[00:00:14] Derek Clifford: And we’ve got miss Amanda Cruise on the podcast for us today. How are you today, Amanda?

[00:00:20] Amanda Cruise: I’m great, Derek. Thank you for having me. How are you doing?

[00:00:23] Derek Clifford: Of course, it’s great to have you here and thank you very much. I’m doing awesome. So before we get started why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about your background where you came from and where you are today?

[00:00:37] Amanda Cruise: Sure. So I grew up in a pretty traditional household as far as work and jobs. And my mom retired from a public school system. So I went the traditional route to begin with and I have an undergrad in chemistry, which I do nothing with. I have a master’s in applied statistics, which I also really do nothing with.

[00:00:58] Amanda Cruise: I was working up in DC after college doing analysis for the Navy, doing some war gaming analysis. And then really got strong analytical background from that and moved then down to Richmond, Virginia and joined Capital One where I was climbing a ladder for about a decade, managing a team of analysts there.

[00:01:19] Amanda Cruise: And that’s when I really decided Hey, I love this. It’s challenging. And also I’m not building anything for myself and I’ve always wanted to do that. Could I do it? Would I be successful? And so fast forward a couple of years, I made a decision to start a business, which ended up failing a year later.

[00:01:39] Amanda Cruise: The product we were selling was unsuccessful. So that was really fun. And then we got into real estate investing. So Jonathan, my husband is also my partner. We own a company called voyage investing. We own mobile home parks. Right now we have four parks, 113 lots across those, and we’re looking for more.

[00:01:59] Amanda Cruise: We’re also looking for non residential commercial buildings. And we had spent the first four to five years investing. We’d used only our own money to learn what we were doing and understand what was going on. And we always had people asking to invest with us. So last year we did our first syndication and we’re able to help friends.

[00:02:21] Amanda Cruise: Get into real estate as well.

[00:02:26] Derek Clifford: That’s amazing. Congratulations on all of that. And it sounds like your journey is it has, shown a lot of persistence and diligence in, in what you’re doing. And definitely a four to five year timeframe is about what we’ve. Been finding also for most syndicators for them to be able to get themselves started on this path.

[00:02:50] Derek Clifford: And I love you that you said that you started with your own capital at the beginning, because that’s exactly how we did it as well. Very, important to do that, to play around with your own money first, before you start bringing in other people’s capital, right? Make sure you have a proven model.

[00:03:03] Derek Clifford: Anyways this show is about. Location, freedom, time, freedom, and financial freedom. So can we switch gears here? I want to talk a little bit about you and your family. And can you describe a little bit about how much or how wide your degree of freedoms are for location, freedom, time, freedom, and financial freedom at the moment?

[00:03:25] Amanda Cruise: Sure. So we have two little kids, Jonathan and I have a daughter who just turned six and a three year old son. And so for us being able to. Have as much time with them as possible and to really, be there is the biggest thing. So we do have pretty good time freedom. I would say right now. That’s probably the best.

[00:03:46] Amanda Cruise: We each work about 25 hours a week. We each have 1 day. So we have a kindergartner, but our younger 1 goes to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday to preschool. And then Tuesdays and Thursdays, he’s home and Jonathan and I each have one day just to spend with him each week where we don’t do any work or maybe he even he’s gone to a mobile home park before he’s gone to different places with us, but we have that dedicated time and my daughter’s in year round school.

[00:04:16] Amanda Cruise: So every few months she has three weeks off. Or she has like a mini summer so she has six weeks off coming up in the summer. So we take a lot of time off with her and we travel and go places as a family. As far as time freedom, I think that has been really great for us since we left W two jobs on the location freedom.

[00:04:40] Amanda Cruise: We’re pretty tied to North Carolina. We moved here about five years ago. My parents are here. My sister’s here. We have help with the kids, which we really enjoy my daughter’s in a public school. One location. So we’re okay there. We travel when we want, but we certainly aren’t uprooting and.

[00:05:01] Amanda Cruise: Traveling the world. I’m one of those cool cruise ships where you can go around the entire world in two years on financial freedom. We have a certain level of financial freedom. We were able to leave our tubby or W twos, but also we have to still work. We have assets. So we don’t have they’re not totally passive.

[00:05:22] Amanda Cruise: Anybody who says real estate’s completely passive is either in somebody else’s syndication or has a really, great property manager on a couple single family houses or something like that. But when you have a decent portfolio, it’s somebody’s job to manage those assets. And so that’s what we do on a day to day basis.

[00:05:41] Amanda Cruise: And we’re still growing. So we’re still working. And if I was able to retire, let’s say we sold all of our assets, we could live just fine without having to work. But that’s not the kind of life we want to live where we’re constantly thinking about money or, Hey, it’d be so cool to go to Japan. My husband’s grandmother is from Japan.

[00:06:04] Amanda Cruise: It’d be so cool to go there for a whole month. And you don’t want to worry about how much it’s going to cost at that point. So we don’t necessarily have that where it’s like, Hey, A couple of times a year, we’re just going to go to Japan for this month, or we’re just going to go to Costa Rica for a month.

[00:06:19] Amanda Cruise: So we have a base level, but more, to grow on the financial.

[00:06:24] Derek Clifford: That’s awesome. So of those three degrees of freedom, which one would you say that you guys want to tackle the most going forward? Or what, has been the discussions within your household of which one you want more of or is there one, maybe it’s, multiple.

[00:06:40] Amanda Cruise: Definitely, I’d say financial freedom. That’s the one that’s top on my mind that we work. We continue to work to keep building our network to keep building more and more cash flow. And so we can up and leave whenever we want or have more freedom to do other things that we want to do.

[00:06:58] Derek Clifford: So I love this. And could you talk a little bit about how real estate investing has allowed you to start to gain some of this time and location freedom and also financial freedom in your life?

[00:07:10] Derek Clifford: I want to see how it. Plugs in. You said that you left your W2. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

[00:07:17] Amanda Cruise: Yeah. So when we first started, we bought one duplex with our own money. We just put 25% down and fix it up and put tenants in there. And then we did a couple other. Single family houses, we gutted those or we did a burr and then we got into individual mobile homes and eventually into mobile home parks and commercial real estate as a whole.

[00:07:40] Amanda Cruise: And that’s where we were really able to start growing. Our network quicker and growing our cash flow a lot quicker is on the commercial side. And so our properties right now pay for our lifestyle. And so through commercial real estate, because we do only value add real estate. So that means we take a property that is performing, right?

[00:08:06] Amanda Cruise: It has some sort of income. It’s generating. And essentially, when you’re buying real estate, you’re buying a business, you’re buying an income stream. So we take a property that’s performing in some way, but we know it can be performing a lot better. The rents are way under market, for instance. And so we go and make those changes to make it worth a lot more money.

[00:08:26] Amanda Cruise: And then we force appreciation through that. And obviously if you’re bringing in more rents, then your cashflow increases. So that’s how we’ve used real estate and specifically value add principles to go and force appreciation to gain net worth and also have extra cashflow through that as well.

[00:08:44] Derek Clifford: Yeah. And, one thing I wanted to add to this also is that the, in the discussion, I think you implied this is that when you work in the real estate side, just in the residential, where you’re buying houses and duplexes it’s not at scale. Like you, in order for you to build your portfolio, you have to do it one, one by one, basically.

[00:09:04] Derek Clifford: But when you have commercial Real estate in your portfolio and you’re learning to manage them and you’re buying it on your own. Then what that allows you to do is one transaction that you do on the commercial side is either 50 units or 200 units. It’s usually the same. Obviously there’s a few differences with financing and stuff like that, but operations and acquisition are pretty much the same.

[00:09:26] Derek Clifford: So instead of going in and trying to buy 50 single family homes, which is what. The approach that I took originally starting out eventually I came around to the idea that commercial real estate is a much better, more efficient way to go. And so I love that you guys found that and you’re using that as a vehicle to enhance your own freedom in all dimensions.

[00:09:49] Derek Clifford: So I think that’s an amazing thing.

[00:09:52] Amanda Cruise: Definitely. And I think it depends on what goals are because everybody has different goals. If somebody just loves their W2 job and they can’t imagine not doing that, and they just want to grow wealth slowly and predictably over time, then buying a single family house and having somebody else manage it can be a really great strategy.

[00:10:09] Amanda Cruise: But we were wanting to leave W2 jobs. So we didn’t have the luxury of, hey, in 30 years, we’re going to keep growing wealth. We wanted to replace our incomes quickly. And it took us about five years to do that.

[00:10:22] Derek Clifford: Can you talk a little bit about how a husband and wife team works together? To even leave a W 2 usually what we see is one person keeps their W 2 so that the lifestyle can stay the same and the other one does the real estate thing full time.

[00:10:40] Derek Clifford: Can you talk a little bit about what those discussions were like early on five, six years ago?

[00:10:44] Amanda Cruise: Yeah, absolutely. So I was really the one driving the conversation of let’s get into real estate and I was going down that path. We were both still working, but I was the one. Going out there sending out letters and going to all these meetups and all the things.

[00:11:01] Amanda Cruise: And right now, when we did buy our duplex, Jonathan was doing the asset management of it. So once we got it stabilized, he was good at that process. He took that over. And about a year into our investing, he was actually laid off from his I. T. job. So I was always going to be the one to leave first, but in 2019, he was laid off and I was like, Oh, don’t get another job in I. T. You can always get another job in I. T. We know this is what we want to be doing. Go ahead and let’s just do it now. Now, I, at the time I was thinking, Oh yeah, I’m sure a year from now that’s I’ll be out of my W2 job one year from now. And it took four more years before I was actually three more years until I was actually able to leave.

[00:11:48] Amanda Cruise: Maybe I would have told him to get another it job if I had known it would have taken three more years, but and so that worked out. So it took me until 2022 to leave. So that’s how it went. Progress wise, we did still have my nice cushy salary so we could live on while we continued building up our assets.

[00:12:09] Amanda Cruise: And then as far as how we actually work together, we have just very different skill sets and passions, which is really good in a partnership. So Jonathan loves to do the asset management side. He likes to dig into the infrastructure. I like to do the number side coming from the analysis background. So I do our underwriting.

[00:12:29] Amanda Cruise: I work with our investors and then we split our acquisitions.

[00:12:34] Derek Clifford: I love that. So can you talk a little bit about how you guys discovered these talents or did you fall into them out of necessity right when you got your first commercial investment. Most likely it’s with your guys’s own capital to begin, and you must have been realizing oh he actually likes doing this or I like doing this piece.

[00:12:54] Derek Clifford: How did that unfold?

[00:12:56] Amanda Cruise: Yeah, even before our first commercial property, even back to our very first duplex, I’m always the one who runs numbers. I’m, the analyst, that’s not his thing. And so I’ve always been the one to do that. And once we really got the property stabilized, he just happened to be the one that I would send out anytime a tenant called Oh, you go check this or you go get the tenant in place.

[00:13:20] Amanda Cruise: And he liked doing stuff like that. And he just likes being part of the property on an ongoing basis. And I really like the initial pieces underwriting and getting under contract. And then I, that’s just what I enjoy more. And he enjoys seeing it through and watching the progress. So just from day 1, it happened to to work out that way.

[00:13:43] Derek Clifford: That makes sense. You explained in your background that you have an advanced statistics degree, right? And you’re a very intelligent person. And so I, I’m not surprised that you get that, the acquisition side makes makes it all happen for you. I think that’s a really, cool balance.

[00:14:02] Derek Clifford: And that you guys were able to find something like this where you, had individual grooves that you all, that you just run down now. And it’s just, it’s more of this process that you guys work together on.

[00:14:12] Amanda Cruise: And thank you for that. And yes, it is a process.

[00:14:16] Derek Clifford: Yeah, it takes time. It takes time for that right to set lanes.

[00:14:19] Derek Clifford: And I’m sure that there’s still are disagreements in some points. But that’s just part of business anyway. And when you’re in the business of marriage and also the business of your business That I know that there can be some overlap as well. But I wanted to talk a little bit about how maybe if there’s some people out there who want to learn how to do what you guys did and work together with their spouse, do you have any advice for people to help them create the incredible time freedom that you guys have created for yourselves?

[00:14:49] Amanda Cruise: Yeah. So first thing is identifying which pieces you are passionate about, right? Cause you have to find properties and you have to underwrite those properties and then you have to manage them on an ongoing basis. And if you are bringing investors, you also need to work with your investors and manage that investor pipeline and the conversations with investors.

[00:15:10] Amanda Cruise: There are really 4 different pieces. If you’re not doing investors, then just 3 different pieces, but where are your passions? Where are your skill sets? So that would be the first thing. And then it’s really about learning. We spent so much time listening to podcasts and you have a great podcast on how to create freedom and they’re great podcasts on.

[00:15:30] Amanda Cruise: It’s specifics on real estate and specifics on commercial real estate. And we spent so much time listening to those free resources. I still love to listen to podcasts on investing in freedom and all the different pieces. And that was for us, the biggest thing is books and podcasts and just learning because you can’t really do it until you know what you’re doing.

[00:15:51] Derek Clifford: Did you guys have discussions about what you learned on these podcasts inside of the household? Was that something that came up or how did you guys share knowledge with each other?

[00:16:01] Amanda Cruise: Yeah. Not in any sort of official way. We’d certainly weren’t like you listen to this book and I’ll listen to this book, but we did it because I think it’s just when you’re so excited about something and you’re working towards something together.

[00:16:14] Amanda Cruise: That’s what you naturally want to talk about, because that’s, your life. That’s what we’re working towards. And we were excited about these new properties or hang up on this commercial thing, especially when you’re first getting started. It can be a little bit like squirrel century. I’m like, Oh. How about we burr?

[00:16:29] Amanda Cruise: Oh, how about we do self storage or hey, I heard this guy’s doing this multifamily thing. Have you looked into that? And so it’s, just something that’s exciting and you want to be talking about it. And if your spouse doesn’t get as excited about it. Then maybe that’s your passion and your spouse maybe has a different passion and that there could be really, great things about your spouse wanting to keep a steady job while you’re getting into real estate investing.

[00:16:57] Amanda Cruise: So if your spouse isn’t on board, that might be an advantage to you as well, if they want to keep their job.

[00:17:03] Derek Clifford: I would also encourage listeners out there if you’re looking to try to involve your spouse and your business I, would highly recommend it because most likely they have some sort of skillset or passion that doesn’t Exactly that may be a blind spot for you or that may be something that you’re just, that isn’t important.

[00:17:22] Derek Clifford: And that could very much be a selling point. Even if you are your spouse is working a full-time job or you’re working a full-time job, if you can come in for just a small portion of the business to assist. In things that either you or they love to do, then it’s not really work anymore. And I think that it’s a perfect way to leverage that.

[00:17:41] Derek Clifford: And there’s no one else that you’d rather have in your corner than your spouse. I think you absolutely, you can totally trust your partner. And I think that it’s really important to be able to leverage that extra set of eyes, the extra brain the extra person that you can bounce ideas off of.

[00:17:58] Derek Clifford: And I really think that’s a, that’s a. A key success learning for people out there who want to succeed in any business is to loop in your partner for perspective just for maybe even advisory or consulting at the top level, or for sharing wins and sharing challenges that you’re going through.

[00:18:18] Derek Clifford: Tons of things that you can do with your spouse that I think that you guys have just been experiencing together because it’s been part of your routine for a long time. But I talk with so many investors who are just lone wolves in this, or they have partners outside of their family, that they work with. But man, having a spouse. Be able to be alongside you on the adventure to leverage for skill sets and to leverage for feedback and how to learn faster and quicker. And to cover your blind spots, it’s just super important. And so I applaud you guys for, doing that together.

[00:18:51] Amanda Cruise: I love that. That was really good, like soundbite and everybody has something that they’re maybe not the best at. And a lot of times our spouses tend to be opposite of us. So that is just really great advice.

[00:19:04] Derek Clifford: I love it. So what do you guys do to balance the demands of managing real estate portfolio with your personal life?

[00:19:12] Derek Clifford: I know that you said that you have time freedom, which is excellent. And that’s really great. But you’ve got kids and young ones. How do you guys manage the split between business side and then your personal side? Is there a routine that you guys go through each day or just want to get a little bit of insight into how you do that?

[00:19:30] Amanda Cruise: Yeah, we work pretty standard hours. Like We’re done working by five every day, if not earlier, because my daughter gets off of kindergarten at 3 45. so 1 of us will stop working every day to go get her. At least on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, right? The other 2 days, 1 of us isn’t working anyways. And jonathan does travel especially more than I do because he’s our asset manager. So he’ll have to be gone right now. We have this big project. We’re doing a couple of hours away from us. So he’s out at that mobile home park at least 3 times a month right now overnight 1 night. So we’ll do that. And I’ll take over with the kids or I’ll be at a conference or we trade back and forth that way.

[00:20:15] Amanda Cruise: But on days where neither of us are traveling We’re really done by five and doing dinner with the kids and really there for them, which is. That’s the most important thing to us at this time.

[00:20:29] Derek Clifford: Perfect. Shifting gears here a little bit I wanted to ask you guys, what is your future goals in real estate investing?

[00:20:39] Derek Clifford: And how do you guys plan to further enable your three degrees of freedom, mainly the financial pieces you mentioned what are you guys doing for that? And yeah. What, are your goals?

[00:20:51] Amanda Cruise: We keep growing. So we want to have 300 mobile home park lots and also just 10 million in acquisitions of commercial real estate over the next 2 years.

[00:21:02] Amanda Cruise: And so we’re constantly, I’m constantly reaching out to brokers, reaching out to potential sellers. We have a property under contract right now. That’s another mobile home park, so continuing to grow in that way. And when you do that, the financial side just takes care of itself. Really just focusing on the habits, making those phone calls, doing the underwriting, making the offers and the financial side will take care of itself.

[00:21:30] Derek Clifford: Yeah. Yeah. Nicely said. And so your goal which is in three, in two years to have 300 lots. How are you guys tracking all of this? What are your guys’s routines? What do you guys do to keep the goal in sight and keep vision of that each day?

[00:21:49] Amanda Cruise: So I keep our goals just on my planning and then every week I’m going through and planning my following week based on the tasks that need to get done to support that.

[00:22:02] Amanda Cruise: So I fill my calendar up with those pieces first and then everything else can either fit it or not happen at all. And then I’m tracking the important things. I try not to get too overwhelmed with tracking, but at least track the number of offers. That we’re making, and then I also track other things, just how many times am I going to the gym, right?

[00:22:24] Amanda Cruise: All of our goals, like health goals and whatnot. So really it’s how many offers am I making and making sure my calendar reflects. That’s what our priorities are.

[00:22:33] Derek Clifford: That’s great. That’s great. I, think a well rounded person is the only that’s, the the well rounded wheel is, the only wheel that turns right.

[00:22:43] Derek Clifford: And if you are fulfilled in your personal life, then it’s much easier to move forward in the business life because you have alignment and balance. And very cool that you have. Goals outside of outside of real estate that you guys are tracking and taking seriously also very, important there.

[00:23:03] Derek Clifford: Could you share a story of maybe a challenging situation that you faced while building your portfolio and your quest for the three degrees of freedom? Oh, gosh, where do I start?

[00:23:17] Amanda Cruise: Yeah, we have, I’ll do one that’s top of mind. We have a park right now. That’s a big project park. We bought it heavily neglected.

[00:23:28] Amanda Cruise: This guy’s, I don’t know, he was 81 years old and doing everything still himself, which really means it wasn’t getting done. And so we took over this park And the end of November 2022. So just a couple of weeks before Christmas and we’re triage. There are so many things that needed to be done leaks in the park.

[00:23:50] Amanda Cruise: We’re going through getting the most important things done. Part of which was fixing up homes. And turns out that the homes were in just super rough shape. There was no this was the least of the problems, but there was no insulation on any of the water lines. Now in North Carolina, it doesn’t usually get down to 14 degrees, but in December of 2022, it did.

[00:24:15] Amanda Cruise: And so many of the water lines busted. So Christmas weekend, like Christmas Eve, Christmas day, and the following day, we don’t even have a manager at this park yet because it had been three weeks since. We, purchased it and Jonathan’s feeling phone call after phone call of tenants that don’t have water.

[00:24:34] Amanda Cruise: So really you, these are people’s lives. So when you have things that go wrong or on the commercial side, it’s people’s businesses is their livelihood. You have to address them. You have to be really good at property management. And so that is a challenge in itself. Things come up all the time, and then you have to adjust your time.

[00:24:54] Amanda Cruise: Freedom is now unavailable for a weekend or however long. Luckily, those things don’t happen all the time. But those sorts of property management things will come up and have to be addressed.

[00:25:07] Derek Clifford: Yeah that’s that brings very close to to, to me and, because I had a similar issue also on one of my apartment buildings happened right over New Year’s and this last year, it happened to be, it was a hot water heater.

[00:25:21] Derek Clifford: And so our tenants were just really. Really irritated with that and not having hot water for, and I ended up being actually a week or so because there was a custom boiler that we had to, and it was very expensive. So the partners, we had to actually do like contributions to, it was a nightmare, and then the accounting around the end of the year, right? Because part of it was in 2022 and part of it is 2023. Lots and lots of fun. So I completely understand where you’re coming from and challenges are that’s what makes things important, right? If you have no challenges in a business, then maybe it’s not worth getting into because you’re solving problems in the end entrepreneurs.

[00:26:03] Derek Clifford: We solve problems. And we get rewarded for that. And if there’s no problems to solve, then anyone can do it. And it’s a very diluted and very competitive space. So anyway I appreciate you telling that story because I can relate with it so much. But the last question that I have for you here today is.

[00:26:23] Derek Clifford: Obviously you’re a successful mobile home park operator. What do you guys look for when you consider identifying these investment opportunities? What’s your what’s within your buy box?

[00:26:36] Amanda Cruise: So on the mobile home park side with anything we buy non residential commercial or mobile home park, it has to have value at lots of significant.

[00:26:45] Amanda Cruise: Potential growth in the net operating income. I don’t want to buy anything that septic and I will not buy a wastewater treatment plant. We need to have a solid location. That’s a thing in mobile home parks, these wastewater treatment plants where you take care of the sewage on site, not septic.

[00:27:03] Amanda Cruise: Septics are fine. Wastewater treatment plants are a whole different thing. It’s somebody told me one time, there’s a kind of like a pond in the park. That’s 1 way to describe it. It’s like a sewage pot. Not that and the location is critical. Especially on our non residential side on the commercial buildings location is.

[00:27:22] Amanda Cruise: Absolutely. The most important thing and on mobile home parks. It’s a lot more forgiving as long as you have a growing population and diverse jobs and a reasonable single family home price. Mobile home parks are going to do quite well.

[00:27:37] Derek Clifford: Yeah, excellent. Very good. In terms of numbers, is there anything specific that you guys look for?

[00:27:42] Derek Clifford: Or is it mainly just upside? At least maybe a 10% upside on rental income and then another 10% downside on expense savings. Yes. Or, is there any anything specific in the underwriting that you guys are looking for that are either a no go or a very strong yes.

[00:28:02] Amanda Cruise: It all comes down to the total return that we’re going to get.

[00:28:05] Amanda Cruise: So as long as the returns are in the 15 to 18% conservatively, then we’ll move forward with that. That might mean it’s more on the expense side. Typically, it’s more on the revenue side. And a lot of these mobile home park operators don’t have enough expenses as it is because they’re doing everything themselves.

[00:28:24] Amanda Cruise: And so it tends to be more on the revenue side with what we do.

[00:28:26] Derek Clifford: That makes sense. Yeah. And the 15 to 18% is for internal rate of return, right? Including the sale. Okay. Got it. Cool. Excellent. All right. Amanda, thank you so much for sharing all of this amazing wisdom. We’re going to head into the rapid round part of the show, which is the same five or six questions that we ask every single one of our guests.

[00:28:48] Derek Clifford: And they’re meant to be answered in a quick in a quick way. So in 30 seconds or less and so if you’re ready, we’re just going to go ahead and rapidly ask them to you. You’re ready to go. Let’s do it. All right. So question number one, name any resource that was or is essential to your journey to pursue freedom podcasts, free education.

[00:29:10] Amanda Cruise: That was absolutely critical and still is to this day to keep growing. Which are your favorites? So I like a couple of different ones. I add my let is good in personal stuff. So I love that. I’ve been listening to Brandon Turner’s better life. I don’t know if you’ve checked that out lately, it’s brand new, but the, a couple people he’s had on there were just really incredible with investing mindset and just approaching different trends.

[00:29:40] Amanda Cruise: And it was, it’s been really good.

[00:29:42] Derek Clifford: Awesome. Very cool. Definitely. We’ll give those a shot. Okay. Number two, if you woke up and your business was gone and you had 500, a laptop, a place to live and some food, what do you think that you would do first with that? Starting on calls.

[00:29:59] Amanda Cruise: Yeah, you have to get deals. So I’d be calling brokers and I would go look up seller information for properties.

[00:30:06] Amanda Cruise: I wanted and start calling sellers because if I don’t have a deal pipeline. Then we don’t have any money coming in.

[00:30:13] Derek Clifford: That makes sense. Yep. A hundred percent. Number three, what does your self reflection and goal setting practice look like from day to day?

[00:30:22] Amanda Cruise: Day to day, honestly, I don’t focus too much on that.

[00:30:26] Amanda Cruise: I just track how many offers we’re making. I’m tracking. If I’m going to the gym, I’ve started doing a little bit better with tracking my acquisition funnel. At least for the deals that I end up analyzing, where do they come from? And so that can help me focus my future efforts, but that’s, the number one thing is just looking at how many times a week am I doing the things I need to be doing to get where we’re going.

[00:30:52] Derek Clifford: Excellent. Love it. Number four, what are the core work habits that you attribute most of your success, your personality traits, things like that.

[00:31:01] Amanda Cruise: The first is knowing what I want, knowing what we want in life so I can go after that scheduling. I always schedule the most important things first and other things will either not happen or fill in the gaps and then communication.

[00:31:17] Amanda Cruise: I’ve given my background, just managing a team of analysts and having plenty of people to report out to and everything with sellers with brokers with our investors. I’m good at communicating expectations, communicating what can, what is going to happen? What are we, what is due diligence going to look like?

[00:31:38] Amanda Cruise: When are you going to get updates on this property? What are your returns going to be? And a lot of people may not be the best at setting expectations because it can feel awkward, or you may be afraid that somebody is not going to like the setting. But I think communication is a big piece that I’ve You know, grown pretty strong and over the years.

[00:31:57] Derek Clifford: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And communication is key in anything in a marriage, in a business in the feedback is super, super helpful. And the communication if that’s flowing, then you have information to be able to make adjustments and. And do what the business needs in order to succeed. So I love that.

[00:32:18] Derek Clifford: That’s, great stuff. That team experiences, I’m sure coming in very handy, no doubt. Number, five. What books do you recommend to people to jumpstart their success? Any specific books?

[00:32:33] Amanda Cruise: Sure. I really liked the ABCs of real estate investing by Ken McElroy. I love Ken McElroy. He’s a genius in real estate.

[00:32:42] Amanda Cruise: And that book is specifically on basically fix and flipping, but on an apartment building. It’s a really good mindset shift for anybody who’s doing single family. Hey, this is the same thing. It’s just a bigger scale, but it’s the same thing. So I really liked that book.

[00:33:00] Derek Clifford: Yeah. Awesome. Good book. Good book.

[00:33:02] Derek Clifford: All right. Last question I have for you today is what tool or process has become one of your most important time money or energy saving ninja magic tricks that you use every single day.

[00:33:15] Amanda Cruise: This is a small tool, but we started using it a few months ago and I really like it. Loom is a free version. And then we have the paid version.

[00:33:23] Amanda Cruise: I have an assistant who’s offshore. So just being able to. Do a quick video of exactly what I want. And she can see my screen and hear my voice and stuff that has been really helpful in communicating with my assistant, so Loom is the name of it.

[00:33:38] Derek Clifford: Yeah. One of our favorite tools, Loom, you can actually get it.

[00:33:41] Derek Clifford: If you have a Mac or PC, you can download it as like a desktop application that way it’s within one click right away, or I think they even have a browser extension that you can click to so anyway. Really, cool stuff. I love it. So Amanda has been awesome having you on the podcast.

[00:33:59] Derek Clifford: I wanted to thank you for your time, but before we go today, why don’t you tell the audience a little bit more about how they can find out about what’s happening in your world and maybe get in touch with you.

[00:34:09] Amanda Cruise: Yeah. Derek, thank you so much for having me. My website is voyageinvesting.com and we have our Investor Circle.

[00:34:17] Amanda Cruise: You can join on there. If you’re interested in the passive opportunities we bring and otherwise come connect with me on LinkedIn, Amanda Cruise, and on Instagram, it’s @investingwithAmanda.

[00:34:30] Derek Clifford: I love it. And for the audience, thank you guys so much for listening all the way to this point in the podcast, please, wherever you’re watching or listening to this, whether it’s YouTube or Spotify or iTunes please.

[00:34:44] Derek Clifford: Like comment or just engage with us in general, that way we can appease the algorithm gods and get more and more exposure to more incredible guests like, like Amanda, and then also attract more listeners like yourself to the podcast, because we think we’ve gotten some amazing content and amazing speakers on here.

[00:35:01] Derek Clifford: I want to make sure that we’re adding the most value. So thank you guys for listening. And Amanda, thank you once more for coming on the show, it has been a pleasure.

[00:35:09] Amanda Cruise: Thank you so much, Derek.

[00:35:11] Derek Clifford: All right. We’ll see you guys next week. Thanks for listening. Take care.