the is the incredible passion I have for it. So I think it would be hard to have a business you don't really care about. I I guess that's just maybe it's possible, but I don't think it would be possible for me because it has to be exciting enough to get me out of bed and know that I'm gonna overcome it, and I'm and and that what I'm doing is making a difference. It has to be a bigger vision.

And kinda coming back to something you guys said of, your skill set just needs to get better to be able to handle it, I would say that that is super true. Like, I am a a I'm a skier. And, you know, when you first start to ski and you go down the moguls, they're terrifying, and you probably will get hurt, and you probably won't even wanna do them. But now I'm in a place in life where I am looking for them. Like, I love moguls because I know how to ski them, and it's fun. So constantly improving your business skills is the same thing so that, like, when the lawsuits come and they will, I look at it and go, I am I have such amazing asset protection. Plus, we have all these it's like a real estate agent. You have, releases that people sign and and, you know, you you're set up so that you know how to handle these challenges.

I guess that's the No. That's great. No. That's great. And I wanna I wanna go a little deeper on this passion thing because we are hearing a lot out there in the world about, like, you should own a business. This is the way that you get there. And and for some people, you know, they're like, hey. You don't need to have passion.

But, you know, I think that's where you've been able to endure this for so long. I mean, I think that's the biggest difference. Right? Is Yeah. Yeah.

And what what would you say, like, are the greatest professionals that you also chose to surround yourself with in the beginning to ensure that you had that asset protection, to ensure that you were set up for the future?

You know, I was I was lucky in the sense that I I had a pretty major radio show in San Francisco, so I was able to interview the best of the best and get, like, personal conversations with these people. This was something that wasn't available back then. There weren't podcasts I'm dating myself, but there there wasn't a podcast. The only way you could really get information was pay an attorney a whole lot of money or a CPA a whole lot of money or, you know, take a a boot camp or they didn't even have really quality things, so I had to figure out a lot on my own.

Back then, even Rias, like real estate investor groups, were just really set up to sell product. And and every single week, you know, someone would get up there in a fancy suit, and people would run to the back of the stage to buy whatever they were selling. There wasn't, like, freely available information, which is why my business took off. I made it freely available. Amazing. But really for myself, it was like, I wanted to know it.

Right. So if I weren't interested like, I look at my daughter, Krista, who you guys know, and she never was interested, you know, because she didn't have the same struggles I had. So her passion is gonna be different than mine, and I I could never kind of understand why isn't she into this? Why doesn't she wanna take over my company? Well, turns out, you know, she didn't have the same struggles.

I I grew up in a generation where my mom didn't couldn't even be on a checkbook by herself. You know? That's right. She couldn't be on title of a property. You know? There there was so little power, and I I grew up with that. My daughter didn't. So her passion is gonna be different than my passion and, her passion turns out to be travel, so she set up a business around that. As you guys know, she helps some people, buy international real estate.

And, so I forget your question. But No. That was that was spot on. I think I think what you said is that you just constantly were surrounding yourself by that person. Yeah. But I just I was lucky enough I was lucky enough to have a a platform that gave me access to people when that was difficult. Yeah. Mhmm. And then I I couldn't find a real estate investment group that that offered what I wanted, so I started one.

Yeah. And that, again, all that came yeah. It was like, I can't find what I need. I'm an entrepreneur by, I don't know, blood. So it was like, if I can't find it, I'm gonna have to create it. That's how it's always been for me. Today, it's a little different. There's more for you, but there's always I think that is the core of an entrepreneur is, like, I need something. I want something. I guess I'm just gonna have to create it because it doesn't exist.

Totally. If you're gonna scratch your own itch, you're gonna have to sign up to do it yourself. And I do think so like you said before, becoming an entrepreneur is signing up to fix problems. Right? You gotta anticipate that the problems are coming.

Tell me a little bit about rituals or recipes. So when you're looking to create success or just live your daily life to create success in a day, tell me a little bit about your rituals or recipes.

I've, you know, I've I don't wanna say perfected it over time, but I've learned I think it is our job to learn ourselves. And, and and the more we learn ourselves, the the better we get at life. Right? So I had to figure out, oh, I I can't sleep. There were years I have a an entrepreneurial brain, and a lot of other people I've I met at your event have busy brains. They're they're, that's kind of the entrepreneurial brain. You can't ever turn it off.

And so I started I had sleeping problems and, like, why it's hard to function when you can't sleep. I found out, like, if when you have a busy mind, you have to be really careful about things like caffeine or wine at night. These are things we love. You know? I love coffee ice cream. It's probably my favorite thing. I can't have it because it has coffee in it. Who knew? I thought it was, like, coffee flavor, but it's like real coffee, you know, the the ones that I like. When I would eat that at 09:00 at night, and guess what? I couldn't sleep. Wine, same thing. Love a red wine. Favorite thing. Can't have it because it it typically will keep a woman awake starting at 2AM. It's like, boom. It's just the sugar in the wine.

So just kind of learning and observing what's working, what's not, and then taking and having the discipline to kind of let go of some of those things that you love so much and finding other other things. Like, I've been able you know, there's decaf coffee. Right? I can or I can have a cup of coffee at 6AM, and that's it. Like, never after that because I have a busy brain. Watching TV at night. Again, I'll do these things on the weekend, but not midnight because it's the same thing. The blue light, you know, from the I think it's the blue light from from the, television will keep you up. So unless you have the the glasses that you wear, you know, to block that, the blue light blockers and, or just don't do it, read instead.

Yeah. So I would start to notice, and then, wow, what a difference a good night's sleep makes. So it it starts to become like, okay. My good night's sleep doesn't start at bedtime. It starts, like, twenty four hours before.

Yeah. And, Kathy, you know, what a powerful statement, and most people don't realize the impact of this. One of the challenges so many entrepreneurs, especially women, have is a lack of sleep. You know, they feel like their time, like, it's in scarcity.

But when you start with understanding what a priority sleep is, your energy level to be able to do those other things is so much higher. So You you gotta yeah. Put your mask on first.

My I trained my kids that, you know, mommy's gonna be not as nice to you if she doesn't get a workout in. And, so, like, my kids I got my kids to support me. And, mom, you you seem a little stressed today. I think you should go to the gym. It's like, oh, that's right. I forgot. I'm much better. I can handle stress when I pump some weights.

You know? You gotta get that you gotta sweat, like, hard. I I'm it's like a lot of people don't like to sweat, but I'm telling you when business is stressful and one of the best ways to deal with it is exercise.

So exercise, sleep, eating well, all these things that we know and most people know but just don't do, and so it's the doing it. It's like, first of all, learn and then do it, and you'll be much more effective.

For sure. Another another area that I think differentiates, you know, super successful people like yourself from others or or maybe having some unconventional beliefs or ways of managing certain things, what would you say where you go against against the grain? Like, what would that be?

I mean, there's a lot. I'm definitely unconventional. But, I put it in scaling smart. Rich and I wrote that book together that I spoke on at GoBundance called Scaling Smart, and it sounds like a book about, you know, 10 x ing your business and stuff, but it's really quite the opposite. It's like, how can your business serve you instead of you serving your business?

And so many people get into business and suddenly they are working harder, longer hours, a horrible boss, which is themselves, and life is actually harder when the dream was that this business is gonna make life easier. And and that's people laugh whenever I say that because it's just true.

So carving out, like, first and foremost, again, knowing yourself and remembering why did I do this in the first place. And usually, you know, like, it's to spend more time with my kids, to have freedom of time, to have a great relationship, to be healthier, and none of those things happen. In fact, the opposite happen generally. So until you are clear about what is the most important thing and carve it out, like, in your schedule.

Rich used to let's Rich is a coach. We're both coaches, but Rich is a, more famous one. He was, part of, creating the ICF, which is the International Coach Federation and and, you know Amazing. Organ yeah. Like, he's Yeah. He was one of the forefathers, I guess, of coaching.

And, so what what he'll say to his high, powered clients is, you know, they come to him for business, but the first thing he'll ask is how's your relationship? They're like, why are you asking? I didn't come here for relationship advice. He goes, yeah. You came to me for wealth and business creation, but if if you don't invest in your spouse, you're gonna lose 50% of your wealth. So what's the point of building if you're gonna Woah. Yeah. And make a drop. Is that right?

And then and then you'd be like, and how's your workout? So, like, I didn't come to you for for that either. And he's he's like, well, if you don't invest in your health, you're gonna lose a 100% of your wealth. So we're not gonna talk about wealth till we look at the whole picture. Mhmm. And most of these men just save their marriages, save their health because they just finally took a look at it.

That is 100% the basis of of what GoBundance stands for. You know, we've got these gardens, these six pillars of a really great life, and, yes, financial freedom matters, but it's it's just one of the things that matters. We do goal setting around all of the things that we feel matters. So I feel in complete alignment

with you there. But then but it's like you know it, but doing it's another thing. So when you are in the throes of building a business and learning stuff you never really thought you'd need to know, running a business is like having a a family, like, depending as we've got 20 employees, it's like having 20 children. And I it's not like our employees are children, but that's what it sometimes feel like. And then you add your clients, and that's, like, another 100 children. And it just that's a big household.

And, you know, I would walk into Montessori's when I was looking for them, and and there would be all these children would be sitting at their tables doing their thing. It was peaceful. You go into, like, another one, and it's like, ah, crazy. So, you know, you you can it can be managed. Right? Let's just say you have to have the systems in place.

But coming back to, like, what is unique about us is Rich would implement it. So in the throes of, like, our ring phones are ringing off the hook and there's issues and problems because there always will be, he would say, honey, I booked a trip. We're going out to town out of town tonight. I got the babysitter. Like, I can't go. I I've got too much to do. He's like, it'll it'll be there on Monday. You could take care of it on Monday. And he would commit to at least once a month get having a romantic night away.

And for the first hour of the drive away, I'd be mad. Like, I can't believe you took me away from our kids and and and just, like and I've got too much to do. And then within an hour, we were back in love and honeymooners and having a great time. And that has now, twenty eight years later, our marriage is as hot and sexy as ever because we Yay. We invest in it. Right? We commit. We set it aside. And if you don't carve out for the things that matter, believe me, they won't matter.

Well and if you're working with a spouse, that is so much even more important. Yes.

Yeah. But either way either way, if you're working or not, you know, you've you've gotta you've gotta invest in it. Make it a priority.

Totally agree with that. You talked a little bit about finding clarity. When you're when you're without clarity, when you're lacking it, what are some steps or some kinda actionable things that you do to help yourself get to clarity?

Our our heart is our greatest guide and especially for women. I think I talked about this at the event. The So horrible. We try to think things through. We try to use our brains to figure things out, and, of course, our brains are useful. But, but the greatest wisdom comes from our hearts, and we know so much, but oftentimes are cut off from it.

So there is a a company called excuse me. There's a company called HeartMath. Mhmm. And they teach you the power of your heart and just some simple exercises when you're feeling confused, when you're feeling, like, you just can't make a decision or or figure something out, take a moment, put your hand on your heart, like, literally.

Imagine your hand is a is your heart and that you're breathing into it. And as you breathe in, the energy around your heart and your hand just grows and expands, thinking about something you absolutely love, anything. Could be your puppy. Could be your baby. It could be a beach somewhere. Just imagine that and breathe into that and and feel the heart expanding, and then ask your heart the question.

You know, what about this partnership or what it is just incredible how the answer will come. You you wanna hang out there all day, Kathy. Right? Because there is a literally a physical connection between the heart and the brain, and the heart actually has the wisdom. But too often, we are cut off from our bodies.

Absolutely. Well, I could talk to you all day just because I feel like spirits and whatnot. But, like, you know, we're just so grateful that you were here with us.

And and one of the one of the main things that really you know, I hope everybody's listening to no matter where you are on your path is that when you put your relationship and your health first, everything else, you know, is is gonna, you know, really fall into place and that much faster. And so many people don't don't do that. That's really what what hit home for me, and it's just such a great reminder.

Having those boundaries, if you don't know truly what you want, you won't even know how to create the boundaries to protect it. So start.

You gotta do that work first to begin with the end in mind. There were a couple things you said that I absolutely love. The idea of the slacklining being this metaphor for life. You've gotta learn how to dance with it in order to to stay on.

I wanna go to Malibu and try this slack on. You know? Come on anytime. I'm I'm I'm, like, close to you in California, Kathy. You're welcome to go.

I love it. And I I I totally believe too when I for myself, this idea of our job is to learn ourselves because it all starts at home. You wanna scale a business. You wanna, you know, have a romantic life. You wanna do anything big. It all starts at home. You're never going to outpace your network will never outpace your your self worth, you know. So until you figure out what that is for you.

I I've just I could not be more grateful for you spending some time with us. And one thing that we really challenge our members to think about is to be prepared with an ask. And you do so much giving back to the world that we would love to ask you. What is a resource or an introduction that would change the ball game for something that you're working on?

Oh, thank you. Well, we're always looking for real estate deals for sure.

We're we're kind? Be specific.

Yeah. We are looking for apartments now, distressed situations. Not not that these apartments they not that the apartment is distressed, but the, I guess, the owner of it, may be in the wrong, debt structure that we can Okay. We can, help them. So, definitely apartments.

We do build to rent communities, and we're always looking for flippers, like just a single family or one to four unit flippers who maybe wanna start flipping to investors because that's what we do. We have an investor group looking for

rental properties nationwide. So always looking for the team. Yeah. I have a couple introductions for you. So I'm gonna call

you. Perfect. Yeah. Amazing. Well, Kathy, you have been just an awesome guest. Just dropped so many wisdom bombs for us today and and so grateful for our audience listening. You know, what's the best way that they can get a hold of you? Realwealth.com

is our website. Reallikerealestate, wealthlikeyourmoney, realwealth.com. And then, of course, I have the Real Wealth Show podcast.

Awesome. Beautiful. Well, everyone, thank you for joining us on the Power of Your Life podcast. Please make sure you're sharing this episode, liking and subscribing because of these truth bombs that Kathy drops. Whoever needs them, make sure you're sharing it. And, we will see you next time.