From Realtor to Multifamily Investor: Bonnie R Schwam’s Real Estate Growth Strategy

Bonnie R Schwam (00:00)
And that’s sometimes what people need is they need to believe that they can do it. And if ordinary people can become multifamily investors, then why can’t you? So having that belief is part of it. You have to believe and have confidence.

Quentin (01:46)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am super excited to be here today. I’m excited about my guest. She has made me feel comfortable. Like I know I’m the host, but she made me feel at home. And so I’m so excited. And so this lady has 20 years of experience. So she absolutely know what she’s doing.

Hopefully she can give you a little story about, not even a little story, but the story about the sword above her head. We’re gonna learn a lot today. So I want you to buckle up, take out your pen and pads, because I’m so excited to introduce you all to Miss Bonnie Schwam. Miss Bonnie, how you doing today, ma’am?

Bonnie R Schwam (02:21)
Yeah, pronounced it right. Correct. Yes. That’s a hard one. I don’t know why people think my last name, they go, how do you spell that? And I’m like, okay. it’s like, so it’s nothing new. But yeah, I’m excited to be here as well. We had a few little, you know, mercury and retrograde issues, but we’re good now, right?

Quentin (02:29)
That’s about how it looks.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, listen Ms. Bonnie, I want to doubt then. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you can give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the space that you’re in. We would love to know that. And we would also love to know where you are in the world geographically. And so Ms. Bonnie, ma’am, you have the floor.

Bonnie R Schwam (02:58)
First off, I’m in Colorado. That is not necessarily the area that I most invest in. I do have rental properties here, but I am a residential realtor here in Colorado with 21 years of experience. That’s what you’re getting at. I’ve always had, when I first got my license in 2005, I wanted to do investing.

But at that time, holy smokes, it was like such a boring world and how would you even get there? there wasn’t a lot of information at that point to, to spear you into commercial investing or multifamily investing or so I continued in mass communications. I, I started two radio stations. So that was, that was interesting. But also just

I always had that in the back of my mind. So I’m like, okay, someday I’m gonna do this. So I was watching Grant Cardone, many of you all know Grant Cardone, Mr. 10X. And so we were gonna go to his business seminar down there in Almanchurro outside of Fort Lauderdale. So we went down there, my husband and I, and then at the end he says, I’m gonna have a real estate seminar. And this was in 2000.

2020, COVID time, right? So I went, my gosh, I’ve got to stay. I’ve got to stay. So my husband went back because I was like, this is the lane that I always wanted to be in. So I went there and I joined his ⁓ real estate class, his real estate mentorship. ⁓ the interesting thing about that is it was the very first one that he did. So I was the…

What would that be called? The, like your first inaugural group would be good. And I found myself, and this is one thing as far as people may or may not resonate with this, but it was pretty expensive. I mean, okay, it was very expensive. And I remember talking to the salesperson, consultant.

Quentin (04:45)
Yep. Yeah.

Bonnie R Schwam (05:50)
about it and I was like, they set me up on a payment plan. And I remember when I did it, when I said, pulled the trigger and said I would do it, I cried. As I said to myself, I’ve never spent this kind of money on myself or something like that. Even though I’ve graduated from college, et cetera, et cetera. was like, this was an investment in me. And this was an investment in a dream that I had had for a really long time. So I cried.

Quentin (05:59)
Hmm.

Bonnie R Schwam (06:15)
I hugged him and then I found myself every six weeks going to flying into Fort Lauderdale because I’m not really a big fan of Miami or international. But Fort Lauderdale is a wonderful airport and it’s really close to Aventura. So I spent the next year and a half probably every six weeks going down there and we learned how to pitch your deal. We learned all different kinds of things about multifamily. He also had

a weekly which he had a weekly mastermind that we zoomed on. And the one thing about it was incredible. It’s like if you didn’t have if you didn’t have your ducks in a row and because people got to pitch their deals. So if you didn’t have your ducks in a row, you get your lunch handed to you in about 30 seconds. It was it was like, my gosh, his first question was

Have you ever been there? You’ve been to property. You better say yes. You had better say yes. Because then it was off to the races of, well, why should I invest in something if you haven’t been there and you didn’t take the time to do that? So to me, it was educational because it, it, it groomed it. It taught me how a lot of people I’ve called Grant sell the sizzle. He likes to sell the sizzle, right?

Quentin (07:30)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie R Schwam (07:31)
Like, look

how pretty this is. And so that’s why it’s true, right? And he puts on a great event and I learned a lot from him for sure. But I needed something else. mean, as far as Grant is, the epitome of sizzle and catapulting you into the belief that you can do this.

Quentin (07:37)
Yeah.

Bonnie R Schwam (07:56)
And that’s sometimes what people need is they need to believe that they can do it. And if ordinary people can become multifamily investors, then why can’t you? So having that belief is part of it. You have to believe and have confidence.

And why can’t you, you know, why can’t you be that? Why can’t you do that? And so I think that that was really

something to learn about and I and I really enjoyed that so but I wanted more foundational things and so the foundational was a year later I was invited to Rod Cleaf and Rod Cleaf was doing a seminar in Denver Colorado which I’m close to so Denver Colorado so I went there and there was a lot of people that were out of grants

Quentin (08:28)
you

Bonnie R Schwam (08:45)
initial inaugural group that were there. And I just really liked Rod. I called him the Tony Robbins of multifamily. So he has about, gosh, probably.

30, 40 years of multifamily investing experience. So I joined his program and became a lifetime cashflow warrior. And again, that was, have all kinds of education, all kinds of ⁓ podcasts, all kinds of, they call them warrior events. And the warrior events, as you can see up here, is my sword. And the sword you get when you close

your first general partner deal. And so that was, I was excited to see that and get that. I mean, I love my sword. It’s a real, it’s a real sword. does have warrior on it. And I think as far as the biggest thing I learned and that my learning is that,

is that you have to put yourself in the right rooms. You have to be, know, multifamily is a small group, but it’s like, you have to put yourself in the right rooms and you have to make connections. And when you make those connections, those are the people that are gonna be good at maybe asset management, or they’re gonna be good at underwriting, or they’re be good at capital raising.

I’d like to say we’re, each of us are good in all things, but we’re not. We have strengths and superpowers. Or finding the deal. I mean, as far as you can be a part of the deal, or you might be the key partner, and key partners are typically well connected, have done it for a long time, have the financial wherewithal to write on the loan, to do the LOI.

Quentin (10:37)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie R Schwam (10:57)
And that was one of the things I think that was really interesting to me was that the letter of intent coming from a real estate, residential real estate, a letter of intent to me is like a contract. It’s like with real estate, we write a contract to purchase and it’s kind of obligating us if we’re a buyer to the deal. A letter of intent is saying, yes, we want to buy this. We’re looking at it.

but it’s not, it’s kind of it’s kind of a dipping your toe in the water. It’s saying, okay, we want to do this. We have the means to do this. This is what we want to pay for it, but we’re really going to not sign on the dotted line until we do our due diligence. And so that’s, that’s been for those of you who have been in the real estate, residential real estate, it’s kind of a shift. Because you, a contract, a purchase means I’m in.

Quentin (11:40)
Mm-hmm.

Bonnie R Schwam (11:45)
An LOI means I might be in, I’m pretty interested, but I got a lot of work to do before I decide that I’m gonna go forward. But then you wanna assemble your team. Who is your asset managers? You need property managers. It’s an added value kind of property where you’re gonna need people that are good at general construction that can help you.

go, oh my gosh, if we do a renovation, we do an added value add, like how much is it going to cost per unit to do it? But the one thing I find about, and we can call it multifamily, but we can call it commercial. mean, you can, you know, because everyone like, there’s so many different lanes right now. Industrial is a big one. Industrial flex space is a really big.

opportunity for people, people still are getting into apartments, which, which they’re good. I went into some self storage, because I was like, well, I don’t have toilets to anyway, but that’s been an experience of itself. Because it kind of has had some challenges. And that’s the one thing is that when you’re going in and you become part of the general partner team.

You have to realize that the challenges that come up, have to address and you have to take responsibility for it, for your investors. And I think for people that have never capital raised, everybody that goes into a deal that’s on a GP team is going to capital raise. People go, I don’t like that. Well, I’m sorry. You’re good. You’re going to have to like that. And the biggest thing I had a coach with through Rod Cleave and he’s, I was saying, my gosh.

I got a capital raise and it was, it was the kind where you needed to know the people, right? You need to have a relationship with them. And so I was asking, you know, if you, it would be easier for me to ask a stranger than it is to ask my neighbor who, who is heavily invested in my deal, my stock storage deal and my kids and my brothers and sisters and my friends and

You know, all of that is a little intimidating, right? Because if the deal is going good, you are the hero and the deal doesn’t go so well. You are not such a hero and you have to kind of keep them apprised of what’s going on. And so with self storage, a couple of years ago, it took a really bad hit across the country. My self storage units are over seven locations in ⁓ Texas.

So they are, they were challenging. And some of the things that we thought we would do like automation and all that didn’t necessarily work. And we still had to move forward, try to see what we could do. It had cell towers. So we sold the rights to our cell towers. It has billboards. It has other vacant land.

There were so many different opportunities for that. One of our units had a tattoo parlor on it. We’re like, okay, I don’t think we really want a tattoo parlor on self storage. so that one is now we’ve removed the tenant and it’s kind of boarded up, but we are going to get that removed from the property itself and put like U-Haul trailers in there. So you always are trying to looking at how can you add more value.

to the property that you have. Can that be renovations? Can that be increasing rents? Can that be…

you know, renting out also more units, looking at other avenues and ways that your property can increase in value and have an economic feasibility as well as a physical one. Because sometimes you can have a lot of units rented, but if you aren’t increasing rents or you’re under that economic threshold, you’re still not making money. So,

That’s one of the things that people wanna look at, but I think you need to make sure that you have…

you know, that you’re prized, that you keep your investors aware of what’s going on and you, know, the buck stops here. So you have to take responsibility if something’s not going well, you’ve got to, to ⁓ man up if you will, and make sure that your investors are aware of it and that, and that you, they know that you’re doing everything that you can to make sure that, make sure that, that you are

Quentin (16:44)
Absolutely.

That’s awesome. You are the best, Ms. Mooney. Let me just say, you are the absolute best. I appreciate you so much. I want to ask you this because I heard you talk about everybody has different superpowers. You talked about mindset. I mean, you just gave us a great download. You talked about how you started two radio stations, how

Bonnie R Schwam (16:46)
doing the best you can. So how about that? That’s awesome! ⁓

Quentin (17:08)
You invested in yourself and you kicked out that money and it was like, Ooh, this is a lot, but this is the first time I’m investing in myself. So I made you cry. I would love to know. I have a Sam is boning. I say destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning no matter what we go through in life, destiny has a way of having us collect moments that make us who we are today. And so you just gave us a lot of experience. You’ve been through a lot within this real estate space.

What has these moments taught you about yourself?

Bonnie R Schwam (17:37)
What have they taught me about myself? That as far as the only person that gets in your way is yourself. Like you need to be able to continue. You have to believe in yourself that you can do this. And that you need a group around you to definitely support you, but also use their superpowers to make the deal go. So I think it’s…

No man has an island on this one. So I feel like even though I’m a solo real estate agent, I still need people around me. And then as I’m not a solo on multifamily. So that’s a big difference that I’m seeing is everybody needs to kind of be learn and you will learn and you need to, I’m going to call it the word vet. The people that may want to do business with you, you need to make sure that they’re a good fit for you.

because you need to be able to work with them and when things get really rough, you need to be able to have tough conversations and still be okay. And sometimes deals go south and sometimes deals are not what they should have been. And it’s like, the best thing to do is kind of head that off at the pass and try to do the best job that you can do to feel comfortable about.

the people that you were doing business with? Are these the people that you respect? Can you trust them? Do you feel like they have the best interest of you and the other investors at heart? Are they all kind of just out for their own gain? So for me, it’s really important to have more of a collaborative experience. And that’s what I’m finding. You can’t do this alone.

It is a team sport and you need to find people that you resonate with, that you know that you can do business with. So that’s, that’s really what I’ve learned is that you’re as capable as you believe you are. And so.

Quentin (19:21)
I love it. I love it. Miss Bonnie, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, Miss Bonnie?

Bonnie R Schwam (19:31)
Well, that’s a good question. The first thing I want to say is there, there’s any women realtors that residential realtors that are out there, I have a Facebook group called women realtors who invest because I think it was important to, you know, we’re always selling people or investors houses, but why can’t those investors be us? So that would be the first thing. So you can also, you can text me at 719-

651 2916 You can DM me on Facebook Bonnie Schwam or Bonnie sells Colorado or Colorado luxury life And then you can also email me I have my email is Bonnie at legacy builders investments That’s a lot, right?

So [email protected] which is my LLC for my multifamily properties. So there’s a lot of ways you can find me. I shouldn’t be hidden. If you look at me on the web, I should show up somewhere. So please reach out.

Quentin (20:32)
Yeah, absolutely. Miss Bonnie thank you so much. You’ve been stellar today. I have become the student, you have

become the master, and I am just thanking you so much for so many different things that you did today. So thank you for coming through. I greatly appreciate you, ma’am.

Bonnie R Schwam (20:43)
you ⁓

Thank

You are so welcome. It was my pleasure.

Quentin (20:52)
Absolutely. So please y’all get in contact with Miss Bonnie, look in the show notes, check her out. Definitely make sure you subscribe. Y’all have a fantastic day and I’ll see you on the next time.