Women of Wealth

Hawley: 00:00

Have you ever wished for guidance and effectively growing your business and managing your finances? Or wonder what it takes to succeed as a female entrepreneur in finance? Then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to Women of Law, where generational wisdom meets ambition. I'm Ali Romo, your millennial host.

Hawley: 00:17

And I'm Hollywood's Greg, your gen x host.

Allie: 00:19

Using our combined backgrounds in insurance and financial services, we will share what we've learned to give you the tools

Hawley: 00:25

you need to grow your business. Join us, and together, we will help you discover practical strategies for financial leverage, business growth, and securing your future.

Hawley: 00:37

Hey, wealth warriors. Are you ready to redefine wealth and master your money mindset? Welcome to Women of Wealth. I'm your Gen X host, Hollywood's Gray.

Allie: 00:47

And I'm your millennial host, Ali Ramos.

Hawley: 00:50

Today, we'll be talking with Desiree Dubois Dubois, sorry, about syndicating.

Allie: 00:56

Desiree lives and breathes entrepreneurship, and I'm excited to get to learn more about her today. Having never had a w two, and working since you were 12, Desiree, can you introduce yourself and some insights on your journey in, in syndicating?

Desiree Doubrox: 01:13

Good afternoon. Good day, everybody. Yes. I am Desiree Dubois, founder of homework, h o m w o r k, dot com. That's where you can live where you work, work where you live, anywhere in the world.

Desiree Doubrox: 01:26

And, when I as I was I've been involved in real estate since 1989, first as an agent, then as a broker, and then as investor. But I found that when I was building these different businesses, many times you need capital. You don't have the capital, so you have a choice of either, a shoestring in it, what's it called, bootstrapping it, or getting investors. And that's what a syndication is. Syndication is simply a group of people who pull funds together for real estate or it could be for a business or it could be for to buy notes or Bitcoin or anything that you want.

Desiree Doubrox: 02:00

It's basically for anything. So when I wanted to start homework, I saw and it was very, capital intensive because we need to secure a property and furnish it and and, you know, and be able to carry the property for a period of time until we had the proof of concept. So I syndicated it, which I shared the concept. There's no not secured by real estate, no dividends, no promises that even as to when they would be repaid by the base of quarter of $1,000,000 just for building the concept of homework. And then after we got the first property up, the proper process was, okay, now we need another property and another property.

Desiree Doubrox: 02:36

And, again, either you either bootstrap it, which is a very slow process, or you can get investors. It's a win win, you know, because of the fact that people that syndicate, many times, they are in their genius. They're either, you know, professionals, accountants, insurance, attorneys, marketing people, whatever it is, and they want to invest in real estate, but they don't have the knowledge to be able to invest intelligently and safely. They don't have the bandwidth either to learn and be able to take that on, nor many times do they have enough capital to be able to capitalize it throughout the whole process. So for them investing in a syndication where you do have experts, well, that's all they do.

Desiree Doubrox: 03:14

That's all I do is acquire properties, underwrite the properties as far as the profits and so forth. Do the closings, remodel, and remarket it, and then have it managed. So that's the advantage of being able to participate in syndication. And they get great returns anywhere from 8%. They've paid up 16% annually.

Desiree Doubrox: 03:34

But more importantly, when we exit, which is either through a refinancing or a sale, they usually double their money in a period of 3 to 5 years. So there's not many markets that where you can really say that you can actually be able to double your money or even get that kind of dividends on a quarterly or monthly basis. Depends on the project. It depends on, you know, whatever it allow. So that's why I'm such a belief of syndication because anybody can get into it.

Desiree Doubrox: 04:01

Now a lot of people, maybe they can't qualify to buy a house or property. They don't have either the employment, you know, the, you know, the the employment, or they don't have the, again, down payment or the credit. So this way, they're able to participate, and they're able to diversify. So they can if they want multi residential, if they want land, if they want retail, if they want commercial, they can take their resources and invest in all those different asset classes and be able to see which ones that they enjoy the most and which ones will be

Hawley: 04:32

Great. Now you have a group sounds like you have a group of best investors that you can go to, but how do you find new people who want to invest?

Desiree Doubrox: 04:39

Through if speaking, we speak a lot, and my people know about it. We also do a lot of a lot of referrals. I work with a lot of either real estate agents who have clients that they've worked with in the past and know that they have money. We also work with financial advisers, people, accountants, attorneys, people that know people, even, like, for even the trust attorneys that handle probates. They now these, you know, heirs of this money or their property, many times again, they don't wanna be involved and just wanna be able to get the return.

Desiree Doubrox: 05:07

So they invested in the syndication. They get that quarterly or monthly dividends. And when we sell, they get the chunk money we call it, and they're able to reinvest that into another project or something else that they were interested in.

Allie: 05:20

I mean, what I thought was really cool about this is that you could use your, like, Roth IRA funds. Because me being so young, I'm always talking to people my age about Roth, Roth, Roth, because taxes are gonna be so much higher in the future. Just pay those now. And what's really cool about this is that you can utilize retirement savings, in the investment part of the syndication. And so why don't you talk a little bit about that?

Desiree Doubrox: 05:53

Ali, you're so right. It's not only, yeah, all ages. There's so many people. I mean, think about the people that are working for the government, working for all these large corporations and companies and industries, school teachers. I mean, all of the house I mean, the, fire, the law patrol.

Desiree Doubrox: 06:11

All those people have some self some type of retirement funds. And what's interesting is that they think they can't use those funds. How that works is that they usually most of these companies have a money manager, a money market manager that handles the funds, takes their investments, and either deploys them to other and and thing invest in other things that they get high returns on. And they get paid a 6 figure fee no matter whether the market goes up or down. If it goes up, they get bonuses.

Desiree Doubrox: 06:39

The market goes down. They still get their money. But you they take that. They may be making 20, 22% on it, and they get their chunk, and then they give you the 3, 4, or 5, if you're lucky, percent of it. And they take the middle of that.

Desiree Doubrox: 06:53

All that middlemen, that's what they take. So if you self direct it, which means you have those funds, you can direct them to wherever you want them to do. You contact your, your whoever your representative, whether it's Vanguard or Schwab or whatever it is, and say, I would like to self direct those funds to something specific. They're technically your custodian. You simply transfer it to another custodian, which are people that sell companies that specialize in syndications, and they direct the money too.

Desiree Doubrox: 07:23

So if you say I wanna do this fund, same thing. You can use those funds for Bitcoin, for nodes, for start up businesses and things like real estate, and you direct it towards that. So what happens is that they send the money to us, and then we, the dividends, get paid back into your fund. And that's why there's no tax consequences. You're not you don't have to pay taxes on it because you're not withdrawing it directly yourself.

Desiree Doubrox: 07:47

You're simply transferring it from one custodian to another custodian and then directing them to where you want those funds to be. And, you know, a lot of people use it as a forced savings because the money goes back in. Before they know it, they've got another chunk of money to be able to invest in something else, and they can keep to it. And now there's a lot of different, things that happen after your certain ages and certain things of that type, but it's a great way, not only just the self directed IRAs or 401 k's, but even the military. And they have a TSP.

Desiree Doubrox: 08:16

So a lot of industries have their own, you know, funds that they can actually utilize, and they don't know. And I find so many people that have literally 100 of 1,000 of dollars tied up, and they don't think that they can they don't know that they can use it and direct it to what they want.

Hawley: 08:29

I I think this is really great, especially for those people who like, I have a client right now, and she works with a big company. They were private or they were a mutual company, meaning that the policy owners own their insurance, you know, company, and then they went public back in this is, you know, 30 years ago. This this client works for 40 years in the school district, and she has these funds that were converted to a dividend kind of account when this transaction took place. Her ex husband passed away recently this year, not recently, it was in February, and it has been almost impossible to get those funds, moved to her so that she can continue to save those monies for her children which was the whole reason why they got those insurance policies to begin with, right, and so I mean I have met with her, I have sent in paperwork 6 times And every single time, they I don't know what they do with the case once they get it, but I hope I never have to go through this again because it's like you know? And then I have another another case that I've been working on with where one of the companies that you mentioned, and there was another situation where someone was deceased, it was a trustee executor situation and they were just not able to they're just having such a hard time getting a couple pages of an old policy because it was the old policy that no longer had money in it, but they still need it to close out the trust or to at least close out the inheritance or something.

Hawley: 10:01

But anyway, it's just it's it is very, hard sometimes when you are in those group plans to even get the information. I mean, we have, customers in the school districts that have 457s, and it's very difficult to get that information sometime depending on who the carrier is. So I think the self directed, know, especially if you're team up with a a company who has success and has a track record of being able to help people. And you kinda probably have to teach your people a little bit how to do the self direct whenever they come in because I don't think it's that familiar for the for the most part, a lot of those, people you were mentioning, they just kinda go with whatever they're told to do and then when something new pops up, they have to learn that as well and many people don't even like to take the time to learn something new that could help them in their finances. So with all that being said, have you had situations?

Desiree Doubrox: 10:51

Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right, and it's just really heartbreaking to know that there's so much funds out there. Many times they change the rules. They'll change it, and you maybe get a disclosure. They say, oh, we've disclosed it, but you don't understand.

Desiree Doubrox: 11:03

You get these you know, you don't know what that means and how it's changed and really and that's all they had to do is send you a disclosure, and they make the they change the rules. And so many people, they think they've got all this money that their company has been matching all these years. They said, oh, no. We discontinued that back in, you know, 10 or 20 years ago. And that was the reason why they were putting in so much because they thought they were matched, and they changed the rules of the game.

Desiree Doubrox: 11:24

You wanna self direct. It's your money. You've learned hard for it. So at least you let your money work for you.

Hawley: 11:30

Yeah. Especially in a company because you don't have a 1 on 1 person. Like you said, it's it's a it's a money manager you could call and get someone on the phone, but there you call back again the next time and it's a different person you're talking to. That part person might not even work there anymore.

Desiree Doubrox: 11:44

Yeah.

Hawley: 11:44

So with all that though, have there been any situations where there's been some investments that didn't go the way you guys had thought it would perform and had to, you know, redirect it or or something like that?

Desiree Doubrox: 11:59

Well, you know, we we launched one of our first properties right before COVID. You know? So, you know, we had properties, and so so some of the things that we had to close, we had to minimize the amount of peep and close, but we're able to pivot. You know, the thing is is that that's why we give ourselves a 3 to 5 year run because so far, there hasn't been anything that's last last that time period. So COVID, when it first happened, we shut everything down.

Desiree Doubrox: 12:22

Then when things eased up, we had brought in on 1 person, brought in 2 people. You know, as a safety, you know, it was safe. We brought in additional people, and we just kinda pivoted that way. But, you know, again, we were still able to generate enough income on the properties to be able to meet the obligations. And then we also have a great reserve.

Desiree Doubrox: 12:39

We believe in having reserves for all the properties, so that if something does happen, I say, for example, a water flood or whatever at that point, and you have to have it vacant for a while, you have that to cover it in addition to the insurances. But we give ourselves the time period so that we can the same thing with the people that invested in homework itself. There was scheduled to it was a 5 year. They came in in 2018. So we simply extended it, and we extended it, and we gave them extra percent in the return for the extension.

Desiree Doubrox: 13:07

So they're happy because they're still earning money on their money, and it's just gonna take a little longer for that. So if you've been in real estate as long as I have, 1989, there's you just have to learn how to pivot like anything else. You know? But the real estate, that's good about it. It doesn't disappear.

Desiree Doubrox: 13:23

Like, the stock market and things of that type, it just goes away. It's there. It's done. It's gone. You know?

Desiree Doubrox: 13:28

Evaporates. Whereas real estate, as long as you have the asset, you know, we always have 2 and 3 different uses. Our primary use is the coworking, co living, but we can also if we have to do travel nurses, we have to do a lot of travel nurses during COVID. A lot of the military during COVID. A lot of people from the foreign, where we're near one of the properties near downtown, a lot of the foreign language schools.

Desiree Doubrox: 13:51

And there were a lot of foreigners that were here that could not leave to go back to Japan or wherever they were from, except for housing for that. So you just really have to be flexible and say, okay. This is what's happening now. Let's keep it going, and, it works.

Hawley: 14:04

Right on. Well, that sounds wonderful. I'm glad that you guys were able to, you know, make it work during COVID, and it sounds like COVID is one of the one of the things that has really boosted some of the the ideas and the homework that you have. I mean, especially now, I I don't know what the percentage is now. However, still in our business, we have agents that only do online appointments still.

Desiree Doubrox: 14:26

Yeah.

Hawley: 14:26

You know? I mean, our model is to be in the schools and to to service people there, but we do have agents that are, like, nomads and they're traveling around and and doing virtual appointments still.

Desiree Doubrox: 14:36

Yes. Absolutely. Before our market was mostly millennials and creatives, but post pandemic, we've got engineers and, again, insurance and financial and bankers and people that work remotely. Even doctors and WebMD, they're doing a lot of the virtual appointments for medical, attorneys. A lot of people especially one, quarantine, that made a lot of people realize they didn't wanna be alone.

Desiree Doubrox: 14:58

And they even if they you know, so they wanna be alone. So they wanna be around somebody. Our properties are set up whereas every room is private the private bathroom and have a desk. But we also have co working areas. So it'd be, like, one area one property is the attic.

Desiree Doubrox: 15:12

The other property is the restaurant on the rooftop, you know, so they could have privacy when they need it, the company when they want it. So it just basically feel like they're not isolated. And then secondly, they have that freedom now and the flexibility. So they'll have to wait for a vacation to go someplace they wanna go. They can go there, work during the day, and enjoy this country or city at night.

Desiree Doubrox: 15:32

And a lot of couples, a lot of older people's market. Like, we're my husband's retiring next year, and we wanna live that lifestyle. We're gonna sell our home and live in different countries for a while, you know, and to, you know, be able to enjoy it that way. So it's just it's a new lifestyle, and it's worked for us.

Hawley: 15:48

Nice.

Allie: 15:49

That's awesome. And you've worked hard for it, so enjoy the travels.

Desiree Doubrox: 15:55

Let me do research. I call it doing research. I business expense. I got to research these properties.

Allie: 16:00

Yes. I love that. So we talked about kind of who stays at your properties. I wanna talk about, your investors. Do you have a certain market that you look for for investors?

Allie: 16:16

Is there a specific industry that usually people like, is it a lot of real estate people who are interested in this, or do you get a just a variety of different investors coming in?

Desiree Doubrox: 16:25

No, Ally. That's a great question because we keep trying to, you know, dial that in so that we can mark it accordingly. We find that we have a lot of the younger ones, like, you know, the 45 and under because a lot of them don't want to buy their own home right now. They wanna be more mobile. So they want to invest, and they have the income, and they have they can qualify for it.

Desiree Doubrox: 16:45

So So we have that. Then we have a lot of the people on the other spectrum that are, retired, that have funds in 401ks and self directed IRAs that wanna put those monies to work for their retirement. So it enables you to, again, have the freedom of flexibility when you're younger, but also be able to build a legacy. You know? So it's a great way for them to be able to instead of putting the monies into something that may or may fluctuate, they can put their money into something and leave it to their families and their children and so forth.

Desiree Doubrox: 17:12

So I think our best market is gonna be people who realize that real estate, like you mentioned, Tali, early, that real estate long term wealth is gonna gain through real estate. You don't have to do it all yourself. You don't have to know it all yourself. You just have to be able to find a good general partner, GPs or syndicator, that knows their real estate, and they do that for you.

Hawley: 17:32

And you were saying that one way for business new businesses to raise funds could be through syndication. Do you personally do that, or do you have referrals for that? Or, like, it's Yeah. So businesses?

Desiree Doubrox: 17:45

Any type of business that need capital. Any kind of business. There's nothing specific. You have your business. There's no criterion as to what the business has to be.

Desiree Doubrox: 17:54

When I did mine, I did a convert it was, again, a start up. It was brand new. It was just a concept, and we did convertible promissory notes. So there's different structures. We have a class, actually, that we teach a mastermind on syndication.

Desiree Doubrox: 18:07

So a lot of people come for that intention. But a credible promissory notes, they get a note, and you promise them you're gonna pay x amount of interest, 8%, 9%, 10% interest in a certain period of time. And when you do that, when it and, you have a certain event, ours was when we sell the company. So when we sold the company, their notes convert to stock, and they would be paid based on the stock that time. So there's many different ways you can do it.

Desiree Doubrox: 18:34

So if you wanna start one person uses to start a coffee shop and machine so that you know how much you needed and have the location. You deal with the business plan or the information. You go to attorneys. They're, securities attorneys, not just any kind of attorney. They it says and if you wanna be regulated by the SEC, which is the Securities Exchange Commission, It's not mandatory, but it's good for you, and it's good for your investors because it shows that there's some gut wrench over what you're doing and your actions and some, repercussions repercussions?

Desiree Doubrox: 19:07

Re precautions. Yeah. You don't you don't follow the rules. So it's a good thing. But you just you get them to do the paperwork, and then you go and you present your opportunity to potential friends, family, but to anyone.

Desiree Doubrox: 19:21

I mean, there's so many different people that would be interested in different things. And they invest in it. You have a certain fund, and you follow the operating agreement. And then whatever your period is, you either repay with profits. You can go the way.

Desiree Doubrox: 19:35

Some people have done it through what is that? Crowdfunding? Oh, yeah. Crowdfunding. Yeah.

Desiree Doubrox: 19:40

Crowdfunding. But this is doesn't take as much, you know, if it's just if you have a good net worth network. But it's it's easy, fast. You don't require any licensing or anything else yourself. I say it's easier to be a syndicated than it is to be a manicurist.

Allie: 19:57

Is there so you you mentioned for syndication that there has to be an event that they're paid out on, And usually, that's when the they sell the business. Can you give another example of, like, what if they didn't want to sell the business? Is it just like a time period that they would be paid out?

Desiree Doubrox: 20:14

If it's any kind of benchmark you want, you can say, okay. I'm going to when I resell, you a 1,000 widgets, and at that point, they know you're cash flowing enough to be able to pay them back. Because it's basically a loan, so promise to pay. It's a promissory note. It could be a certain time base.

Desiree Doubrox: 20:29

It could be a certain dollar when we reach our first $1,000,000, you know, or whatever that monetary goal is, then we will be able to pay you x amount of dollars and pay them out. So it could be any kind of benchmark either by time or by quantity or by dollars.

Allie: 20:45

And then and then, I know you like, your investment, you have different investment benchmarks for how much people the minimum that people need to invest. So is that, pretty common in all syndications that there is a minimum and then it just varies on what funds are needed for that specific syndication?

Desiree Doubrox: 21:05

Yes. How you usually you'll do is you'll look at how much you need total, and you'll break it down. So, obviously, if it's 50,000 for a $1,000,000, you'll need so many of those. If it's a 100,000, you'll only need so many of those. If it's no.

Desiree Doubrox: 21:18

200,000, you'll need so many of those. If you decide to take 5,000, you'll need a whole bunch of those to be able to reset $1,000,000 mark. So you kind of take it, and then also you do base that on who your market is. You know, if you have a market that is not that may not have $50,000 and you start at 5 or 10 or 20, 25, it could be whatever you do. We always feel, for us, less is more.

Desiree Doubrox: 21:39

Less people, less investors. It's more because it's just, we have relationships with our investors, and this is something that we know them and they know us, and we just really, because they go from one investment. I have people who have started with me years ago, and they just go from one investment to the next investment to the next investment with me. And so it's a nice relationship that you have with them, but you can create, you know, whatever amount you want. But less is more or less larger amounts gives you less people, less people, less less babysitting.

Hawley: 22:12

So besides the real estate, what are some passionate, programs that you're working on right now? What are some of the the, businesses? I mean, I know the homework sounds like that's one of your big passions right now, especially with your husband retiring. Is there anything else that's really piqued your interest and you're excited about, the invest the investment?

Desiree Doubrox: 22:33

I'm I'm excited about our syndication simplified master class that we have. And the reason being is that very if you Google, there's very, very, very few women's syndicators, and there's even less, syndicators, the women's syndicators, women of color. So I really would like to get more women involved in syndication. It's so much easier than selling real estate. See all these realtors drive around and and go back and forth, and it's just that's really a lot of heavy lifting.

Desiree Doubrox: 23:02

Whereas if they were syndicators, it would be the life would be so much better. And it's just really a powerful position to be able to one of our best moments of each month is when we share the dividends and we pay the dividends, because that means you're contributing to somebody else's dream, whatever it is, you know, either their retirement or their legacy, whatever it is. So that, I would like to, spend more time. And we right now, we work with a lot of real estate companies, a lot of Keller Williams offices, a lot of EXP offices, and Realty, Realty International. We speak of them for the agents, trying to really get any agents to think about being syndicated as opposed but specifically women.

Desiree Doubrox: 23:41

I just think it's so it's a, you know, badass move for women to to because it's predominantly, but predominantly a male industry. So, again, you can verify and really being female in this syndicator. So

Hawley: 23:53

that's I mean, now is

Desiree Doubrox: 23:54

the time for women to

Hawley: 23:54

get involved in this.

Desiree Doubrox: 23:55

I mean, if you think about it, the first

Hawley: 23:55

time in our history American history that women are, inheriting both their family money and their spouse's money. And so for the first time, I think it's gonna be they keep kinda pushing the date back, but I think in the next 10 years, women will own 50% of the wealth. And we really need to get our women educated on these different opportunities because these are the things that are like old boys club starting out as, you know, I mean, I've been in the insurance industry and I was in real estate before that. I did mortgages and loans through, a company in San Diego, actually, in La Jolla. And so I I have seen this over my career.

Hawley: 24:39

You know, I only had one real w two job, so I'm kinda there with you, but not in 12. So, you know, I have seen this over the years, and it's just so interesting. A couple years ago, I did a a road tour with E Women Network where I went and spoke at each, at each location that Sandra Yancey, their founder, was speaking at. Mhmm. And one of my comments was, like, it's okay for women to talk about money.

Hawley: 25:05

It's okay to say how much money you wanna make. It's okay for you to say how much you wanna have saved. It's okay that you wanna say, you know, by this date, I wanna stop working for someone else and I wanna work for myself. I mean, these are conversations that a man doesn't even think twice about having, and here we are. You know?

Hawley: 25:21

Like, for me, here I am 30 years into my career, 35 maybe years into my career, and it's still a conversation that we're having. So I think it's really interesting, the education part, and with what's happening in the world that women can really find a place for them to get the investing that they need to start their business, but also to be the investors themselves and to take a chance on themselves and people that they know.

Desiree Doubrox: 25:45

Exactly. You're absolutely right. It's way past time. And for some I think you said even inherited money or if the but now they're making money. I have signed so many women that are making 6 or 7 figures, and they're buying.

Desiree Doubrox: 25:56

And it's okay to buy the expensive designer this and designer that and so forth and so forth. I said, like, oh, if you just put a little bit of that away, you know, you'll have that forever and ever. So it's just, it's perfect timing to do that. And then I would just like to get the word out as much as I possibly can.

Hawley: 26:11

Well, I mean and if they're making that kind of money, you tell me I mean, my closet is pretty big, and I only have so much room for all my stuff. You know what I mean? Like, at some point, I either need to get rid of it if I'm gonna get something new. I started doing this last year. I'm like, if I buy something, I have to get rid of something else.

Hawley: 26:26

So I have room in my closet. So now I just find myself, you know, I have, like, free dresses for our convention next year, so I don't have to buy anything new. So I just have to make sure I stay the same shape and size.

Desiree Doubrox: 26:40

Different problems. I do that. I only have so many hangers. It's a lot of volume or hangers. So I buy something else, there's no more hangers.

Desiree Doubrox: 26:48

I either gotta get rid of something else, and that's it. And it's, you know, it's okay. Now I it's you realize what's really important in life right now, and it's security. And it's having a legacy because we don't know what's gonna happen. And still these women that, you know, and I say women, but they do have this lifestyle, and then at a certain age, they don't have any money.

Desiree Doubrox: 27:06

They don't have retirement. They don't have any money. And You

Hawley: 27:08

gotta take those purses. They hold their value. If you take care of them, you could that could be your assessment plan. Actually, it's funny. Actually, I have a cousin, and she was telling me that she was making extra money just going through her closet and getting she used to be in the music industry, getting rid of some of these pieces that she used to have, like this purse or this jewelry or whatever.

Hawley: 27:26

And most of the time, it was given to her anyway from, like, you know, like a marketing team or whatever to market whatever artist she was working with. So I'm I'm it's so true. It's like take that money and invest it. Know, $5,000 purse is great, but how many times are you gonna actually gonna use it? Or you could get that $5,000 working for you and, you know, maybe turn it into 50,000 in a couple years.

Hawley: 27:46

You know?

Desiree Doubrox: 27:48

I hope so.

Allie: 27:49

Well, I just wanna say both of you ladies have been an an influence for me and just I look forward to to working more with you, Desiree and learning more from you. And Holly has been a mentor to me, through my financial services career, starting as her assistant. So I appreciate you both for paving the way for women, to to go after more and just talk about money more because as as we've talked about, it's incredibly important. So thank you, both of you. Should we go should we go on to the lightning round, Polly?

Hawley: 28:26

I think so.

Desiree Doubrox: 28:30

I'm gonna brace myself.

Allie: 28:33

Alright. Well, I think I know the answer to one of the questions, but we're gonna ask them anyways. So just as it sounds, a lightning round is just quick, one word. Sometimes they require a few more words, but just quick responses to these questions. Alright?

Desiree Doubrox: 28:49

Okay.

Allie: 28:50

Alright. Cash or credit?

Desiree Doubrox: 28:53

Cash. It's cash but credit in some situations. Alright.

Allie: 29:00

Okay. Real estate or stocks? Real estate. If you want a $1,000,000,000 today, what would be the first thing you do with the money?

Desiree Doubrox: 29:13

If I won a $1,000,000, I actually would actually go into some of the countries starting in America for women and helping them buy their first home. I know. I love that. Yeah. That's

Allie: 29:24

I love that. That was the most selfless one we've got so far. Yeah. May maybe we've gotten some family answers for that, like helping our family members with houses.

Desiree Doubrox: 29:35

In a home. They've always still have a home. I love

Allie: 29:38

that. What is a fun impulse buy you've had recently?

Desiree Doubrox: 29:44

It would be a oh goodness. I did. I feel good. I see.

Allie: 29:55

You're like, I don't do impulse buys. I Oh my goodness.

Desiree Doubrox: 29:59

Goodness. I lost it there recently, and I said, oh, this is impulse. It was probably some the designer shoes I have on. They're I bought them for the golf tournament, and, it's a designer shoes, and I would never it's not it wasn't that expensive, but I got them at One of the stores that stacked it all. Shoes?

Desiree Doubrox: 30:17

Cute. Yes.

Allie: 30:20

What's a money saving tip that you swear by?

Desiree Doubrox: 30:25

Negotiating. When you can negotiate and I I don't mean to bring people down, but negotiating is this negotiating. This is the cost. If I buy this many of it, if I pay it in cash, if I did this, if I did that, it can number change. And many times, like, almost like 80% of the time, you can negotiate a price.

Hawley: 30:44

Mhmm.

Desiree Doubrox: 30:45

Cancelingly.

Allie: 30:47

I like that. What's your biggest financial fear?

Desiree Doubrox: 30:54

Not having the having the wrong politicians in office, not having control of what our economy is gonna do, not only for us as individuals, but for our United States of America.

Hawley: 31:07

Yep. That is a fear.

Allie: 31:09

More so today, I guess. But maybe

Hawley: 31:11

maybe tomorrow. More so tomorrow. Yeah.

Allie: 31:14

Maybe that fear will dissipate a little bit in a couple weeks.

Desiree Doubrox: 31:18

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's something we have control over. That's why we so important that we do our thing.

Allie: 31:23

Yeah. Yep. And last but not least, what's your biggest financial goal for the next year?

Desiree Doubrox: 31:31

The biggest is complete this fund, $10,000,000 fund, and to get the properties up and running and nurturing, slipping, hit start, or idea plan, and be able to, you know, render a great return for everybody. That's my.

Allie: 31:45

Well, thank you so much for being on. If if people wanna find, your you said that you're, you've got a class that you're offering. And then if they wanna get involved in in your syndication, how can people find you?

Desiree Doubrox: 32:02

They can email me at desiree@homeworkhom work.com. They can go to our website, and they see information there for syndications and for the properties, and they can find my email address there as well as my phone number. I have the same phone number for 35 years.

Allie: 32:24

That's awesome. So we'll we'll put your contact information in the description of the podcast as well. Thank you again for coming on.

Hawley: 32:32

So much. I do wanna just mention that it's home it's homework without an e. So homw0ork.com. Because I looked it up and I'm like, oh, this isn't working for me. But for whatever reason, my brain wouldn't let me write home without an e.

Hawley: 32:48

So I after you just said it right now, I'm like, okay. Great. It's right there. So make sure you get out there and check out Desiree and see what she's up to. Thank you again, Desiree, for being on.

Hawley: 32:57

Thank you so much.

Hawley: 32:58

Thank you for joining us on this week's episode.

Hawley: 33:01

We'd love to hear from you, so make sure to follow and tag us

Hawley: 33:03

on Facebook and Instagram at women of wealth podcast. Your support means the world to us. Until next time, remember, your financial future is in your hands. Stay informed, stay inspired, and embrace your will. See you on the

Hawley: 33:15

next episode.