296 | Do You Have an Exit Strategy? How to Build Passive Income with Rebekah Taylor

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Have you ever been to a real estate agent's retirement party? The running joke is that there isn't one; they just keep selling until they can't. In this episode of The Faithful Agent, Cole and I sit down with Rebekah Taylor — passive income strategist, co-founder of MachSpeed Lending, and the American Apartment Owners Association's 2024 Best Passive Income Expert — to ask the question most agents avoid: what's your exit strategy?

As a realtor, your time is tied directly to your income. It's transactional; you have to produce to get paid, which means you're constantly trading your most valuable asset for your next commission check. But what happens when you don't want to keep selling, or you reach a season where you can't? Rebekah has invested in over a thousand rental units nationwide and managed millions in private equity, and she's here to show agents that there's a middle ground between "buy all your own rentals" and "throw it in the stock market and forget it."

This is a conversation about stewardship. We get into the practical side — house hacking, real estate syndications, self-directed IRAs, hard money lending, and the tax advantages most agents have no idea they're leaving on the table (depreciation, bonus depreciation, cost segregation, and qualified real estate professional status). But we also get into the heart side: how do you discern which opportunities the Lord is actually calling you toward instead of chasing every idea you hear on a podcast?

If you've ever felt the golden handcuffs of big commission checks while quietly wondering whether you're building anything that lasts, this one's for you. Rebekah closes with simple, actionable advice on budgeting, living below your means, and putting your money to work so that one day, work can become optional — and you can be present for the moments that matter most.

Key Takeaways

Your time is your most valuable asset, so build an off-ramp. As an agent, your income stops when you stop. Creating alternative streams of income protects you when deals fall through and gives you a real exit strategy instead of selling until you're 83.

You already understand real estate better than the stock market. Agents have a built-in advantage — you know property, values, and locations. Rebekah's challenge: why pour everything into a market you don't understand when you could invest in the space you know cold?

There's a middle ground between active and passive. You don't have to choose between buying your own rentals and doing nothing. Syndications let you come in as a silent limited partner, while debt funds and hard money lending offer another path entirely — without the toilets, tenants, and trash.

The tax benefits are massive — and most agents miss them. Depreciation, bonus depreciation, and cost segregation studies can create paper losses that offset your active income. Because realtors can qualify for real estate professional status (track those 750+ hours and talk to your CPA), those write-offs can work against your GCI in ways most other professions never get.

Hard money is about speed and convenience. Rebekah's Coke-at-Sheetz vs. a-12-pack-at-Sam's-Club analogy nails it — you pay more to get funded in days instead of waiting weeks on a bank. MaxSpeed runs around 13.5% annualized on roughly six-month terms for flips, builds, and gap funding.

The debt fund is the steady, hands-off option. A one-year hold, 10% under $500K (11% over), quarterly distributions, compounding if you reinvest, and backed by collateral. No tax benefits on the debt side — but it pairs beautifully with the equity side that does carry them.

Stewardship starts with a heart check. Don't chase every opportunity you hear. Garrett's story — feeling called to be a landlord, then sensing the Lord say "that's not what I want you to do" — is the reminder to ask first. And Joey's $10 million analogy lands the point: if someone trusted you with that, you'd invest time learning to manage it well. That's exactly what the Lord has done.

Start with your budget. Know your numbers, live below your means, tithe, and invest the difference. Make the hard choices early so that work can eventually become optional — and you're free to say no without guilt when it matters.

Connect with Rebekah:
Website: https://machspeedlending.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebekah-taylor1986/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@passiveincomeplaybookrt

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Transcript

The question is, do you want to work the rest of your life? And as a realtor, your time is tied to your money like you have to produce to make an income. It's transactional, so you're constantly trading time for money. And so I think you need to be thinking about outside of that, you know, the work that you do every single day. How can you make money while you sleep so that someday you can retire and retire when you want it, not be 90 years old? You know, our time is precious. It's our most valuable asset. So how do we use it? To the best of our ability? I think especially as believers, we're thinking about how do we make lasting impact? Do we have an off ramp? That is the question that we tackled today with Rebecca Taylor. As most agents, we are so tied in to the day to day of how do I do more deals? And we don't even know what's my exit strategy. One day, my friend, when you don't want to keep selling or you're in a position where you can't keep selling, what is your exit strategy? We just finished a great conversation with Rebecca Taylor. What do you think? Cool. Yeah, that was awesome. As we were thinking about, how do we be good stewards? Should we invest? If so, how what questions should we be asking? Hard money. I mean, she touched on even budgeting all the way down to the minutia stuff that we think might not matter. But she was a rock star and I'm super excited for this episode. This is an episode about stewardship. I think you'll love it. You'll love her for sure. And my joke is better than Kohl's this week. We'll see you on the other side. See ya. What's up everybody. You know this would not be a faithful agent podcast without some Christian dad jokes. If you remember what I said from last week, if you thought Cole's joke was better, leave us a five star review. If you thought my joke was better, leave us a five star review. Cole wants you to leave us a four star review, and I reminded him it affects him now too. So let's just do five stars across the board. Cole, you are younger, more handsome, less hair, but more handsome. Why don't you start with your Christian dad joke and let's see what me and Rebecca think, all right, since I'm always bantered back and forth with Garrett. Here we go. My barber asks what happened to my hair, and I said, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Nice. That's good. I feel like you just came up with that on the fly. Well done. What you are the modern. Your hair is the modern day joke. It's amazing. Uh, someone someone write that down. Okay, cool. Why did Lazarus love surprise parties? Tell me why, what you got? Because he was really good at coming back when people least expected him. That was so lame. Your jokes need to actually start becoming good. That is. I mean, Rebecca is laughing out of pity, not out of doom. Which I appreciate. We just. We're gonna. So, you know, for those of, you know, my assistant Shelly does all the editing. Shelly, just grab that laugh track and. Always right. Rebecca laughing. Always behind every joke. Forever for the next 300 episodes. Uh, for real, though, we're excited, and my joke is better leave me a five star review. If mine was better leave coal a, you know, a a four and a half star review if his was better. But today we are genuinely excited. We're joined by Rebecca Taylor. She and I met through a mutual group, uh, coaching community. We're part of Brand Builders Group, which we love. She's a passive income strategist, award winning speaker, co-founder of Mock Speed Lending. Most importantly, she loves Jesus. And she's a mom about to be mom to baby number four here just a few weeks. So literally start praying for her, uh, community. Come around her in prayer. Um. With more than 17 years of business experience, she has invested in over a thousand rental units nationwide, managed millions of dollars in private equity assets, and was named the 2024 Best Passive Income Expert by the American Apartment Owners Association. Rebecca, that is awesome. And today, what we're going to be talking about is why agents need to be thinking beyond commissions and thinking exit strategy and creating off ramps. So we've got the perfect person to do that with us today. Rebecca, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you. It's so good to be here. You guys are. You guys are so much fun. This is going to be a blast. What a high. Was a 

great bio. It was a great bio. And I think that. It doesn't even do you justice. Right. And the research that I've done and the conversations we've had, the amazing amount of things that you have accomplished. Right. And being really young. Right. You and I are still really young. I think we can say that in the real estate world, most people are like 50, you know, 56. We're young Rebecca. We've we've got a lot of time. Right. But but you have you had your license. You have your license, but you started investing in real estate a long time ago. Talk to me initially and talk to us initially about why do real estate agents need to be thinking about exit strategy and offramp? Why does that matter? Yeah, that's a good question. I think really at the end of the day is the question is, do you want to work the rest of your life and is it a realtor? Your time is tied to your money. I mean, like you, you have to produce to make an income. It's transactional. So you're constantly trading time for money. And so I think you need to be thinking about outside of that, you know, the work that you do every single day. How can you make money while you sleep so that someday you can retire and retire when you want it, not be 90 years old? You know, our time is precious. Precious. It's our most valuable asset. So how do we use it? To the best of our ability? I think especially as believers, we're thinking about how do we make lasting impact. And all of us, the three of us sitting here today are spouses. We're parents were thinking about our time and and trying to use it to the best of our ability. So I think it's really important to be creating alternative streams of income that can support you outside of closing that next property, because we all know sitting here and those listening that sometimes deals fall through and you might have worked your butt off for six months or a year on that property that didn't end up going through, and then all of a sudden you're in a pretty tight situation and discouraged and frustrated and stressed when you might have had some other income coming in, if you would have been, you know, investing it. So it is a process. It doesn't happen overnight. I'm not here to sell some get rich quick scheme, but it does take, you know, an investment of your time and your resources. Yeah. I think, you know, I was sharing with you all preshow. I did a deal with an agent who's 83 years old, you know, super sweet. Old man who still had a pager. And that's how I got Ahold of him. He had a landline. That was the picture on his side. Can you imagine the picture on his listing side was him holding a landline, which is amazing. And, uh, you know, he would change the contract and bring it to me in a manila envelope. But, you know, the joke was it? Computers were doing real good at that time, right? Like everything was on email. Uh, the the joke that I've heard in the real estate space is, you know, have you ever been to a real estate agents retirement party? No. They just die. And and it's funny, but that's the reality of it. How many of us are locked in day to day? Got to get the deal done. Got to get the deal done. And, you know, it's almost this golden handcuffs of we're getting paid super well. Yeah. So yeah find the deal, get that next thing right. Whatever. But when an agent gets to the point where they're ready to slow down, how do they do that? And I had an agent I was coaching not that long ago who was selling 40 homes a year. I mean, she was killing it. And she told me when when? Like, right before she hired me, she told me, well, my goal geared is to stop in four years and be done selling. I said, okay, great. Well, what do you plan to do with all that business you've spent the last 20 years building? And she said, I don't know. I probably just stop, I guess. And I was like, that's that's terrible. Like, let's put something in place from an investment in terms of building your business, right? And build it out in a way that you can continue to earn income because you can do that. But then she also hadn't thought at all about rental investing as well. Right. So the the sad reality was she spent those 25 years and then showed up with what, you know, what's at, what's there at the end of the day. And that's really hard to to spend your time and not the right way to do it. I don't think in terms of shepherding. So. For the agent that's listening. Rebecca, I just start here is so many agents are saying, well, that's great, but how do I invest? Right. I'm not I'm just not generating enough income. And there's so we are so caught up in our day to day, like, how do I do another thing. So how would they do that? How do you all help 

people do that? How would you help them solve that problem? Yeah, I mean, there's certainly more active ways to like, you know, going out and buying a rental property. We started with house hacking. So back in 2012, we were listening to Biggerpockets. It's a real estate investment podcast. And, you know, my my dad had been investing in real estate since 2004. So we saw him grow. He had actually been a pastor for almost 30 years. And he suddenly, not suddenly, it was a process, but grew his wealth through real estate and buying up rental properties. But it was a process. It was time. It was it was still a lot of work. So we bought our first place in 2012. We house hacked, had tenants living in our basement while we lived upstairs, and their rent every month almost covered our mortgage. And so it was a really nice place to be. But it did, again, still require some work. And I think the the nice part about being an agent is that this is the industry, you know, like you understand property, you understand values, you understand locations. I mean, there's just so many things that you already have a really good grasp on. So it is kind of funny to me when I talk to people and they're like, I'm putting all my retirement into the stock market. And I'm like, do you really know the stock market that well? But, you know, real estate, so why not go and invest in that where you this is your space like you know it left, left and right. Now understanding how to you know, own rentals is is more work. But there is you know, hiring a property manager, if you find the right person to work with it, can manage it and deal with day to day operations. I think that's a smart move. That's something that we have done. But again, there are still some active sides of it. So you could go the more active route. You could also go the passive route. There's this thing called Syndications and it's basically group investments where people come in as limited partners and they put They put their money in a pot basically, and they go and buy larger portfolios or larger properties like a we have one in Lynchburg. It's a 100 units. Um, and it's just, you know, five apartment buildings here in Lynchburg. And so we came together was a $13.25 million purchase. I didn't have that much money. So when we brought in investors, because we could write your check next time you write a check, that'd be great. That'd be great. So we all came together a couple years ago and bought that apartment complex, and we've got limited partners that are very silent. They don't have to deal with the door, you know, day to day headaches of toilets and tenants and trash. They're able to just put their money in. They earn monthly cash flow and it's just very hands off. And so there are options like that. And that's one thing that we do. We we don't always have a deal open. It really depends on finding the right property that we bring investors into. But that's a much more passive option. And then we also have mock speed lending, which I'm sure we'll talk about more here in a minute. But that is our lending side. And we actually lend to investors that are flipping houses or building houses like. That need capital very short term. And so we bring investors into that space and the returns are a little higher. There's not the tax benefits that you'll see on the rental side. So happy to share more about that. But again a couple different avenues I think really what it comes down to. What are your goals. You know, do you are you looking for something more active. You might make the best return on the active side, or do you want something a little bit more passive that you can just put your money to work? Again, you're making money while you're sleep sleeping. And so I think you just have to really identify and get clear on what are your goals. Yeah. Rebecca, one thing that I find really interesting is that many real estate agents help clients with investment properties, but either don't invest or they don't know how to or even how to advise their clients. So what would you say to them? Hmm. I think surrounding yourself with people that are in the space, you know, listening to podcasts, reading, there's a lot of great books out there that that just kind of give you a feel for, for this investing world. Um, I mean, a lot of them are on audible, or you can listen to them while you're driving to appointments. I know we all spend a lot of time in the car, so there's opportunity just to educate yourself. But also most cities have a local investor community like what we call a Ria, a real estate investor association. And so I would recommend plugging in there. And even if 

you're not going to learn about investing, you might just pick up clients from that. So that's I mean, just a way to, to get plugged in and you will learn about investing in the process. So I think it's just a good space to plug into ours meets every Friday. We have a place we meet for coffee. We hang out, talk about deals. Uh, every month we have an educational topic. Somebody comes in and speaks at a restaurant. So I think a lot of cities have those. And I think that's probably one of the best ways to just surround yourself with people that are ahead of you. And you can ask a lot of questions to. That's good. It's good. Yeah, it is interesting. And so, you know, transparency. We don't do real estate investing anymore. Right. Like what I had to navigate. So so here's where I'll encourage all agents is I think we either get stuck in this mindset of like all I do is I just buy and help people buy and sell homes and help people buy and sell homes. Not really building anything for yourself, which is, I don't think, appropriate or the right way to do it right. We also will listen to podcasts hours or whoever's and every idea is like, I got to do that, I got to do that. I got to do that. I don't know what you're supposed to do, right? The Lord is going to give you that direction. But it is, I would say, inappropriate for you to just sit there and say, oh, that's cool. And not just say, Lord, is this something that I should pursue as well? Right. Because I think most of us don't err on the side of I'm overambitious right now. Sometimes that happens. Of course it does. I think for most people you're under ambitious, right? Like ambitious. Not for you. It's for the people in your life. It's for your future generations. It's for the honouring of the Lord with your wealth. Right. The opportunity of whatever. Owning a rental home that, uh, like my good buddy Tyler does, owns a rental home that someone in one of the pastors in his church rents for $600, lost to Tyler every month because in the Lord's kindness, he can afford to do that and he can bless them. Right. What a gift that is to be able to be a blessing to somebody else. But we often just hear ideas. We either jump at them or we sit there and do nothing about them. So all I'll say is my challenge to the ages listening is to say, okay, Lord, I'm going to listen to what Rebecca is saying. And then I'm going to ask you, is this something you want me to pursue? Because it could be, yes, it could be. No, we shouldn't pursue everything, but we should be pursuing something other than just how do I help people buy and sell homes? That's good. But what else do we need to be doing? Right. So, you know, one of the things you talked about catch up in real quick. Can you do, buddy? Yeah, yeah. So I want to tell the listeners a story on YouTube. Rebecca, I'm curious how you'll respond, especially I guess this is the faithful agent and we're talking about investing. So a couple of years ago, um, I just kind of felt like I was supposed to be a landlord. It's like, okay, I'm a Christian. I want to bless other people. I want to be better than someone else. Not not maybe not even just a slumlord, but just maybe to be able to bless someone, to be a good representation of Christ in, in rental property. And so I'm like, I'm going to start, you know, I'm pouring into books Biggerpockets podcasts, all the things. And um. And what I realized, what was I was simply comparing myself to the industry standard, which is just like Garrett is saying, I'm going to be a real estate investor because everyone is talking about it, and therefore I must do it. And so I was praying about it, and the Lord was like, I didn't call you to be a landlord. Like I'm like, yeah, but I have all the skills and I have a, I'm type A and blah blah. I can run numbers. And he's like, that's not what I want you to do. And I was like, okay. So I completely abandoned the idea. And for three months I felt great. Well, right after all that, uh, we sold our primary and and that ended up being a rental property. And then somebody came to us and was like, hey, we're buying 18 units. Do you want to be a limited partner? And I felt the Lord was like, hey, this is the time. You're good. But I think it is a heart check, especially as a believer. But it's, you know, along with numbers, which I'm sure you're going to share too. So I wanted to just encourage the listeners with what Garrett is saying. Yeah. That's good. And the idea of REIT's right, which I've done that before too. I think what you said, Rebecca, we want to come to you. What you said was most agents, you know, do your question of like, what do you know about the stock market? I mean, I don't know anything. Uh, I 

can look at historical returns, but it's kind of, uh, put money in and forget it. And there is kind of this middle ground, right. Which I want you to talk about. We tend to think I'm either going to buy rentals and like, how am I going to, you know, all of us on here have a bunch of kids. So I'm like, how with five kids and in a busy business, am I going to do that? Or what if I just throw money in the stock market and just forget it? Um, there's that middle ground, right of like, do I partner in a syndication? Do I partner in someone else who's going to buy real estate and then even. And I want us to get to this. I have I have investors. How do we connect them to Rebecca and what she's doing? Give another option. So, you know, for the agent that is thinking about, you know, on a higher level, how do I get a return? But also tax advantages. How how do they do that. Why would that matter. Why do they need to shift from stock market to hey, Rebecca's got a syndication, why don't we go be a limited partner? Why would they do that? I mean, I think one of the biggest reasons is that, yeah, the depreciation and the tax benefits. So, uh, when you own a rental property, we have what's called a depreciation. So the government allows us to write off so much every year on a property. Typically it's over like a 27.5 year period. So if you paid just for easy math, $270,000 for a property every year, you can write off 10,000 of that through depreciation. And I'm no CPA. Please really like do your own homework, talk to your CPA, talk to your attorney. Yeah, talk to your tax person. Please do not take this as the word but but there are some incredible benefits I've experienced. I mean, we have been able to save so much in taxes. It's been incredible. Every time I like, get my taxes back, I want to hug my CPA and not punch her, which is pretty good. You know, like I don't have to have this massive tax bill. I get a refund a lot. So but there's this thing also called bonus depreciation. So you're able to actually pull depreciation forward and take a larger lump sum if you plan to hold the property in long term. So that is another option where you know, you may you may have a good sized property that you're able to pull forward instead of 10,000. Maybe there's a $50,000 loss. That paper loss. It's not actual loss, but a paper loss that you're able to pull forward. And as realtors, you probably as long as you're working 750 hours or more per year, you fall into what's called a qualified real estate professional status. And that's something that you want to talk to your CPA about. They will have to set that. Like, you'll have to claim that you should track your hours for that, but it has to be the majority of where you're spending your time. Like if you're just a part time agent and you've got a W-2, this is not probably going to work for you unless you have an Airbnb. There's a short term rental loophole, and that's a whole nother thing. You only have to have 100 hours for that. But there's just some incredible benefits to where if you have rental properties and you are a realtor, you're a qualified real estate professional. You can have some massive write offs which will go against your earnings as a realtor. So I mean, I have friends that literally like do not pay taxes and they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as agents because of those those rentals and in Syndications. A lot of times we'll pass through that depreciation. We'll take those bonus. But the bonus depreciation and pass it through to our limited partners. So you're able to, you know, take advantage of some significant write offs outside of just your standard like mileage and phone and all the, you know, the things that your CPA is already writing off. So it's worth considering. And that's probably one of my favorite benefits of of real estate is just the tax side of things. So we get to enjoy. And yeah, so to be clear again, neither of us are CPAs. But normally when you if you were just, you know, random I worked in whatever healthcare it would be depreciation against my passive income. Yeah it goes right flows first. And yeah as real estate agent it's against my active my GCI right. The money you're bringing in as an agent you get to write off as a loss. As an expense if you if to make it easy whatever. Like how much income did you actually make? Uh, right. You get to write it off against that, which is amazing, right? That's like a huge benefit for us as agents. You can do that. You're saying Rebecca to in a syndication. I could say I'm going to give Rebecca. $50,000 for this indication. They're going to go buy this big, massive property, whatever. And 

as a passive investor in that I still get the tax benefit. I can still generate income through that. Is that what you're saying? I am, but every syndication is different. So you want to be very knowledgeable on what you're getting into. Because then there's a lot of paperwork with these syndications a lot it's called, but it's a PPM, a private placement memorandum. So you want to know maybe have your attorney review it first. Know what the general partners are sharing with you? Because everyone's different. Some of them may decide not to share that depreciation. Most of them I've dealt with do share the depreciation because limited partners want to take advantage of that. But you're exactly right. Like if you're in another field of of work typically you're passive losses. You're going to only offset your passive gains. So those are going to stick together. Active losses offset active gains. But when you're a qualified real estate professional in you know again you're you're owning some form of rental properties. They kind of intermingle. So that's one of the beauties. And I think a lot of realtors just don't know this. Like, hey, if you know, again, I hold ownership and something and I'm, I'm falling into that qualified real estate professional status. Again. Make sure you have the hours of track it. Talk to your CPA. I want to be clear on all of that. There's just so many benefits that a lot of the other folks outside of this industry do not get to take advantage of. Yeah. Let me go back into this. Just I'm going to play dumb and devil's advocate for any listeners, because I don't want this to go over their heads. So what you're saying is, let's say that my GCI was $200,000 a year, and I've invested $50,000 into a property, whether that's as a limited partner or just an investment property. Anyways, yeah. Um, and I could possibly have a bonus depreciation. So the CPA or the government will make it seem as if I only made 150,000. Is that what you're trying to say? No. So let me be clear. So 50,000 would have been what you would put into the property. And then typically what that syndicator will do or you can do I mean, again I've worked with my CPAs on doing this. We do the what's called it's called a cost segregation study. So we'll go in and they'll look at the property itself and determine what what can we depreciate earlier. Because again, every building and the way the government does it is every building typically they'll depreciate or type of real estate they'll depreciate. And every, you know, land or a. Um, like a gas station or of car wash. It's all has different schedules for the depreciation, but with the bonus depreciation, if you hire a professional, um, if it's larger property, you're probably gonna hire somebody to come in and do it. They're going to look at all the components and figure out what can we pull forward and depreciate earlier. And so it's probably not going to be a full 100% loss on what you're you're making or what you put in that 50,000. It may be ten or 20 or 30,000. Again, I don't know without seeing the study, and I would definitely work with a professional on that. But that $30,000 amount that now you put in 50 and now you know you're going to get a K-1 for that year and it's going to come back and say, hey, we have a $30,000 loss, paper loss. It wasn't a loss to you, but that's going to bring you down your taxable income by 20 or $30,000. So yeah, instead of making you set 200,000, you now look like you make 170, 180. But again, I don't know what the numbers would look like that all of that's a part of the, the, you know, professional that you're hiring, that's doing the study and figuring out how much can we pull forward. I think an important note, though, is that you you probably don't want to do this if you're planning to exit a property pretty quick, if you're only going to hold it for a year or two, you're going to pay that back like the government wants their money eventually. This is really focused on long term properties that you think you're going to hold for a while. If you're not going to hold it for more than a couple of years, I would 1031 exchange it and, you know, move forward with another. You got to replace it because, again, the government's going to come after their money eventually. So it's it's basically just pushing it forward. So don't don't really don't look at this. If this is in and out, like I'm just going to hold this property for a couple of years. No that's great. I think a lot of people um. Understand through stories and examples. So I wanted to make sure that you could. I appreciate that. Yeah. It's good. I think it's the beauty of, you know, exactly what you said. As a real 

estate agent, we can take advantage of this. Going against what I actually created for income for myself. Right, is here's my loss, quote unquote. I'm part of a car wash syndication. Right. Exactly like you said. Why? Because I wanted the passive income. But also I can, if this gets written off. Right. Everything I've earned now, it's not real estate. I mean, it is sort of right, but. But anyways, everything I earn from that car wash syndication looks like I made nothing. According to the government, what they're going to test me on because I have depreciation. Right. So it's it's an amazing opportunity playing the tax game. Not that I'm an expert right by any means, but it's like just figure out the game. They the government wants you to play. They show you how to not pay taxes. I mean, right. I mean effectively they show you how to not pay taxes. You just got to know the game and play the game. What I love what you're talking about is there's this other option that a lot of us don't know, which is there's a middle ground. You don't just have to go buy all your own investments. You can. Right. But there's these other ways to get involved and take advantage of that as well. Now for the agent that has clients, Rebecca, that's like, man, they my people, everyone. Any friends of mine that work with a lot of investors are. Man, what hard money lender do you know? Who do you know that does this and you know that does that right? Why should they say let's call Rebecca. Let's call speed lending. What would bring them your way? What separates you all? Quick question for you. Did you get into real estate to create more freedom for yourself and for your family to live a more faith filled and purposeful life? Now, if that is true, and I believe it probably is, let me ask you this question. Do you feel like you're having to be on your phone almost around the clock, and do you feel like you ofttimes have to work weekends when you'd rather be at church or with your family? Or do you feel like you're constantly chasing attention on social media? Now, does all that feel like freedom for many? It does not. The good news is this the homeowner concierge is a simple platform that scales your referral relationships. It's not just dependent upon the relationships that you have, but the referral relationships that your preferred vendors have. Now, if you're interested again in having more referrals, so much that you don't have to live in scarcity, you can live in abundance and you can have that freedom that you desired. I want you to go to Pro Insight Faithful. You know, like the Faithful Agent podcast. Again, it's Pro Insight faithful. You're going to watch a quick video there. If what you see there resonates, you're going to schedule some time together. And I'll walk you through how we're helping real estate agents to again scale their referral relationships and finally get the freedom that you desire. I think probably one of the biggest things is and the reason why we're called mock speed lending is because we're fast. We you know, if you go to a bank, It's probably going to be a month or I mean, banks don't love short term rehab loans or short term builds. They're looking for long term clients and mortgages. And so we're they're a little bit you know, that that's out of their box. And so they come to us, these investors that are flipping houses or building or need gap funding because they want something quick. They want to work with people that have already done these types of projects. They want to work with investors that look at the deal, the way that they look at the deal. And so I think the biggest thing being fast and also being convenient, you know, and we do ask for information. There's definitely information we need upfront. Um, you know, we look for driver's license entity docs. Uh, we'll ask for tax information, bank statements. We want to get, you know, who's involved in the project. We want to get the purchase contract. Obviously the rehab, the scope of the work, the budget. You know, there are some things we're going to need at the beginning. We're not just going to give people money, but it's a whole lot less than going through a bank, which is literally could be weeks or months before you get approval and you might lose the deal in that time frame. A lot of our investors, they are a lot of our, you know, borrowers. They they are buying foreclosures. So they're buying, you know, just some type of distressed property where the seller is just like, I got to get this sold in the next week or two and we can fund it that quickly. So I think that's probably one of the biggest or two of the biggest reasons they come to us is 

speed and convenience. Can some can an agent also do that for. Bridge loans, bridge funding. So what I mean is, you know, we have so many people right now that are I don't want to get rid of my 2.5% interest rate, right. Whatever. But then a house pops up on the market like I need that house, I need to go buy it, but I gotta sell my home. We're not even close to ready. Need funding in between to make that work. Is that something you guys have done too, or is that outside of your scope? Yeah, that is outside. So we strictly do. It has to be an entity, like a business loan we could not lend to on a primary. So and if it's somebody's home that they're living in now, if they plan to transition that home into a rental property, then we could certainly talk through those, you know, possibilities of how we could help them in the with that gap funding. But if it is something that they're planning to hold and use themselves, then we wouldn't be able to help on that front. So the LLC has to be established prior to or during prior to closing or prior to application. Uh, I mean, probably prior to application, you'd want to have those stock, but, I mean, it's pretty easy getting an LLC set up, so I can't imagine it'd take them very long. But yeah, yeah, if you're bringing in partners, it's going to take a little more time. And I would be, you know, cautious about who you're doing deals with. But uh, but yeah, I would say have the LLC set up and then come and apply and we have a website. It's pretty simple to get all that information in. Are you allowed to kind of share maybe the last couple of projects that you've done and rates and how they've gone? Yeah, absolutely. So our standard rates I mean and this is going to sound high. Like I'm not gonna lie. We're definitely more expensive than the bank. But again, you're paying for convenience and speed. I heard an amazing analogy years ago which is just stuck with me. Um, why why would somebody come to a hard money lender versus just going to the bank where it's going to be probably 5% cheaper or 3% cheaper on an interest rate standpoint is just picture yourself in the car, you're driving down the road and you're really thirsty. You really want a Coke like you want the Coke right now. So you pull over to Sheetz and you get the coke. You spend three bucks for it. But man, it was there. It was fast, it was easy, and you got it, you know, versus you could go all the way over to Sam's Club on the other side of town, spend $15 and get a 12 pack. And it was only what, a dollar, something per Coke. But it was going to be time and it was going to be, you know, you're it was just not convenient. And so I think that's what people have to keep in mind, is we charge more for that speed and that convenience. And so our average rates are 13.5% annualized. Most of our loan terms are six months. Most of our borrowers are holding the money for six months, and then we typically charge for origination points up front. And we get creative sometimes with how we structure deals. Sometimes we'll wrap origination points into, you know, part of them into the back end. But typically those are standard terms. And most of what we're lending on is single family homes like flips or new construction. We've got one quad plex right now in Lynchburg. Um, so it's a mix. I mean, we have done some gap funding, like a property in Waco, Texas. It was a multifamily property. They needed 650,000. And so we only lended them the money for like two days. It was very quick. They just needed it in and out. So, you know, it's a it's a mix of deals that we're doing. But they're all going really well. And it's been a lot of fun just to see homes and communities transformed. A lot of them are actually around my church here in Lynchburg. We have two locations and we do a ton of loans around that area because it just it needs revitalized. And so we get to be a part of that, you know, and helping support those, those borrowers. Mm. That's amazing. That and that um. You also have as a listener, we could be partner with you on the back end of those loans, right? To be a limited partner. Say, I'm going to give money to Maxfield Lending. Who's then going to lend it out? Since someone who is revitalizing. Right. Is that correct? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So we started off with our own money. I've been lending for over three years now. My husband and I, and we started with our own money. Then we started using retirement money, which is something else to keep in mind is that if you ever want to self direct money out out of the stock market and do something different with it, you have the option to go in self-directed 

those funds into a syndication or into Maxfield lending. And it's just that, again, diversification is a great idea, I think. And I would never encourage somebody to put all their eggs in our basket, you know, but maybe diversify and put some of them. And so but we started using retirement money. And then a couple of years ago it's been about two years now. We started bringing investors in. And then last year we launched our debt fund and has since then have just been growing. So we we bring them in. It's just a one year lockup or one year hold for investors. And it's we pay 10% a year on their money if if it's under 500,000, if it's under if it's over 500,000, we pay them 11%. And we just do quarterly distributions. So you get the money in your account or via check if you want to reinvest it. We compound that interest so it grows a little faster. So it's just a very steady consistent. You know backed by collateral investment. Again there's no tax benefits on this side of things. So that is one benefit or one thing I want to mention is earlier we were talking about equity investments where you're getting those great tax benefits. Now we're talking about the debt investments where you won't see those. So I think they play nicely. I think if you do both, they can be a really great kind of have a great marriage there. But but the returns are higher, I think on the debt side with what we're doing at max speed lending than you might find with some of the syndications out there to somebody. So, Rebecca, you mentioned something called self-directed. And to the listener, if you don't know, you can what's called an IRA or a self-directed IRA, and it's basically, you know, your you have a special piggy bank for the IRA. And instead of putting that in stocks or bonds or mutual funds or something like that, you're just transitioning that from that over to a physical something, which is real estate. So a lot of people don't know that that exists. It's relatively easy to do so. Self- directed IRA, if you've never heard of it. Yeah. I didn't know you guys had that in the boonies in North Carolina, where you live. I didn't like I didn't know it made it there yet, but that's really. Where do you live again? I don't think, you know, nobody has ever heard of it. I also think that the analogy of the coke went over your head, because those also haven't made it. Sam's club is a grocery store. I know you guys grow all your own food. Um, but you can't buy it from source. Look, you can be funny that jokes at the beginning that nobody listens to. They have to wait 32 minutes into the podcast to have a good time. If you thought that was funny, leave us a five star review. I was going to keep saying that over and over and over again. Uh. That's amazing. I love it because again, the concept is, uh, the agent listening, right? It doesn't mean you need to go do this right now. I would absolutely look at what Rebecca and her team are doing, but it's the question of, okay, Lord, what do you want me to do? You know, a friend of mine once said this. Uh, he asked me because I. I call him actually, Joey. We were talking about him beforehand. Rebecca. He's been on the show before. Joe and Mary runs Wealth without Wall Street. Great place to look as well. They love the Lord is great, guys. Uh, and so I called Joey and I'm like, dude, I'm I'm I'm reading all these books about about money. I'm trying to understand to be a good steward. Right. Like I felt conviction of. I just was kind of doing what I was always told to do by my parents and, and, you know, love my dad. And he's smart with this. But his go to the financial advisor, help him tell you what to do and you just do it. And I said I felt conviction because I had no stewardship over the money that the Lord had given me. I was just like, it doesn't mean that those people aren't great. They are. But like, I didn't know what was going on. And so I need to learn. So I'm learning all these things. I call up Joey and I said, man, I gotta be honest. I'm worried that I'm going to fall in love with money. Like I'm just thinking about it constantly. Now I'm doing all these things and and he encouraged me. But then he said, Garrett. If you gave me $10 million and said, take care of this for me, how much time would you expect me to spend learning how to do that? Well. And he said, is that not exactly what the Lord has done? And in much more abundance than that? Right. And so it was just that conviction point of like, yeah, I just so often we just ignore the responsibility to be stewards of what we have. Not just money, but our kids, right? Our relationships, our talents, all the things and money often is like, yeah, I'm just gonna throw in 

the stock market. That's the easy thing to do. Doesn't mean it's the wrong thing, but that's the easy thing to do. And I don't stop to look around and just say, how do I not pay taxes legally, right? How do I invest in other things? How do I support, you know, the rejuvenation of a city by helping make speed lending, lend out more money? Whatever the scenario is, just sit there and say, Lord, this is not mine, this is yours. What do you want me to do? And how do I get better at it? And so I just think you should agent go say, okay, Lord, how do I become a better steward of the income that you've given me? Because it's yours, not mine. And then what do you want me to do? Right? Is it speed lending? Is it buying properties yourself? Is it? Who knows what it could be? Right to your point. Earlier call. But I do think that as a an industry, we get stuck in with a commission. Checks are so big. Well, I can make $10,000 selling this house, so why would I worry it at all about, you know, buying that home? And it's because 30 years from now, when you don't want to have to work forever, uh, you don't have an exit strategy, or it's next year when your kids are now a year older and all of us. Right? Like, how many more years we have? 13 kids, you know, between the almost born and the actual born, uh, among us on this podcast, uh, that that's a lot of children that need our attention and time and and focus, especially right now, it's the most, you know, attention, needy season of our lives, I think. And now I have Cole who, you know, he just anyways, he needs a lot of attention. And, uh, so does that hair. And so the reality is, is we need a way to have freedom agent when you have you all know my story. My mom sick and is on her deathbed. Right. And I want to spend time with her. And then my dad after she passes. Do you have the space to sit there and be present? Because those moments have come or will come in your life? Or is your business so dependent on you showing up and grinding it every day because of it? Is that's dangerous. So what can you be doing? And this could be one of the things. So, you know, that's just my challenge to them. Uh, Rebecca, you take us out, right? What do they need to be thinking about? What would be the last piece of advice you'd have? And then we want to know how they connect with you and find you. Yeah. I would encourage your listeners to to start. I mean, it's so simple, but make sure you have a really clear understanding of your budget and then figure out a way to live below your means and invest that difference. You know, maybe you can live off of 70% and you give 10 or 10% to, you know, I'm we tithe like give money and also put 20% into some type of investment like figure out what's a healthy way to live. And I think it is so easy, especially as we make more money to go and try to keep up with the Joneses, you know, to buy the bigger house. And I'm guilty of this. Like, we actually just moved in the fall and now we have a pool and it's great. But man, it's a lot of work. And holy smokes, there's all these things that keep breaking. And I'm like, what the heck? I wasn't expecting that. But you know, it's it is so easy to fall into that trap of like, okay, now we have more money, so let's go spend it and, and enjoy these things that, you know, maybe blessings from the Lord. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I'm saying if you want to have more margin to be able to have work, be optional, you have to make the hard choices early on. And so especially for these young agents, like put money aside and figure out places to to make your money work harder than you are and make it work while you're sleeping. And so again, that's a clear understanding of your budget. It's making some sacrifices and then choosing making the choices to put the money into the investments. And a lot of times I think people get analysis paralysis because there are so many options out there, but have conversations. I'd love to connect with your listeners. You know, if you'd like to meet, let's chat for 20 or 30 minutes over zoom. Let me understand what you're looking for, your goals. I think that's the other really important pieces. What are you after? At the end of the day? You know, like what? How long do you want to keep working? What does retirement look like? And then back into it, you know, how much money do you need to sustain your lifestyle. And obviously there's inflation. There's a lot of things that happen over the years. And so you have to think ahead of how do I eventually replace this income with passive income so that I'm not 

dependent on my active income and working until I'm 83 like that man that you talked about? None of us want to do that. Like, I love being an agent. It's a lot of fun. But man, I feel like I always get the calls during my kids birthday party. You know, the client wants to see the house right now or on vacation, and you feel bad saying no, and you don't want to pass that person off. But, you know, again, if you can build your teams and I know you guys talk a lot about that here, which is awesome, but also build your income so that you're not you're not feeling bad saying no, it's okay if you have to pass that client off to somebody else. And again, you know, still earning income from it through Exp or whatever brokerage you're with. I mean, I think there's just so many ways to plan out your future, but you just got to get clear on your goals. And I think a lot of people miss that, that part of it. And they don't go hard after them either. Super good. How did they connect with you, Rebecca, or what would be the best way for them to go about that? Yeah. So our website is mock speed lending its max mock speed lending. We have a form there on our website. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, and you'll probably put in the show notes. You can put my link to LinkedIn. So that's another way. I have a YouTube page and it's Rebecca Taylor's passive Income playbook. And so that's another way. I've got a ton of educational videos. Also some fun videos as a mom. So I, you know, love to share with other parents. We have so many fun stories. I know between the three of us, we can talk all day about our crazy kids. And so yeah, those are probably the best ways is is through YouTube or through my LinkedIn, following me on YouTube and then mock speed lending. But we'll have those in the show notes so they can definitely reach out there. Amazing. That's awesome. Uh, loved having you on Rebecca Cole, man, I'm going to throw you to the wolves and see what happens. So why don't you take us out, buddy? Um, it's your second time, so you know what to do by now, right? What? What how do you normally exit this? Because whatever you want to do. Can I pray? Sure. Okay. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for Rebecca and Garrett and the hair that we still have left on our heads. God, we love you and all things give us guidance as we are stewards. And, um, as we steward our money, as we steward our time, as we steward our family and our resources. Lord Jesus, we love you. Amen. Amen. Faithful agents, we love you. We will see you next week. Hey Christian again, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If it resonated, would you take 30s and share it with another agent who's also trying to grow their business without losing their faith, family, or peace? That's how this message spreads. And if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. I release new ones each Thursday to help you build success that actually lasts. It genuinely fires me up knowing this podcast is helping you pursue excellence to the glory of God, both at work and at home. I'll meet you back here next week for another episode of The Faithful Agent.