The Power of Time Management: Real Estate Insights from 2 Success Stories

Stephen S. (00:02.941)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs Welcome back to the show if you’re joining us for a second third or hundredth time or welcome to the show if it’s your first time This is your host Stephen Schmidt and I’m here with two fur today. It’s always a fun surprise when I get two folks on And we are we’re going to be interviewing Akshay and Krishna today who are in the local area of Austin, Texas both are

working professionals who have also built some pretty substantial success in real estate while working a full-time job, which we’re going to really dive into today. Just remember before we do at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Akshay Krishna, welcome to the show today.

Listed & Invested (00:56.376)
Thank you. Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

Stephen S. (00:59.323)
You’re welcome. I know probably both of you will want to answer this, but when I usually get started with folks, I ask if you could just share just a little bit about yourself and really how you got here. What got you started in real estate and what got you to where you’re at today? So feel free to take as long as you need to answer that for both of you and tell me, tell us where we’re at.

Listed & Invested (01:21.678)
Sure, so we got married in 2022 and I always tell it, this is the Texas tag story, right? The toll tag. So I was just casually browsing through my toll tag statements and I realized we were spending like 200 or $300 per month just on tools. That hit me hard. And I was like, if I’m spending this much on tools, what am I doing on other aspects of finance? Right? Like before marriage, I didn’t look into that.

So I started looking into finance. got interested in it and she gifted me a book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. So that’s how it all started. So we learned about real estate. We started watching real estate podcasts and videos. That’s how we started. And to know that in more in deep, we took an Excel. We made sure that what is the finance or what are the numbers? Where are we wasting money unknowingly?

For example, the toll tag, we could use routes where it was not emergency or urgent. We could take that route, but we just chose to use the same route. And that’s when it hit us, okay, let’s first cut on a few things that we are aware of so that we can save money. then both of us, yeah, we were married and then we got into the topic of where can we invest further? Okay, we are making money. Where can we invest further?

when real estate came into picture. And we come from not a rich or wealthy background like middle-class families back in India, like ruined apartments, right? So we always wanted to own something that is giving us wealth and for sure it’s just real estate, right? So that’s how we started and also we have a full-time job.

cybersecurity engineer and she’s a systems analyst. So we do this passively so far.

Stephen S. (03:22.205)
Sure. So now when you got started in real estate, what was it that made you decide that real estate was going to be the thing versus investing in anything else that’s out there? Was this something that was maybe conversations growing up that the family was like, you need to invest in real estate or like, where did that drive really come from to to invest?

Listed & Invested (03:42.67)
So I would say one thing is, say you have a stock that is priced at $100. You need the full $100 to be able to purchase one share. But say you see a house for $200,000, you don’t need the full $200,000. You just need like $40,000 or something, which is leveraged, like using other people’s money. So the acceptance and reality that you don’t need the full amount, but start leveraging money to build wealth,

Stephen S. (04:02.365)
Sure. Leveraging debt, right?

Listed & Invested (04:12.744)
when we started looking into real estate from a different perspective and also historically the appreciation, tenants paying down your mortgage and amortizing that was kind of interesting to us to build wealth.

Stephen S. (04:30.461)
And so what’s what’s yep, go ahead

Listed & Invested (04:34.58)
We did not see that in any other way of…

assets or any other way of investments where somebody else for example our tenants will help us build equity. So that’s a good way to make wealth and we understand it’s a slow and steady game but yeah. And also when we started we were initially firstly understanding the difference between rich and wealth right that’s what I tell most of the years like riches today you have money, paycheck, you’re rich today but you’re just couple of paychecks before

broke. Wealth is measured in time right and in real estate is equity so we thought how can we buy back more time more equity by using leverage right and this is the only asset class where you can do that.

Stephen S. (05:23.837)
Sure. Now, with real estate specifically, did you guys just jump head first into it or did you have a plan that came together that you went and then executed? How did you really get that original start?

Listed & Invested (05:24.622)
Hmm

Listed & Invested (05:40.184)
So the first thing that we saw that time, both of us were fairly new and I was not a realtor back then. We looked into in and around our locality where we live. But at that time, we were also so naive that we understood maybe we could have even a thousand dollar negative cash flow and still we would own it. That was our mentality. But then we had very we had great mentors and friends in our circle who suggested, that’s crazy. Don’t jump into your first

deal with a cash flow and with such a huge… And I still remember I posted this on some real estate channels and bigger pockets and reddit and the comments are like crazy to accept a thousand dollar because we didn’t know right all we knew was it’s gonna go up in value tenants are gonna pay down the mortgage but a negative thousand we were ready to do it but then like she said we had so many good mentors and stuff like that so that’s when I think we decided

decided to start with Georgia. Our very first deal was out of state. I wouldn’t say it is giving life-changing cash flow, but it gave us enough lessons on what not to do in real estate. So that was how we started.

Stephen S. (06:55.325)
Hmm.

Listed & Invested (06:58.126)
3 bed 2.5 bath down home in Georgia that we got its turnkey immediately we rented it using our different realtors so that’s how we got started no fixing just not even deep cleaning just click the pictures and put it for rent yeah i think we were not scared we didn’t have the fear to go out of state we went solely by

which area gives us cash flow and the numbers. So that’s one reason now when we look back, think that was out of state was our first property. And I think that gave us a lot of confidence.

Stephen S. (07:33.469)
Yeah, so that’s really interesting too, because most people that I find that I get connected to, they only do real estate in their local market, or they’ve gotten large enough to where then, you know, they’ve just got so much money, to be quite frank with you that they have to move out of state to go find more deals. What was it about being in Texas?

and then finding a deal halfway across the country. A, how did you find that deal and what gave you the confidence that things would work themselves out being so far away? What made you decide to do that?

Listed & Invested (08:09.614)
So I think we had some good set of people beginning from day zero, right? Like we had a good realtor in Atlanta and we had a couple of friends who had already invested there. And I have a friend who is a lender in Dallas and he was the one who told me like, try exploring Atlanta market. Then back then, I think we didn’t even know how to run the numbers. Everything was online and I did some research and niche.com.

the average appreciation of how it’s going.

One major difference I would say is the property taxes between Texas and Atlanta is comparatively smaller in Atlanta. So we thought, okay, why don’t we give it a try, right? And also it’s almost like a new built when we got in 2022, it was a 2020 build. So two year old home, the inspection report came clean and the realtor was helping us a lot. So I think.

We basically had some risk appetite to take risks early in our career and confidence we had in the people that we used to work with and still we do.

Stephen S. (09:20.573)
Anything you want to add to that?

Listed & Invested (09:24.46)
Yeah, like you asked how does it feel to have deals just close by around your house? It feels wonderful. The last deal that we had is like 10 minutes away from our house. It feels like a bliss to just go and show people rather than in places like South Austin and Kyle and we love to drive to New Braunfels like one and a half hours. So having deals close to our house, we are just thankful to the people who helped us procure this deal. And yeah, me being in the real estate

state business we can see the MLS I have more access to tools which I can definitely assist and leverage all those as well for our personal wealth building game.

Stephen S. (10:05.085)
Sure. Yeah. Now, so what is that dynamic like? Because obviously you both you both are involved in the investment deal, but Krishna, you specifically have your realtors license. So what made you decide to get that? Was this before you decided to invest in real estate or how is that benefited you guys having that versus having to go hire a realtor to help with your deals, etc.?

Listed & Invested (10:28.27)
2022 back, we both decide, okay, real estate is the game that we would like to put our investments to. I, at that time I was on a dependent visa and since we are immigrants, I was on dependent visa where I did not have a work visa at that moment too.

become to do my nine to five job. So I was in a mental state if I would say I was a bit lost. having real state or something to concentrate on, to learn, to understand, it really got into me. I was really interested in it. And that’s when he out of fun, he just made a fine statement. If you’re so interested, maybe you should get a license because you are really passionate. You go into the details of it. So maybe this would help many of our friends and family and everybody around.

in the society as well. And also I think 2022 December we did our first deal in Atlanta and 2023 July just six months down we closed another deal in Atlanta. So we got like really pumped because December deal happened then came April the tax returns and I understood how car segregation, the depreciation bonus all those worked out in taxes. I was like this is so cool. So I was immediately jumped on to the next deal.

And I was like, then I came to know about this real estate professional, like if you can show your passive losses again. So, so many research went into that and I was, as she said, casually joking, why don’t you get a license so that…

commission on whatever flows inside the family, right? So that’s when she got her license. I think I took that funny sentence literally seriously. I cleared all the seven perp papers that we had and then the final exam and yeah, I had my license by the end of the second deal. yeah. And one funny thing that happened was, so we did two deals. Krishna is preparing to become a realtor. It was like a six month long process.

Stephen S. (12:01.629)
Hmm.

Listed & Invested (12:26.146)
By the time she cleared her real estate exam, she also got her IT full time. So she didn’t even be a full time realtor. So fortunately or unfortunately, both of them landed at the same time, but I think she was able to manage it. I did not want to miss both the opportunities that came my way. I’m trying to balance both in my life. So an engineer realtor. Yeah.

Stephen S. (12:49.764)
Right. Now, what are some common misconceptions that people have when they have jobs about like, I can’t do it all the same because I work full time.

Listed & Invested (12:59.522)
So I think so many people think if you want to do real estate you have to spend like three to four hours a day running numbers and so much and this is not me talking because we have a realtor here even if I were to start from scratch I would

depend on tools, know, start trusting people and one common thing that people have is, okay, I have a full time, eight hours a job, then come back home and relax. Yes, you have to spend a couple hours more analyzing the deals or using your lunch breaks to run your numbers and stuff. So it is doable and we are like living examples, right? Like I go to office like three days a week, but still we were able to do the deal. It’s about…

I would say your priority, mean nine to five keeps fueling your rich nerve, but real estate will fuel your wealth nerve. And we wanted both, I would say, right? I don’t want to go broke now in order to be wealthy 20 years down the lane, right? So I think it’s about priorities and time management.

Stephen S. (14:04.349)
Hmm.

Listed & Invested (14:08.448)
or me personally, comes with sacrifices of time, with sacrificing a few of my social circles, meeting friends and people because every other weekend when you have a deal come your way and…

If there is no people to show up at times to clean, we both need to clean that house. We make it sure that it is tenant ready. So yeah, it definitely comes with some sort of sacrifice, but yeah, you earn the, reap the benefits later. So we still remember there was one time when we had a fixer upper, it just needed some deep cleaning, some paint and flooring. We were there cleaning like the mess, like on a Saturday evening while our friends were out at the brewery.

you know enjoying themselves right so so definitely I think I missed a point the social sacrifice is comparatively little bit higher when you have a full time and you are not able to pay give time for real estate during the weekdays but I feel we have gotten better at it as well because as deals came we understood we need people rather than time instead of leveraging the time let’s help ask help from people and now we have a good team for example our last deal

It worked like clockwork. We just had to go and just supervise things. now we are taking a step back and having a team to work for us.

Stephen S. (15:31.805)
Yeah, that that makes total sense. So let me ask you this has the sacrifice been worth it so far

Listed & Invested (15:40.11)
far, I would say yes.

Stephen S. (15:42.749)
because

Listed & Invested (15:43.178)
I mean, without that, for two individuals, a regular middle-class family, like coming from a 900 square foot apartment back in India, we wouldn’t have imagined building this $1.6 million real estate portfolio, right? I mean, though it is not giving like life-changing cashflow today, to be honest, like 10 years, 15 years down the line, once we pay off the debt, it’s going to be like assets and we can pass it on, we can enjoy the passive income, right?

I would say the temporary sacrifice is definitely worth it.

Stephen S. (16:17.469)
Yeah, 100%, which it sounds like your strategy is more of the long-term anyways. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your strategy is more buy and hold, build long-term wealth versus just flip, get quick payoffs, and then go do more deals. And I think part of that might be a time restriction, maybe, because you don’t have the 40 hours a week, right, to be just processing deal after deal after deal, but it sounds like you guys are setting it up to where like,

Listed & Invested (16:26.478)
Hmm

Stephen S. (16:46.397)
and 20 years from now, you’re gonna really reap the benefits of the work that you’ve been doing today.

Listed & Invested (16:50.958)
Yes, it’s a 10 year game we are playing. So many hurdles come. mean, we’ve been having lunch at 5.30 PM and we’ll be exhausted. And one thing that we keep encouraging us is it’s a 10 year game. 10 years down the lane, you look back and you’ll be so happy about what we did today.

think we would also like to specify here, we do not want like crazy number of houses. Yes. We can have the correct, if the numbers work correctly with the minimal number of houses that we have as friends, foreign, we can work through it. I mean, we have been, we have got moved with people telling 45 doors, 100 doors, right? Like that’s a famous terminology in real estate. It’s like, it’s like your batch. It’s like your feather on your hat, right?

Stephen S. (17:40.477)
Right. I’m in the 100 door badge club. Sure.

Listed & Invested (17:40.992)
You can’t buy right? And then we realized is it 100 houses? I mean we were still naive to realize that. Then I realized okay one duplex if they buy that’s two doors like doors a unit right? And then we realized no you don’t need it. I mean maybe we’ll do a couple more maybe not but five houses or

Stephen S. (18:02.877)
You could buy one apartment and have 300 doors, right?

Listed & Invested (18:05.774)
Yes, all you need is good deal, automated management, software management and you can prepare with that. That’s what we’re trying to prove. And I think with our intention, since it was in the right place, we have few friends and we have people reach out to us also to help them buy a deal.

Since I am also a realtor, now I know the ins and outs. Since we are also an investor, we just don’t market things. We are 100 % honest in our opinion or suggestion. So we have people, clients and customers who also request us to assist them. We also, we have our Instagram. We also post the other side of real estate, right? Say HVAC fails and other property, there’s a plumbing issue. And while you’re attending to that, you have a P1 incident in your work. You have to join.

that call as well. So we show the other aspects of real estate also.

Stephen S. (19:04.049)
Yeah, 100%. Now, so let me ask you this. What does life look like in 10 years for you if everything goes according to the plan that you currently have? How does it look different?

Listed & Invested (19:14.03)
So I would say it’ll be a little different, a lot better. Meaning, so we still do like a…

yearly international trips, right? We have a separate budgeting for that. Like last year we did Italy while doing real estate. I think the count will increase, right? Because by our strategy, by my Excel sheet numbers, once you start paying down the loan, okay, out of six, one property is now debt-free. That’s gonna give me $1,000 more to my already having income, right? So we can…

I am assuming we can spend some quality time and more vacations, good food, good clothing and stuff like that. Quality life. Quality life overall.

Stephen S. (20:01.467)
Hmm. What does equality life mean to you?

Listed & Invested (20:05.71)
I mean it’s different for everyone right for us it’s like having a relaxed laid-back vacations I mean not having to worry about what’s happening back home that’s one thing having good quality food and you know quality clothing and everything right so it matters right I mean when you have a property with debt you wouldn’t go for the $200

shoes you would just think about this is like four months HOA right I mean that’s the mentality we are with but but once you have like debt free once that income keeps flowing you now have a little bit of freedom to purchase what you want

gifting parents back home, making them travel in like little bit of higher class in airlines. Those are all like quality life. things that give us joy. Yeah. yeah, if not on the materialistic aspect that what I discussed with him, since I see so many peer friends of us, quality to me is maybe down the lane in 10 years, we might have a kid. We would like to spend more time with the kid. So I can happily have a nanny or somebody to take care of the kid. I can pay for that person and then have a quality time with my family.

Stephen S. (21:11.335)
Mm. Yeah.

Listed & Invested (21:16.446)
those are simple things but getting time back in majority of aspects

Stephen S. (21:21.627)
Right, but essentially buying back your time to then be able to actually experience and enjoy the life that we’ve been blessed to live. Yeah, I’m totally with you guys. And I love every piece that you said, because me and my wife, we’re on the same page there. It’s like, we want to eat good food. We want to buy, you know, not flashy clothes. We want to buy textiles, right? Like we want to buy.

Listed & Invested (21:29.005)
Yep.

Listed & Invested (21:45.176)
Thanks.

Stephen S. (21:46.491)
We want to buy good clothes, you know what I mean? That are high vibration materials, you know, that aren’t a bunch of blends that you go get it down at Walmart, no offense to Walmart. But, you know, we want to do those things because of the way that they also make us feel living in a higher vibrational state, right? We want to be able to travel and experience the world. We’d love to go internationally and see the history and try to figure out, you know, some of those things that like, how did we get here as a society? All of those things. And,

Listed & Invested (21:48.558)
Mm.

Stephen S. (22:16.06)
You know,

Listed & Invested (22:16.077)
I read a book, there’s this author called Ramit Sethi, he talks about the rich life that you’re gonna build. So he says, yeah, I will be, yeah. So he talks about, he’ll.

Stephen S. (22:28.349)
I have his book sitting right next to me.

Listed & Invested (22:32.526)
We have those over here. So he talks about guilt free spending, right? That’s matters. mean, ordering a good quality appetizers, even if it’s $75, that’s quality life, right? Like buying a shirt, even if it’s like a three digit is quality.

Stephen S. (22:51.844)
100 % I love that well the last question for you guys before we kind of wrap things up for today If you had to go back and start over again, which you haven’t been doing it forever in Fairness, but you’ve been doing it long enough to crack a code that I think most people are too scared to even take original action on so if you had to go back you both are working professionals nine to fives all that if you had to go back knowing what you know now today with a You know almost 1.5 million dollar portfolio

What would you do different and what would you do the same?

Listed & Invested (23:23.576)
So probably wanna, I will go, what would I do different, right? So previously I was thinking I need to have money down, I need to have my credit score ready, I need to show my accounts ready. But now what I would do different is first try connecting with people. A nice handyman, a general contractor, like a mentor, right? That’s where I would start with because today,

Even though if we don’t have any down payments, we have people who are ready to lend to us, like even like 5 % down, 10 % down, like friends and mentors. So that’s one thing I would do differently. Start with the people aspect of real estate. That’s what I would do differently. Okay, I would go with what we do the same. think we tally or we budget each cent that is spent on every rehab we do.

And though I complain about missing few social circle and missing my friends, I would still go take the junk, put it in the, I would learn to do all that with my hands so that I value and respect the person who comes and does that for us. We would not know how much of effort that takes. It takes a whole day or a day and a half to clean a house if you’re doing a rehab. So though I complain about those things, looking back, now I know how valuable I feel. I feel so respectful for the person.

and who comes and does that for me and the second thing and the first thing that I said was yeah to the cent just have all the budgets to the cent don’t take any not even one penny casually like okay that’s that’s just yeah I mean the last deal we did the house was missing a number plate on the front of garage door it was just a ten dollar item in Home Depot but we still track that we still track it in our sheet so don’t miss even

Stephen S. (25:00.711)
Mm.

Stephen S. (25:14.973)
Right.

Listed & Invested (25:16.784)
gonna pay you $2.

Stephen S. (25:18.781)
Right. Which accurate accounting is where most people end up making the biggest mistakes in real estate, because it might just be a $10 item right here. But if you keep that bad money habit going and then eventually maybe you do have a thousand doors. Well, a thousand times $10 is 10,000. And that’s actual real money now that we’re talking about. So if you skimp out on the little, you’ll skip out when you have a lot. Right.

Listed & Invested (25:38.616)
Yeah.

specific.

True, true. Yeah, and not specifically doing this bird kind of deals where you buy properties fix I want to know how much did I exactly put in how much the odd boy the cash on cash and all of those right? So yeah, I tracking start believing people are the two things we would start over

Stephen S. (25:50.109)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen S. (26:04.573)
Yeah, 100%. Well, if people want to learn more about you and what y’all are working on, where should they go to learn more about you guys?

Listed & Invested (26:14.434)
We have an Instagram page on social media. So listed and invested, it’s the name of the page. People are happy to come there, chat to us, drop DMs. We can access them in whatever way possible. And the name is interesting, right? Because we started doing real estate and we started structuring LLC and all of those. And we needed a name, right? Then of course we were leveraging Chad, GPT, and AI and stuff. But I was like, wife is doing the listings, buying and

husband is doing the investing, running numbers, cash on cash otherwise give us a name it’s like listed and invested that sounded really catchy and that’s our brand or channel or company however you want to it but that’s how we go like listed and invested

Stephen S. (27:02.609)
I love it. That’s awesome. They use ChaiGBT to get it. Well, that’s great. Go drop them a follow y’all. Let them know the Fuel team sits you over there and who knows, maybe go bring them a deal. We’ll see what happens. But everyone, I hope you enjoyed today’s show and we’ll see you in the next episode. Akshay Krishna, thank you so much for being here and sharing your knowledge with us. I’m sure people are gonna get a ton of value out of this. We’ll see all y’all on the next episode.

Listed & Invested (27:26.67)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Stephen S. (27:31.133)
You bet.