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Show Summary
Monique Pasciak shares her journey into real estate investment, starting with a significant financial boost from an investor at a medical conference. She discusses her first property purchase and the subsequent appraisal that highlighted the potential for profit in real estate.
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Monique Pasciak (00:00)
Yes. So he wrote me a check that day, gave me his card and said, it seems really promising what you’re talking about and explaining. This is what ⁓ I’m hoping to. He actually said like, this is what I’m hoping to help inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to go do, because he owned a business in the medical space himself. And he wrote the check on the plane and he wrote like a little note. ⁓ It said, I believe in you, Monique.Like go chase your dreams or something. And I still actually have that note. It’s framed in my office and I got the a hundred thousand dollars. I went to work and I called the investor when I was done with the property and I said, Hey, I have your money. And he wasn’t expecting me to give him back this money, but moral of the story, always make sure you’re paying your investors back on time, if not early.
Dylan Silver (02:25)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is an investor working in several different markets across several different states, Midwest, Texas. Please welcome Monique Pasciak Monique, welcome to the show.Monique Pasciak (02:41)
Thank you for having me, really appreciate it.Dylan Silver (02:43)
It’s great to have you on here. I’m very familiar with Texas because it was my backyard until I moved to the Caribbean. But you’re involved in some interesting areas. Before I get into that, and I do have questions about how you got involved in the areas that you’re involved in, I want to start off at the top and ask you, how did you get started in real estate?Monique Pasciak (03:03)
So actually very funny story. I own a software company or owned just finally exited last week. So yay for me. That was a long one. ⁓ I owned a software company in the medical space and I was really trying to figure out ways to offset my active income. And I had reached out to one of my friends in cybersecurity and I said, Hey, how are you?Dylan Silver (03:13)
Congratulations.Monique Pasciak (03:32)
offsetting your income and he said, I’m buying real estate. At the time, he was actually buying commercial real estate, investing in syndications, things like that. And I was thinking, okay, great, I need to go buy a single family. So I got on a plane, I was talking to this guy, I’m like, I’m gonna go buy single family houses, that’s how gonna offset my income at this medical conference. And he said, okay, great, here’s $100,000. And he wrote me a check on the plane.Dylan Silver (03:52)
Right.Whoa!
Monique Pasciak (04:01)
gave me $100,000 and I purchased my first property in Indianapolis for 40 grand. I put probably 20 to $30,000 worth of work into it and it appraised around 200. And I pulled all that money out, gave the money back to the investor who was so kind to give me money on the plane. And then we just kept going, did as many as we could. I clearly held that I did the BRRR method. ⁓And that’s how I got into real estate.
Dylan Silver (05:18)
I want to dive into this a little bit here, get a little bit granular on this relationship with this investor. And also walk me through your background. was this, it doesn’t sound like it was at, was it at a real estate conference that you came across him? How did you meet him?Monique Pasciak (05:23)
Yeah.wasn’t. I met him on a plane. I yes, happenstance on a plane, right place, right time. And yeah, it just ended up working out. He was also in the medical space. So very interesting. And come to find out he actually owns a lot of Colorado. He is a passive real estate investor. So he he was in give back mode and I
Dylan Silver (05:32)
I’m a pro. Okay, happen Stan.I’m coming.
Monique Pasciak (05:57)
to be someone that he decided to give back to, which I’m very grateful.Dylan Silver (06:00)
Your background, were in corporate in the medical space, is that correct?Monique Pasciak (06:06)
Yeah, so I owned a company in the healthcare space. It’s an EHR system or an electronic health record. So whenever you go to the doctor and they give your notes back in like a patient chart, or you get your bills in the mail, that’s the software that I created for independent practice. So that’s what I did before getting into real estate.Dylan Silver (06:30)
Okay, so walk me through the conversation with this investor. you’re on, you’re literally on the plane. Is this right? You’re on the plane. Okay.Monique Pasciak (06:37)
Yes, on the planeand we struck up conversation. I saw he had a medical catalog that he was reading and it was talking about the new CPT codes that were coming out for that year. And I said, ⁓ you know, like, are you here for this conference? He had said, yes, we did not meet at the conference. And this is when I was on my way back to Denver, Colorado, where I lived.
And I just started talking about the new CPT codes that were rolling out. And I just was talking a lot about how medicine is very corporatized. So we’re seeing a lot of smaller independent practices that are being purchased by all these billion dollar companies. And he said, yeah, you know, it has to stop. And I said, well, I’m going to stop it. And I kind of went into, you know, my little spiel on that and.
Dylan Silver (07:21)
Yeah. Yep.Monique Pasciak (07:32)
Somehow I said, I need to start offsetting at the time I was nowhere close to even needing to offset my income. But ⁓ I said, I really need to offset my income because this company is going to be really big. And he said, know, okay, great. Tell me more about it. And I told him and started sharing about this process that I just had Googled like in the airport called the Burr Method. And I explained it him and he said, sounds great.Dylan Silver (08:00)
And so did he literally write you a check that day or how did it work?Monique Pasciak (08:04)
Yes. So he wrote me a check that day, gave me his card and said, it seems really promising what you’re talking about and explaining. This is what ⁓ I’m hoping to. He actually said like, this is what I’m hoping to help inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to go do, because he owned a business in the medical space himself. And he wrote the check on the plane and he wrote like a little note. ⁓ It said, I believe in you, Monique.Like go chase your dreams or something. And I still actually have that note. It’s framed in my office and I got the a hundred thousand dollars. I went to work and I called the investor when I was done with the property and I said, Hey, I have your money. And he wasn’t expecting me to give him back this money, but moral of the story, always make sure you’re paying your investors back on time, if not early.
And I called him and I said, Hey, I have your money. And then I also,
you know, from Google thought that 12 % was a good return. And I said, have your money plus 12 % and I gave him 12 % flat. And he was very surprised and he said, okay, great. I would like to see you in person and I want to hear about this project. I want to see it. I want to know like what you learned and, all the things. And, I flew down to where he lived and then he,
We got in the car, he started showing me around and he said, you know, do you see all these buildings? And I said, yes. And he said, well, I own them all. So lo and behold, he was a real estate investor. had no idea. He did not tell me that he owned real estate. Um, so yeah, was, it was a really full circle moment.
Dylan Silver (09:39)
Yeah.This is amazing. I’ve spoken with, I don’t know how many guests on the show here, probably upwards of 200 at this point. And this is the best capital raising story ever. mean, people joke about meeting someone at the airport or at a restaurant and then writing a check. This actually happened. And it’s interesting, because you mentioned he didn’t…
lead with that he’s a real estate investor. You understood that he was involved in ⁓ the medical space and he knew that you were involved in the medical space. And what this stirs up in my mind when I think about this is when folks are talking about raising capital, when folks are talking about how do I go about this process, what’s the pitch, a lot of times it’s the credibility that you bring to the table as well as passion, right? And people can see that.
And he, I’m imagining, just like I’m saying, he saw your background in the medical space and he saw, okay, this is someone who’s had to work diligently, acquire knowledge and ⁓ overcome obstacles in this difficult industry. And he’s thinking, I’m a real estate investor. I trust people in the medical space who’ve been able to scale this ladder, if you will, have been able to overcome the hurdles as much as I trust real estate.
⁓ gals and guys. Here’s a hundred thousand dollars. I don’t know if he thought about getting it back, like you mentioned, it might have been, he never thought about getting it back, but seeing what he saw, he said, okay, this is a credible person. This is someone who’s going to do good in the world. Here you go. And I think that that is under underestimated because you mentioned it wasn’t like you had a big portfolio and lots of, ⁓ returns to show him at the time. You were just getting started.
Monique Pasciak (12:04)
Yeah, just getting started. And we went on to do hundreds of deals together the same way. So it really does show. just a quick note when you’re raising capital, of course, you you need to know all of your numbers and have everything buttoned up and tight there. But also you need to make sure that you’re personable. You need to make sure that this is someone that you actually would want to do business with when you’re preparing a pitch for an investor.I’ve now invested ⁓ in multiple different real estate projects and it also goes to the person that you are along with your accolades.
Dylan Silver (12:43)
Yeah, no, I echo that.100 % I’ve asked people who are on Wall Street who’ve gone into real estate how they raise capital I’ve asked people who have a background in agriculture and that have gone into ⁓ Raising capital and funds in the real estate space syndications and so on and so forth and I’m asking you know What’s your advice and it boils down to exactly what you said, you know being able to Know everything about your business but also being personable and sometimes people will go and they’ll hire the personable person or they’ll say okay You’re my partner now
because you’re better at this than I am. I do want to pivot a bit here Monique and ask you about the areas that you’re involved in Midwest, Texas and also the deals that you’re involved in. What’s the typical deal look like and which areas you currently involved in day to day?
Monique Pasciak (13:33)
Yeah, so a typical deal for me, I still buy a lot of single family. ⁓ I do want to make sure that my portfolio is still diverse enough that if something were to happen, I don’t go crazy into one product or another. So I’m pretty diverse. I’d say the majority of my portfolio is single family, but I do have ⁓ commercial assets, warehouse.Small multifamily large multifamily and then I actually have my first RV park under contract as well. So ⁓ I’d like to think I’m Pretty diverse and then the areas that I typically invest in are the Midwest so Wisconsin Indianapolis Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas ⁓ The reason why I chose the Midwest is because I actually am from the Midwest
Dylan Silver (14:05)
Beautiful.Monique Pasciak (14:26)
I lived in Northern Illinois growing up and then I moved to Indianapolis. So I was very comfortable with the Indianapolis market, which was where I bought my first property. And when I was in Indianapolis, I would go on day trips to Cincinnati or to Louisville. And then I started to understand a little bit more about those markets. And then my subsequent markets were Cincinnati, Ohio, and then Louisville and the areas around there. And I continued to grow.as I have traveled to those different areas. Now, I don’t need to do it as much just because I have a full team, but I still invest where I know and I know has good appreciation.
Dylan Silver (15:47)
I want to ask you specifically about finding deals and the process involved, if we can get a little bit granular on this. So you’re involved in several different asset classes, know, RV parks, ⁓ single family, you mentioned some ⁓ industrial or warehouse, right? When you’re looking for deals, are you looking off market? Are you looking on market? Do you have teams that are calling leads? Are you purchasing leads?What’s your acquisition process like?
Monique Pasciak (16:17)
Yeah, so my current acquisition strategy is a blend. I have five full-time acquisition managers that are on the phones all day creating relationships. That’s where I’ve found the biggest ROI, if I’m being honest, when you can pick up the phone and you know that someone’s on the other end, you have a conversation, you have the banter, you hear about their day or their dog or whatever fun event they’re doing and be able to tie that back in to the next conversation.and my acquisition managers primarily are on market. have one that’s off market, but the majority are on market. So right now I’m closing, I’d say 30 ish deals a month. And the majority of those are on market deals. And then I also have a channel of off market that come from wholesalers, ⁓ or other people in the industry that are offloading. And then we have, ⁓
underwriter that will look over those, know, get back to them, let them know if it’s a fit or not. So we have a blended approach.
Dylan Silver (17:16)
I don’t want you to give away the secret sauce here, but I do want to ask you about the on-market deals. I have participated as a JB partner in making a hundred offers in back-to-back months on ⁓ distressed or high days on market or, you know, properties that aren’t particularly well-marketed. Maybe it’s a flat fee listing and they’ll have like three photos up and we’re like, well, this is odd, right?Monique Pasciak (17:39)
Yeah.Dylan Silver (17:45)
And so we’ll make low offers on these properties, right? And if you make 100, you might get three or five, right? What’s your approach and your team’s approach with the on market? Are you looking for distress? you looking for high days on market or is there another characteristic?Monique Pasciak (17:45)
Mm-hmm.So the days on market actually doesn’t matter to us. ⁓ The most important things that we look for, I primarily at this point, buy rent ready properties, unless I can be 60 % of ARV, which those deals are definitely harder to find nowadays. ⁓ I’m buying a lot of deals right now from banks directly for properties where I am. starting to see again, the 10 cents on the dollar coming back.
⁓ So that is one way that I source my off market properties for larger rehabs where I’m going to do the BRRR model. If they’re on market a lot of times, I’m not making super low cash offers. I will do a creative offer where the seller hopefully can still get their purchase price or close to, and then they just have to give me the terms. So the way that I look at every deal that I structure is
you can either set the price or the terms of the agreement and then we get to pick on the other. And it’s just about being fair. So I have a blended approach, I’d say to that model, but I’m not just going in low balling.
homes that have been on the market for a long time.
Dylan Silver (19:12)
Yeah, that’s what I was doing. That’s I was doing. But it did work. But I will say that you have to put a lot of them out there. As a realtor myself in Texas, I also have a better perspective of what at the time I almost felt like man, I don’t I feel badly because they’re putting out so many low offers. But because we were the end buyer, because we were buying it, we weren’t, you know, attempting to assign it to someone else usually.Monique Pasciak (19:14)
hahahahaMm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dylan Silver (19:39)
I later learned that these realtors have a fiduciary responsibility to present every single offer to their client, no matter how low it is, unless their client tells them in writing, they can’t just verbally tell them, we gotta tell them in writing in Texas, I don’t wanna see offers below X amount. So if, you what we were doing, I now feel better about it because I was thinking, well, if this is high days on market, they’re not receiving offers, or if there’s four photos online and they’re not getting any feedback, at least now, hopefully they’re gettingsome feedback. Hey, this is where where the offer is going to be. I do want to ask you again a little granular here about the creative offers. I’ve dabbled in this but I’ve also found okay, well this is a little bit tricky because now I’m putting together this creative offer. I don’t know if I need attorneys involved here. I don’t want to be writing contracts if I’m an agent. Now I’m kind of you know violating Trek if I’m writing my own contract here. How are you going about these creative offers? Are you reaching out to attorneys? Do you have ⁓
You know, an attorney on retainer, do you have a generalized creative contract? How do you handle that?
Monique Pasciak (20:44)
Yeah, so I have lots of attorneys now. didn’t at the time. I paid as I went, depending on the different type of offer that we were working with. ⁓ Now I have a securities attorney, a contracts attorney, and a real estate attorney. they just kind of, we have a templated system now, unless we need little tweaks. We’re pretty much good to go. And they just review all the documents that we have per transaction. ⁓And yeah, so we, also have a in-house transactions team. So my transactions team is actually the one that will write all the contracts, send everything out. And it’s, it’s definitely more systematized now than it once was. ⁓ but that’s what we’re doing. in a lot of cases, if an agent has to write on their state board contract, that’s absolutely fine. We still have additional documents that they fill out.
⁓ in addition to whatever agreement it is, whether it’s tracks IAR, the WB 11 in Wisconsin, and we just go from there.
Dylan Silver (21:48)
I’ve personallybeen a part of some tremendous, real estate teams that I felt like, okay, this is every day, I’m excited to be there, we’re getting deals across the line, we’ve got a TC over here, we’ve got three really great callers on the phones, we’ve got an owner who’s constantly in touch with us, and then I’ve been a part of some not great teams where I’m like, okay, are we all gonna be here next week, is this person gonna show up, right?
Monique Pasciak (22:12)
ThankDylan Silver (22:14)
Listening to how you’ve built out your team and you mentioned the blended approach that you take and then with it with everything Do you feel like the the approach that you’ve taken and the systems was? Influenced by your career in medical at all Or did you feel like you had to almost start a new entirely even mindset wise in real estate?Monique Pasciak (22:34)
Yeah. So it was heavily influenced by my ability to manage and lead teams to scale operations. ⁓ you know, the company that I had started with, it was bootstrapped. So zero dollars, zero employees, me and one other co-founder. And that company grew to millions of dollars per year. So I understood how to scale.the operations piece, really, really helped me when it came to real estate, because as I’m sure you know, there are times where no one knows what’s going on. Everyone’s just kind of running around delay, delay, delay. ⁓ So I’m very, very clear on the expectations of the team. I want it to be a good experience when someone works with us, especially when you have your typical, ⁓ you’re an investor.
Okay, great, you’re not gonna close, you’re gonna try to haggle last minute, you’re gonna back out of the deal, whatever the case is. It’s like, we’re already fighting against those things. So how can we be as prepared as possible to not have to have those conversations, you know, after we’re 20 days in, or, ⁓ you know, make sure that we’re very communicative upfront. So lots of project management and operations from dealing with so many clients and having to scale.
my medical company that’s really led to success in my real estate endeavors, for sure.
Dylan Silver (24:01)
I am almost thinking, know, the folks that are part of your company, they better be super grateful for the processes that you’ve set up because I can tell and we are just…⁓ getting to know each other and I’m listening to your story here today for the first time, but I can tell that you’ve got an incredible system over there and team over there and the way that you approach real estate. Like you mentioned with the perception of investors and how things go haywire and then lenders will ask for an appraisal at the last minute. I’m like, how can you ask for an appraisal the day before we close? Like this should have been, you know, but so much comes up in this that.
If you don’t have these systems and processes in place, it’ll just feel like a tornado, like chaos. So my hat goes off to you, and it can still feel that way even when you have all these processes in place. We are coming up on time here, Monique. Where can folks go if they’re in the Midwest, maybe they have a deal and they’d like to reach out to you? They may be in Texas or they have a property that they’d like your feedback on. How can folks get in contact with you?
Monique Pasciak (24:44)
Yes.Yeah, so best way to get in contact with me is sending an email to my team. If you have any deals you want to send, anything you want us to look over, that’s deals at sell smart RE. So sell smart real estate without the real estate deals at sell smart RE.com.
Dylan Silver (25:25)
Monique, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.Monique Pasciak (25:28)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciated it.
