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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds engages with Melissa and Paul Maschek, a couple who share their unique journey in real estate. They discuss how their personal lives intertwine with their business ventures, revealing insights about growth, spirituality, and the importance of relationships in both personal and professional realms. The conversation highlights their transition from living in a small condo to becoming successful property investors, emphasizing the lessons learned along the way and their future aspirations in real estate.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Melissa And Paul Maschek (00:00)
Like this, think the lead is always our intuition. And we always seem to be like aligned on that and aligned with what we’re doing. And I feel like it’s not going in spart, having all your ducks in the row. But if there’s some intuition hits, like lean into that and talk about it. Because I feel like as a couple, if you’re a couple and one person has like one of these intuition hits, like talk about it because it’s like these things are valid. And I think we’re a testament toQ Edmonds (00:05)
Yeah. Yeah.Melissa And Paul Maschek (00:29)
to that because all these things just align completely on attractive.Q Edmonds (02:05)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And I don’t know if y’all can tell, I’m smiling a little extra today. For me, I think this is going to be special. I’ve been getting to know these folks a little bit behind closed doors and we’re going to talk about real estate, but we’re going to talk about life. We don’t know how we do here. You we blended to, you can’t divorce your business from your life. They’re one and the same.And you are the key factor in both. You’re the key factor in your life. You’re the key factor in your business. So we talk about the journey in life and business and where the confluence is. And I think today is going to be that kind of beautiful marriage. Pun intended. See what I did there? Pun intended. So we have this amazing couple here. And we’ve been talking backstage and just talking about their real estate journey, right? And so I’m going to allow them to talk about their journey and for you to get to know them a little bit better.
And I did not check on his last name, but I’m gonna take a shot on it. I wanna introduce you all to Mr. and Mrs. Maschek
Melissa And Paul Maschek (03:09)
Pretty close.Q Edmonds (03:10)
⁓I should have asked, man. Help me out. Give it to me, Mad shit. Mad shit. My apologies and put some respect on it. Y’all want to introduce y’all to the Maschek How y’all doing today?
Melissa And Paul Maschek (03:14)
It’s Maschek, but pretty close. ⁓Great, thank you for having us.
Q Edmonds (03:25)
Absolutely. Thank you all for being here. I think y’all can tell I’m excited. I’m giddy. We’ve had great conversation. But now it’s time to the world into some of the things we talked about. Not everything, because y’all ain’t going get it all. Some of this stuff I’m going hold for myself. But we’re going to talk a little bit, let y’all in. So what I want y’all to do, I want y’all to take the listeners, the viewers into your world. Tell us a little bit about what your main focus is these days.Melissa And Paul Maschek (03:39)
youQ Edmonds (03:51)
Tell us maybe the origin story of kind of how you got in real estate, why real estate. And then if y’all don’t mind, tell us what part of the world you’re in, geographically where you are. And so y’all have the floor.Melissa And Paul Maschek (04:03)
All right, great. Well, thanks for having us. Q, is that what you the best name to call you? Q?Q Edmonds (04:07)
Q, Quentin,I’ll go by either one. Yes, sir. No matter. Yes, sir.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (04:11)
We’re in ⁓ the Charleston, South Carolina area. The city we live in is Mount Pleasant, which is right adjacent to Charleston. ⁓ And to kind of take us back, I guess we’re going pre-COVID. And me and Melissa, ⁓ we’re living in a one-bedroom, one-bath condo apartment together with a mortgage, ⁓ with two dogs in a 700-square-foot house. And we just thought there had to be more.Maybe more space was the key to have a little more, ⁓ while we love each other, is like, that’s close vicinity for a newly married couple. So then we were starting to look for houses and we had to start where we were at. We didn’t have, we had a mortgage on the small condo, but we didn’t have a ton of money. So we’re like, where can we afford? So we had to venture out of town a little bit and we got like a little house out in the country.
⁓ And we converted that to a Airbnb wedding venue Melissa’s a photographer so it really aligned really well in terms of her creativeness But we were also able to do weddings out there and it was cute enough where we did have I don’t know we had around 15 weddings So was from somebody that didn’t have any any real estate experience to owning a wedding venue in a year was a quick transition ⁓ So from that point on we
We’re able to, well, the pandemic hit and then we’re like, what do we even do? But because we lived in rural South Carolina, they didn’t have pandemic rules. So we were a little fortunate to have like an ability to rent out.
And that was just kind of happenstance. So then after that, we didn’t really want to own rentals. So we’re like, we decided to sell it, but that was around the 2020 to 2022 timeline when real estate
Q Edmonds (06:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.Melissa And Paul Maschek (06:54)
specifically in the Charleston area just went insane and so we just kept basically cashed in on that and then from that point on we we’ve been living house flippers for around five years So we’ve done since that I guess for other properties ⁓ Which we live in and then we flip it to benefit from capital gains is paying less capital gains ⁓ From and then we were able now we are in the house that we are dream housein the dream area, the city that we love with now four dogs. So we expanded family expansion. We have a yard now. So I feel like we’re very fortunate. And I think this is going from no real estate experience where I didn’t even know how to use a drill to expansive real estate experience. I feel like if you’re a person listening.
Q Edmonds (07:32)
Yeah.Yeah.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (07:48)
and you just don’t even know what to do with any tools. Call me because I had no skills and I still have limited skills, but I guess you just do the best that you can every day. And then I don’t know, it made us closer. And I feel like that’s the biggest gift of all is just making, we’re able to communicate better, work through challenges and just get to a better spot. As you’re looking for where we want to stay in our house. So where are going?Q Edmonds (07:59)
Yeah.Mmm.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (08:17)
Now we want to stay in our house. We love it. We don’t want to do live in flipping. We want to just do house project on the side of investment properties. We don’t do this full time. I have a job that I love. Melissa owns her own business. So it’s just a matter of doing it on the side, maintaining that short term cashflow, as well as just doing something that’s fun that we like to do and creative and all the things. And we’ll do it for as long as we’d love to do it. I don’t know. So that’s kind of where we’re at. Melissa, do you have anything to add?No, think you sound pretty succinctly. Yeah. I mean, I think we’re we’ve worked our way up to getting into a house that we really love and we just want to root down here and then but we still want to continue doing property investing and we both feel like we have like a greater capacity for more and we’ve learned so much along the way. So we feel like why would we stop doing investing? So we’re just kind of transitioning at this point to doing property investing on the side instead of living flipping.
Q Edmonds (09:14)
Yeah. Love it. I love this story. I’m almost getting stuck on that greater capacity for more, because I love that. I love you guys for it. Thinking, and I just love the journey, right? Living in a one room condo. You know, one bed, one room. I’m familiar with that. Listen, so much of what y’all say just brings back so many bells. Now y’all got a family, got the family of the dogs. I absolutely love it.⁓ I love how the journey made y’all closer. And so I say this probably every podcast, at least definitely recently. ⁓ I always say destiny has no wasted moments, right? No meaning what you go through in life, these moments, destiny, these moments kind of make you who you are today. And it’s like, none of it is wasted. All of it means something. It means something to where you are.
where you find yourself, where your feet are planted. And I love how this journey has made y’all closer. So that’s one thing. But what else about this real estate journey? What else has it revealed about yourself individually and as a couple? Did it reveal ⁓ consistency, humility? ⁓ What are some of the things, other things that have revealed to y’all taking this journey?
Melissa And Paul Maschek (11:12)
I feel like for me, it’s revealed like capacity, like just realizing that I’m capable of so much more than I thought and realizing that I’m capable of learning new things and trying new things and actually finding success at it and actually enjoying the process of learning. I feel like, you know, any, any kind of business ownership will teach you that for sure. And my first business, my photography business has definitely taught me that, but I think what’s been really beautiful about property investing is doing it with my best friend.and learning that we can grow stronger and grow together. that our strengths benefit each other. It feels much more like we’re building something more meaningful with property investing. And not that my photography business isn’t meaningful, it surely is, but it’s definitely more like my solo thing. Whereas property investing is like a joint venture that we can do as a couple. And so I think that building of our relationship and of our commitment and of our
know, tenacity and resilience and lot of these challenges that we’ve faced has been, think for me, the real gift and the real treasure of it.
Q Edmonds (12:20)
Absolutely. Paul, I’ll the floor up to you, man. Anything you want to add?Melissa And Paul Maschek (12:24)
I don’t know how I top that, but I’ll give what I think. ⁓ I would say it’s connected me to something beyond spirituality. And it could potentially not make a ton of sense to everybody, but it makes sense to us. And when you align, there’s certain dates or timelines where it just doesn’t make sense other than maybe there’s something bigger.Q Edmonds (12:26)
Yeah.Melissa And Paul Maschek (12:52)
that’s like aligning this stuff and we were closing houses like within like the exact two year timeline to avoid having to be capital gains or other symbols and signs that are like on the date or the amount of money and profit we would make from one property would be the exact amount that we had to pay cash for the next property or the closing date would be the exact same date or like it would align with like some other weird thing like there was so many things like that and even this property that we’re looking at right now it’s likeAll these dates are like perfectly synchronized with others that and it’s just like we just now there’s just like some other force at play. Yeah. So I’m a financial analyst. So I, I data data most of my life. But then when you dive into property, I understand data, but also it’s kind of releasing that, you know, opening myself up to like maybe they, well, there is a bigger thing at play here and just releasing to that. I don’t know.
It sounds weird coming from a data guy to be like, I need to just trust my intuition in these signs more and see where it takes me, ⁓ which is opposite of what I do in my day job, which if that makes sense. This is the uncommon conversation that we have oftentimes about property investing because most property investors are very metrics focused. And while we do our metrics and do our research and we’re both very strategic in that way as well.
Q Edmonds (13:57)
Yeah.Big snow on the sets.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (14:18)
Like this, think the lead is always our intuition. And we always seem to be like aligned on that and aligned with what we’re doing. And I feel like it’s not going in spart, having all your ducks in the row. But if there’s some intuition hits, like lean into that and talk about it. Because I feel like as a couple, if you’re a couple and one person has like one of these intuition hits, like talk about it because it’s like these things are valid. And I think we’re a testament toQ Edmonds (14:24)
Yeah. Yeah.Melissa And Paul Maschek (14:47)
to that because all these things just align completely on attractive.This was not our plan, which we could go into another 10 podcasts of all the things that have aligned perfectly. But I think we got across kind of what I was saying with that.
Q Edmonds (15:46)
Yeah.Thank you. I just, I really, it’s so refreshing talking to you too. I would say something, I’m gonna keep it quick. I’ve never shared on this podcast before. So when you talk about timing and just how you saw about spirituality, something bigger just with timing, like the signs. My wife, before I started dating my wife, I was watching her from afar and I had put boundaries on myself because I was in a place of
just like rebuilding and learning more about myself. But I knew I wanted to pursue my wife probably before she even knew, not probably, before she even knew. And it was so strong that she was the one I wanted to pursue. I mean, it was super strong that before she even knew I was interested in her, I took out my phone and I recorded a proposal video. And I said, when you see this,
Either this is gonna come off real crazy, like this guy’s insane, or this is gonna tell you how serious I’ve been about I knew you were the one. And so I recorded it, you know, it had the timeline. Just so happened that day that it was a bad storm. So how lights went out, a friend of ours, it was a friend of hers, but we knew each other kind of through the friend.
I was friends with her husband. She was friends with the wife. The wife took her out, called her like, what are you doing? She’s like, I’m sitting in the dark. So took her to eat and she brought up me because we knew of each other, but she didn’t know I wanted to pursue her. To kind of speed up the story, she had that marker in her mind. Cause you know, it’s hard to kind of remember where you were on certain dates unless something kind of happened, like some kind of event. So when we got, when we finally started dating,
When we finally got around to thinking about marriage, I said, I want to show you something. I don’t think I ever showed her the video, but I showed her the time. I said, I want you to look at the date and the time. And because she was able to trace it back, she had told the story that after her girlfriend mentioned me, when she went home, she felt like I was thinking about her. She felt like I was praying for her. That’s how she felt, like I was praying for her and her son.
And because she had that marker of the date, when we looked at the time of when I did the video, in the time of like when she was praying, they almost was in total sync. And so as I was as I was doing my video, she had this overwhelming feeling like this dude is thinking about me. And so I say that to say, and I’ve never shared that on this podcast, but I want to double down. When y’all say y’all believe in time and stuff, listen.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (18:22)
Yeah.Thank
Yeah. You get it.
Q Edmonds (18:40)
I hear you. I hear you.I hear you.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (18:44)
We’ve had stuff like that with us too. We’re separate and think of each other. ⁓Q Edmonds (18:46)
Yeah.Oh,
me and my wife is so weird. We will literally call each other at the same time. And we, it’s like, it’s been time we picked up the phone and my hello. She’s like, hello. I’m like, are you serious right now? And so I think for me, that shows the beauty of the partnership that shows just being in line. Right. I think for everybody that’s watching this, you know, we’re not trying to sound super spooky, but there are things that show you what alignment looks like.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (18:54)
Yep.Right.
Q Edmonds (19:20)
For us, it’s just happened to be timing, right? And these are tools that we know within ourself that this is an alignment. But you out there on your journey, there are things that you know when alignment hits. And alignment matters in business. It matters in your decision making. It matters in who you get in business with. And so if you can’t get nothing out of what we said, if it sounds super like, just deal with the word alignment. All of us can understand.alignment needs to be is critical in moving forward our next steps. Would y’all agree with that? Yeah. let me ask you this. What are you guys, what’s the next real goal? Like, what are you guys looking to do next within real estate?
Melissa And Paul Maschek (19:54)
Yes.Sure. While we’re currently under contract on a house, that would be a strictly investment property. And I think it’s just kind of growing. feel like what are we going to do? Just do have capacity for more. And I think we’re just focusing on that. Maybe it’s this house, maybe it’s not. I don’t think we’re like tied to a specific thing other than like we want to do something together that allows us to be creative and just expand our capacity.
And then maybe that’s this house we’re under contract on, or maybe it’s not. feel like just having fluidness of like stretching ourselves, but also like it doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. And so I guess we’re very fluid in that regard of like, it can just change and that’s okay. If someone, if we were like, this isn’t the perfect fit for whatever reason, we’ll pivot to something else. But I think being on the same page communication, but then also like, I think we’re
full just extremely capable of more and I think just leaning on those things. So I guess it’s kind of a vague answer, but like maybe I don’t need, we don’t need to know exactly what it looks like, but other than real estate is there’s so many avenues. Let’s just see where it takes us. Yeah. Is that a line? And I think like we feel into things a lot too. So sometimes like, I mean, you can set goals, sure, but sometimes you end up, you know, five steps forward towards your goal and you realize actually this doesn’t feel a lot.
or this doesn’t feel right or new information is presented and then suddenly you’re like, okay, I need to make a little bit of a tweak or a pivot. And I think we’re both very fluid and adaptable in that way. And as long as we’re on the same page, it doesn’t really matter which direction we take things. So we’re both at a point where we’re like, okay, if we have a little bit of extra money, we can use it in investing in some way. Do we wanna just stick it into an account and do something passively?
Not really, like we wanna be more involved. We wanna be doing things. We wanna create something and be creative. So, know, flipping is kind of like an outlet for that for us right now.
Q Edmonds (22:08)
⁓ I love it. I want to do this because I think you guys are the perfect people to talk about this. When we’re coming down, winding up the show, I always have a segment when I talk about relationships, right? And I always kind of angle it and frame it from like a business angle. you know, I ask people how important are building business relationships. And every time I ask that, but the undertonethat I want people to know is that relationships are important, period. Because again, if you build the right foundation and the right approach to relationships, period, you’ll carry that over in every relationship in your life. Whether it’s with your spouse, with your kids, with yourself, and with business. Like relationships just have good, healthy foundations. And so I want to talk to you guys about relationships. Of course, you’ll have the relationship with each other.
And so I don’t, y’all can talk about it from any angle, from a business relationship, from being business partners with each other, but I just want to hear you guys approach in perspective on a healthy relationship.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (23:23)
Go ahead, you can start. Okay, sure, thank you. I get the first crack at that. I would say knowing that I’m not perfect at any, all things, and just being able to ask for help and grow. And I feel like doing so in a manner that’s just not counterproductive is so critical in a marriage relationship or a working relationship or anything, because I’m not gonna be, look.I guess an example would be when I first property I would get down then like I didn’t want to spend money on like even a cutting board, which is like $20. I was like such a lot. It was like fun police. It was like every aspect of everything was just no fun. So literally taking the fun out of everything and then just releasing that control and it just takes time. It’s not, it’s not, it’s just how my life experiences.
Q Edmonds (24:06)
It’s crazy.Yeah.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (24:22)
got me there, but it’s not like it’s gonna unwind instantly. just having professionals like therapists or working together, and time just gives you the opportunity to grow it together. So I feel like just knowing that maybe there’s more skills to add to the toolbox, but being open to getting those skills and then utilizing them. And I would say that would be for me.Q Edmonds (24:44)
That’s it.I love it. Melissa, else?
Melissa And Paul Maschek (24:48)
Yeah.Yeah. To piggyback on that, feel like we’re not, nobody is like a fixed person. Like our personalities aren’t fixed and our brain isn’t fixed. And when you work on yourself, like there’s so much that you can uncover and there’s so much that you can shift. And I think we both realize through our own inner work journeys that there’s so much that can shift in your relationships when you’re working on yourself. And so I feel like
You can be anybody that you want to be. And it takes time and it takes work and it takes intentionality to like uncover those neural pathways and to build new ones. But like, there’s a lot of transformation that can happen relationally and internally. and then I think your, your external world, whether it’s your external relationships or your business or whatever is like a mirror for all of that internal transformation. And I think like, for me, like we’re in a season right now where
we’re looking for, I’m looking for more collaboration and more partnerships that are going to be like long-term partnerships that we can kind of build a new foundation. Like I said, we’re kind of pivoting from doing live and flipping into something different. And that’s still like, you know, we’re still figuring that out what that is going to look like and finding those people that feel like they’re in alignment and finding those people that like, feel like our values are aligned and our goals are aligned or even just like,
what we’re trying to aspire towards individually is aligned. So I think that’s kind of where we’re at right now. We were talking the other day about like communication styles and making sure that those flash and like having really good communicators on our team is really important too, so.
Q Edmonds (26:32)
When you talk about sign, we talk about sign. we get this. Paul, when you said cutting board, me and my wife literally had this conversation to this day. There was a cutting board. I lie to you not, this beautiful wood cutting board, like tree trunk cutting board. And we was in the store, I don’t know if you ever heard Ross. Do y’all have a Ross for y’all in Charleston? My wife loves Ross.Melissa And Paul Maschek (26:38)
Yeah.Thank
Q Edmonds (26:59)
We in Ross, this beautiful cutting board, I pick it up and I’m like, this is so beautiful. This is before we even married. And I’m like, this is so beautiful. She was like, get it. And Paul, did you know, I was like, I don’t know if I’m gonna spend the money for this. It was like $20, It was like $20. And Paul, through this day, I regret not getting that cutting board. she, I like, I’m telling you, it’s crazy.Melissa And Paul Maschek (27:13)
I’m sorry.People
are just like, these carnivores.
Q Edmonds (27:30)
I’ll tell you, I ⁓ love, go hip hop.Melissa And Paul Maschek (27:36)
Cutting board is a hit for you. It’s so weird this is all connected but thanks for sharing that.Q Edmonds (27:42)
It’s great.I’m absolutely loving this conversation. I love your answer. Cause some of the highlights that I wrote that, you you’re not, you’re not 100 % where you want to be. Like having a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset. You talked about neuro pathways, you know, I try to slip in some psychology on this podcast, some type of way, if I’m just being honest, because
We’re growing people, like we’re growing. We’re trying to get unstuck. Some of us have kind of been who we are since we was like 13 years old. So it’s like this little child in us is trying to live out these big opportunities and success. And so it’s like all of this journey towards being entrepreneurs, towards being real estate people, business, these decisions that we have to make. And so I love you guys approach. I love what you all shared. ⁓
I know people are going to great nuggets away from this podcast. And so this episode specifically. So I appreciate that. I I could easily go for another 20, 25 minutes easily, but I don’t want to pause. Cause there’s so much I want to say. I guess the last thing, the last nagging thing I’ll say, have you heard, have you guys ever heard of Dr. Caroline Leaf?
Melissa And Paul Maschek (28:56)
ThankLeave.
Q Edmonds (29:07)
She hasa book called Switch on Your Brain.
Okay. So she, ⁓ she talks about neuropath ways. She talked about, what is like plasticity that’s in the brain, how the brain is malleable. And I just, when you said that, I just, thought about her. So I’ll just drop that name. Her name is Dr. Caroline Leaf and the book is called, switch on your brain. And so as you was talking, it, and I feel like if I don’t say it, I’m a regret not saying it. So I just put that out there. love books and that’s, that book has changed my life. It has changed literally the men in my circle, their lives. Cause you know,
men sometimes, it can be hard for us to dig deep. I’m just talking, maybe you’re not like that, but I know men in my circle, sometimes we ain’t wanna dig deep. And that book has really kind of changed the way we think. Protein branches, changing, feeding our mind. So we tell our mind what we wanted to think as opposed to just going down a rabbit hole. so yeah, so you get it.
But so I had to say that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. If someone wanted to reach out to you guys, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you are doing, how can they get in contact with you?
Melissa And Paul Maschek (30:12)
Thank you for the recommendation.Instagram would probably be the best way. That’s our main page. We share like DIY information and investing information and stuff on there. ⁓ Our Instagram handle is @housethingsandstuff which was kind of a joke when we started. We were like, let’s do some house stuff. Let’s do some house stuff. That’s where that came from. ⁓ So yeah, so just send us a DM on Instagram. We also have a free downloadable ebook ⁓ on our Instagram page that you can get if you’re a new investor looking to get started.
Quentin (30:52)
All right. So, let me say three things to y’all. Okay. First, me thank you for your time because you could have been anywhere in the world, but you chose to be here. And I thank you for your time. It means the world to me. And I’m going to explain that to y’all a little bit more and y’all going to understand the time and why it syncs up. So thank you for your time. Definitely thank you for your story. I believe in stories. think stories have a way of planting a seed in people.And we may never know how it grows. We may never see the growth, but the fact that we planted to seed sometimes could be the course correction that they need. And it may come two years, five years, but you planted the seed. And so thank you all for your story. I believe you planted many seeds. And lastly, thank you for your perspective, for your mind frame. So thank you so much for bringing that perspective and that mind frame to this platform. I greatly, greatly appreciate y’all. Thank you for coming through.
Melissa And Paul Maschek (31:50)
Thanks for having us.Quentin (31:51)
Absolutely.So listen, y’all heard them. can’t deny it. You can’t deny this episode. It was great. Y’all got the nuggets. Looking to show notes, get in contact with them. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we will continue to bring up and just have these amazing conversations with amazing people just like Melissa and Paul. So y’all, thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic
