Episode 101 – Why Taking Action Is Key To Making It In Real Estate With Ashley Wolkomir

There are different tips and strategies for entering any new business venture. But the most vital step to making it in any industry is first taking action. Ashley Wolkomir is a self-employed real estate investor and realtor. From buying a hotdog stall to being a live-in landlord and now looking into buying her own properties, taking action has always been the key to Ashley’s entrepreneurial endeavors. Action is also what will drive her success. In this episode, Craig Curelop and Zeona McIntyre chat with Ashley about how she’s venturing into real estate and finding her path after leaving her previous jobs and entering self-employment. Learn from her journey and be inspired by her story to start investing.

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Why Taking Action Is Key To Making It In Real Estate With Ashley Wolkomir

I’m here with my cohost, Zeona McIntyre, also known as, Z Money. Z, how are you doing?

I’m doing great.

We’ve got Ashley Wolkomir coming on the show. Going from hotdog cart to real estate agent and investor, that’s a unique story.

It’s inspiring that she has the opposite problem as most people. She’s all action and maybe she doesn’t think it through enough. You’re going to hear that a little bit in her story of how she goes for it, which is pretty awesome.

One thing that resonates with me is from a friend of mine. He probably got this from someone famous but he always tells me, “Education times action equals success.” Anything multiplied by zero is zero. You need to make sure you’ve got education and action and an equal balance. That’s how you get the most success. I want you to think that through. Again, Ashley has created a lot of success, even though she’s more weighted on the action side. I admire her so much for that.

I say that in the episode because the action is so much harder than the education. You can start taking action and figure out what you need to learn. You can do the education as you go but it’s harder to do the action as you go. If you’re going to skew in one way, the way Ashley skewed is the way you skew.

Let’s have it happen.

Let’s bring her to the show.

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Ashley Wolkomir, welcome to the show. Ashley, thanks so much for coming to the show. You’ve got an interesting journey that I’m super excited to share with all of our readers. Why don’t we kick it off from where that journey started and told us how you first heard about financial independence and when that was?

Thank you for having me on. I would love to share my story. I learned about financial independence, house hacking, and all of that completely by accident. I had no idea what it was when I got started. My story started back in 2018. I wanted to move to Denver for family reasons. However, I had four animals at the time and there was no place anywhere that would take four animals. If it was a private landlord, they didn’t want that many. Apartment rents were outrageously expensive. I talked to my mom about potentially buying a property. The goal was that I would rent out the extra rooms.

That was the only way I could figure out to live in Denver. My mom had rental properties while we were growing up in Kansas City, Missouri. She agreed, which I’m shocked about. I’m so thankful for my mom. She is still my main investor. She agreed and bought a property in Aurora, Colorado, 4-bed, 2-bathroom. Originally, when I started, I needed to pay her market rent and she charged less than what most full houses went in that area. I started renting out two bedrooms. Two girls I found on Facebook Marketplace seemed like a good fit.

Did you naturally think four bedrooms sounds like a good number or had you read Craig’s book? Was that a happy accident?

I didn’t even know Craig existed. I didn’t know house hacking was even a term. I’m not sure what it was. I wanted a guest bedroom and my mom was charging me $2,200. I needed to have two tenants and I would only be paying about $600. That’s what I was looking for, so that’s why I chose four.

You sleep in the kitchen and each dog and cat gets their one bedroom. That’s cat hacking. Ashley, real quick, I want to make sure I got this. You didn’t purchase the house. Your mom purchased the house, rented it to you, you occupied a room or you rented the whole house, then were able to rent out the other bedrooms. Is that right?

Yes. She wanted it to be completely out of the deal. She wanted her money. I told her that if there were any vacancies, every single month, she would get her $2,200, even if I have to cover some of that money. We also decided that since it was her house and, in the future, the goal was for me to buy it, which has changed now that I’m a realtor.

The goal was if we put any money into the properties, zero-scaping the lawn, anything that needed to be fixed, she would pay for supplies and I would pay for labor. A lot of times, I did the stuff myself so that I could save a little bit of money. If anything broke down, since she was the owner, she fixed it. It was a nice perk, too. Later on, I found out that it was called rental arbitrage. This whole time I fell into everything real estate investing, which is fantastic. Moving on a little bit into the property, Craig, would you like to ask a question?

Real quick, I want to ask, can you explain? What you said you’re doing is rental arbitrage and you happen to do it with your mom. You’re able to do this with anybody. Could you rent any $2,200 house and rent out the bedrooms and maybe do the arbitrage that way if you’re in that beginning stage of saving up to reduce your rent expense?

It’s a fantastic way for anybody out there that doesn’t have money for a down payment. A lot of times, sellers that want to make passive income don’t necessarily need a lump sum of money. A lot of properties that I’ve looked into to do rental arbitrage are going to be seller financing. They want money. They’re the bank. Instead of selling their house and getting a lump sum, we rent it from them. It’s a good option. It’s nice when it’s a family member because she rented it to me like $300 less than market rent but even if it were $2,500, I would have still been cashflowing.

I want to put a little note about arbitrage because people love to talk about it, especially in the Airbnb space. It’s a good means to an end but I don’t know if it’s a strategy that I would tell people to do forever. The reason being is that you get so much out of owning a property. You’re getting the pay-down, the tax benefits, the equity over time and there’s a lot of stuff that you miss out on arbitraging. That’s the only thing that I would tell people. It’s a great place to start but don’t get stuck there.

I’ll add to that because my mom and I decided to sell the property, so I’ll get into that later but we were selling so that I could focus on my own personal deals.

One thing I’ll add to that is when you’re a rental arbitraging, you’re developing a relationship with a landlord. Perhaps, they’re not ready to sell now but they want to rent it to you for market price. You can make some money, whether that’s saving on rent or maybe you can even cashflow a little bit. You can potentially rent a bunch of places from landlords. Pay them their rent and rent it by the room or Airbnb or whatever arbitrage you want to do but you’re developing a relationship with that landlord.

You can talk about maybe doing like a right of first refusal. If they do ever decide to sell, then they would come to you first to see if you would want to buy it. You could eventually get into the property that way and you could build a portfolio that way as well. I’ve heard of that. Again, there are a lot of pros and cons to this but I would agree that you don’t want your end game to be the rental arbitrage. You want it to be owning the property.

One of the things I’ve learned about rental arbitrages is the tax benefits. I learned that from Zeona. There is none. I pay subleasing taxes.

Tell us a little bit about the deal. You told us you’re paying $2,200 or $2,250, then what did you rent the rooms out for? How did it end up working out for you?

Try not to be overly friendly with your tenants. Share on X

I started out high. I looked on Facebook Marketplace to see how much rooms were going for and this was 2018. I rented one of the rooms that had a private bathroom for $1,050. I rented the other room for $900. It happened to be two girls that were out of state. It was luck of the draw. It took me about a month to get tenants in. Since I originally wanted a guest bedroom, one of the things I learned is to try not to befriend your tenants overly. The tenants and I clicked well. However, we had a hard time with our professional versus personal lives.

One of the tenants wanted to leave early, which was breaking her lease. She told me months in advance and she said, “Go ahead and rent out the guest bedroom now. If you get a tenant, you won’t be losing any money from me.” I ended up doing that and she ended up staying through her whole lease anyways. I had a feel of what the house felt like with four people and what it felt like to make an extra $900. I liked that feeling. Since then, I have been renting out three of the rooms.

The average though is $950 for that bedroom. It’s the master bedroom. I chose to take the bedroom with the master closet for some reason. That’s not all in one and $850 for the other one. It made me $2,600. I paid about $300 for utilities and then $100 for random things like taxes and paying for supplies. I broke even. I made $7 a month for the years I lived there.

Still, you were probably coming from paying rent. It’s better than nothing. What was your rent before you moved into the house?

I lived in Maryland. I owned property there and sold that before I moved to Denver. It was $179,000 for a three-bedroom townhome.

That must have been a little slicker shock when you guys started looking.

I was like, “I’m not going to be able to move to Denver.”

What happened next? You got a taste of this house hacking thing. You realize that filling the house all the way was a good move. Did it make you want to go to that next property?

My story takes a while to get to full-time real estate. COVID hit. At that point, I had been a dog trainer at Petco, which I loved. It was my dream job but unfortunately, I was one of those that was furloughed and then eventually, permanently fired. I wasn’t sure what to do but I had no living costs. I knew I didn’t want to work another job that had a boss, that I had to work weekends and so, I decided to buy a hotdog cart during a global pandemic.

That’s what everybody wants.

At this point, I didn’t think about buying more houses. My goal was to buy the property back in two years. However, two years was May or June of COVID and at that point, I had lost my job. It was very difficult to get a primary residence loan without a W2. I did have two years of rental income, which counts but with no W2, I wasn’t able to get a primary residence.

Let’s dig into the hotdog cart. First, I don’t even know how you do that business. Where do you find a hotdog card? How much does it cost? How did you know that could be a business even?

I had a friend who knew I was leaning towards being an entrepreneur. He had five hotdog carts. Before COVID, he rented them out and they were making good money. He was like, “I will sell you one,” and gave me a discount. It was $4,000, which I was like, “I’ll have that.” I needed a vehicle to pull it, so I bought a Jeep, which was $3,000 and the startup cost was food. It’s a little bit over $7,000 to start a hotdog cart business. Read books. There are books on it. There are a bunch of Facebook groups. I did a bunch of research to learn how to do it but it was my test to see if I could be self-employed and not fail. Here I am, still self-employed but not a hotdog cart vendor.

What are some things that you learned about business while running this?

A lot of dedication, self-management, and sacrifice. I’m very social. I’m all about hanging out with my friends. A hotdog cart pretty much needs to be out all the time on weekends, on evenings. I had to learn to make sure that I was putting my business first and not my social life first. It taught me marketing strategies, faced social media, and how important it is to run a business.

A DSCR loan is a Debt-Service Coverage Ratio loan, where they look at the property versus yourself Share on X

Ashley, one thing that I super admire about you is that you get an idea and you run with it. Actions have never been a problem with you. a lot of people have that analysis by paralysis phase. They want to analyze the returns of the hotdog stand, which is a million different other things. Go out there and do it. Build that confidence. Maybe make a little bit of money then that will leverage you to the next thing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. It was a seasonal venture. I needed to come up. That was never my long-term goal. I wanted to do it for a couple of seasons. I was pretty much waiting until the pandemic was over before I got back into the real career world. My mom was the one who said I should look into getting my real estate license.

At this point, I met my boyfriend, who is part of the main reason I am an investor. At the beginning of the hotdog cart, I met Max who has five properties as an investor. We had that in common. Between him and my mom, they were both like, “You should think about getting your real estate license.” Max was starting to know that he wanted to buy a house a year as a house hacker. I was like, “If I become a real estate agent, I will at least have one client.” I started to get my life. I was like, “I figured I would buy a house, too.”

When I decided to get my license, my goal was three a year. I’ll probably hit 7 or 8. I thank the FI Team and Craig for that. They gave me confidence for sure because it was scary becoming a full-time agent but I worked on getting my license. I did my online classes, which are 168 hours. It should take four months for the average person. It took me a year.

I’m not sure what it was. It was back to the fact that I didn’t have any living expenses and the hotdog cart was making good money during the summer that I took my time during the winters, then realized summer came back around and paused for the entire summer. I came back and worked on it again. I did pass my first time but I studied for a year. I got my real estate license in November of 2021.

Being a real estate agent opens up a big world. If you’re going to be an investor, invest in your state, and buy one house a year, it gives you a big discount and so many more opportunities. You see everything as it comes on and you hear about stuff that’s off the market. It’s a great place to be if people are investing. That’s great that you folks went that direction. I imagine Max benefits from it a lot.

I gave him a discount the first time. He doesn’t get one anymore. It works well as a tag team. He pays me. I get to go on vacations that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to afford. It’s the way we think about it. During all of that, my mom retired during COVID as well. She was an entrepreneur her whole life and owned a medical transcription business for many years. Once COVID happened, she basically retired early. She started RV and sailing. She left her primary residence house.

She’s been gone for months at a time. I had the idea that instead of letting it sit vacant, I recommended she runs it as an Airbnb. I have been running her Airbnb. We went down there, helped her decorate it, and got the app going. Again, it’s pretty passive. She doesn’t want to do much with the app. She doesn’t know how to run the app, so I do all on the app side. I’m talking to the guests.

Tell us a little bit about that. If somebody is wanting to start up an Airbnb, your mom already lives there. How much did she have to buy? What did she have to do to get it ready?

She had to get rid of a lot of stuff. My mom’s a bit of a hoarder. She had collections of dolls. My mom reads this. I’m so sorry but they are so creepy. We got rid of them all. We got rid of a lot of the knickknacks that she had. It’s a 3-bedroom house, 2-bath and we use one of the rooms strictly for storage for her. We rent out two of the rooms. It’s a whole unit, rent out two of the units and she locks up the garage, so our car is safe when she’s not traveling.

Besides that, she didn’t do much. She repainted a little bit. She did a little bit of stuff, more like curb appeal and some zero-scaping but it was pretty much ready to go as an Airbnb. It’s in Cañon City, Colorado. It’s seasonal. There’s nothing in the winter. There are no ski areas that are super close and it makes about $120 a night for a whole house. When she bought it, it was less than $200,000 a few years ago. Her mortgage is $500. She does want it. For this one, she pays me as a property manager. She pays me a 10% flat rate of all of the income.

That’s another avenue people can look into. Also, it’s a temporary thing. Being a property manager, if you’re a real estate agent, helps you make these relationships where you could potentially buy or sell for people. It doesn’t give you the equity. You’re there in that space again where you’re still taking a little bit of profit off the top but you’re not getting much further. I did management for ten years. Although it can be good cashflow, it’s so much better to own the properties.

The next step is owning a property. Over the past months, my mom, I, and every agent around has noticed how quickly the market’s been shifting to a buyer’s market. My mom and I were never planning on keeping my house hacked for a long time. The reason for that was that it didn’t make sense long-term for property management. I wanted to start focusing on being a full-time real estate agent and managing the tenants, especially when I moved out.

I moved out about months ago and rented out my room. At that point, I was making an extra $900. However, my mom, since she’s a businesswoman, mentioned she was losing her in-house landlord and so that was going to be a little bit more difficult. There wouldn’t be eyes on the property all the time. She raised my rent by $200, which is still a good deal for me. When I moved out months ago, I started cash flowing at $700. However, I wanted to focus on real estate, on my own properties. When this market shift came, I pretty much immediately was like, “I’m going to sell the house. I don’t recommend this. I do part of the actions.”

I do recommend planning a little bit better. I talked to my mom. I was like, “I want to sell now. The market’s turning fast. I don’t want to manage the property anymore.” I told my tenants they had six weeks to move out. One of my tenants did not like it and I did have to hire a lawyer. We ended up not evicting her but we came through. She had been there for 3 years going on 4 and I had resigned her a few months prior. She wasn’t happy. If I would have planned better, I would have planned better.

Don’t be afraid and just go for it. Share on X

Did you get to sell the property?

It is in the process of remodeling. We have gotten the carpet pulled out. It’s been painted. The carpet will go in. We’re redoing lights, so we’re getting it to look a little bit nicer. It’s in Aurora, Colorado. It’s something to make the appeal a little bit better. I’m hoping to have it on the market in about a month, which is still too late in my opinion.

That’s going to be interesting to see what happens. What’s your target there? Remind us what she bought it for.

She bought it for $315,000 in 2018. Originally, we were hoping to sell it for like $515,000 but I’m already looking at prices. They’re down to $480,000. Honestly, it will still be good. Since it was never her primary residence, she’s going to have to pay capital gains tax. We’re deferring those taxes into something called a 1031 exchange. She’s going to buy a like-minded investment. I have talked her into doing a large house tax.

We have a property management company that specifically does house tax only. Since I don’t want to be the property manager, my mom still likes house hacks, so I recommended she goes big. She’s probably going to pull $200,000 out of this 1031. We’re going to be looking at like 8 bedrooms with 2 kitchens, 2 living rooms, and rent out 8 of the rooms. That way, she can still be making pretty much the same but she’ll have a professional company property managing it. She’ll have a large house that will hopefully gain more equity.

Is that HomeRoom or is it a different company?

Yes.

I have talked to them personally and they do good products. They find great properties and they’re creative. It seems like they get great tenants. That’s a great option.

It’s cool because I get to use my mom as the investor and then learn the listing side, the 1031 exchange, and the buying side. That’s me focusing on the agent part. It feels a lot nicer to learn it all with my mom. I’m selling Max’s condo now in RiNo. Both of them are helping me with learning how to do the listing side of being an agent. Hopefully, those commissions will give me enough I have to do.

My goal personally is a DSCR loan. That’s Debt Service Coverage Ratio loan and that is a loan where they look at the property versus myself. If you look at me, I haven’t had two years of real estate income. It looks like I make no money, so I can’t get a conventional primary residence loan. I have to put quite a bit down from 15% to 20%. I’m almost there. I’ve saved almost enough. I’m looking in South Padre, Texas for an Airbnb. My uncle has a neighbor who’s selling.

I have a private in but there are some legal issues to getting that property. There’s a lien on it. Hopefully, I get that one in 1 month or 2. I’m looking to be my mom’s main competitor in buying Airbnb in Cañon City that’s 100% mine. My mom’s supportive but she’s like, “You’re going to take my clients.” My goal is to do the DSCR loan but both of the houses are like $300,000 versus what would be $600 here.

Why these two areas? What are you hoping for in Texas? That seems a little bit random. Cañon City, maybe because you know it already?

For me now, it’s because I have personal connections to both of those areas. I’m a little hesitant to do an Airbnb anywhere that I’m not comfortable. I could do it in Denver but if I have to do 20% down of a $500,000 house, it’s going to take me a lot of time to get that money unless I start building capital with investors and stuff. I’m not quite sure if I’m there yet though. Eventually, future goals. I chose Cañon City because we already have cleaners and plumbers. We know the area.

Also, I’ll be able to tell if mom’s Airbnb is getting booked. I can push people over to that one. In South Padre, Texas, there is an HOA in that neighborhood that can run the property for me. It was expensive. It’s 38%, so I will probably test it out and run Airbnb myself for a little bit there since we have connections. We know cleaners. My uncle is the next-door neighbor of what Airbnb would be. The neighbor is probably going to sell it to me for a cheaper price, so it’s an off-market deal.

Where do you see yourself going in the future? It seems like Airbnbs has caught your eye. Maybe when you can qualify for a conventional loan, do you think you’re going to be doing some more house hacks?

Every agent around has noticed how quickly the market's been shifting to a buyer's market. Share on X

Max and I have agreed to move every year to get more properties and use that 5% down primary residence loan. We agreed that every other year, we’ll trade off. Hopefully, my taxes will show that I have enough income to buy a primary residence. If so, I’ll buy a property, then he buys property, then I’ll buy a property, and so on and so forth. We’re hoping to do mother-in-law suites. Max is doing a cool deal with the one we’re in. It’s huge. It’s a 4,000-square-foot house. It has a completely full refinished mother-in-law suite in the basement, which is a 2-bed, 1-bath with its separate unit. All four of my animals get to have access to the outside.

He is completely remodeling the top portion. It had been sitting on the market for about 45 days but this was back when the market was booming. We got it for $10,000 under asking. His goal was to refinish the entire top, which is 3,000 square feet. He’s turning the top from a 3-bed into a 4-bed and redoing everything. It’s going on a $120,000 remodel now but he’s going to pull out a cash-out refinance. The goal is to put all that money in and use that money for another investment. The goal is to find the same type of property. We can live in an area that’s already finished and most likely finish the other areas with contractors. We do not know how to do anything. Eventually, maybe a little house for ourselves.

How many properties does he want? You said he already has five. Does he have a goal?

He wants to double each year. In 2020, he bought one. In 2021, he bought two. In 2022, he should buy four if this remodel ever finishes. He’s going to be buying three before January hits. He wants to double that. In 2023, he wants to buy eight. I’m might be happy if I can get 1 or 2. Max is an amazing man and saved the money or he’s hiding something from me and he’s a millionaire.

The houses we were looking at had double kitchens that were high. They were in jumbo loan territory. I was particular. I was like, “If we’re going to move in together, I will move out of my house hack. I lose my living for free.” We were looking for a kitchen, a laundry, so two completely separate units. Those properties were high, $800,000s, if not $900,000s and that was out of his price range since he wanted to do 5% down. For a jumbo loan, you have to do like 25% down.

The house that we found was in bad shape. It was from the ‘80s. There’s a carpet in the master bathroom. The bathtub didn’t even work. The kitchen was in bad shape but the space that we were living in was amazing. It was perfect. It was move-in ready for us. Instead of putting more money down onto a property, he used his money to build equity in the property. He’s going to be able to pull that money back out, plus some, and buy another property.

That’s the end of your journey, right?

Yes, besides being a real estate agent and getting a few of my own properties.

That’s always the goal. You’re still young. You’ve got a lot of time. If you’re doing one a year, that ends up being a nice portfolio over time. Do you have any final words of wisdom before we go into the second part of our show?

For me, it’s don’t be afraid. Go for it. If you don’t have the money, don’t give up. Find a way. If you write a business proposal and do your research, there are so many people out there that if you go to them, you can get into real estate investing. The down payment assistance program is fantastic, too. I’ve helped 2 or 3 of my clients get in. They spent $3,000 to buy a house. One’s an Airbnb host now and the other is a house hacker. Go for it.

Colorado has some great down payment assistance programs but then there are others that you can find at more of a national level or even job-specific ones. Let’s go into the final four. What are you reading right now, Ashley?

I’m reading a lot. I’m reading Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant and the Rich Dad Poor Dad book by Kiyosaki. That one’s more focused on how to become wealthy, businesses, and investing. I’m also reading The Miracle Morning for Real Estate Agents, which is funny because I don’t plan on waking up early. I plan on using the tidbits to help stage the beginning of my day. I’m a night owl. That’s my life. That’s my clients. I’m reading a book. It should be about how to start your day miracle.

He talks about that, too. Everybody can adjust it for themselves. I particularly love mornings but it doesn’t work that way for everybody. Craig, question number two.

Ashley, what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

For me, the best advice is don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s been a lot of stuff in my life that I’m afraid to share if it’s problems or anything like that. I’m only where I am now because of the help of others.

We’re a team. That’s one thing I love about real estate. People feel like they have to go it alone but when you meet people that have been investing for a while, you see that behind them is so much support. We all talk to each other and help each other out. That’s an important part of our community. If you’re getting started, find other investors or people interested in investing because it will help you go so much further. My question number three is, what is your why?

The best advice is don't be afraid to ask for help. Share on X

The why for me, in the beginning, was so I could live in Denver with my animals. It was straight for financial reasons. The why for me now is to be able to share my journey with others, especially my community, and help them with their financial journey.

I love that. Ashley, last serious question, who was your first ever crush?

Let’s see. Probably middle school, the guy in the band. We both played the trumpet. He was nerdy.

Ashley, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find out more about you?

Primarily Facebook at Ashley Wolkomir. I’m also a country dancer. I love country dancing. I have a YouTube Channel. Me and my boyfriend have competed across the country. That’s Always Want Another Dance if you’re in investing and dancing. My Instagram is @AshleyWolkomir as well.

Who’s your favorite country artist?

I’m not even sure. Probably Spencer Crandall, a local artist from Colorado.

I may have to check him out. I never heard of him. Ashley, thank you so much. Ashley, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing your super unique journey from hotdog carts all the way to a real estate agent and investor. Thanks so much for coming on and we will be chatting soon.

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That was Ashley Wolkomir. Z, what did you think about Ashley?

Ashley is super animated and excited. It’s like she gets me excited about it. I’m like, “I want to do Airbnbs in Cañon City. I want to do anything that you’re doing.” I hope people get hyped out of this episode in learning about her journey.

I’m sweating now because I want to like take action after she tells her story. I’m like, “I need to do something.” It’s like running through a wall and breaking Airbnb. Do some arbitrage and maybe even open up a hotdog stand. Who knows? I love that she’s so animated and full of action and excited about helping others achieve financial independence through real estate investing as well as herself and her boyfriend.

One thing that’s funny is she started out by saying, “I was a dog trainer at Petco. I didn’t want a boss. I didn’t want to work nights and weekends,” then she was like, “I got a hotdog stand then I worked every holiday, all weekend, all times to do work.” I was like, “That was the reality of being an entrepreneur.” You start this job so that you can do your own thing but then you do it too much. You work 100 hours a week. Anyway, maybe balance is the lesson here. I’m not sure.

There are a lot of lessons here. It feels okay if you’re working 100 hours a week for yourself and you’re building something for yourself. You’re providing value and getting fulfilled by that. It’s another thing when those 100 hours are being fulfilled by creating someone else’s dream and making someone else’s dream come true.

If you feel good working 100 hours a week, lean into that one while you can. I’ll put any money that you won’t do that forever. If that’s building your foundation so that you can pull back later, then do it. I was at a point working $100 a week when I was first starting out. It was like 14 hours a day. I was probably there but again, now let’s pull back and I work a much more reasonable amount.

We all want to be like Craig.

If you want to be like me, you can leave us a rating or review on iTunes and on all the places that you possibly can. We’ll have a fun little interaction. It helps the show tremendously. If you haven’t already, you can go to FITeam.com and download our House Hacking Starter Kit. Z, you got any love that you want to share?

We may have some pre-sales available for our book. I’ve got a book coming out called 30-Day Stay, all about medium-term rentals with Sarah Weaver. Check us out on BiggerPockets.

Go check out Z’s book, check out our House Hacking Starter Kit and check us out on Instagram. I’m @TheFIGuy and Z is @ZeonaMcIntyre. With that being said, Craig and Z, out.

About Ashley Wolkomir

Ashley accidentally ended up House-Hacking a property she bought in 2018 in Aurora. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even know it was called that until she met a fellow Real Estate investor. She would just say she was a live-in landlord that rented out the extra rooms. Well, you can definitely say this was the best “accident” to come along! As it pushed her toward a full-time Real Estate career.

After a successful animal science career (1 year as a zookeeper, 5 years as a dog trainer) and oddly enough a short venture as a hot dog cart vendor (Willow’s Wieners – she named it after her dog who was by her side at every shift), she dived into earning her Real Estate license. Due to her cash-flowing property and management of her mom’s Airbnb (in Canon City, CO), she was able to live the way she wanted to. This freedom is why she chose to become an agent.

She joined the team in November of 2021, and her passion to spread the FI Team’s goal just keeps climbing. The team is an amazing support and endless supply of resources that gives her the confidence to “sell” her skills as an agent.

When she’s not raving about how great Real Estate investing is, you can find her on the dance floor! She and her boyfriend are competitive Country Swing dancers. They even have their own YouTube Channel (Always Want Another Dance – https://youtube.com/c/AlwaysWantAnotherDance). Her desire to live life to the fullest, has her traveling to new places, hiking 14ers (20 peaks completed), skiing, dirt biking, attempting to exercise regularly haha, and setting up events to get her dance community together.

She wants everyone to feel the magic of Real Estate investing and start taking control of their lives!

Tagged Airbnb, financial independence, house-hacking, passive income, real estate, Rental Arbitrage

Episode 101 – Why Taking Action Is Key To Making It In Real Estate With Ashley Wolkomir

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