Business and Beyond's Feature Friday ft. Julieta Duvall

What if your biggest business struggle is not your strategy… but your money mindset?

In this powerful episode of Business and Beyond Feature Friday, Julieta Duvall shares transformative insights on money mindset, entrepreneur mindset, financial flexibility, self awareness, business growth, and breaking the hidden patterns that keep entrepreneurs stuck. From real estate investing and human design to overcoming debt, scarcity mindset, and building a healthier relationship with money, this conversation is packed with actionable lessons for business owners and entrepreneurs.

If you have ever struggled with money mindset, overspending, budgeting, financial stress, business finances, or finding balance between entrepreneurship and personal growth, this episode is for you.

In this episode, you'll discover:
How money mindset affects your business success and personal life
The hidden financial patterns that lead entrepreneurs back into debt
Why knowing your numbers is essential for business growth
How to break a scarcity mindset and build financial flexibility
The importance of self awareness in entrepreneurship and money management
Why successful entrepreneurs learn to pay themselves first
Real lessons from real estate investing, budgeting, and business mistakes
How your beliefs, habits, and relationship with money shape your future

⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 Intro to Money Mindset and Entrepreneur Success
01:27 Real Estate Journey and Unexpected Business Lessons
04:20 Why Entrepreneurs Must Choose Themselves First
05:16 Hidden Patterns That Shape Your Money Mindset
07:07 Looking Inward to Break Debt and Financial Struggles
09:22 Self Awareness, Self Care, and Business Success
11:42 Different Ways to Practice Self Care as an Entrepreneur
13:03 Mistakes, Growth Mindset, and Breaking Bad Patterns
16:35 From Debt to Debt Free Through Money Mindset Shifts
17:25 Money Muscle System and Paying Yourself First
19:48 Budgeting, Knowing Your Numbers, and Financial Awareness
18:34 Scarcity Mindset vs Healthy Relationship With Money
22:00 Spending Patterns, Debt Cycles, and Business Lessons
27:18 Financial Flexibility vs Financial Freedom
31:45 Progress Over Perfection in Business and Life
32:53 The Power of Asking in Business and Real Estate
36:24 What Actually Made Their Business Work
38:19 Business Organization, Taxes, and Expensive Mistakes
44:19 Julieta’s Best Advice for Entrepreneurs

Julieta Duvall opens up about her journey through real estate investing, homeschooling, human design, entrepreneurship, and learning how money mindset, financial awareness, and intentional decision making can completely transform your business and life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Business and Beyonds Feature Friday with Tania Bartellini. Today's guest is an amazing woman. I cannot wait to interview her. Her name is Julieta Duvall. She is a soulful rebel and grounded guide for individuals and families dismantling systems that no longer serve them. Through radical storytelling, intuitive tools, and her podcast, The Unschooling Lifestyle, she empowers people to live with rhythm, trust, and unapologetic truth. A dedicated mom, entrepreneur, and seasoned flight attendant of nearly 20 years, Julieta embodies a free-spirited, nomadic lifestyle, often living out of a suitcase while inspiring others to embrace authenticity and transformative change. So welcome, Julieta. Thank you so much for having me, Tony. I'm so excited to be here. Yes, so am I. So tell me, what industry are you really in? And how did you get into it? Why did you get into it?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

So uh one of the industries that I am in, it's real estate. And we have a small portfolio or of properties, and we got into it back in 2007 and 8 because we couldn't sell my husband's childhood home. We wanted to find a home for ourselves, but you know, we felt that the only way we could do it was to sell my husband's childhood home in order to purchase our primary home, right? And we couldn't, we couldn't, nobody was selling. You know, if you think back to 2007, eight in the US, the market crashed, it was it like incredibly hard. So our mortgage broker said, why don't you rent it? And we were like, well, we never really thought about that. But if that's the only option, our mortgage broker walked us through the process of doing that and how that shows up. And then, you know, kind of we went ahead and do it then. By then I was in the airline industry already, so I had been there for um since 2004 at that point. So it was kind of fairly new. So there was just a lot of new experiences, but one thing led to another, and it just kind of kept us on that path. And real estate has been really good to us. It helped me with you know, staying home with my two children through the pregnancies when I took time off of work and I wasn't getting paid. And it's just been it's just been uh a steady friend, a loyal friend too.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

And so you said one of the industries is real estate. What else are you into?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

If you don't know, I so there's a lot that I'm into actually. So aviation is one industry. I've been there for 20 years, real estate since 2007. You know, you do the math, like 18, 19. Then in 2020, I became a homeschool advocate because we started homeschooling and it changed our lives a lot. Um, in 2021, I got into human design, which is what I do now. Like I do a lot of a lot of work supporting people through the lens of human design. So it could be mindset, it's money, that's um one that I've been working with lately a lot. And um, so I help families, you know, like transform their lives. So once you move into home education, everything else around has to shift a little bit because things change. And that's my work is a lot in transition. So I work a lot with that taking the leap of faith, you know, that things will be better on the other side. And I love that so much because it looks so dark. Honestly, wherever you are in your journey, whatever you're about to do, it feels like there's no light, there's no clearing once you step through the forest. But I promise you there is. So yeah, that's gonna, yeah, it revolves around just choosing yourself first in everything that we do, whether it's education, you know, our real estate business, my trips as a flight attendant, it all revolves around honoring yourself and your needs first. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

That I love that because one of the things that I find, especially with women entrepreneurs, some men entrepreneurs as well. This is not gender specific, but I just find women are tend to be more like this. Um, we deplete ourselves because it's always, oh, let me help them, let me help everybody else. I don't have time to take care of me. I have to take care of everybody else first. And what you're saying is, no, you have to take care of you first. How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

By really knowing and examining the pattern. So I'm a pattern person, like I'm very structured, like it really helps me. Back in my undergrad days, I was gonna go and become a CPA, a certified public accountant. Like, let me tell you, that was not my path. And I am happy life. That was in 2020 when we started homeschooling. So I send a letter to my master's program saying thanks, but no thanks. But patterns, I was gonna go into forensic accountant because there is a moment in the accounting world and in our lives where things change, where we begin to follow this pattern that feels safe. And the reason I think why sometimes we choose to do for others before we do for ourselves is because it's easier to, it's easier to do that than to look inwards and find that moment and work through that moment that life, it's um, you know, it might have been an experience. I usually find that those experiences happen in childhood. And it's it's intense how once you go back to it's like you know, you're back in your six, seven-year-old feeling that experience all over again, and you keep doing that, you keep replaying that memory as an adult, but it's easier to not look into it. That's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

And you hit something right on the head. It is so much easier to take care of other people and deplete yourself than it is to actually be self-aware. And when we have the time to take care of ourselves, we have to be self-aware, right? And that's scary.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

It is very scary, and I can tell you that I would not be here. I don't know that I like to say that I would have gotten here, but honestly, 2020 came and I was it was the first time that I took time off at work from the aviation industry. So I took almost two years off. I was extremely grateful that I could do that. And then when we started homeschooling, I had all this idea. I'm like, okay, yeah, this is happening. Like, we're gonna do it. This, this, this, this. And then my children came and said, like, lady, no, you need to get your stuff together because I was getting angry. So at that point, I had to look backwards, like I call it inwards and backwards, and that kind of went into everything, into the real estate business because I was some of the hard moments when we had no money to pay for, you know, for the license fees, for the rental license. I was afraid to look. I was not actively looking, and that is what got us into a lot of trouble. So then the money situation, too. I wanted to be debt free, but I didn't really know how to stay debt free. So there's so most people say, I just want to be debt free. And we got there, and it was great for a couple of years, but what happens that I did not examine the patterns that got me into debt the first time. So then I got into debt again. And I'm like, okay, how is this possible? Like, didn't you learn your lesson? The answer was absolutely not. So examining the patterns in my past helped me see where the work was, you know, spending more in the last quarter because it's the fundraising quarter of the year, right? Everyone bombards you with like, be grateful, give, give things, give more to people, and you may not have it. So there's a lot of patterns there that I apply the same, the same principle that I had to do when I was homeschooling because I was like, if I don't fix this, like I cannot be with my children 24-7. Like it's just not gonna happen. And I had to kind of go inwards and backwards, and eventually that translated into like the real estate, you know, my human that's how my human design work came alive, and it just helped me process what I did not want it to see.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yeah, and see, that is so beautiful. Um, one thing I always tell people is don't be selfish, you have to take care of yourself, yeah, right? Because taking care of yourself is actually a selfless act. Yes, right. You owe it to your clients to be the best version of yourself when you're with them. You owe it to your family to be the best version of yourself when you're with them, you owe it to your friends to be the best version of yourself when you're with them. And the only way you can be the best version of yourself is by taking care of yourself, yeah, right? Making sure that your cup, your proverbial cup is full to give, right? Yes. Um, so I love that you're saying that. And yeah, it is hard, it's very hard to look in within and see your shadows and things that you might not be proud of.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

It's not easy, and you know, in addition to taking care of yourself, like you want to do that and make that a priority, but you have to know how it is that you take care of yourself because what fills my cup, it's going to be very different than how it how it shows up for you. Like, for example, for me, it's getting up early in the morning and doing some writing or uh podcasting or just like car making, like papers to reading. But I know I can tell you that I have to have those moments because I know that if I do that, I'm gonna be okay for the rest of the day. I'm gonna be able to support the space that I need for my family, the business, my children. If I don't, then I'm short, I'm snappy, and I'm like, that's not their fault, right? Because I chose not to do that for myself. It's my own self-awareness, self-responsibility, because this is the only thing that I can control. I can't control, you know, it's now here in Michigan, so I can't control that. Like, you know, so I'm just working on what I can do for me, and that is it. But sometimes we don't know that because we're so used to doing other people, paying other people first, that we leave ourselves completely lost.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

And see, and you brought up a couple of really good points that I want to make sure our audience does not miss. One is taking care of yourself looks different for everybody, right? If one more person tells me I need to go take a bath and relax, I'm gonna like implode, probably. I cannot stand taking a bath. It makes me stressed out. I get bored, right? Like that's not for me, but it is for someone else. Exactly. So, and like you, for me, I take care of myself by waking up every morning and having my meditation time. Yeah, right? I can't just get up and do stuff, I get stressed out, and the rest of the day goes, you know, very badly.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, it goes different, but now you know, right? And this and you prioritize that moment for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah, so I wake up at least 15, 20 minutes earlier than everybody else in the house, so I can have my mental health time, right? My alignment time, my grounding time, my time to start the day the way that I want to, so that I can be happy and be better for everybody around me. So I love that you brought that point up. Um, the other point that you brought up was you know, the patterns, right? Because a lot of people don't want to make mistakes, first off, because it's taboo, which I don't know when mistakes became taboo because that's the only way you can learn, right? Um, but more importantly is if you make a mistake and you just continue moving forward, that does not mean you're never gonna make that mistake again. It just it's almost inevitable that you're gonna make that mistake again because you didn't look back and learn from it. You didn't take the time to go internally and figure out why did I make that mistake? What was the pattern? What do I need to do so that I don't make it again?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Exactly. Yeah. And that feels, you know, that goes back to like how we see mistakes though, because if we were shamed, you know, from early on as a child for making mistakes, then obviously we don't want to do that because we don't want to feel that feeling of shame again. So we don't really see the experiences as a learning experience. We see it as something bad that we are bad, but in reality, it's just something that moves you forward. And without them, I mean, we wouldn't have this world if we if people didn't have experiments or you know, something like that. But it really is about going back because you can make the same mistakes over and over again. But if you don't look back to it, you're it's hard to move forward. Like the lessons are just like probably more expensive, and especially in business, because everything is um it's it works different. So your lessons will be a lot more expensive and just more stressful, probably.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

That yeah, and then the pattern, the pattern is you were raised to think that mistakes are bad, which makes you think that you are bad when you make a mistake, and then you don't look into that pattern or that belief and figure it out for yourself that that's really asinine, right? And then you tend to raise your kids with the same belief, and it's just this pattern that keeps happening until you are aware of it and stop it. I mean, how many of us are gonna look at a baby who's trying to walk and say, Oh, you fell, that's a mistake, you can't walk again. Don't worry about it, don't try, right? Like what is that? We are made to make mistakes and grow.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

So so true though. And if you and if you like, we encourage that when they're babies, and the moment we step into school, then it's a little different. And then we also encourage that in adults, you know, like people that leave their corporate career and they go into this sabbatical and they find themselves and all that. We encourage that. It's just not in the society, doesn't really like let you do that your whole life. So it's a little bit, so it's tricky. There's a lot of belief systems there as you, you know, as you wanted to become an entrepreneur, it's it's a lot of what you what you take in that kind of guides the way you do your business sometimes, I think. I mean, it it certainly was for us, and um, it brought us a lot of heartache sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

But yeah, and so would you mind expanding because we know the what, right? You had stated earlier that you were in debt, you got yourself debt free, and then you went right back into debt and got yourself debt free again. Yes, right, and you did that by looking inward and finding those patterns. Was there anything else concrete that we can share with the audience? Of it wasn't just mindset, right? It wasn't just looking in. What are some of the patterns that other people might have that they can kind of look inwards and say, okay, is this the pattern that I have as well? Or is it something different?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

So there's a few, there's a few of them. So the first one was that every time we get paid, we paid everyone else first, and we were last. So what I use now, how I share with people is I have a four quadrant uh system for, and I call it the money muscle. Don't, you know, it just kind of came to me. So I I love that name because it really is something that you build. Muscle doesn't come to you when you go to the gym just one time. It's a it's a habit, it's a it's you build that habit, you build your muscles. So the quadrant usually would go, you are the last. But I put ourselves in the first in the upper left quadrant that knowing your numbers and doesn't matter, even if it's $20 that what you have left, you know, that is money that you can spend on other things, but you pay yourself first because we're so committed to other people. We're so committed to your rent, which is important, or your mortgage, it's very important, your utilities and whatnot, but we're so committed to paying our cell phone bill before we choose ourselves. The other thing is was scarcity mindset in the same way we do a diet. Like, you know, we go on a diet, I would go on a diet for a long time, and I would be good for like three months, right? No carbs, no this. For I don't do that anymore. It's been a long time, but I used to do that. And then something would happen, and I would just completely gorge to in everything that I could find myself in. So the mindset that I should not be having a vacation or a purse or whatever it is that fills your needs. So this is the other thing. You have to know what what feels what feeds your soul. If it's a pair of shoes every every month, that's okay. We just want to be prepared to buy that pair of shoes all the time and not just on your credit card as a because when we go on vacation, we'll say, I deserve it. So you go all out, you spend, you overspend on vacation because you deserve it, and then you come back home and it's scarcity mode to until your next vacation. But the bills pile up, the credit cards pile up. So examining that in my upper left quadrant is where most of the work is because you're examining all of that, assessing your numbers. I we did I didn't want to look in the numbers. I mean, I tell you, I would just swipe the card until the machine told me that I had no money because I was afraid to look in because I knew deep down that we had zero money in there, right? So that one was a big one. So that's kind of like a big one on in the sense of how to move forward per se. And then you add in your goals, you know. So the upper left is about you paying yourself first, examine all those patterns, the upper right is about your how your home, keeping a roof over your head, the lower left is about your food and your gas, and how those how that is, is doesn't it doesn't mean that you're not going to eat on a restaurant, it just means your money, it's accounting, you're accounting for those expenses. If you like to eat out every every night, then you keep that. That's okay. There's no shame in doing that. It's just you just want to be prepared for it. And the lower right is about your um variables, right? Your memberships, you know, things that can be assessed that should be reassessed. Because what happens nowadays in our bank accounts, you know, Apple will say, so Amazon, Apple, and Google, you cannot, you have to dig very deep to trace what is it that they're charging you for. And I am like, I get so upset when people just come into the bank account to do to take my money. I'm like, no, this is not yours, but I'm okay with the relationship that I have. For example, Spotify. I love my Spotify account, and I'm okay with that. I know they're gonna come in every month. They just went up a dollar too, actually. It's now $12.99. So I know they're gonna come in and take this and be okay. I'm okay with it, but you are looking, and that is a lot of where we do not want to go. So knowing your patterns is what helped me kind of create this path of staying out of debt because I knew when I was. More likely to spend more money. So we always would go a big expense at the end of the year, like November, you know, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was always like a it was always a feeling of like, yes, we deserve it. And then come January and February, we were in, we were in trouble. Like your credit card bills were coming and we had no money. So you go back on the cycle of using them again. So same thing with the business. You know, your business taxes are due March 15. So you have to get all your stuff together. We wouldn't do any, even myself with an accounting background, I wouldn't do anything with the business up until it was tax time because we were afraid to look. Now we had um, you know, we had a lot of uh stuff to fix with the houses at some point, and there was just like different pieces, but that's really got us into trouble because one time we forgot to pay the rental licenses. And in Michigan, in the state of Michigan, if you don't have a license with your rental home, it was a misdemeanor. So we had to go, we had to hire an attorney, and my husband had to go because he was the listed party. So it was an expensive lesson for us to know to not take care of business. To stay afraid of looking cost me more money than the you know, the process of having set a processing place for to remember that the licenses were due. I mean, there's a lot there. I feel like I said a lot.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yes, it it is, but it really boils down to, and I don't mean to simplify it so much, but it really boils down to having a budget. Yes, right, knowing what your numbers are, knowing how much income you're getting in or how much income do you need in order to be able to pay those things, yes, and then going after it. Yes, right. It's um one thing I always tell people is have a business plan and have a budget, right? Have a projected budget. It might not be 100% accurate, and I will guarantee that it's not gonna be 100% accurate. Probably, yeah. We don't know what the future holds, but we can guesstimate, we have educated guesses as to what could happen, what can't, what do we need, what do we spend on, right? And we can use our past spending patterns to project our next spending patterns, our future spending patterns. And I think that is very important for people to understand because you cannot improve that which you do not measure exactly, yes, it's really, really hard. Yeah, and everything that you've been talking about is don't be afraid to look, measure it, don't shame yourself. Yeah, there's no shaming there. No, because we work hard. Why? So that we could just die and not enjoy our money and pay off debt?

SPEAKER_01 25:10

No, oh no, yeah, absolutely not. Your life, our life, it's not meant to be hard. I don't think it's meant to be hard.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

No, it's not, but we make it harder than it needs to be. And a lot of times I see this pattern with people of overspending on things that they don't even care about because their next door neighbor has it, or because society says you should, or you know, it's a measure of success or what exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

And that it really goes back to, you know, how you feel your belief system. So it's, you know, it sounds so like so like spiritual or you know, too much, but it's really tangible once you start translating those that work into this, you know, your numbers, into what you value, uh, into how you choose to spend your money. It's okay. It's your money. You could spend it any way you want to, any way you want to, but it's your decision. And when you don't want to look, it's no longer your decision. It's someone else's.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yes, exactly. Exactly. I love that you said that. I mean, this is very important. Um, I want everybody to see this. There is no shame in what you want to spend your money on, it is your money. But what we're saying is know what you're doing with it, right? Don't let the environment and what's around you control your life, your money. You need to have intention, you need to have awareness and alignment, and then you spend it how you want, knowing right, what the consequences are, making informed decisions, yeah, rather than just fly by the seat of my pants and you know, let's see what happens, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah. I mean, I think there's a place for everything. I think we've all have done, you know, like that, like flying by the seat of our pants. But honestly, when you don't have, uh, I think one of the one big moment for me that's was I was going through the McDonald's drive-thru and I truly did not know, was afraid that my credit card was gonna get declined, or my debit card by trying to get food for my children. So when you have other responsibilities to yourself, to your family, like you wanna do wanna you wanna know that because your life is so valuable, your time is so valuable. If you don't know your numbers, then your time is just gonna, you know, you're just gonna spend it thinking you need to work more in order to bring more. And nowadays, um, I'm 43 and I don't I don't want to say like I'm at the end of the road, but I love what I love the most is having uh time flexibility. So I no longer use the term uh financial freedom. I use the term financial flexibility because I actually love my work. I actually love what I do. I don't want to just sit around on a beach, although that may work for someone, and that's okay. That's that's your jam, go for it. But I actually love my work, I want to keep doing it, but only when it feels good to me, when I am in the right mindset. I have a lot of emotions, so I have a a very um uh lot of emotions. So sometimes are very low and sometimes are very high. So, but in the low, I like to get creative. I like to write, I like to type in my typewriter. So I want to be able to say, today I'm just not going to do anything else, but I know that my family, that my home, that everything is safe, and then I'm okay with taking this time for myself. But if I didn't know my numbers, I would just go to work. I wouldn't even think about wanting to do that. And to me, that's just, I mean, your time is so precious. That's the one thing that advocate the most. Your time is so precious.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yep. And you I want to go back to something you had stated earlier that um you thought it sounded too spiritual or too much. And I just want to bring forth that we are spiritual beings. Yes, right, that's where it starts and ends, is we are spiritual beings. And so, you know, no matter what religion you are or what your beliefs are, we are co-creators, yes, right? And so when we go into our spirit and when we go and see who we really are and our patterns and what we do, then we can co-create our life and our future, and that's the only way that we can do it is by intentionally doing it, by intentionally seeing what our patterns are and either disrupting them or continuing them, depending on what our goals are, right? And everyone is different.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

That is so beautiful, and it's so true because all the abundance is already out there. You just have to let it come to you. And one thing that I say to people when I work with them, I'm like, if money was a person, how would this person look like? And how would that relationship with this person be? Would they be your are they your friend? Are they your neighbor? Are they someone that you've never met before? And in your mind, maybe you think you will never meet. Once you start putting this, you know, once you start examining your relationship with money and how you feel abundant, then things start to come up. I am telling you, things will show up. And it's your choice, like you said, to do to change the pattern or to not. It's okay. It's just a matter of just like wanting to find out. Because once you open your eyes, and once you cannot unsee that. And my children will tell you that I have gone through a lot. Um, so but I wouldn't change it for the world, right? So it's it's been worth it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

But now tell me, you did this all once and you figured out your patterns, and everything just kind of fell into place, right? It never happened again.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Um, no, it's still, you know, it's a work in progress. It's not to say that perfection exists. I don't I don't believe in perfection, you know, like nature is perfect, but even that, you know, some we have weeds and trees and they have side branches, and you know, some of them is imperfection, right? It is, it is perfect imperfection. So uh we bought our we bought our primary home back in 2008, and then we rented my husband's home, and then we needed a home for my parents, and we walked down the road and looked, you know, saw a sign, called this guy and asked him if he could do a land contract with uh less money down. No, we needed a lower monthly amount. That's what we needed. I said, we have this type of this money, this amount of money, and we need this, the payment to be this amount because we're paying for my parents. And the guy's like, okay, like no problem. So that's the other thing. You have to ask if you don't think you're worthy of owning your own business or you know, following your dreams, then the universe only gives you what you're asking. So, because I remember my husband telling me, like, he will never do that because land contracts are usually five years or less. They don't really go for eight or ten years, uh, when it's an owner-to-owner uh sale, direct sale. And I'm like, we don't lose anything. All he can say is no. And he was such yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Sorry, but why are people afraid of no? You're still in the same position as before asked.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Yeah, you just you just have to ask. So he was such a sweet guy. So he said yes. He had come from a family, a very family-oriented person. So he knew what it was like to, you know, care for your elders and stuff like that. So he did it. And then when we were able to, we just bought the house outright from him, and that's where my parents live today. And the other, the other two, I think we bought, we also bought them from a gentleman that was like had a long-term relationship with the city, and he, I don't even remember how we met him actually. How oh, because we bought one in foreclosure from the bank, and it was um back then, the so this was was 2011. So the bank wanted to get rid of the of the properties here in Detroit. Back then, that house was $12,000. And we said we're willing to pay that, which is we needed a lot of work, but my husband is uh it's a handyman. Um, I mean, he has extraordinary talent. My husband is extremely talented, and we were grateful, you know, to do that. And then we opened, we did a water inspection, and it was like a fountain in the house. There was water coming out from every direction. The walls, you know, had been turned off, had been turned off for two years. It was this was October, so it was going to go on the bank's books one more year, right? So they needed they needed it off the books. And I said, Well, would you take seven? My realtor back then. She's like, no, absolutely not. The bank will never do that. I said, Kathy, please just ask. If they say no, I'm still willing to pay $12. I'm just asking because that's how much it's gonna take me to it's gonna uh you know pay a plumber to come and do all this plumbing. It's a small house, right? And she's like, absolutely not. I said, just ask. And sure enough, the bank said, sure, no problem. So we bought it for $7,000 back in 2011.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

See, and that's the power of asking. Yeah, right. It's not a risk of getting a no. That's not the risk because it's already a no when you don't ask. When you don't ask, yeah. Right. So there's no risk there. The only thing that can happen is you stay where you are or you get a yes. Like there's only an upside to it. Yeah. Um, I love this. So we've talked a lot about what you know obstacles that you have faced in having a business and growing multiple businesses. Um, and personally, so thank you so much for sharing all of that. I I really appreciate it. I'm sure the audience does as well. Let's talk about the other side of it, the flip side of what is working. How did you get that to work?

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Uh honestly, by my husband. I I like to say that, you know, we do all of this work, but my husband is the brain of the operation. The man is very intuitive, he's very handy. How we got it to work is by knowing the houses. So in real estate, it's not knowing the houses, knowing your your what your house needs, because things will come up inevitably. The the dryer, the washer, you know, what works for us is to know the houses inside and out. What works for us is do the best we can for the houses. Like we really have a spiritual relationship with the houses because the houses have been um been able to support us in a way that we couldn't have, you know, we haven't experienced before. So we have done major renovations. And when I say we, it's my husband. Like he is the person that does all the hard work. I just go and give my ideas. My ideas are what kind of like drives the the you know the flow of the house, but he actually does the actual work. Obviously, we have you know people that we trust. Uh trusting our intuition has really served us well. There has been a few times where we didn't trust our intuition, and it was the only time we had an eviction happen. And yeah, that was a big that was a huge learning curve. Like huge learning curve. So, what works for us has been following our intuition, having a spiritual relationship with the houses as part of our uh you know, support system, and following the process, looking into the legalities of taking care of business. Really, that's it. Uh, we had another time, our CPA actually forgot to file our taxes, and we didn't know for he forgot to file the business taxes. So we didn't know for about three years, three or four years until we were gonna do something and we needed the the return. And somehow my broker said, my mortgage broker said, Why haven't you filed taxes for X year? I'm like, I did. And uh he's like, No, you didn't. So again, my husband, who is a hero in the story, got on the phone with the IRS, which if you've ever tried to call the IRS, it's almost impossible to get a hold of anybody. And once the things get too complicated, sometimes they actually hang up on you. So my husband worked through that with the IRS, and because they have a fee when you don't file taxes for X amount of years, and then you file, you will pay fees for the years that you didn't. And it was almost back then, it was almost a $5,000 fee. But we explained, he explained, we send all kinds of documentation. It was a very labor-intensive process, and it was just, you know, at that point, uh, the fee was weighed, but it's a one-time thing that you do with IRS, like you don't follow that. So taking care of business, like really knowing what that looks like, it's important. Um, there's a lot of information out there, but I think it's just taking it one step at a time. Like they say, how do you eat an elephant? It is one piece at a time. You don't tackle all of this um at the beginning, but it's just it's just important to be aware that there are things that need to be done, you know, like the rental licenses that also was expensive because he got charged with a misdemeanor, so we had to hire attorneys and all of it. The eviction, we needed an attorney, even though we did all the work ourselves, but because it was a it was a rental property, a licensed rental property, that we needed uh an attorney to handle that. And that was uh um something that really left a mark for us. Like it was uh one of the most recent experiences that we've been through. So since we started, you know, uh renting properties or having this business, the eviction happened two years ago. And um we never we had we had experience with like you know, dogs chewing through uh doors and stuff like that. And we have always had uh good tenants, uh, but it left the it left the mark for us. So there was a lot of reflection on that, what went wrong for us in order to be able to move forward and to not let it um, you know, not let it put mud on all the work that we have done and how the houses have continued, continue to help us, right? Because my parents still live there. So it's uh it's something that we do for my parents and it's um it feels good, but uh there's a lot of um, yeah, there's a lot of learning there for sure.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

And I love that you're bringing all this up because again, simplifying it a little bit, it's about doing your research, yes, right, having that relationship with your potential clients, with your products, with the houses, like you said, with your services, whatever it is, um, and being organized, right? Making sure that you're doing the things that you need to do at the times you need to do them. And those can become very expensive lessons if not done properly. And so again, you can not um improve that which you do not measure, yes, right? And so being able to see all of those things and being organized is going to help propel you forward and also lessen those mistakes that could happen and lessen the burden, especially the financial burden of those mistakes, right? So thank you for all of that information. If um, so you said real estate, um, but you also do human design, you do other things that you service people with. So if someone wanted to reach out to you, have a conversation or work with you, how can they get a hold of you? Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

So you can find me at my website, the unschoolinglifestyle.com, and you can find us how to email us. You can, you know, look at I mostly work with families leaving mainstream education and finding out the rhythms that work for them. So it includes many different things: money, human design, belief, systems. It's all like part of the process. And yeah, you can find us there. Email us, our YouTube channel is there, my personal Facebook. I recently left Instagram because I know, like, because it just wasn't working for us. It was just taking too much time, too much space. So, YouTube, our website, and my personal Facebook is where you can find us in our podcast, of course.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

In the podcast, and all that information will be at the end of the podcast and in the comments. So, don't worry if you missed it, you will have a chance to get it. And I just want to thank you so Much for all of this information, for being so open and willing to share your experiences and how you have overcome those obstacles, how you've made your success work for you. Um, before I let you go, though, I have one last question.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

If you can give business owners one piece of advice to help them succeed, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Believe that you can. Oh. Believe in yourself that you can succeed. Because you absolutely can. Will it be easy all the time? No, absolutely not. But you that you are capable of? Absolutely, most definitely.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Oh, I love it. And you heard it here, guys. Um, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you again, Julietta, so much for your time and your expertise. And we will see you all next time.