The Busy Professional’s Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing with Vanessa Peters – EP 210

The Fastest Way To Build A Six Or Even… Seven Figure Real Estate EMPIRE! 

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Are you looking for a passive way to invest your hard-earned money? Well, today’s guest, Vanessa Peters, has a unique real estate investing strategy that you won’t want to miss! 

In this episode, we’re talking all about investing in entitlements — the process of turning raw land into a “shovel-ready” state. This adds value to the land and can lead to BIG returns!

Ok Josh, but wouldn’t the builders handle that type of work?” 

Nope! You see, the National Home Builders typically only purchase land that’s entitled, rather than raw, to reduce risk and speed up the process of bringing homes to market. 

And therein lies the opportunity. Once the land has been entitled, builders will then pay more than double what it’s worth! 

Development-readiness involves doing the leg work to get the property zoned, cleared, subdivided and/or permitted for builders — so it does require a team with a specific set of skills. This is why finding or building the right syndication is an important piece of the puzzle. Which leads me to today’s guest… 

I’m speaking with Vanessa Peters, MD. Vanessa is the founder of VMD Investing and has been investing in real estate for 12 years in single family homes, commercial retail, apartment communities, short-term rentals, self-storage, land entitlements and manufactured home parks. She has invested in over 2,500 units across 15 properties and 4 funds.

In my conversation with Vanessa, you’ll hear how she went from a busy doctor (who was swimming in debt) to learning the in’s and out’s of the real estate game. Now, she’s a co-sponsor in a massive $50M land development fund, which you’ll learn all about! We dig into land entitlements, syndications, the power of your network, personal development, and more. 

If you’re a busy professional looking to create passive income with real estate, this is a pretty interesting real estate niche to learn about — so don’t miss out!

Key Takeaways

  • The low-risk real estate opportunity you never knew about — investing in “raw land” and adding value through entitlements.
  • Hear about Vanessa’s $50M fund that’s giving investors an 8% preferred return + 8% in profit sharing for a cash flow of 16% — and how she assembled a rock star team! 
  • How Vanessa got her start in real estate and moved from single family homes to investing $50k into her first real estate syndication.
  • Understanding the risks and rewards of leveraging real estate.
  • Why your network is your net worth! 
  • How to level up your life through the power of masterminds.

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Josh Cantwell: So, hey there, welcome back to Accelerated Real Estate Investor with Josh Cantwell. I am so excited for this interview for you to hear. I am interviewing today Dr. Vanessa Peters. She is the founder of VMD Investing, has been investing in real estate for 12 years, and actually started investing right in the middle of the crash. She’s done single-family homes, commercial retail, apartment communities, short-term rentals, self-storage, land entitlements, and manufactured homes. She’s invested in over 2,500 units across 15 properties and four different funds. Today, she is passionate about helping busy professionals, doctors, highly paid executives invest and build wealth through passive income-producing real estate.

And she is the author of the Busy Professionals Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing: A physician’s path to building wealth, creating financial freedom and leaving a legacy. In this interview, Vanessa and I cover number 1, we’re going to talk about her new $50 million land development fund and how she’s essentially getting entitlements and selling large plots of land to national homebuilders for a very quick double-digit return. Number 2, we’re going to talk about the importance of authoring a book and being on podcasts in order to build her network and meet new people and also recruit capital for her fund. Number 3, we’re going to talk about her journey from being a busy new doctor deep in debt and having zero real estate experience to buying her first real estate investment, which was a short sale in San Diego, and actually going through a divorce and losing a value in that single-family home to ultimately getting into real estate investment, single-family homes, home flips, then getting into multifamily syndications, making her first $50,000 investment in her first syndication to now being a co-sponsor and a co-general partner in a massive $50 million land development fund. Number 4, Vanesa and I also talk about why busy professionals and doctors should invest in commercial real estate to create passive income and reduce their taxes.

I also think you’re going to love to hear about Vanessa’s journey, very similar to mine, very similar to a lot of you. Even though she’s a busy, successful doctor, her path to real estate success sounds a lot like yours and mine. I hope you enjoyed this interview on Accelerated Real Estate Investor with Vanessa Peters.

Welcome to the Accelerated Real Estate Investor podcast with Josh Cantwell. If you’re looking to retire early with forever passive income, you’re in the right place. This podcast is the go-to destination for real estate investors, both active and passive. And multifamily apartment investors, both new, intermediate and advanced. Now sit back, listen, learn and accelerate your business, your life and your investing with the Accelerated Real Estate Investor podcast.

Josh Cantwell: So, Vanessa, listen, thank you so much for joining us today on the Accelerated Real Estate Investor podcast. So excited to have you on and looking forward to this for a long time. Wanted to get started right away by asking you, I know you’re working on a fund, I know you have a lot of things going on, even lots of different types of investments. Tell us about something you’re working on literally today or this afternoon, next week that really kind of gets you fired up.

Vanessa Peters: Alright. Thanks for having me, Josh. I’m so excited to be here. Yeah, well, I’ve just launched a fund. It’s called Rockstar Capital Fund 2. And it’s a really unique niche in real estate land entitlement. And so, yeah, it’s the final $50 million fund. And it’s really interesting because we all know that single-family homes are in demand right now, inventory is low all over the country. And this provides a little piece of the puzzle, which is quite profitable. The folks who build the new homes, the national homebuilders like Mattamy, Lennar, Ryan, etc., they used to take land from raw all the way to fully develop.

However, back in the crash of real estate in 2008, 2009, they had a whole lot of raw land on their books when that occurred. And unfortunately, they had a bunch of dirt that was worthless overnight, basically. And being that their big corporate structures, they were like, okay, let’s not let that happen again. So, they decided to prefer to buy land with a shovel ready, or another word for that is paper lots or permitted lots. So, that’s the land entitlement process, is buying a piece of raw land, getting it ready for the national homebuilders to do their thing. It’s quite an involved process. It requires specialists who know exactly what they’re doing, getting environmental proposals, getting surveys done, engineering stuff, making sure the soil is okay, making sure there’s no giant boulders underneath there that they can dig into, getting permits from the city, you know how fun that is, zoning, but the cool thing is that you’re not actually doing anything. You’re not getting any tractors out there. You’re not grading. You’re not digging for piping or anything like that.

So, the folks that used to work for the big national homebuilders are now working for this company that I partnered with. And they know everybody. They know the city people and all that. And we’re focused in the Carolinas. And I did a deal last year, which was a smaller 500 lot deal just to see how it went really well. So, now we’re opening it up to 30,000 hopefully this coming a couple of years. This year, we’re hoping to do about 800 lots. And so, what that means is that the investors that come in will receive a preferred return, and the folks who are doing this have done the full development process, but what happened is that when the land was getting ready, they were smaller, and the big national homebuilders would be like, hey, we want that land. We’ll pay you double for it. Oh, okay, well, that sounds pretty good.

So, what happens now is the homebuilders come to this group, they’re like, hey, we want that piece of land. Please go buy it and get it ready for us. We’ll give you an LOI, and it’s usually about double what it’s worth. And give it to us. And so, it’s a pretty smooth transaction and they don’t actually purchase the land until they’re absolutely sure that it’s going to work out because obviously, you don’t want to buy a $6 million or a $10 million piece of dirt and find out that it’s just dirt.

Josh Cantwell: Right. Fantastic stuff. So love the Carolina area, so Lake Norman, Charlotte, the Carolinas, obviously have a lot of demand there. If you look at the kind of population migration, a lot of people moving to the Southeast and the Midwest, moving away from the coastlines, no high tax expensive areas. So fantastic area with golf down there. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. The demand prices are shooting up. I love the strategy. Tell us a little bit more about if somebody invests in the fund to get a preferred return, a big part of the return is going to come, obviously, from the sale, right? The land is now kind of ready. It goes to a builder. There’s a big transaction. Dollars come into the fund. Is the fund an open-ended fund or close-ended fund? And what is some of possibly the risk that it goes into land development? I don’t do a lot of land development, I don’t know, our audience, because there’s not a lot of deal flow happening especially with single family. There’s a lot of new construction that needs to happen. Why is this land development such a key part of the process?

Vanessa Peters: So, it’s a closed-ended fund. We’re expecting five to seven years. It’ll be capped off once it fills. And the beauty of it is because the development of the entitlement only takes 9 to 18 months, 12 months on average. We expect to provide the preferred return from the full development. There’s a pipeline of about 250 homes that are already in the pipeline to be built, and they could be built for rent or MLS or buy and hold. And so, I’ll provide the preferred return cash flow and also some depreciation for the fund, too, and then, the sale of the land, we’re hoping to get two to four quarterly profit-sharing distributions to the investors per year. So, we’re looking at hopefully 8% preferred return, 8% in profit sharing for a cash flow of 16% that year because these turn over so quickly, it’s not like multi-family. And I’m in many multifamily deals and I’ve done on a GP on many of them as well.

There’s some delayed gratification there. You’re waiting for that sale. And since these sales are so quick, we’re going to be providing a little more cash flow. And we all know inventory is low and the homebuilders want to build. We’re building in the affordable home market space. So, these aren’t McMansions. These are in the 150 to 300 range. And so, this is for regular folks to purchase. And so, it’s really a critical part. And there is the ability to expand quite extensively. We’re looking also at Florida and some other markets, too. And so, I feel like this fund is projected to do 16%, but it could be higher. And it is a good chance that after we get rolling, it will be. And then, we’ll just roll it into the next fund. We’ll probably create a fund 3 after five years. Or if we need more capital, we’ll start one sooner.

Josh Cantwell: Fantastic stuff. So love the niche fit for what’s going on in today’s market. I just interviewed last week, who’s a good friend of mine, the executive vice president at Auction.com. He’s essentially their economist. His name is Daren Blomquist. And right now, the average amount of properties that are on the MLS, according to the National Association of Realtors, is just a tiny fraction, over one million. It’s the lowest number of homes listed for sale on the MLS in the history that they’ve been tracking this. You’re going back at least 30 years or longer to the lowest amount of inventory they’ve ever had so obviously where prices keep going up. So, even if there’s some fluctuation in interest rates, even if there’s some fluctuation, there’s just so much demand for affordable housing.

People are talking about mobile home parks, but you said that 100,000 to 300,000 range, not the McMansion properties, more of the starter homes. So, I love the fit. I wanted to ask you about that, because as an entrepreneur, you, I, all of our listeners, a jewel like this or a form like this doesn’t come together unless there’s an incredible team behind it. So, I’m curious how you’ve assembled the team. How has that come together? Because you’re a busy physician, you’re obviously a busy investor as well. So, land entitlement seems entirely out of your swim lane, but there’s obviously a lot of people who are experts at this. How did you assemble the team?

Vanessa Peters: So, yeah, absolutely. And to your point earlier about risks, I didn’t follow up on that question. The risk with this is actually really low. I’m a conservative investor. I like to be assertive and aggressive. And I do have a small portion in venture capital and things like that, but overall, I don’t like throwing my money. And so, I really like the low-risk aspect of this fund because things are so short term that in 12 months, I don’t think the bottom is going to fall in real estate. I don’t think we’re in a bubble at this point. And even like you said, if interest rates start to rise, there’s also the thought that maybe when the moratorium on evictions and such goes away, people will probably have more foreclosures and that will provide some inventory as well, but as we all know, our lending environment is so different than it was back in 2008. The banks are much more conservative.

So, I think we’re still on a good track. And the beauty of the fund is since things happened so quickly, we could pivot or we could change directions if something started to change, whereas when you’re in a five-year deal, if things change, then you might not see as much of your money back as you’d like. The other thing is that this is the first liquid fund that I’ve ever been in. After a year, you can put your capital out, and we give your spot to someone else. You get back your full amount of your capital, minus the distributions for that quarter that you would have received. So, that’s really kind of, I feel a good way to try it out. And if you’re not happy, then you can take your capital back out.

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Josh Cantwell: That’s fantastic. I love that. Thanks for addressing the risk scenario.

Vanessa Peters: Yeah, and then to speak to the team, the other folks that are doing the actual development, they’ve been doing this for 20, 30 years. The lead construction, the owner of the construction side, his name is Lindsay Jarvis and he’s from New Zealand. He’s a funny guy, and I love to put him on my webinars to sell, too. And this isn’t his first rodeo. He knows what he’s doing because he’s done it all from zero to selling the homes. And he knows all the national homebuilders. He’s got them on a speed dial. And so, they call him. And then he has assembled this excellent team of land asset managers, the LAMs, they call them. And they’re the folks who know the specifics of how to do this very specific thing. This isn’t a do-it-yourself kind of thing. This isn’t like you can read a book or go to a conference and figure out how to do land entitlements. It’s not that. It’s probably really detail-oriented, boring work to most of us to think about going to the city and filling out forms and reviewing proposals and such. So, that’s critical is having that really knowledgeable group of guys that do that.

And then, I met the guy who started the fund, Brandon Rooks of Rockstar Capital. I met him because I’m part of a Mastermind for doctors investing, and he’s one of the sponsors in that group. And we met a couple of years ago and started chatting. And I told him that I partner with about five different operators, but I would sure love to have one that I could be a really big part of the GP on. And he said, “Well, you know what? You might be my person.” And so, we did a couple of deals together. And I could show that I had a good investor base. And so, then we started working together and learning. And it’s been a really interesting process setting up a fund. It’s a lot more work than a single-asset deal and a lot more expensive. And so…

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, for sure it is.

Vanessa Peters: But it’s been interesting getting the portal set up and doing all the tech behind it. And I love doing that. I love making things automated and making things easy because we’re all busy and we don’t have time to be printing our docs and signing them and sending checks in the mail and things like that. So, yeah, we’ve got a great team for this fund.

Josh Cantwell: I love it. I love the way technology really has enhanced the way that operators, capital raisers, general partners can kind of put it all on a portal now, showcase the deal, showcase the webinar, showcase the private placement documents, push that stuff out when quarterly interest payments are due, all automated to the portal. All this evolution of what happened with the Jobs Act almost 10 years ago when President Barack Obama signed that into law. And it was in its infancy back then right when the crash happened, 2010, 2011. And now, you see 10 years later, all of this private equity venture capital, these different funds that people are able to do, you don’t have to be in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or traditional investments. It’s fantastic stuff.

So, Vanessa, I’m curious to kind of back up a little bit more to the way you got started. You’ve done single-family home investments, funds, multifamily apartments, land entitlements, commercial investments. You’re also a very busy doctor. People might ask like, oh, my gosh, listening to this, like, how does she have time? And how could she even get started being– because many people perceive doctors to be so busy, always on call, no free time. My buddy right next door is a family practice doctor. He’s very busy. And I have a lot of doctors and passive investors that listen to this podcast, they’re thinking, man, how does she do all that? Sounds like, are there enough hours in the day? So, tell us how you got started, jumped in, and then how you started to build your portfolio out? How did you scale? How did you meet people? Tell us a little bit more about the beginning.

Vanessa Peters: Sure. I started investing actually in 2008. I did purchase it.

Josh Cantwell: Not a good time to get started.

Vanessa Peters: No, it was. I bought a short sale. It was a low price, but…

Josh Cantwell: Okay, here we go.

Vanessa Peters: After the crash, right around, actually, it was early 2009. You’re right. And so, it was at the advice of a realtor. I said I had some extra cash. And I’m in San Diego, a family medicine physician, and he said, “You know what? Riverside County, just north of you, that’s going to be a great spot.” And so, I bought a single-family home that was a short sale. And then the market kept going down. I bought it kind of early, and it went down, kept going down for a few more years. Not a lot, but you know, and I was just kind of like, I’m not sure that was the best thing to do. I didn’t know much about real estate honestly. I wish I had dug in at that time. And then I would have been like, oh, wow, I need to buy 10 of these. And then I would be set because that house now has like $350,000 in equity in it. And it’s had the same renters for 10 years. I’m thinking maybe I should 1031 that into something bigger, but I basically set it and forget it because I wasn’t sure.

And I got married, I had a child, I was busy working and I kind of forgot about real estate honestly. And then, when my son was getting a little bit older, like, three or four, I started talking to a financial advisor and I was like, you know, I really want to spend more time at home. I’m so busy. What can I do? Maybe I want to retire early. And of course, I had the typical investments. And he’s like, well, do you know how much money you’ll need to retire with the same good old rate? And I was like, no, not really sure. He was like, about $4 million. And I was like, oh, crap, shoot.

Josh Cantwell: How did we got there?

Vanessa Peters: I’m barely an accredited investor. That is really far away. And I was in my 30s, my mid-30s at the time. So, I basically put my nose to the grindstone, I worked my butt off, I saved more than half my income, thinking, okay, I’m going to get there. I’m determined. And then I looked up about five years later, graphed out everything. And I was like, well, crap, this is like a straight line, my net worth. And it’s a straight line because I’m saving so much money, not because my investments are performing so well in the stock market. And this is in a good bull market. So, I was frustrated and I wanted something better. I knew that real estate was the way to do that. I kind of woke up and I was like, oh yeah, right, real estate.

I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad in my early, early medical career, and it blew my mind, but it freaked me out at the same time. I wasn’t ready to ditch my medical career and become a full-time entrepreneur. I mean, like, it just wasn’t in the cards for me. So, I kind of just put it away. And then, I kind of remember that, I was like, I need to get into real estate. Of course, by then, in San Diego, I couldn’t find the thing. I was looking everywhere at condos. I was scouring the whole area. I couldn’t repeat what I did in Riverside County. So, I was like, I’ve got to find a different way to invest in real estate. I joined BiggerPockets. I started going to meet-ups, learning everything I could about real estate.

And of course, they’re focused on the traditional way, which is buying homes and then flipping them into small multis and bigger multis, etc. I went to some meet-ups and learned that most Southern California investors are going out of state purchasing a turnkey home in Memphis. That bothered me. It made me nervous because of my conservative nature. I just didn’t really want the responsibility of having an actual house in a place where I don’t know anybody, that’s a plane right away, leaving everything to a property manager. So, I was like, I don’t think I want that risk, but I kept digging, I kept looking. And I found out about syndications after a while on BiggerPockets.

Josh Cantwell: Here you go.

Vanessa Peters: I reached out to somebody who seemed knowledgeable in the area. And we had a couple of chats. He told me about a potential deal in Dallas-Fort Worth and the returns, ran the numbers. I was like, wow, this is amazing. This light bulb, I was like, this could really work because I have capital, but I don’t have time. So, this is what I want to do. And I flew out to Dallas, met everybody, did a gut check, did a criminal background check. I was like, 50 grand is a lot of money. Like, you want to make sure this is for real because I was pretty skeptical at first and put my money in. And then, the checks started flowing, and I was like, okay, this, I was totally hooked.

So, I transferred everything that I could out of my 401(k), got a self-directed plan, started investing in a lot of syndications. And then, I kind of fell in love with it and I also became one of those people who just talked about it all the time. And other doctors didn’t know what I was talking about. Some of them were interested, and I was like, I need to get the word out. And so, that’s when I wrote a book about passive, like basically, the busy professionals guide to passive real estate investing and joined the team to learn how to be a syndicator, basically, and focusing more on the capital raising side of things because I do like my job, I’m not planning on leaving my job. I don’t want a new job as a person who, like, is the hands-on construction, finding deals, underwriting, etc. So, I found my niche with basically my network of accredited investors. And so, that’s how I got started in real estate, but ultimately, my goal is financial freedom. And I’m an LP on 22 syndications. So, I try to invest in all the deals with my investors as well.

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Josh Cantwell: Yeah, I love it. So, that book, the Busy Professionals Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing is available on your website. It’s VMDInvesting.com. If you’re on YouTube, you can see Vanessa showing a picture of the book. Fantastic stuff.

Vanessa Peters: Yeah, it’s on Amazon as well.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, on Amazon as well. Fantastic. So, I’m curious, like, looking back now, what did you think you could have done differently? What did you do right? What advice would you give our audience? What advice would you give your younger former self? Because a lot of the things that you did, I love, like it’s just like I want to learn more about real estate. Oh, Rich Dad, like what happened there? Let me go buy a property. You actually jumped in and then you started just continually learning, started the network. It seems like from an outsider’s perspective, you did a lot of things right. You kept growing. You kept learning. You made the flight to Dallas. You started learning more about that. You decided to make that first $50,000 investment, like bam, now, I’m hooked. I think a lot of people would want to take the same path that you took, but there’s probably a few things that you maybe would do differently, looking back. So, what advice would you give your younger former self and our audience about how they can get started and a little bit about your growth that could affect them?

Vanessa Peters: Yeah, I made some mistakes and I started late. I’m in my mid-40s now. I wish I….

Josh Cantwell: Oh, my God, you started late. You started earlier than most people. Most people are like 50, 60, like, oh, what’s this real estate thing? Like, oh, my God, your perspective is amazing to think you were in your 30s and you started late. I’m in my mid-40s too. So, you’re like, oh, my God, I’m in my mid-40s, but no, like we both kind of started early, I think, in the general scheme of things, so.

Vanessa Peters: Right. Well, thank you for saying that. Thank you. I feel like I got started late, I guess, because I was so driven as a teenager. I’m like, I’m going to medical school. I’m not taking any breaks. I finished all my residency training when I was 26. So, I’m from Canada. There was an accelerated program. I came down here. I’ve been at the same job ever since. So, I was a baby when I got here. If I had known a little more back then, I could have an amazing empire right now, but a couple of mistakes I made, one was getting a giant line of credit in medical school. The banks, they’re like, oh, you’re going to be a doctor. Let me give you a $100,000 line of credit. This was 20 years ago. I’m sure they’re bigger now. And I spent it. I didn’t need to spend it, but I took a Hawaii vacation, just stuff like that.

Also, during the housing boom, I leveraged my house, and that became, unfortunately, a problem. I was treated, like any teenager, just like so many other people, like, oh, this is great. So, the house I bought here in San Diego in 2003, I refinanced it a couple of times and had it turned way underwater in the downturn. Unfortunately, I also went through a divorce that same year before the downturn. I got the house, he got the 401(k). And so, promptly after the divorce was final, this house that I had, which had a bunch of equity, all of a sudden had zero, and I had nothing in the bank. And so, it’s important. I’m much more cautious now with my debt to income and leveraging properties. I know leverage is a great thing, but don’t overleverage yourself. Make sure that if something went south, you would be okay, so.

Josh Cantwell: Right. Love it. Fantastic advice. Vanessa, so we’re going to finish with our final five and then we’ll have you jump off. I know you’ve got other things going on. So, thank you so much for joining me. Again, Busy Professionals Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing, go visit VMDInvesting.com. Also, you can learn more information about Vanessa’s fund there. And we’ll jump into that here. Again, so the final five, Vanessa, we’re going to do this really quickly. Question number one, what’s your favorite way to find deals or find opportunities to invest in?

Vanessa Peters: Through my network, yeah, I don’t really like to find deals cold from, say, folks contacting me on LinkedIn, etc. I’m not the deal finder in this whole process, but having said that, on my side, I own properties wholly on my own. And through those, the way that I do that is through trusted realtors and through a trusted team in Kansas City. So, always through a team. I don’t like to find deals by myself. I like to have the experts help me with that.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, always be out looking for partners, talking to people, meeting people. Question number two, Vanessa, favorite way to find capital to invest. Obviously, you’re standing up this fund. So, favorite way to find capital or joint venture partners, limited partners for deals.

Vanessa Peters: Through my network and through doing things like podcasts, writing a book. You have to get yourself out there. People are going to trust you. And to have your story out there and a face to the name, it makes it much easier for people to hear your story and trust you, basically.

Josh Cantwell: Absolutely. Vanessa, favorite book. Could be a business book. Could be a nonfiction book. Favorite book that you’ve ever read, and why?

Vanessa Peters: Well, the CASHFLOW quadrant is something that really sticks in my head because I keep going back to it. It’s like a mantra. I want to be in the I quadrant. That’s where I really want to be. I know the B quadrant is great, and maybe I’ll do that, but it has to be passive. I don’t want to be an entrepreneur working 80 hours a week. I want to be an investor.

Josh Cantwell: Fantastic stuff. Vanessa, you’re busy. We’re all busy. You’ve got to find a place to decompress and think. What’s your favorite place to go?  Kind of your sweet spot to just think about your life, decompress, kind of evaluate, reflect, where do you like to go?

Vanessa Peters: So, on our property, I have a little She-shed. They call it the casino.

Josh Cantwell: Love it.

Vanessa Peters: And it’s a shed, but it’s beautiful inside. It’s like my little office. I go in there and I put on some meditation music and just meditate. I try to meditate at least 10 to 15 minutes every day. And that’s when ideas flow. I also love to get out in nature and go for a hike, just while I’m moving, while I’m walking, that’s when I can really decompress.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. It was Bill Phillips from Body for Life that said, I never got a great idea by actually thinking about it. I just got into my joy. I got into the flow of my day. I walked away from the busyness. And that’s when the best ideas came in. They just kind of flowed into my head. So, you gotta take time to decompress and think. Vanessa, final question. Who’s had the biggest impact on your life? Who’s a mentor, a leader, somebody that’s had the biggest impact on your life, and why?

Vanessa Peters: Yeah, that’s a tough question. I feel like there’s so many people that have given me a nudge and it’s taken me in a completely new direction, like the high school teacher who said “You should be a doctor,” or the CEO here at my clinic who hired me. So, I feel like I almost have kind of like an avatar of mentors, like my board of directors that have guided me through my life, but I don’t have one specific person.

Josh Cantwell: Okay. Let me add one additional question. Just because you mentioned Mastermind, right? So, I run a Mastermind, a number of other Masterminds. You mentioned the Mastermind. Tell me about the impact of that, because you’ve talked about network, network, network, and the Mastermind, whether you own it, run it, or whether you pay to be a member or it’s a free Mastermind, it’s a fantastic way to meet and talk with people and meet new people in your network. So, what impact has that had on you?

Vanessa Peters: That’s phenomenal. When I started getting into the idea that I wanted to have a business with real estate, I started with BiggerPockets and then I heard Hal Elrod on BiggerPockets. And then I went to that event and then I was like personal development, I’d never heard of it, but it was awesome. And so, I joined Hal Elrod’s Mastermind and then GoBundance Mastermind. And then, now, I’m in another doctor’s Mastermind. And it has just broken open the doors. And it also gave me the inspiration to write a book, for example. I got to see other people that weren’t just real estate people and see what they’re doing and cross pollinate with different ideas. It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done because so many of us live in a bubble of our lives with our kids and our friends and our work. And we just kind of– we’re so limited. And this has been amazing.

COVID has really hurt my Mastermind’s situation. I haven’t been able to go to events. I really miss them, but I love it. And I think that that’s the way that if you want to level up and go somewhere, you’ve got to pay for it. At first, I’m pretty frugal. And I was like, gosh, that’s a lot of money to spend on a Mastermind. And it feels like you’re paying to get friends, but that’s not it. You’ve got to pay to play. If you want to waste your time going to events, you might meet some people, maybe, but if you want to really meet the people that are going to work with you, become partners, become your best friends, you need to make sure that you’re getting the cream at the top.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, it’s the deep dive, right? It’s the people that are really committed. And often, people commit for what they pay for, right? And so, that’s the idea of a Mastermind and kind of those loose free Masterminds, my experience is those typically don’t last and don’t go very deep. So, fantastic stuff. So, Vanesa, as we sign off, again, mention your website. Tell us where we can get the book. Tell us about the fund with information about the fund. I know a lot of my audience will want to take a look at that and see what you’re up to. Where can they get more information about you?

Vanessa Peters: Great. Yeah, at VMDInvesting.com, that’s my website. You can get the first three chapters of my book for free if you like. You can also check it out on Amazon, The Busy Professionals Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing, and RockstarCapitalFund.com is the fund website and it’s a Bio-60. So, if you click on the link, you can access the SyndicationPro portal and have a look at everything in there, which is awesome.

Josh Cantwell: Fantastic stuff. Vanessa, listen, thank you so much for carving out some time for us today on Accelerated Real Estate Investor.

Vanessa Peters: Thank you.

Josh Cantwell: Well, there you have it, guys. Thank you so much for yet another edition of Accelerated Real Estate Investor. Thank you for jumping in. If you enjoyed this interview, make sure that you go ahead and leave us a little bit of a rating, a review. Tell us how we’re doing. Tell us, communicate with us. Don’t forget to also hit the subscribe button to subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, also on YouTube, wherever you catch your videos. So, you never miss another episode of Accelerated Real Estate Investor.

If you’re a passive investor looking to make additional passive investments, don’t forget to visit our website at FreelandVentures.com. Go ahead there and register on our investor portal to receive free information about our upcoming real estate investing opportunities. Thank you so much for joining us again today on Accelerated Real Estate Investor. If you’ve enjoyed it, share it across all the different social media platforms. Help us build the community, and don’t forget to register. Go to Facebook, find our group, Accelerated Real Estate Investor, on Facebook and join the group today.


Hey, Josh here. And do you want to win a free accelerated investor t-shirt? All you have to do is give Accelerated Investor our podcast, Accelerate Investor a rating and a review on iTunes. OK, do that now then send us a screenshot on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. What we’re going to do then is every week we’re going to pick our favorite rating and review and we’re going to send that person a free T-shirt and maybe again, some other cool fun stuff as well from Accelerated Investors. So again, don’t forget to take a screenshot, leave a rating review, take a screenshot, send it to us so we know exactly who you are. And then once a week, every week on the podcast, we will announce a new winner. Don’t forget to take a screenshot and send it to us so we know exactly who you are. We’ll announce a new winner every week. 

You were just listening to the Accelerated Real Estate Investor podcast with Josh Cantwell. If you enjoyed this episode and learned something new, help us build the A.I. community by leaving a review and five-star rating on our iTunes podcast channel. Also, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss another episode. To see passive investing opportunities, visit FreelandVentures.com/passive. To start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of with multifamily apartments, apply for one-on-one coaching with Josh at www.JoshCantwellCoaching.com.

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