Power Forward: Finding Real Estate Opportunities In Times Of Crisis With Nicole Espinosa
Amidst the chaos and fear we are facing with the COVID-19 situation, it helps to be reminded how all of this will soon come to pass. Licensed realtor, bestselling author, and the leading short sale expert, Nicole Espinosa, is here in this episode to do just that and inspire us to continue moving the needle forward in our business and personal life. Letting out her expertise and experience, she shares with us how she has powered forward in life by finding real estate opportunities even in times of crisis. Nicole then gives out some great advice for those who are currently struggling and starting from ground zero, discussing how you can create wealth through passive income and showing the steps to take when facing a short sale. This crisis may have put a halt to your life, but it does not have to overtake your personal goals. Learn from Nicole how you can rebound from this situation and become the boss of your own life in this conversation.
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Power Forward: Finding Real Estate Opportunities In Times Of Crisis With Nicole Espinosa
I am honored and blessed to bring you a special guest that is near and dear to my heart. She's a bestselling author of the Short Sales Uncensored and the leading short sale expert based in Dallas, Texas. It's funny how we met. Her name is Nicole Espinosa. Before short sales, she had a background in real estate operation management. She was working with over 50 lenders. She's closed thousands of short sale transactions successfully and continue to process hundreds a month for clients nationwide. She's been on podcasts, TV segments. She is a boss to be reckoned with. Even though I refer to her as the short sale queen, another word that comes to mind when I think about Nicole is the rebound boss. This girl has been through it to hell and back. She keeps rebounding with no excuses. When she goes in, she goes all in. Nicole, thank you for being on the show.
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
It's been fun watching your journey on Instagram and YouTube and watching you rock it out in your own right. We need to address the elephant in the room of what's transpiring right now. None of us would have thought that the Corona would have hit like this. You’ve been such a great place of community, wisdom and sharing with people what's going on, how they can react to it and not respond in a chaotic demeanor, but put their feet on the floor, take a deep breath and sharing with them how to power forward. I'd love for you to share a little bit more about even the webinar that I listened to and your heartbeat behind what's going on, then we'll dive into your story.
Thanks again for having me. I'm excited to be here. That's a great way to start it out because everyone is searching for answers. Everybody is sitting at home. They're consuming so much on social media and the news especially. Like anything else with the news, it's promoting chaos and fear. The biggest thing is that everybody needs to take a deep breath and remember that even though this is unprecedented, we are able to come out of this. The people that are not paralyzed by it and they're taking action to move the needle forward in their business and in their personal life, they're the ones that are going to thrive.
When you go back to 2008, 2009 when the market crashed and people lost their jobs, their homes, all of that, that was something that we had never experienced. Yet the most amazing companies came out from it. The Uber and all of these huge companies, they have thrived in crisis. We have a history of that. In any market, we're going to talk about real estate specifically because that's what we do. There's always going to be an opportunity. You have to look at it that way. You have to look for you to change and be able to pivot. I saw this thing on Instagram. It was like a pivot is the word of 2020. I was like, “That is so on point.” We were living our lives. We were traveling. You and I have talked about this. I have four trips that I was supposed to go on. I was to the point where I was like, “I'm traveling so much. I don't even have time to do anything else.” Now I'm like, “All I have is time.”
It’s the same with you. You had your book tour and all this stuff that was going on. This is something that has been a huge blessing. Has it been hard? Absolutely. If you’re a mom, that in itself figuring out with your kids and your sanity. The one thing that I always say that I don't have a lot of is time and that's what we all say. This is such a huge gift. What we do with it will be able to move the needle forward in our lives. This isn't the end of the world. It's heartbreaking. There are a lot of things that are going on with our economy, with people that are losing their jobs. There are a lot of opportunities. Everything I've been talking about and putting out there is like, “Let's come up with strategies. Are you focusing on the right daily actions so that you can still be thriving despite the circumstances?”
That is well put. Even in one of my posts, I said, "Unprecedented times, calls for unprecedented pivots.” This honestly could be someone's moment of reinvention. How much time do we have in regular day-to-day life? We don't have much of it. This could be the time where people draw a line in the sand and say, “This is day one of my new normal and my new life. It will never be the same. This is the day.” Even it being April of 2020, the exciting thing about this is we entered quarter two. What are you going to do to up-level from quarter one? How are you going to make the impact large? This gives us a phenomenal opportunity.
One of the big things that we all have to be self-aware on is asking yourself, what's going on inside? How are you describing your internal world? I read this on an Instagram post. There are three different ways that you can describe it. It's a raging ocean, it's a babbling brook or it's a placid lake. We cannot control our circumstances, but we can control how we react. If we choose anything other than the placid lake, it's going to be chaos on the inside. It's going to be chaos on the outside. If we decide a placid lake where there's peace inside, all bets are off and you can power forward to your success and pay that forward to others. You are an absolute champion of that. That's why I love following you on social media.
I appreciate that. I love what you said. That's a great illustration. That's powerful. I don't ever want to paint a picture that every day is like this. There have been days even through this journey that I'm more of a therapist than anything else. It's hard not to take on the reality of what's going on. It's not perfect, but every single day you're keeping perspective. You're sticking to your routine. You're doing what it takes every day, not on the days you feel like it. It's the daily actions and people want those end results, but they don't understand that it's the consistency that is going to be moving it forward.
The consistency and having that discipline is also going to help you on those bad days because we can't help it. That's the world we live in. We're human beings. There are times where I’m breaking down in the shower because it hits me all at once. There is much of it. It's hard not to internalize that, but it's an inside job. It's the peace inside. It's making sure that I'm keeping perspective and understanding like, “I have to keep moving forward.” I'm going to focus on the things that I can control and that's something that I've told my team and my community. What can you control? I understand this sucks. I understand this is happening, but what can you control? Let's focus on those things because those are the items that we can move forward and everything else will fall into place. We don't want to spend energy focusing on anything else. That's helped tremendously for us.
Real Estate Opportunities: People who are not paralyzed by fear and continue to take action to move the needle forward in their business and personal life are the ones that are going to thrive.
I even have it written on my mirror in my bathroom, "Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most successful chapters in our lives won't have a title until much later.” Even when it feels like it is complete pandemonium, you keep putting one foot in front of the other. There have been moments in my life and in my journey where I look back. I'm like, “That was hell going through it.” I didn't understand what was going on, but that was one of the most powerful chapters in my story. You have to keep holding fast to your vision, keep holding fast to those goals, do or die. I'm moving forward. It doesn't matter. I love seeing what you put on social media of how it was such a chaotic day. You felt like you were failing and not doing the job that you felt you are called to do. Your adorable little daughter has a lady boss attitude, Emma. She said something to the effect of, “I love you. You're doing a great job.” What did she say?
She's like, “My heart’s happy. I know you're stressed out, but you're doing good.” I broke down crying. I was like, “I love you.” It was so innocent. My kids are seeing me 24/7 now. I'm grateful because family members have taken days of homeschooling. It's not 100% on me, but that day specifically, I already woke up with such a heavy heart. I woke up to all of these messages from family members that aren't working, from agents that are like, “I can't even pay my rent.” All of those stories like clients that are scared to death of losing their house through all of this and all that stuff. It was almost like this defeated feeling and I was like, “Nicole, just do it anyway.”
I forced myself to get out of bed. I’m sure people that are reading this can resonate with that. I had to push through it. The first thing I did was I went on a run. I wanted to go back to bed, start again tomorrow. I don't want to get up. It's hard to because we're not physically going anywhere. I'm grateful for my office, but I can't go if I have my kids. I had to homeschool them that day. Let's be real. I'm trying to be a good mom. I am not a homeschool mom. That is not within my forte, but I have to do what I have to do. I had 5 or 6 Zoom meetings that day.
I was in between trying to answer, “Mommy, I don't understand this.” Even at my status, I was like, “I don't understand it either. Let me Google it quick.” I have no clue what they're trying to say. The teachers are not teaching, they're just handing assignments. What happens? It puts a burden on the parents. It was between calls and working. I had been up since 5:00 in the morning. By the time, I put them to bed it was 9:00 at night. You want to talk about a full day, the whole entire day of doing that. That's when my daughter said that and I broke down crying.
I was like, “I need to change my perspective and understand I am so lucky to have this time.” Even with my kids, this is the most time I've spent with my children their entire life. They're in school 8 hours a day. I'm a single mom so I don't have help. I have a nanny that helps pick them up. I travel a lot. It's one of those things where it forces us to slow down and truly understand this is important. This doesn't matter at all. I was doing it, but it doesn't matter at all. It's been such a blessing despite how emotionally difficult it's been, challenging, all of that. It's also been such a huge blessing. That was a long day.
Let's dial into the state of the United States and where things are at. Put yourself into the shoes of someone that's maybe struggling to pay the mortgage, maybe one of your friends that reached out to you. What is your best recommendation? There are some lenders that are saying, “Go ahead. Don't pay the mortgage.” I listened to your webinar. You're like, “That's probably not a good idea.” If you want to share what is their best plan of attack if they're in that boat.
I went on a little rant on Facebook and the video has been shared over 350 times. It was funny too because afterward, I was like, “I’m going to rant on Facebook. Let me watch it so I don't look crazy. I want to make sure.” I was so passionate about the fact that there's so much misinformation out there as everyone's freaking out especially with unemployment, 6.6 million people. That's where we're at as far as filings. It's to the point where if you were to call and file unemployment, their system is crashed. They can't even take on your applications. If you look at a chart, this is the highest it's been since the last recession.
It's insane. The crazy part is this is just the tip of the iceberg. We're not even in the thick of it. We've only been mandatorily quarantined for a couple of weeks. We still have another month to go. That's the crazy part as far as the perspective of what is to come. My best advice, if you're in a situation where you don't have income and you know that's temporary to use the time that the bank is giving you and understand that this is not going to be a forgiven thing. A lot of times, if you are not able to pay and the bank says, “We'll give you a forbearance, which means we basically put a pause on everything for three months.” That's the norm. At the end of those three months, you will have to pay all three months plus the next upcoming payment.
The reason why I went on that rant was that there are many articles and many real estate professionals that are like, “If you need help, don't pay your mortgage. Call your bank and tell them you can't pay.” They're not sharing the full story because most people live paycheck to paycheck. If you do have some type of financial hardship where you're not producing income, you're not going to be able to come up with four months, even if you have a couple of months. It's a blessing that the bank is willing to give you those couple of months but use this time to come up with the money.
What's going to happen long-term is if you don't have those four months of payments, once the forbearance period is up, you're going to be forced into a loan modification. The only way that they can modify or adjust your loan is if they go through a loan modification. What does that mean? That means that they can change the interest rate. That means that they're going to add all of those payments that you're not paying to the back of the loan, which is going to take away your equity. Whatever you decide to do, think long-term.
Most people that we see that are in these situations are emotional, which is warranted. I understand what's going on, but you do not buy a house not to have equity. That's the entire point of purchasing a home. If you're going to be in a position where you're like, “I have $50,000 of equity, but if I do this and loan modification, it's very real that I could lose $30,000 to $40,000 of that to a loan mod or to some type of workout auction.
Is that worth it? Absolutely not. If that's the case, think about if in the long term I can't afford the house, I need to sell it now so that I can keep the money in my pocket and then start over. It depends on what your situation is because there are some people that really could go through this in the next couple of months. Use that time to come up with the payment because they do not have to pay right away. That's the best thing that you could do is use those three months to come up with the money, whether it's selling something, getting another type of job. There are plenty of people that need help because although a lot of jobs and companies are shutting down, there are other companies that are ten times busier that you could be working in the meantime.
As long as you're thinking that way, there's nothing wrong with doing it forbearance, but understand the long-term effects or consequences of doing something like a loan modification. Most people, they do loan mods thinking, “Great, you're going to adjust my loan to lower my payment.” That's not what happens. The bank does not forgive anything. The bank is a business. While they're saying they're helping, they're helping your immediate need, but long-term they're screwing you because they're adjusting your loan.
We've seen people that have had fifteen-year notes get extended back to 30. We've seen interest rates that are adjusted from 3% or 4% to 8% or 9%. If you do the numbers on how much of a huge difference that is and how that is long-term, it's massive and ridiculous. If you don't have the money, it's either do that so you don't get foreclosed on or have to live with the terms that they give you because no bank is going to allow you to refinance if you're behind on your existing mortgage. They don't explain any of that. The representatives on the phone are like, “Don't worry, we'll tack it on the back of your mortgage.” I'm like, “Let's think about what that means and what does that look like.”
My best advice is if you are in some type of financial hardship, it might be best to spend these next couple of months to figure out like, “Should we sell it because we can walk away, $40,000, $50,000 might change the trajectory of our life. We then can start over because otherwise, we lose that money into a loan mod or whatever terms that the bank negotiates. Now we're staying in our home, but at what cost?”
When you get educated, when you know better, you do better. When they call the bank, do they need to sign something for the deferment? How do they get educated on the ins and outs of, “We'll tack it onto the back?” How do they know?
The only way to do that is a loan modification. They'll send them an entire agreement because if you change anything to the terms of the mortgage, you have to re-sign because now it's essentially a brand-new mortgage. They have to file it and all that. For forbearance, all the major lenders have their own programs or what they're willing to offer for each client. If it's a government-backed loan, they're doing three months. A lot of the smaller lenders, you have your PHH, RoundPoint Mortgage, Freedom, Box, Star, all of those. They're doing their own programs individually.
It's not the same across the board. All they need to do is call their lender and figure out what they are offering for someone that's in this situation for their borrowers. The bank will run it down with them saying, “We're going to offer you two-month forbearance. We're going to do this. We're going to do that.” Based on that information, they'll know what they can do. Across the board, no matter who your lender is, forbearance is the same regardless. It's the fact that they're putting a pause on you owe it now. You'll just owe it later. Whether they want to pause it for three months or they want to pause it for six months. If you pause it for six months, now you owe six months plus the next mortgage payment. That’s essentially seven months of payments. Understand that because it's a gift or it's a blessing to be able to have that time but make sure you're using that time so that you can come up with the money.
That's why I'm such a big advocate of creating multiple streams of income revolving around your passion zones. The average millionaire has seven streams. It's important to have a plan B in case something happens to the plan A. It's important to be thinking about the long-term repercussions that if all hell breaks loose, what are the plans?
Passive income is everything. That's how you create wealth. If you're a real estate agent or somebody that's aspiring to be an investor, that's something that you have to consider seriously. That's why a lot of people, the ones that are thriving are the ones that do have multiple sources of income. I can't believe how over-leveraged, even big huge companies are. It's only been a couple of weeks that they've only had to do one payroll and they're shutting down. If that doesn't speak volumes of the financial literacy of many companies and entrepreneurs, I don't know what does.
I've been a real estate investor for several years. It's my second strongest stream of income to date. I have a property manager, but I text all my renters and checked in with them to see how they're doing. If I need to work with them, I can. All of them said, “No, I'm not affected by the Corona.” I'm so thankful for them that they are in a good spot that's not necessarily the truth for a lot of other parties. For them, I'm glad that they're all in a great spot. With that being said, I talked to two of my friends. They’re very green in real estate investing. They asked me, “What do you think I should be doing with the cash that I've been saving up for years?”
I could share my perspective, but I want to hear from you. Nicole, I want to hear what your thoughts are about diving into the market as far as real estate investing. Airbnb has turned upside down. Besides the Airbnb, what are you thinking as far as investing in a flip or a buy and hold or student housing? What are your thoughts on someone starting from ground zero?
Short Sales: The Raw Truth Of Closing A Short Sale
They need to hang tight. They need to stay as liquid as possible because it’s their time to shine. In the next few months, we are going to a surplus of so many inventories. We're going to have many properties that are going to be a buyer’s market. There is no doubt in my mind, I can say that with full confidence, knowing how high the default rates are and they're going to continue to climb. There's going to be not only many short sales that are going to be flooding the market but even homeowners that need to sell that haven't been able to sell because people aren't wanting to see houses because of the economy shutting down and wanting to go out. They might be putting it on hold, but they still need to buy a house. Buyers are going to have so much leverage. With that said, there's also going to be many opportunities to buy properties at a discount.
Even though there is always a good time to buy when you have a crisis like this and you have more inventory. You still have people that are desperate because of foreclosure, because of their circumstances. Now is the time to buy properties cheaply and hold onto them. I can't say regret because first of all, I don't have a lot of regrets. I feel like everything is a part of who we are. It's part of our story. I wish I would have done some things differently, but I know what I do now. One thing that I wish I had the opportunity to do, which is a better way of saying it, was when I got into the market, I had many properties that were ridiculous deals.
As I was building my pipeline and investors made millions of dollars off of the properties that I sold to them and understanding what I could have done now. Understanding that there are many properties that I could have held onto as rentals. They would be worth three times the amount that I purchased them. That's something for me personally that I am working on building a portfolio through this. If I don't come out with at least a couple of properties, I would have failed myself. I feel like this is how you create true wealth. If you are one of the fortunate people that have saved money and that are liquid, you need to prepare. You need to find people that are in the front lines. Team up with a good agent that works with investors. Talk to people like yourself. If you're an investor, if you're a wholesaler, you're going to come across many of those houses.
If I was that person and I've been on the sidelines, I would be making relationships like crazy because you're going to be the commodity. You're going to be the one with the cash that everyone's going to be looking to sell those deals too. I would sit and wait. I would rent them out. I would hold onto those houses. In the next couple of years, watch them increase in value again as the market starts to get better. I think that this will be a couple of years that we'll see the effects. Truly no one knows to what extent because we don't know how long we're going to be shut down as a country. We don't know the depths. We don't know any of that. I do know that because of what's going on in the next couple of years is where a lot of the opportunity is going to come from.
It seems like you are in my head or I was in your head when you were saying that. That's almost the exact conversation with two of my friends that want to jump into the market. I feel like wherever there is a pandemic, on the flip side, there is a massive opportunity. I jumped into real estate investing when the last bubble burst. It was perfect timing. There was a property that was in a good market. It was going for $225,000. I bought it for $105,000 in cash. I got a renter in there. I paid it off completely and it cashflowed from day one. The equity that's in that property is legit.
I got a line of credit, pulled it out and now I'm investing in another piece of property because of that. It's amazing the opportunities that you can create for yourself and be able to pay that forward to other people. Even in the wholesaling space with seeing the shifts in the market, it's interesting to see the type of crisis that we're able to contract these properties for and also with the cash buyers, how much better of a deal they're able to get now versus a few weeks ago. It can be unnerving for people that are not in a great boat, but if they can be thinking creatively, I'm always asking myself and always challenging the people that I'm coaching and I'm training, are you in the fixed mindset or are you in the faith mindset?
Whenever a problem pops into your mind, the first gut reaction should be, “Here's the solution.” If you stay in a fixed mindset, it's a vicious cycle downward. If you say, “There's a way to figure this out. Everything is figure-out-able, game on.” That's very well said, Nicole. Tell me as far as with your pulse on the market and your business with being the short sale queen, what do you see the next six months are looking like? If someone is potentially facing a short sale, tell them what their next step should be, even potentially reaching out to you if they find themselves in that type of circumstance.
As people are trying to put their finger on their personal situation, financial situation, all of that, we're going to see a lot of people that are going to try and work out options with their bank first. We will see a wave of people that have been hanging on. This was like the tip of the iceberg for them. They already had a hardship. They were already in distress and they're going to need to do something. We will see that immediately. In the next few months, we're going to see people that have tried to do something with the lender and they weren't successful. They need to sell. We'll see more people that have been trying to hold on.
It's going to depend on their financial situation, how fast the government opens back up, that allows these businesses to open back up and start making money again. If somebody does find themselves in a short sale situation, we're nationwide so we love and would be honored to help them. Even if it's agents that want to partner up with us, they can head to our website, TheSSQueen.com. They can always call us and ask questions. My entire career I've always said, “Use this as a resource.” We also put a lot of content out on YouTube. Every week we put a video out as far as helping agents, real estate investors and even consumers. We're trying to be a resource because there's no one else out there that puts information on what to do.
This is such a niche. I'm sure that there will be a ton of people that are going to try to do it in the next few years or so. This is not something that you learn overnight. Going back to my book, that's the whole reason why I wrote it. When I was starting out, I had to figure everything out for myself. If I can help educate agents and investors so that when they are speaking to these homeowners that they can give good advice and stop turning them away and stop telling them the wrong things, then overall, we'll be better as a community. I'm passionate about that.
Also, share your Instagram handle because you share so much great content on your YouTube channel. If you want to share with them how they can access you there and then also your Instagram handle.
YouTube is The Short Sale Queen. On Instagram it’s @TheNicoleEspinosa. Feel free to reach out. If you are looking for specific content and things like that, people are always messaging us and we'll try to create a video on it or put that stuff out to the community.
I know that we've been talking a lot about the ins and outs of what the state of the US is, which is important to be educated, to know what your options are and feel a pulse on the market. I also want to touch a little bit about your story. We're going probably a little bit longer. I would love for you to share your backstory, where you came from, what you were doing before this, how you've become the expert as the short sale queen and where you are looking to go moving forward. Share the details on that and we can finish up after that. I want people to understand who this powerhouse Nicole Espinosa is.
I'm originally from Orlando, Florida and moved to Dallas, Texas. When I moved, I was 21-years-old. When I moved here, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I'd always been in sales. It was always a little entrepreneur, selling things and had little businesses. My first job was at an REO brokerage, which is Real Estate Owned foreclosure brokerage. I got into the market as it was crushing. This brokerage specifically, that's all they did. They'd have hundreds of listings a month. I was there every single day. The broker ended up hiring me to run the office. Fast forward a year later, I was managing pretty much all of our departments, working with the asset managers and learning so much of how they worked and operated.
It was an awful job because I was also in charge of the evictions and reporting back to the banks what the status was, whether it was occupied or vacant. Kicking out these families and getting the phone calls. I had a six-month-old at the time. I was working 12, 13-hour days. It was a lot. When I finally decided this was not for me, I had gotten my license online and decided, “I'm going to be a real estate agent. I'm going to try and do this myself.” At the time, I was so ignorant because the only thing I knew about real estate was REO. I had no idea what a CRM was or how to work with clients.
I didn't know anything. I knew that I was leaving a salary, benefits, all of that to go out on my own. Within a couple of weeks, I had my first closing. I was in the office 8, 9 hours a day because I was used to it. I was used to running an office. I was used to working my butt off. Here I am trying to be a traditional real estate agent with no direction, guidance or any knowledge of how it works. I was signing up for every phone time, at the time it was Keller Williams. Nobody else wanted to do it. I was on the phone because I didn't know anybody. Finally, I had my first deal. It was cash. I was three weeks in. I remember looking at my commission check and I was like, “I can do this.”
The first listing appointment that I set was a short sale. At the time, I didn't know that. I knew that the homeowner told me that if he were to move forward with the listing at the price I suggested, he would have to bring $10,000 to closing that he didn't have because he was behind. I went back to my office, to my broker at the time and I was like, “What do we do?” She's like, “It's a short sell but don't even waste your time on it. Don't bother with it.” Everyone pretty much said the same thing. They were like, “Don't even waste your time with it.” I was young and ignorant. I was like, “I got my first listing, I'm going to figure this out.”
What do you do? I was like a sponge. They're like, “Call the bank and see what they're willing to do.” I was on the phone with Ocwen for over an hour. I'm sure this guy is still talking about me to this day, how annoying I was because I was asking 100,000 questions. I was like, “Let me do it.” Months later, I complete my first short sale and not well, but I did it. It closed and funded. The reason why I was interested in it and the reason why I started doing it was that nobody had any answers. Anybody I had talked to was all wrong information based on their limited experience or interaction.
Even the banks only had lost mitigation departments. Most of the lenders didn't even have full short sale departments because the only thing that they were prepared for were foreclosures, not shorts sales. Loan modifications have always been a thing but short sales, they weren’t. There was never a need for them. I started marketing for them. I started developing the process that we do now, which is then updated and things like that but just the core things that we do every single day. After a few years, I started teaching classes about it. I started getting out there and educating agents. I became an expert locally. I became the person that they went to because I was the only crazy person that wanted to do it or knew how to do it.
There was a boom of everyone and their mother wanted to do short sales. It was 2013, 2012 when the REO market dried up, then everybody was an expert. Huge investment companies were doing their own shorts sales, a lot of the OG investors from the 2000s. They had huge departments so they did everything in-house. It forced me to become even more creative in how I can try to get business and get it referred to me if everybody's competing. Once the bank started doing hundreds of thousands, millions, whatever number, they started cracking down and realizing if we're going to do this on a high level, because REO started drying up, just the simple fact that we started doing many shorts sales. If we're negotiating before it goes to foreclosure, there are no more foreclosures.
Once that happened and REO started drying up, all the agents were competing, the bank started cracking down on the processes. They started requiring an agent to be involved, which eliminated many of the investors because the investors couldn't negotiate their own deals anymore. Fast forward to 2014, 2015, the market starts completely recovering and I'm still doing it. The one thing about a lot of the people that I've talked to, we're going several years in that I've been in the business. I'll talk to people from 2009, 2010, they’re like, “You're still doing short sales.” I’m like, “Yes, that is correct. I'm still doing it.” Now we do it on such a high level. It's been a crazy journey.
When I wrote my book, it’s probably one of the scariest things that I did and the most uncomfortable because you're putting yourself out there. You don't know how it's going to be received. I had this idea because when I was teaching these two-hour classes, I had them certified by the local associations for CE credit. Every single time I teach a class, they're like, “Can you do a longer class?” I'm like, “No, it's already two hours. This is already long.” People wanted more information. Fast forward 2016, I have this idea. I’ve just gone to a divorce. I was like, “I'm going to do this.” It took me a year to take action because it was for me the most intimidating thing. Once I finally decided that I was going to do it, I got it done in a couple of months. I gave myself a deadline. In my fashion, I did it the day before. I was like, “It's going to be before the end of the year, December 31st.” It's a fetish. I went through and self-published. It's available on Amazon and pretty much on every platform. It's crazy how it took off. A year later after I published the Audible, it’s number one on Amazon in the real estate category, which was crazy, the Kindle and all that.
The biggest thing I learned from it was every single thing that I've done in my journey, every single thing made me nauseous. I felt sick to my stomach. Who do I think I am? I'm not going to do this. You push past it. At this point in my life, that unsettling feeling gets me excited because I know this is going to be epic. This is going to be huge. You face the fear and you do it anyway. It's insane the things that come out from it when you do it with being so uncomfortable. I've been consistent on Facebook. It was one of my biggest platforms for a while now. I remember the first live video that I did and I wanted to throw up. I'm like, “What's my name? I don't understand. What do I do again?” I have no idea. I forgot who I am.
Fast forward, I'm doing videos all the time, interviews and shows. It's one of those things where if you would've asked me a few years ago, I probably would've laughed like, “What? No, that's not me.” You keep growing and you keep evolving. You become a better version of yourself when you make yourself a priority and you face that uncomfortable feeling and you do it anyway. If I can give any advice to anyone is if you're scared, that means you're doing something right. If it were easy, every single person would have done what I've done. If it were easy, it wouldn't even be a thing. It wouldn't be success. There would be so much of it. It wouldn't be impressive.
The people that I've talked to that are doing things that are way more impressive than me. I respect them and look up to them. The things that they tell me are like, “You did what?” I was passionate and committed to my why. I was committed to the bigger picture that I took a leap of faith and I trusted myself. I did the work. Understanding that and it was a little bit of ignorance but it was a lot of passion. It was a lot of me trying to figure it out as I went along the way. We took the company national in 2018. I can't believe it's 2020.
One of my bright ideas, by now the girls are like, “What now?” I'm like, “I've got a great idea.” They know that I am not messing around because when I come up with something, I am committed to whatever I do. Within hours, I am the person. That's probably been my biggest weakness is that I take too much action. The whole analysis paralysis, I don't even understand what that means. If I have something, I'm all in. It's also been my biggest weakness because when you think about it if you commit to too many things, that's how you burn out. You're not able to take it all the way.
When I decided to go national, I was having all these people from different states like, “Would you ever consider helping us here?” I'm like, “No, I'm in Dallas, Fort Worth, in Houston, in Texas.” I decided to launch the Short Sale Queen. It was within a matter of hours. I’m like, “I wonder if this is a trademark.” Hiring a trademark attorney 1.5 hours later to file everything. Two days later, getting a logo and starting forming the business. It's been crazy. We have 140 listings the last time I looked. We consistently do over 100 listings a month. That's been consistent.
Real Estate Opportunities: Your company is not just about you. It is also about the relationships that you spend most of your time with, because they too buy into the vision just as much as you do.
That is inspiring on many levels. You came into this being a newbie, not knowing what end is up, going through hell, but skipping through it and putting in the sweat equity, the time and look where you've come. It's pure grit. Getting through it, thinking outside the box and having that confidence. That's the thing that resonates with me. Even in my prior career of what I was doing, people would be like, “How are you so confident? Every time that there's a problem, you have a solution.” I've been breathing, eating and sleeping this for countless years. If I don't have a good solid answer, there's something wrong. We don't start out there, but as we keep putting one foot in front of the other and we keep becoming a master of our craft, it's phenomenal how you can absolutely move mountains. The other thing that you've done a phenomenal job on is you've done incredible with building an amazing team. Tell us about the scaling piece of your business as well and how were you able to hire the right people and put them in the right places?
I could write a whole other book of what not to do. Maybe that will be How Not to Run a Business 101. From the very beginning, the one thing that I've always been good at is culture. I was not good at identifying people's skillsets, but I was good at culture. People were so loyal because of what I created, the community I created, the environment, all of that. I learned the hard way as I continued to scale that if you're not intentional with growing your organization, understanding what needs to happen with each role. A lot of times people are like, “I need help.” That's the extent of what they think or how far they think in hiring someone. That will catch up to you.
If you're trying to grow your operation and be able to scale because the things that I was doing on the level of 20, 30 listings a month, there's no way in hell we would be able to do it here at this level. That's something that you want to talk about failing forward has been defeating at times, exhausting all of the above. A lot of it was understanding my skillset, understanding how I am as a leader. Understanding my weaknesses. I'm a terrible manager. I'm a phenomenal leader, but I am a horrible manager. I cannot wake you up in the morning. I am not good at babysitting you. I don't have the capacity for it.
There are some individuals that need that. They need the structure to be able to everyday report to you, whatever. Realizing I had to get out of the way and hire someone that was able to keep them accountable. What was happening was I would give you a task. I wouldn't come back to you with it until either shit hits the fan or somebody is complaining or I realize it's not being done. I'm like, “What's wrong with you? I gave this to you. I forgot about it. That's your job now. That's why you're sitting here and I'm paying you.”
People don't work that way. If they do, generally they're not working for you. That's been the hard piece because I'm also like, “Fine, I'll do it myself.” There was a period of time where I was so burnt out. I was working 80 hours a week because I was doing my job. I was micromanaging other people's jobs. I had my hand in every single part of the organization. I was wondering, I'm like, “Why can't I scale this? I'm working so hard, but I feel defeated because I'm not making money.” We're doing sales, but we're not making money for the staff that we have. It's because they were just bodies in the organization. I didn't equip them. I take full responsibility because I still adore every single person that's ever worked for me. You might ask maybe two people, the people that have been with me forever.
I had employees for years from the very beginning. They were as miserable as I was. They didn't want to quit because they loved me and they loved our vision. They hated the actual job, the actual tasks. Let's be real. Life is too short. Your job and your company, that's where you spend most of your time. Those are relationships you spend most of your time. Everybody needs to be happy. It's not about me. It's about them too, doing something that they love to do. They buy into my vision as much as I do. That has been a huge thing for me.
I got to the point where I was like, “I'm done.” I got a mentor. I was like, “I'm going to try this out. I put myself in a new environment. I need to start all over. In Nicole fashion, I fired everyone at once because I don't know how to do anything on a small scale. Logically the people reading this that are very logical are probably like, “What is wrong with you? Do one at a time.” I couldn't. I was like, “Everybody out, get out.” It's funny because they were as relieved as I was. I was almost in tears firing some of the people that had been with me from day one because I am loyal and they were loyal. They were relieved when I fired them.
It was then just me doing everybody's jobs and me being the salesperson I am, I was like, “I'm going to figure it out.” High blood pressure and a single mom exhausted. I don't even think my kids knew my name at that point. It was literally to the point where it was like, “I'm either going to quit or I am going to figure this out, but there is no middle. This is not sustainable.” I hired my first person. It was such a God thing. Everything fell into place. I put an ad out. She was the first person to call. She's my operations manager now. She was inquiring. She was being nosy because she had done short sales before.
She's like, “What is this company?” I was like, “You have no idea how to do this because nobody knows how to do this.” I’m quizzing her and she came for the interview. She was like, “I read your book and I probably would have added this and this.” I fell in love with her. I was like, “That is the best thing that she could have said. I tested her on every level. It was such an amazing fit. Everything that I had, I needed and didn't even know that I needed at the time. It was my complete opposite. The same passion, same drive, same vision, but the complete opposite. All she thought about was streamlining and structuring and systems. I'm the visionary.
I recommend Rocket Fuel. That book completely changed my life. There are two books that completely changed my life that your audience has to write down and buy it. If you are doing any type of business, then it's Rocket Fuel. They talk about the integrator, the visionary and how each role is vital to your organization. You have to have both pieces because the integrator is never going to think forward. They are only going to think about the situation and the problems they can fix. The visionary is always going to be moving forward, but you have to have both.
I was running my organization as a visionary, which is why I couldn't keep moving forward. I could get the business in my sleep, but you only have so much time in a day. I don't think naturally. How can I create a system for something I'm doing ten times a day? I’ll do it ten times a day because I'm like, “Get it done.” Now I think a little bit differently because it's happened. You don't know what you don't know. The other book I talk about a lot is Scaling Up. That book is what prompted me to fire everyone because they asked a question.
That one question, I was like, “Everybody's got to go.” They said it was extremely powerful and it said, “When looking at your organization if you had to start all over, would you still have the same people in your organization?” As I went through every single person, I was like, “No.” I fired everyone. Those two books, if you are thinking about growing a business on any capacity, read them. They changed my life. It's something that was instrumental as I was going through this journey.
I have to say, Nicole, there were many golden principles that you talked about. Two of those that I pulled out are to get yourself out of the way of the organization and yourself as a bottleneck. Put yourself in your zone of genius and put the right people on the bus in their zone of genius. When you have that Yin and Yang, magic can truly happen. That's where we're at as well, putting the systems and processes in place. I definitely can be all about the vision, but as far as executing, I'm grateful for our VAs, our administrative assistant, all of that. That's not my zone. I'm getting there to start to think more in processes, but that's not my normal nature so hire that. Nicole, I'm going to ask you three last questions. You have been generous with your time. I'm eating this up. The first one is if someone met you and said, “I want to become the boss of my own life and call the shots, what's my first step?”
The first step is being clear about what you want and why it matters.
What is your definition of a boss?
Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business
A boss is someone that owns their craft. You can be a boss in being an employee. You can be a boss in whatever you're doing, your crafts. Being the best version of yourself and being the best at it. Taking the time to master whatever your craft is and owning it. That truly is a boss. A lot of times people think it's someone that has massive companies or whatever. I've met the strongest women that are employees, that are working for someone else, but that they're in their own right a boss.
Any last words of wisdom? You've already put so much out there, but any other things that you want to share?
First of all, congratulations on even reading this blog because the fact that you are taking the time to better yourself and learn is huge. It's important what you feed your mind through this crisis and in general, it’s what's going to help you get through everything. It does change your perspective. I know we hear that a lot, but on those days where I can't get to bed. I put a podcast on. I've put music on. I put something on that can feed my mind because our emotions are real. They are not logical and sometimes they take over, even when we don't want them to or we can't stop it. What we can do is train our subconscious. We can feed it with logic. We can feed it with changing our perspective so that we can come from a place of gratitude. We can move forward and be the people that we need to for the people that are counting on us because it’s not just about us.
Thank you so much for your investment in my tribe, my community, Nicole. It's been such a blast getting to know you on a personal level, even just sharing your experiences. You inspire me on many different levels. Thank you for investing. I appreciate you. I adore you. Share your handles one more time so that people can follow you and your journey.
On YouTube, it’s The Short Sale Queen. You can find me on Instagram, @TheNicoleEspinosa.
For our audience, I want to say thank you for linking arms. We have got this. This too shall pass. Like every other episode, my challenge to you is to fire your fear, build your faith and become the boss of your own life. Let's get after it.
Important Links:
The Short Sale Queen - YouTube
@TheNicoleEspinosa - Instagram
About Nicole Espinosa
Nicole Espinosa is the best selling author of “Short Sales Uncensored” and the leading short sale expert based out Dallas, TX.
Before Nicole did short sales she has a background as an REO manager working with over 50 lenders. Nicole has closed thousands of short sale transactions successfully and continue to process hundreds a month for clients nationwide.
Nicole has been featured on several real estate panels, podcasts, and TV segments. She also teaches classes on short sales to other brokerages, title companies, and realtor associations. Nicole’s extensive knowledge of distressed properties has made her the market expert when dealing with difficult transactions.
When she’s not working on real estate transactions, she is a mentor to her real estate team, and mom to her 2 adorable children, Elias and Emma