Achieve Financial Freedom: The Value Add Investor’s Proven Blueprint

Brett McCollum (00:00.714)
Alright guys, welcome back to the show. I am your host Brett McCollum and I’m here today with Christie Omalley. Today we’re going to be talking about value ad investors. Before we do, at Investor Fuel we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Christie, how are you?

Christie Omalley (00:23.8)
Doing great, Brett. How are you doing today?

Brett McCollum (00:25.962)
I am so good. Thanks for being here with us. Excited to catch up with you. Get to know you a little bit before the show. I have a feeling that you and I, we’re going to have to kind of rein things in because I feel like we could talk forever probably. But that’s what’s going to make this exciting. But before we get into everything, do us a favor. Catch us up to speed. Rewind a little bit for us. Who is Christie?

Christie Omalley (00:48.226)
Yeah, so if I go back a little ways, Christie, high school, just sports teams, AB student, but I always had trouble staying focused. Like that ADHD always hit. And I never really understood why. So I ended up at Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, my first year was during the shootings. And so we, you know, I didn’t do too well after that. We did lose my RA. We lost.

Brett McCollum (01:16.697)
No man.

Christie Omalley (01:16.93)
you know, a few people. So that was very, very difficult. So I was already starting to spiral. I was changing my major from psychology to mathematician to veterinarian. And it was just, you know, crazy. And then my second year, sadly enough, I lost my aunt, my uncle, and my grandfather. So God had a different plan for me. I ended up leaving, coming from Blacksburg, Virginia, back to Virginia Beach.

Brett McCollum (01:28.28)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (01:41.102)
And when I did, where I was working, my manager at the time knew a young man that I told I would never date. We became best friends. And that’s the only reason I got to know him though, was because I came back and it turned out that six years later we were getting married. So yeah, my husband is my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were 18. We’ve been together for nearly 20 years now.

Brett McCollum (01:50.027)
Never.

Brett McCollum (01:58.67)
Wow.

Christie Omalley (02:07.974)
and he is also my business partner. So it’s been a wild ride, not always the funnest, but it has been exciting along the way. He was at a junkyard, never went to college, doesn’t have a college degree. I ended up going back and doing Liberty University Online, getting my education degree, my master’s degree. I thought teaching was gonna be a good fit. So I got that pretty quickly. I was taking 21 credit hours of master’s school to get it out before we got to our wedding.

Brett McCollum (02:17.604)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (02:37.262)
And I finished, we got married and we bought our first house right before we got married. It was a property that came with a secondary lot. It was a Fanning May property. And when we bought it, we didn’t realize really what we were getting into. We were able to rehab it. It was in a class A area, but it was like a class C property.

We were able to personally go in, rehab it, gut the whole thing, make it really nice. And after we got married, we were able to move in. We bought it for $156,000 back in like 2012. Well, not even two years later, we sold a lot of land that came with it for 110,000. And we still have that property today. It rents out for nearly 2000 a month and we just cashflow heavy on it. We only keep it because…

Brett McCollum (03:07.609)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (03:23.172)
Wow.

Christie Omalley (03:26.05)
That was our first place. We should probably sell it. There’s a lot of equity. I make over a thousand dollars a month on that house net. So it’s just a fabulous little property that we’ve kept and held onto. But we didn’t realize it once I got into teaching and he was at the junk yard still. He was making like $12 an hour. I don’t know how we qualified for that house, but we did. I was substitute teaching, still finishing up a few things before I got my actual teaching job. Once I got my teaching job, we were flipping

Brett McCollum (03:27.706)
Sure.

Christie Omalley (03:55.918)
Smaller like we were going into this this area was a class D area We were buying houses for like fourteen thousand dollars, but we weren’t ever making anything more than a thousand off of them It was so terrible But he got into real estate and he ended up with a firm that had Fannie Mae Freddie Mac accounts and he was selling like a hundred homes a year But he wasn’t at a full commission split. So it was more of a job. However

Brett McCollum (04:06.785)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (04:17.305)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (04:21.124)
Sure.

Christie Omalley (04:21.858)
family that owns that company is like our family now. And I have to attribute a lot of our success to their mindset that they taught Chris and I along the way. As a teacher, and many teachers will probably relate to this, I got into it and I love teaching. I love the kids, but then the paperwork just bogged me down. It was like 60, 80 hours a week and it was overwhelming. And when I went to my second year of teaching, they didn’t give us a raise.

Brett McCollum (04:42.514)
yeah.

Christie Omalley (04:51.256)
personally was requested to become a gifted teacher, which is the higher level kids because they knew how good I was. My scores, my write-ups, everything was phenomenal and I was in a really good school district and then they didn’t give me a raise. And that was the point where I was like, this doesn’t make sense. Why would they not give a raise? But they did a step up for the new teachers. So the new teachers that came in that year were making more than I was because

Brett McCollum (04:57.08)
Right.

Brett McCollum (05:11.566)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (05:19.819)
no.

Christie Omalley (05:20.864)
Yeah, and I was like, just, this doesn’t fit. Well, I got pregnant with my first child and I had to make a decision that year. Am I going to go back or am I going to stop? We had two rental units at that point and I decided just to leave. I hadn’t fully realized what was getting ready to happen, but whenever I left, I ended up going and helping Chris a lot more and we started flipping more houses, not exponentially. We still didn’t realize the power of the investment.

Brett McCollum (05:28.814)
Yep.

Brett McCollum (05:38.799)
Right.

Christie Omalley (05:49.208)
He was still using his real estate as most of his income and he was doing really well. I mean, he was making well over a hundred thousand a year, but on a scale of what investors can do, that’s nothing. So we slowly grew. I ended up homeschooling my children. We ended up with two kids and they’re sweet girls. They’re nine and six. They’re adorable. So we homeschooled for 10 years. We ended up moving out of that first house to our next house. It was another rehab.

Brett McCollum (05:56.282)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (06:00.034)
Right.

Christie Omalley (06:17.602)
We rehabbed it, bought it for like $300,000. It’s worth over a million dollars now. Beautiful property. I’m getting ready to rent that one out because we ended up moving from there to the Outer Banks, which has been a phenomenal experience to some extent. But anyways, it’s just, it’s snowballed and we went from him being a real estate agent to him deciding to go into contracting. We built that business. We’ve even bought a bin cleaning business. We’re like,

Brett McCollum (06:17.656)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (06:25.785)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (06:31.726)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (06:44.108)
The trash bin, it’s a big truck and the truck will pick up monsters. Terrible idea. So we had this ADHD. We never stuck to one thing. Well, we went to the Limitless Conference last summer. We ended up selling that bin cleaning business, bought this property down the outer banks, made the move, decided to renovate it ourselves, not use our crews. And we, we didn’t realize it at the time when we bought it, but this was going to be our new home. So yeah, we got down here. It’s been awesome. We have.

Brett McCollum (06:46.82)
Yeah, yeah.

Brett McCollum (06:56.495)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (07:09.86)
Wow.

Christie Omalley (07:13.358)
nearly we’ve actually more than doubled our real estate portfolio in the last eight months from that one conference and from the mentors that we decided to actually go after after after that conference. We never believed in that before and that has been a huge mindset. You know just the shift in the way we think, the leverage, everything and so this journey is

Brett McCollum (07:19.001)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (07:25.252)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (07:32.663)
Absolutely.

Christie Omalley (07:40.256)
just now ramping up, it’s just now getting started and we are very excited to see where it goes.

Christie Omalley (07:57.644)
Nors.

Yeah, so there was a massive mindset shift from that conference and from hiring mentors. We’ve worked with Cam Cathcart. We got to meet Brandon Turner and Tiffany High has been someone that’s helped us. So along this journey, we have decided to stop using our own money and stop those roller coaster months that we were having of no deal flow or no cash flow. There was months we were going without cash. Obviously as an investor, you have a good chunk.

Brett McCollum (08:17.849)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (08:29.718)
It comes in one month and then you can live off of that for a while. Yeah, so we went full time investing. Chris stepped away from everything else. I stepped away from everything else and we’re just focusing on real estate and the leverage has been the game changer. We’ve always been value add investors. We never buy a deal that we don’t have equity in after we rehab it. And when we decided to go that route, specifically the house and the outer banks,

Brett McCollum (08:31.78)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (08:47.855)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (08:55.828)
We saw the value there. We bought it for like $285. It needed a full rehab. No, the roof was terrible. It didn’t have HVAC. It needed to completely be gutted on the inside. But there was one thing that we saw specifically, and it was the fact that the underneath could be converted to an apartment. And because of that, we realized the cash flow could be exponential compared to what it was going to cost us for a mortgage.

Brett McCollum (09:20.538)
Sure. Yeah.

Christie Omalley (09:22.254)
So we bought it 285, I believe we put 150 in it and then we just got the appraisal for 600,000. We were able to pull all of our cash back out, which yeah, that’s what matters as an investor. And we were working on it together, which was the craziest thing. We hadn’t done that since we were in our twenties instead of having our crew. So that was a nightmare, but it worked out and we ended up buying a Bayfront property in December that we have since transitioned to. And I’m going to Airbnb that property out.

Brett McCollum (09:30.5)
There it is.

Brett McCollum (09:52.804)
Wow.

Christie Omalley (09:52.888)
So, yeah, it’s been something. And of course, we are under contract for another house in the Outer Banks, which once again has an ability to put an apartment underneath. That seems to be the ADU’s, just the calculations when you start doing it, it actually works out. Everything that’s single family right now is very hard to math correctly.

Brett McCollum (10:13.43)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s difficult for sure. Man, we got a lot to, all right, let’s go back, let’s back up a little bit, okay? So you start off, you’re at Virginia Tech, you know. I remember that whole time, what you were talking about, and it’s wild that you were there. And I’m sorry, mean, that must be, that had to have been really difficult to go through. Whoa.

Christie Omalley (10:29.784)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (10:35.342)
The anniversary was just a few days ago, so it’s still difficult to this day, but you’ve created a community of friends. One of my best friends is still, like she’s coming down to stay with us at the beach, and she’s from that timeframe, and she was the person I leaned on, she leaned on me, so it’s bittersweet. mean…

Brett McCollum (10:48.216)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (10:55.67)
It’s hard as a young adult, 18 years old, to go through something like that and wrap your mind around how awful it was, but it also shapes you and it puts you into a different mindset, into someone who can handle things that maybe most couldn’t.

Brett McCollum (11:01.335)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (11:12.292)
Yeah, and that’s something, like pre-show we were talking about, things that happen to you that actually happen for you kind of thing. Tragic, it doesn’t take away the tragedy, it doesn’t take away how hard it is, it doesn’t take away the difficult time, but it is also, it’s like had that not happened, this wouldn’t have happened kind of thing.

So it’s a bittersweet a lot of times things that happen like this, right? When you left Virginia Tech, were you always from the Virginia Beach area or did you go out there for a different reason? What brought you back out there?

Christie Omalley (11:48.846)
So my family is from the Virginia Beach area. I always say Virginia Beach because everybody knows where it is. But we’re you know, I was raised in Chesapeake for the most part, but my whole family is from the mountains of Carolina. And so I have good memories of cousins going to stay for a whole week down there and just playing in the creek beds and you know, living the life using a Johnny house as a double seater. So you know, those are my memories. But most for the most part, you would say I’m from Chesapeake because since the age of six is where my family’s lived.

Brett McCollum (11:59.704)
Got it.

Brett McCollum (12:18.344)
Okay, so you really were coming back home more or less at that point. Yeah, and that, I think a lot of times at the younger age, you how old were you when you moved back?

Christie Omalley (12:29.062)
when I moved back from tech. So I would have been 19, 19 when I left. It was my sophomore year and I decided I needed to be home.

Brett McCollum (12:31.129)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (12:37.509)
Yeah. Yeah, and we don’t know who we want to be when we grow up when we’re at that age, you know, a lot of times, you know, and that’s the craziest thing of like going to college at 18, 19, whatever it is, you know, and, you know, you have to declare a major and you have to declare who you want to be. like, none of it, none of us know, not really. You know.

Christie Omalley (12:55.982)
no, and it’s the craziest thing. You go in there and they’re like, they want you to, but there was nothing in it for me. Even when I did my teaching degree, I worked as a substitute teacher the whole time I was doing it online. There is nothing about that degree that prepared me to become a teacher. The reason I got my job was because I substituted and because I learned how to handle the kids. I couldn’t have made it, I don’t believe, if I hadn’t substituted.

Brett McCollum (13:07.119)
Yep.

Brett McCollum (13:22.54)
Yeah, so my wife was a teacher for nine years. Yep, did that same thing at Lentree Ed. And we went down that road for a long time too. And for her, coming out of college, it was like, who do I want to be when I grow up? Also, if I don’t know what I want to do, because I’m still, but you’re forced to do something. Now at this point, what are you, like 22-ish, right? And she’s like, well, I guess I’m to teach.

Christie Omalley (13:24.696)
Really? wow.

Christie Omalley (13:39.384)
Mm-hmm.

Christie Omalley (13:44.184)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brett McCollum (13:51.992)
because I think I’m good at it. And think she’s great. And now we homeschool. my kids don’t know how lucky they are to have the teacher they have. But I mean.

Christie Omalley (13:59.416)
Absolutely. But you know what’s amazing about that though, and I know Florida is different than Virginia, but Virginia requires you to have certain degree or you have to have testing for your kids. But my master’s degree in teaching, which is all God’s plan, allows me to teach my kids and never do any kind of testing. I just showed him my master’s degree and they’re like, OK, she knows what she’s doing. Florida, think, because you don’t have to do any reporting. Is that correct?

Brett McCollum (14:20.922)
any kind of thing you guys.

Brett McCollum (14:25.039)
Yeah.

No, you don’t have to, but if you do want some of the scholarship opportunities that we have, Florida is able, like you have to do standardized testing and at least report back so that they know that you’re, you know, know what you’re doing, so to speak.

Christie Omalley (14:44.193)
Christie Omalley (14:49.641)
So what do they do in Florida?

Brett McCollum (14:50.146)
Yeah, so in Florida there to there is not a requirement per se as far as getting

You don’t have to have a degree or things like that to teach your kids that sort of thing but or for testing rather either However with grants and scholarships that they afford to homeschool parents You do have to do some version of a standardized test in order for the government quote-unquote to give you said scholarship They need to know that hey your kids are on a curriculum. They’re performing. They’re doing that sort of thing. So it’s kind of a It’s not necessarily the same like, you know in Florida we have something called the fcat, know, the Florida whatever it’s the standard

state, it’s not that test, but you have to do a measurable thing that your kid is on track, that they’re performing and they’re doing what they need to do and it has to be in some way. So it’s something and it’s not a lot, but you still have to do something, right?

Christie Omalley (15:44.361)
Makes sense. Yeah, everybody has that teaching degree. So it like for me, I’ve seen so many kids and how they are supposed to be progressing. So doing my own, it makes it easier.

Brett McCollum (15:51.139)
Right.

Brett McCollum (15:55.096)
So I want to ask you this. So you come back, you meet your husband. That’s super cool. You guys have gotten to know each other. You’re best friends. You get married. That’s the best, by the way. I think that’s the only way. I tell my kids at a young age, marry your best friend. Don’t, you know, like, my gosh.

Christie Omalley (16:10.695)
Yeah, foundation. mean, you can have the spark, but that spark can go out. Where’s your foundation?

Brett McCollum (16:17.284)
I promise you this, I’m gonna put you on the spot here, Chris, just for 10 seconds here. my gosh, I’m gonna ask you and I’m a little nervous to do it. So you’re flipping the house that you’re living in now and for that three, however long that renovation was while you’re working, living there and working there, I’m willing to bet you that there are times there that that spark was probably not present sometimes.

Christie Omalley (16:21.961)
Lord.

Christie Omalley (16:31.487)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (16:40.927)
I’m sure we went through the idea of divorce like four or five times. sounds terrible.

Brett McCollum (16:43.992)
Was it, right? But like, that’s it though, isn’t it? That’s where it’s like, you know, that’s real life of like, but I’m with my best friend and even in the times where I was like that, like, I wish people…

Christie Omalley (16:56.327)
You have this foundation that you know, I know this sounds terrible and you can’t speak lightly of it. Yes, we did lose it a few times because we renovated this off like by ourselves with the kids. And we’re like, what are we thinking? We could have had our crews do this, but because of the foundation, any day I was losing it or any day he was losing it, we knew we’ve been together for like 20 years. We can get through this and that’s in the back of our minds. And we’ve been kind of trained to remember that.

Brett McCollum (17:04.442)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:20.228)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (17:26.463)
Maybe we shouldn’t have used that so much, but that foundation was there that no matter what we’ve got this.

Brett McCollum (17:32.058)
Yeah, and that’s something we’re teaching our kids too, because like sometimes mom and dad have arguments. It happens, y’all. Like it’s gonna happen, you know, like this is a part of life. But guess what? We have a foundation. We’re friends before we’re, you know, married. And that helps, you know, in seasons of ups and downs. You’ve been married as long… I don’t know how long y’all have been married, but like, know, we’re going on 16 years this year, you know? So, yeah, it’s like…

Christie Omalley (17:58.009)
that’s so sweet. Congratulations.

Brett McCollum (18:00.531)
Yeah, but guess what? It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, you know what mean?

Christie Omalley (18:06.099)
And that’s where people get it all mixed up. They watch those Disney movies and that’s only the beginning. And that doesn’t normally happen by the way.

Brett McCollum (18:11.426)
Yeah, and that does, and then in every Disney movie somebody, know, we only watch the, they’re only, that Disney movie only exists because mom and dad, somebody died. You know what I’m like, you know what, that’s, you ever watch a Disney movie where like the parents of the Disney character were like, no, it doesn’t, I’m like, y’all, this is tragic. And yet, by the way, we are the biggest Disney fans on the planet. I say we, I say we, I, because I’m forcefully pushed into this life, forced into this life.

Christie Omalley (18:35.731)
You’re forced into it. You love it. Don’t lie. You love it.

Brett McCollum (18:38.788)
We were at Disney last week, you know, so. But anyway, all right. So you guys start renovating homes. What was the dip in the, dip the toe in the water moment for you guys? What was the first thing you guys did?

Christie Omalley (18:42.395)
You

Christie Omalley (18:54.804)
on the first property we did or the first like, okay, we should be doing this full time.

Brett McCollum (19:00.204)
More on the first investment property. did that look like?

Christie Omalley (19:03.807)
So the first investment that we didn’t really realize was our first home. But the first time that we decided that we wanted to buy our first flip, we actually pulled a home equity line of credit and we used that home equity line. I think it was like $33,000 we got off of it. And we went to the worst neighborhood in the worst area and we bought a house for 14 grand.

Brett McCollum (19:11.844)
Sure, yeah.

Okay?

Christie Omalley (19:28.159)
Chris was still a realtor at the time. I was still teaching, so we had that income and that just got her toe in the water, like you said. It got our experience and I always say, take that first step. That’s where people get so caught up. They get so nervous, so overwhelmed, and they’re just so afraid. Just take your first step. It’s gonna be okay because even if you lose money, you’re gonna make it back from the experience. Luckily, we made $1,000 off that flip. It took us a year. It was awful.

Brett McCollum (19:32.142)
Yeah.

Right.

Brett McCollum (19:52.459)
yeah.

Brett McCollum (19:56.259)
Okay.

Christie Omalley (19:58.015)
But the sad part is the people who bought it from us still own it to this day and they rent it out. Like it’s just, they make so much money off that house, but we didn’t know what we were doing. We were 24 years old at that time.

Brett McCollum (20:07.61)
Sure, and well, you’re 24, but you did something. And like you said, you took the actionable next step and that sort of thing. you’re doing that. When was the time, I guess, now you’re full, let’s say you guys are full time. But it also seems like kind of, it was almost a recent shift in the last maybe eight or nine months of like something shifted in you guys’ business. What, come with me through that a little bit.

Christie Omalley (20:12.475)
Exactly.

Christie Omalley (20:33.407)
So we were in full time then. Yeah, back when we were 24, we didn’t actually become full full time until eight months ago, because Chris was still.

a realtor so he would still list houses. We decided in 2023 that the market was a little rough. We had bought our apartments in 2021. We had bought some Airbnbs in 2021 and we sold those Airbnbs. I think I bought one of them for like 200,000. Didn’t need any work straight up making 80,000 a year gross on that. And about 2023 hits and or 2020 late 2022 I saw all of the flood of the Airbnbs

in that area and I was like this something something right so we actually sold that property made 250,000 off of it in a year like it sold for 450 went a hundred thousand over what we had listed it for because of the income that I was making on it do I wish I still had it today yes but we were renovating another value-add investment property at the time we call it our apartments but it’s mixed use of commercial units duplexes triplexes so we needed that cash to kind of pour

Brett McCollum (21:29.476)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (21:36.429)
Right.

Christie Omalley (21:42.315)
into that because the bank, one thing the bank doesn’t like, I was thinking about refinancing the Airbnb’s, but because it was an Airbnb at the time, the banks I was using and we didn’t really know much about hard money, they didn’t want to use the Airbnb income, which I was making 80,000 a year gross, but the actual rent amount in that area was only 1200 a month. So 24, yeah. And they’re like, nah, we ain’t giving you any more money.

Brett McCollum (21:55.384)
Right, yeah.

Brett McCollum (22:01.87)
Yeah. You almost have to manipulate the system a bit with those kind of deals. Yeah, that’s, I had to learn some of those lessons. those are, but nobody teaches you that stuff sometimes, right? And like, what? Yeah.

Christie Omalley (22:13.791)
Exactly.

But now I have the mailbox money from those apartments that pays my bills for the most part every month, which has been nice. And I could, I’ve 1031, I used another property that was going to be an Airbnb in the city of Virginia Beach. Airbnbs can be really difficult, but we bought this property to Airbnb. It was beautiful. had three different lots with it. It had an actual dock on the deep water. We were going to renovate it, Airbnb the house, and then also Airbnb, the apartment that came with it.

and then we were going to use the extra lots as parking for boats so that way we can make more money off of that. But then right when we bought it, was a short, sorry, was a short sale. So it took a year to actually go through. I think this was 2022. When we bought it under contract, it was fine. We could have Airbnb’d it. But then afterwards, Virginia Beach changed their Airbnb laws and that zoning, they wouldn’t allow it. So because of our intent, we bought it to Airbnb.

Brett McCollum (22:50.607)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (23:09.85)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (23:15.521)
to use it as a rental property, we were actually able to end up selling that property, never actually renting it out, but I had proof that Virginia Beach had changed their laws. And so our accountant was able to take that and we 1031 that, I think it was like nearly 300,000 of, once we renovated it and we sold the lot separately, I think we made like 300,000 on it, I was able to buy the other, another apartment complex with that money. Yeah, so we’ve.

Brett McCollum (23:31.843)
Right.

Brett McCollum (23:38.222)
Wow.

Christie Omalley (23:41.951)
We’ve stumbled our way through this over time and we didn’t see the value of being full time. I wish in 2019 we just went full time, but we were still selling real estate. then 2023 with the dip, we got nervous and we’re like, oh, let’s start a business. Cody Sanchez, she seems like she’s got this. And so we got a cleaning business. It was a nightmare, but we done sold it last year. And that was when we said, okay, we, sold the bin cleaning business the day that we bought the property in the outer banks, which was.

Brett McCollum (23:43.652)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (23:58.351)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (24:09.314)
No way. Very cool. So yeah, for sure. You doubled your rental portfolio in a very short amount of time. In some ways, that’s like, Whoa, that’s wow. It is wow. That’s what I want to talk on the overwhelming side of it. Because I think a lot of people listening might go, that’s amazing, Chris, you guys know what it is. And I don’t want to take away from that because it really is.

Christie Omalley (24:11.897)
God’s hand at work.

Christie Omalley (24:20.146)
Thank you.

Christie Omalley (24:25.809)
It’s, yeah, overwhelming.

Brett McCollum (24:39.114)
What are some of the things, because you’re still learning them right now, because it’s still new, but what are some of the things that you’re challenges and things that you’re learning right now after doubling a portfolio that quickly?

Christie Omalley (24:50.783)
But…

The growth is growing so fast. I’m realizing Chris and I can’t do everything by ourselves. So we are going to have to and we realized this early on because I was managing all my rentals. had 17 rental properties. I was managing the Airbnb’s. I was managing all of the long term rentals. So I have a lot of experience with systems, building out the systems to make AI work for me. And that has been a game changer where I just work with the systems. But once we move to the outer banks, I realized I didn’t necessarily want to manage those properties because I

to focus on flipping and then I also wanted to focus on potentially educating others about how to get into real estate. So I handed that off the property management to a local property manager and I went through three of them in two months but I found a really good one and he’s been amazing. So just buying back your time.

Brett McCollum (25:39.256)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (25:42.491)
Along the way, I also hired a bookkeeper. was keeping, I was doing all the bookkeeping for all of our businesses. And I found a lady out of Tennessee. She’s phenomenal. She does all of my bookkeeping now with QuickBooks Online. I don’t even have to look at it. So that has been the mindset too. We can’t do it all ourselves. Yes, we have a lot of subcontractors and I will be hiring W-2 assistant soon, but you’ve got to put people in the right places. Just like Dan Martell says.

Brett McCollum (25:46.223)
Yep.

Brett McCollum (25:55.382)
Love it.

Christie Omalley (26:12.385)
do what you do best and let them do what they can do best. And that might mean somebody at $20 an hour. With my mindset, my knowledge and technology and my husband’s sales ability, neither one of us should be doing a $20 an hour job.

Brett McCollum (26:16.442)
That’s

Brett McCollum (26:26.906)
Yeah, and I totally agree with that. And that’s perfect. I was glad to hear you say that. So delegating, getting time back, you know, doing that. And I’m sure, confidently sure that you’re going to continue to evolve, grow and change and pivot. Especially as if growth is in your future, you know, because, you know, it’s the what’s the Southern Christian, you know, new levels, new devils, you know, like you’ve got to, you know, that’s it’s part of it, you know, and

Christie Omalley (26:52.863)
Thanks.

Brett McCollum (26:56.87)
learning that as you go, but you’ve surrounded yourself with good people, good mentors, that sort of thing, and that’s incredible. What you guys are doing is nothing short of an incredible thing right now. That’s a testament to action and to what we are capable of.

Christie Omalley (27:10.736)
Thank you.

Christie Omalley (27:16.799)
Yeah, and you have to find your why. know, you can’t, I could stop right now. I could live a happy life. I could be fine. I have generational wealth for my kids, but.

Why do I keep growing? It’s because I want to help others. It’s because the more income I make, I can tithe more to my church. I can give back to the community. And that is what fuels us. Right now I’m building out an educational platform for anybody who’s interested, know, mostly, you know, women, because I come from that teacher background and I love teaching. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t have that with the adult side of it. And now that I’ve started mentoring other women, it’s been so nice. So yes, I still want to grow. I want to show people where

Brett McCollum (27:36.409)
Yeah.

Christie Omalley (27:56.491)
in it, we still are in it, and we can teach you how to do the same. So that why has been a big fuel along the way.

Brett McCollum (28:04.494)
That’s huge, yeah, I can’t agree more. If people want to reach out to connect you to follow that journey or just to follow along in general with where your guys are going, what’s the best way for that to happen?

Christie Omalley (28:11.924)
Yes.

Christie Omalley (28:16.127)
So right now I just started Instagram. We have been dark on social media for since we were 23. We have not used social media Surprisingly, I had a 21 year old assistant before last summer and she was like why are you on Instagram? And I was like, I don’t know and she’s like, you know so much stuff So I ended up starting Instagram last August and so Christie dot O’Malley is my handle

Brett McCollum (28:31.054)
Yep.

Christie Omalley (28:40.115)
and I’m slowly building out things with the educational side, building out a website, and of course I can take free Zoom calls if you’re just interested, and that link is on my Instagram handle.

Brett McCollum (28:51.874)
I look perfect. we’re going to make sure that gets in the show notes, because I think that our audience listening to this today, Christie is going to go. Yeah, that’s somebody we want to connect with that she’s somebody that we want to grow with. She’s somebody that we want to have opportunity with, you know. So, guys, I encourage you strongly to reach out and connect and, you know, get to know Christie along the way. But yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for being here and doing this. This has been phenomenal. I really appreciate your time and sharing your story. Yeah, it really has. Yes.

Christie Omalley (29:10.847)
Thank you, Fred.

Christie Omalley (29:16.967)
I that. It’s been fun. Thank you. You made it very easy. Very easy for me.

Brett McCollum (29:22.298)
Even with some of our challenges in the recording process, you know, we get through it together, right? So yeah, but all right. Well guys, thanks so much to you as well for hanging out with us and listening. We appreciate your time as well and we’ll see each of you on the next episode. Take care everybody.