Speaker 1: Welcome to Getting Rich Together. I’m your host, Shama Bunton. This show was born for my own journey. Coming out of a divorce, I reached out to 50 women to talk to them about money.

95% of them did not want to go there. That’s when I realized we need spaces where wealth isn’t hidden in silence but shared in possibilities. Here, you’ll meet women from all backgrounds, trailblazers, risk takers, visionaries, each expanding what wealth can look like. This is your place to be inspired to discover new pathways and to remember that we rise by building wealth together. Getting Rich Together is a wealth catalyst production.

At Wealth Catalysts, we bring together education, networks, and great opportunities for women to build wealth and change the world. Now, on to today’s show. I am here today with the bold and the brilliant Mel Dorman. Mel, it’s so incredible your life story, being a formal social worker, turning into a real estate investor, financial activist, founder of the Seller Financing Academy. In just a few years, building a multi-million-dollar portfolio of almost three dozen rental units all through seller financing, which has been pretty impressive. In addition to building this incredible platform, you’ve got this fabulous book, Bank on Your Neighbor, and you have a viral TEDx talk, something that I think all of us want to have one day to be like, hey, now we have viral, which is so amazing. But what I think I love about you the most is your ability to help people reclaim their financial power, to see possibilities, and to build community.

And often when we think about things like real estate, we think about exploitation rather than community strengthening opportunities. Now, today, before we jump into all of that, I first want to thank you for being on the show. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to share your story.

Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s a real honor.

Speaker 1: Okay. So before we get to all your fabulousness and how we can all go hook up our neighbors, we always start with the beginning. And we start with a little girl, someone who is somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12 years old. Mel, context us and take us into who you were around this age, where were you living, what was life like around you, and what were some of the money things that you were picking up at that age?

Speaker 2: Oh, well, when I was in middle school age, I grew up in a middle class family. Both parents were construction workers. We didn’t really have much financial literacy to speak of. But they did put me in a private school, so I saw people with money and I knew that it was possible. And they did do a good job of teaching me how to work hard and how to save. So I didn’t know how to expand, but I did know how to preserve the capital I got. And those were foundational lessons, but they wouldn’t get me to retirement anytime soon. I love that.

Speaker 1: And so when you found yourself then going through high school, were you big into your books? Was it Mel the rebel? Was like, how am I going to get a job and start building an empire? Was it, I’m going to join sports. How did you start to understand yourself at this early time in your life? And what is it that you thought you would become? What is it that you knew of yourself?

Speaker 2: Funny story. A lot of adults start their first business in maybe their 20s or 30s. They started a net-sea shop or something like that. But I started a reptile breeding company in high school. That fell out of here. It was my first failed company, but me and my employees, which were my parents who were volunteers, they didn’t do a good job of tending to them. So they ended up dying when I went to college. So there’s big lessons in hiring and firing and fair labor.

Speaker 1: Okay. So let me get this straight. So reptile breeding. So reptiles are a large category. Let’s get specific. What were you breeding? And how did, I mean, did you get to sell any? Did they ever make it to the breeding phase? What was this like? And how did you even learn how to do this?

Speaker 2: I think I watched one too many crocodile hunter shows, but I basically got into it because a friend of mine introduced me to a guy who would sell reptiles sort of off market. And you’re like local pet co, they actually just buy from local people like myself who are raising them in our garage or a bedroom in our house and basically had over a hundred animals.

So think of like the lizards that would be frilled and they’d run across the water in Jurassic Park or, you know, bearded dragons or 10 foot pythons or all sorts of really interesting animals. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Oh my God. And then you’re breeding them. You have to understand like there are cycles. You have to date them. Was there any like weird cross breeding species or was it all purebred?

Speaker 2: All purebred. But I will tell you one time I had this endangered species from the LA County Zoo and it was a Cuban iguana. And so I actually hired his son to stay with us for a few weeks to get him amped up to be able to breed. So that was an interesting experiment. It didn’t work, but I almost lost a finger in the process.

Speaker 1: That is totally outrageous. What were the margins like if you were to take your bag here?

Speaker 2: I wasn’t. That was the issue. So this was my first failed company. I think most people do this in their 20s or 30s or maybe their 40s. They branch out and they think, I have a great idea, but they don’t pencil it.

Like they don’t think about how many eggs make how many reptiles and make how much money. I never did a business plan. So I was like a hobby and of course you lose money on a hobby. And what did your parents think? They thought I was wild. They were like, what are you doing? But they wanted to support my dreams and I appreciate that. But it was certainly a lesson in business at a young age.

Speaker 1: Did that get on your college admissions like form?

Speaker 2: Was it like, I didn’t want to tell anybody. I mean, I probably shouldn’t even be mentioning it here because it’s a little bit embarrassing, but it was, it was the start.

Speaker 1: Oh my God. It’s so cool. No, that is not embarrassing at all. I think that is like so audacious and radical and fun and awesome. I think that’s so awesome. Okay. So first business in high school, then you’re getting ready to go to university. You’ve already crossed off the list. I imagine like animal greeter is not what you’re going to do after college. Nope. Maybe you’re also scared off of veterinarian. Was it like animals just came off the entire category? So amazing. Okay. So what was left on the list? How did you decide what you were going to study?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I got to college, I started out as a business major and really quickly my heart found people really mattered more than business to me. So I started studying sociology. I started deconstructing a lot of my ideas around race and sexuality and gender and all these constructs of oppression in our society. And that really led me to the path of becoming a social worker eventually, but before that, a humanitarian. And yeah, I have my college to think for that. They helped influence that decision.

Speaker 1: That’s amazing. And so when you were sort of thinking about, you know, I think what’s fascinating, and I was just talking to my husband the other day about this and some friends the other day, I was like business. And we think about business as this thing that’s outside of us, but business is created by people for people, managed by people. The whole thing is actually about people, people, right? It’s all people.

But yeah, they’re like JPMorgan reports earnings of XYZ. And I’m like, okay, so where are the people in this whole thing? And someone the other day was like, well, you know, the board of directors and like, and those are people, we are building all these things with people. And yet somehow people are not a part it’s so existentially bizarre, right? Like how we’re building something in service of something outside of us yet all of these things are about us. Right?

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Okay, so humanitarian, you’re like, I got to save the people, which is amazing. And then you go into saving the people because social work is all about the people. I also think it’s like a quick way to right size also for yourself, like another wild dichotomy in the world, which is the people who help the people tend to not be the people who have the money. It’s like another you’re like, wait a second, I’m helping the people, but like, how do I help myself? So tell me a little bit about getting into social work and what you learned about it. And also like, how you started to think about your own life, because obviously being out of college, you already don’t make a lot of money, no matter what industry. And then going into a service based profession, such as service to the people in this capacity, also sort of puts you on this lower income trajectory, which can be challenging when you’re like, I’m already not making that much money. So how did you start to reconcile these early days of your career?

Speaker 2: So right after college, I actually moved to Islam in India and I was helping women out of sex trafficking. And that was really the first time that I saw business as a method to help people, because what basically we were doing was hiring women who had been trafficked, maybe as kids, usually.

And then we teach them how to make handbags and t-shirts that we sell all over the world at places like Whole Foods. So graduating in 2009, I was about as anti-capitalist as you can get. I was all about the Occupy Wall Street movement, like I hated money. But then seeing that business could be used for freedom really changed my mindset. And so when I came back to the United States, I really started thinking, how could I be a professional in this environment and help people in my own community? And so I got my social work degree and I started doing all these really amazing things, working with people in the jails, working with people getting out of homelessness. But then I got stopped in my tracks because I realized that my own family was part of that group that really couldn’t get by anymore in America, this middle class that’s been disappearing for decades.

And I was faced with that because my dad got Alzheimer’s and he was only 67 years old and he was the breadwinner of our family. So suddenly we were in crisis. Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1: there’s nothing quite like having something hit home to really context suffering, possibility. And it’s so different, right? I feel like when you’re in your world and you’re in service of other people, right, it’s like the pain and suffering is something you can understand or have sympathy for. But until you have such experiences that are so traumatic, can you really have the empathy because you’re like, oh my God, this can and is happening to me.

So how did you then start to reconcile what was happening at home? All of a sudden you have these deep profound experiences of poverty around the world, which I think is so easy. When you see, I remember when I was growing up, I’d see people outside of the Safeway grocery store and they’re save the children. And you’re like, yes, I want to save the children and I do.

And it’s like, you want to save everybody. And then also you see something and experience something very, very real, which is like, but my own family is unable. And this is very local, my own family is unable to sort of have the levels of success or opportunities that we maybe just automatically think of people in the US as having that, right? We think of our social infrastructure as stronger. So what was the like mental emotional stuff happening for you as this was all coming together?

Speaker 2: I think, you know, living in a third world country and living off of like a dollar a day, sharing a very small space with three other people sharing a bed and a hole in the floor that we peed and everything like dire poverty. And then coming back to the United States and realizing for the first time that within my own context, my family was that disempowered family that actually didn’t have the resources they needed to survive in this economy.

It really shifted everything for me. I had always seen myself as a place of privilege. And because of our status as Americans globally, how much access to wealth that we have. But seeing how individually my family was so disempowered, it shifted everything for me. I realized that financial literacy was crucial to being able to solve this problem for my family, but also for myself. I thought I was like being what I call financially celibate, right? Like I was sort of opting out of capitalism by being a social worker and having this like self-righteous, I’m better than people who chase money kind of mentality. But what I didn’t realize in all of that financial celibacy, it’s just like regular celibacy, it’s not really cure for safe sex. Like I was fully exposed to capitalism, even when I thought I wasn’t. And so I had to like really reconcile with that and recognize that I was actually just creating excuses to not have agency in my life when it came to my finances. And so that was my turning point, really.

Speaker 1: That just like full body chills. I’m like the that emotional, spiritual, intellectual coming together of gosh, just how weak our own social fabric is and how in many cases, like this dichotomy that you’re speaking of, it’s like, we see often these days people are talking about people have jobs, but they still can’t afford to live working, right? Used to be what they thought was the answer to things. And it turns out working without thoughtfulness or the opportunities or whatever the construct is that make working and the money mean something can ultimately be keeping us away from the things that we truly can be doing to support ourselves. In what ways did these sort of like crises affect your family? Like what were some of the things like some of the specific things where you were like, this is not okay. And I’m stepping in and my life is changing now. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So like kind of looking at the context of my particular American family, like I’m graduating in 2008. I’m like taken on $100,000 of student debt to work now as a waitress for 20 bucks an hour. And my sister, who was 25 years old in the Mayant, she just lost her home to the crisis, the housing crisis and foreclosure.

She’s one of 8 million people who lost their homes because of predatory bank lending practices at that time. And then you have my dad who was told, if you work really hard, we’ll have you at the end. We’re going to give you social security, we’ll take care of you, Medicare, all those things.

Well, no, none of those things helped us at all. You get 2000 bucks for social security. That’s not $7,000.

That’s not going to pay for his home care. And so I realized in this moment that there was these promises that we’ve been given as Americans, that if you do this, you’ll get that. And those promises don’t exist anymore.

They maybe did 50 years ago, but it’s really hard to do that and get those results these days. And so my particular situation is we had to ask my sister, who was drug addicted and homeless at that time, to move in and take care of my dad because we couldn’t afford the $7,000 a month that cost for home care for somebody that was aging the way he was. And that was devastating. Clocking in every day to go to work as a social worker and make $3,000 a month, helping everybody else’s family and not having any money left over to help my own family was just absolutely crippling. And that’s what sparked this real desire inside of me to change my life and to recognize that money matters. Money solves problems. Money gives you choices. Money allows you to donate to the causes that you care about and to change the way that your neighborhood looks.

Money is power, it’s wealth. And suddenly I realized this whole time I’m over here trying to help people on the margins, not even realizing that one of the ways that I can help those people is to become somebody who’s not marginalized. I can shift the tide by personally changing my position in society as somebody who’s queer, who’s a woman. If I become better in my own self, I’m actually changing who has power and wealth in our nation. Oh, yes.

Speaker 1: Oh, I just adore you so much. It’s such a big awakening. It’s almost like on the airplane when they say literally put your fucking oxygen mask on first. We don’t think about that and especially as growing up as women, we’re not cultured to do that. It’s like, no, no, no, it’s not, it’s not about you.

It’s about everyone else. And that I think is really such a powerful shift. So you are now known for building and creating really what I would call to be people first, community first real estate ecosystems by really helping all the stakeholders.

But obviously before you had dozens, you had one. Can you tell me how you went from, okay, I’m navigating this job, family stuff is like in crisis mode already that puts your nervous system into like just all sorts of things, right? What am I doing?

How do I figure this out? So like how on earth did you figure out how to get yourself into real estate, especially in asset class, where not only at that time was it busted and like scary and people were like, what am I doing? But also like the opportunities also seemed like how do you even know like what is possible when you haven’t been educated to be doing this, right? What started to fall into play?

Speaker 2: So after I graduated from my masters at UCLA, I basically put myself through an MBA program of my own. Like I read 20 hours a week, all these books and podcasts about real estate, I was really trying to understand the mechanics and it’s like any other science like their rules and their laws. If you drop a cup, it hits the floor because of gravity and the same thing happens in real estate.

If you break a rule, you will pay for it. And so I was learning all the different metrics of how to make a good and solid investment. And in that process, I stumbled into seller financing. And so a lot of real estate investing is about finding somebody who’s down and out going through a divorce or a death or some sort of tragedy and then trying to negotiate them down on the price of their house so that you can flip it and make a profit and extract that capital out of the neighborhood and pat yourself on the back.

You did a cool HGTV flip of your own. But that didn’t really speak to me like I’m a social worker that I could see like that’s just gentrification, you know, on steroids. And so I’m like, okay, what does appeal to me is seller financing because that’s about finding somebody in my community who’s a partner who actually has paid off their house or paid off their property because they’ve been a landlord for a long time. They’re responsible. And I’m actually just creating a relationship with them. That’s long term where I pay them monthly installments for their equity.

And slowly over time, I purchased the property directly from them. And what was beautiful about that is it was it was an investment strategy that was built on social capital, not money capital. I didn’t need a lot of money to get started. I just needed to meet the right people who understood the concept.

And then we would design something together that met both of our needs. So for example, and what my Ted talks about is I bought my first my first triplex this way with $500 out of pocket. And I didn’t have to swindle anybody because the seller made hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest that I would have ordinarily paid to the bank. That’s why it was a win-win.

Speaker 1: Okay, but why real estate, right? So when we hear about like, investing, it’s like most people go, well, I’m gonna start off with like a 401k or start putting money in the market. And you know, I feel like there’s like, there are some social and cultural things that we are taught, right? And like, this is the stepping stone going straight into real estate, I think is like, it’s such a great hard asset, you can touch it and feel it. But obviously, it can also be especially for a young person, a little intimidating to be like, and now I own this house. And this is a big deal. So there’s a lot of responsibility with that. How did you decide on real estate as the sector that you were going to get into?

Speaker 2: This is such a great question. It actually brings me back to a really good story. So when I was doing humanitarian work back in my early 20s, I lived in Uganda in a very rural village. And I remember one week, the host family that I was staying with, their cousin came to visit and he brought this book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and he handed it to me. And he was so excited. He was like, you got to read this book, it’s going to change your life.

And he’s like, you can keep it for a few weeks, I’ll come back. And I looked at the book, I flipped it over, saw that it was about investing in real estate. And I went, oh, Americans, they’re so capitalist and they’re awful and they only care about money. And I handed the book back to this kid and I said, you would be better not to read this yourself, right?

I was so self righteous. And speed up seven years later, my dad’s now got Alzheimer’s, I’m sitting in the jails, not as an inmate, but as a social worker. And I’m sitting there trying to figure out how do you make money? And it clicks, wait, that book that kid sent me, I could read it now. So I’m reading this book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. And I realize, oh my gosh, this is how money works. And one of the fastest ways to build wealth is just to anchor yourself with an asset that’s constantly appreciating while you sleep or not. And that’s really what led me to real estate, because I’m not very good with math. I can’t follow stocks. If you want to pick a stock that’s going to fall tomorrow, ask me because I’ll figure it out. But I am not good with anything other than real estate. And so I’m a big advocate of it because it’s just working with people. Like you said, it’s people like your maintenance person, your leasing person, your tenants, they’re all people.

Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this is so nice. Okay, so the very first one. So you’re like, okay, I’ve done all my own research. I’m like, people love you. So that helps. You’re like a nice person. So yeah, some social capital. And then what you knock on someone’s door and you’re like, Hey, I think I want to buy your house.

Like can we have tea? Like how did you sort of get like in the door? And also like how did you prove yourself to be credible, right?

If you’re going to go up to somebody and be like, Hey, I want to do this thing that’s legal, first of all, totally legal, totally legal, but historically maybe a little unconventional, right? Like not the thing we get marketed. So what was it like for you? And did you just did it happen on your first conversation? Like with the first house? What was this like?

Speaker 2: So I like to think about seller financing through the lens of dating, like I wouldn’t show up to a date and be like, will you marry me? It’d be too much, right? So like you don’t do that. So first you just have a bunch of dates and you can do that by cold calling or door knocking people or what I did a lot was I sent little letters that looked like what your grandma might send you on the mail. It has a cute little stamp and it’s got handwritten envelope and I’m signed in the inside and it’s very personable and all it just says I want to have coffee and just get to know you and maybe buy your house one day. And so I did that a bunch and one day when I was cold calling some neighbors and whatnot, I came across this attorney because I was actually looking for his client who was dead and I didn’t know that at the time it was a little awkward, but it was a great meat cute story for Kelly and I. And he happened to be a bankruptcy attorney and I was a pre foreclosure realtor at the time.

So we had a lot of client overlap people that were struggling with their finances. You know, a few months into the friendship, he actually texted me and said, Hey, I want to sell this triplex and I wonder what the value is. And so I knew what seller financing was. I looked it up on the computer and I saw right then and there he’d owned it for 15 years. So I knew that he had the most important ingredient for seller financing, which is equity. He owned it. He could lend it back to me. I showed up to the listing appointment and back up a little bit like for six months after I learned about seller financing, I’d wake up every morning and I’d say my affirmations and I’d be like, I’m going to buy a seller financed property all by myself without using anybody’s help. And I don’t need a bank loan.

This is my affirmation. And that day he actually looked at me before I could say anything to him and he says, I’d like to seller finance this to somebody. And I was like, Oh my gosh, manifestation right in front of my eyes. And I said, Well, how about you sell it to me? And so no, I had to talk to hundreds of people, but that one property today, I mean, from that one purchase with $500, I’ve already netted over 400,000 in equity and it cash flows about $3,000 a month now. So was it worth talking to 200 people to find Kelly? Absolutely.

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Incredible. So you mentioned like right before, as you were telling the story, you mentioned to work in pre foreclosures is what you had mentioned. Give me a little bit of some of the context of which I’m like, what does that mean? What real estate muscles you had been flexing and building at the time because you’re now talking about things where I’m like, oh, crap, what does that mean?

So what were some of the muscles that you had been building and how did you sort of cut your teeth on things to make it to this sort of stage of like, all right, I talked to 200 people now. That’s cool. What was going on in your life at that time?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So at that time, I had quit my day job as a social worker. I had $16,000 in my checking account. I was trying to live off of that. I was like picking up little per diem jobs at the hospital as a social worker, just to fill in the gap here and there. And so I was desperate. I was in a really bad place, but I was hustling really hard. I was cold calling 10 hours a week. I was door knocking people.

I was sending out letters. And so I think like how I cut my teeth is I was talking to people who are in foreclosure primarily, I was tracking them down, having a conversation and trying to prevent them from going to foreclosure. We wanted to buy the property before it went to auction. So we wouldn’t have to compete with anybody else. And we would give them like $5,000 to move out.

We’d make it really smooth for them. Otherwise, the sheriff would show up, knock on the door, kick him out in 24 hours. He was a lot like social worker. I was like the real estate social worker. And I did that for a year.

Speaker 1: But I realized that TV show, the real estate social worker, it was tough.

Speaker 2: I was like in the trenches of social work means real estate. And I did that for a year. And I went, I think I could just like, you know, take buyers who’ve gotten pre approved and help them buy a house.

That’d be so much easier. So I actually just built like a multimillion dollar team after that because I cut my teeth on the hardest type of client, which was somebody who answered the phone with FU because they thought I was a lender or something trying to foreclose on them. So if you can turn somebody from that to a meaningful conversation, then you can help just about anybody. And I do credit that. Yeah, it really built my communication skills.

Speaker 1: That’s so powerful. Okay, so you entered to your first agreement, you like throw yourself a little party. Oh my God, we did it. Like this, this actually happened. Now it was the purchase of this home with the intent that you would live in the house. Was it like, I’m going to start this off and fix it up and rent it out. Did you go into it thinking this is going to be the first of many things that I do? Or was it like, okay, this is the first let’s take it slow, let me feel it out. What was sort of the thought process around house number one?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so my first one actually was a duplex that I bought with an FHA loan. But then my first seller finance transaction was a triplex with Kelly. But I really had a mission to buy at least one multifamily a year for five or six years. And I advocate that for my clients who are trying to get into passive investing and into retirement too. If you buy one fourplex for the next five years, you’ll probably be pretty set for life as long as you maintain those and they start cash flowing then yeah.

So anyways, I was taking that same path for myself. And once I figured out how seller financing worked, it just really helped me leapfrog from one investment to another because with seller financing, you design all the terms. So for example, on that particular property, I owed them 700,000 and about three years later, I decided I didn’t like my 5% interest rate, it was 2020 and interest rates were 3%. So I called up the seller and I said, Hey, could we do something really creative? Could we take that $700,000 note divided in two?

So it’s for 350 and 350. And can I move one of those notes to another piece of real property? So that’s something that you can do with seller financing, you can move debt, you can move it strategically, because now I was able to do a cash out refinance, take out $200,000 and buy a 20 unit in Ohio with that. So my $500 didn’t just get me three units, it got me 23 units. And holy shit.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so it’s like, I mean, brush your shoulders off, you know, like, it’s like really like, wow, oh my God. Okay, so let’s bring it back to like family stuff. You’re starting to build your like, holy shit, I’m really good at this, where everything’s clicking, like things are moving, obviously, you’re still managing father, family, like things are happening. Were you able to reconcile or were there any sort of material changes that you are being that you were experiencing that was enabled to help your family in ways that started to make you feel like, okay, like this goes beyond just cash flow into my pocket, but in like life, right, because life costs money. But now I’m able to make some material changes to my community or to my family.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I, my dad actually, he passed away the first after the first property I bought. I remember being at his bedside and realizing as I was saying goodbye to him that while I had finally bought my first property, I was too late for him. And he was, he was so proud, like just crying, so proud of me that I did it. But we both knew in that moment that I was too late. And I remember sitting at his bedside, just really making myself and the universe a promise that like, if I could learn how to build wealth, that I would teach anybody who was willing to listen.

And on this side of things, I’m really fulfilling that. So like, I wasn’t able, tears in my eyes right now, I wasn’t able to help my dad. But now I can help so many people. I’m set up in a spot now that I can help my mom without thinking, right? And what’s beautiful about that is my loss has now become the gain of so many other people. And so it’s almost like my dad was the sort of like sacrifice in my journey, like to learn and to recognize the pain that comes when you don’t know. And yeah, it’s, it’s so it to answer your question, like I’m prepared to help my mom when she needs it. But right now she doesn’t need to. And now I’m just teaching other people to take care of their families so they don’t have to go through what I did.

Speaker 1: Sweetheart. Yeah, like we just, we don’t know the legacies that we are here to leave. And we don’t know the like, the road ahead of us. But with with deep sense of like gratitude and awareness for the life we do have, like we can change the world.

Like we, we can do that. Your progress with what you’ve built from a personal standpoint, from now a professional standpoint, right? And the freedom and flexibility and now extending this into the impact to other people who are trying to create material changes for themselves, for their communities. At what point and when and how did you start to say, Okay, I’m on this path to continue doing this for myself, for my family, for the future that I want.

And now I have the bandwidth and the capabilities to start to then export that into the world. Because that’s really different, right? It’s one thing to say, like, I’m doing this and be inspired by my story, right? It’s one thing to be inspired by someone’s story. It’s another thing to say, I’m going to tell you exactly all the things that I do and how to do it. And like, I want you to go do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I so after, after I reached financial freedom, I was about 35 years old, I 34 rental units, I had six figure financial freedom. I just spent like a year or two really thinking about how I could take my story and fulfill that promise that I told you about. And so I was on a liveaboard in Turks and Caicos reading this book about the demise of the American dream, while I was scuba diving three times a day for about a week.

And that deep learning and that deep contemplation helped me realize that my story was not about how I individually could build well, but that it was a bigger picture of how we could collectively redesign the capitalist system that we live in so that is not so extractive, and that there creates a way that there’s an interdependency between us. And that turned everything on. I’ve been obsessed with that idea ever since I like got off the scuba boat that day.

Like I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And so I wrote my book, I did my TED talk, and I’m really just advocating for Americans to create these types of relationships in their life, because if we collectively did this, then we would not be suffering the way that we are.

Speaker 1: I believe that because we are a country that are made up of people and like we need to like we are people and we create things for people and so like where the hell are the people?

Yeah, like it’s so weird to read statistics and be like, okay, these are statistics, but those are people that are like in this thing, we need to like really think about it differently. I call this like for myself, I often call it second wave entrepreneurship, you know, the first wave is like, I’m going to go build this thing, it’s an intellectual thing, it’s like, I, you know, need to prove something or do something. And then the second wave is like, okay, this is a much bigger mission, this is a much bigger calling, this is something that I am driven to do and that I have to do.

And there’s no other option, right? It’s like all of a sudden, you’re living, you can call it your path, your purpose, your Dharma, it’s like you are in the zone. And so there’s another step in that, which is you go from this internal world to now starting to form an external identity, right?

And like it becomes another sense of learning who you are. And so I’d love to ask you about who you were before the epiphany, who you are now and who you were two minutes later answering the call to that. And so I want to ask you about answering the call to your mission and like how it’s been and what it’s been like to take all this internal dialogue, information, knowledge, expertise, and start to formulate that into an external facing world.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s like, I’m in this phase of my life where I’m marrying my social work background and understanding of sociology and systems of oppression and capitalism and all those sorts of things. And I’m marrying it to my expert knowledge as a top realtor and as an investor, starting merging those two worlds to create something totally different, something that I’ve never seen in the space before. And what’s been interesting is when I had the idea, I had no idea what I was going to do with it, right? It’s like a big idea, but how do you disseminate that to so many people? And so a friend of mine recommended a TED Talk, which was a great starting place.

And it really helped me narrow in the vision of what I was trying to communicate. But guess what? When you do a TED Talk, nobody calls you after it comes out. Nothing happens. No, it’s like nothing happens.

No, it’s like it gets published and lots of people see it and it’s cool. But they don’t know how to contact me. They don’t know what I’m doing. I was pretty much nobody. So the program that I went through, thought leader, they were a coaching program that taught me how to get my TED Talk called them up and I was like, now what?

And they’re like, you’re not going to believe what we’re going to ask you to do. So here I am. I’m 38 year old. And I do three Tiktoks a day. And I’ve built a over the summer, I built 150,000 person following on my social media. And now people do know who I am, but it would never have been something if you asked me even eight months ago, if I’d be on Tiktok, I would have laughed at you. But apparently, this is the living as the world we live in now. So that’s what I’m doing.

Speaker 1: That’s also I’m like, so Tiktok three times a day.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s on Instagram too, and all the other major socials. But yeah, it’s a free way and organic way to build a following really quickly. If you know what you’re doing.

Speaker 1: That’s amazing. And so what has it been like to now also take your information and your strategies and to package them? I feel like there’s something interesting. It’s almost like when you do something for yourself, sometimes you give yourself more leeway or flexibility, because it’s for you. But then all of a sudden, like people are looking to you. And you’re so, so now it’s like eyes are dotted, T’s are crossed, and you start to productize and build models around not just real. So you have experience in real estate. Well, you did have a product-based business. You were breeding iguanas and things. So like you do understand. That’s true.

Speaker 2: They’re very similar. Yeah.

Speaker 1: So like as you’re looking at sort of building now, a different kind of business model, right? Like this is different than this is selling real estate, concepts, ideas, and helping people with really selling education, right? And trying to help people go from, okay, the sounds cool to this is how I do it, to I feel confident to do it, to, oh my God, I’m doing it, right?

Like I feel like there’s these different levels. And so how has it been sort of taking these ideas and putting them into products? And what are you learning now about sort of building business in this like non-reptilian, non-real estate manner? Like this is different.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I’ve learned so much. When I learned about seller financing, it was at a boot camp. I went for two days. They told me a whole bunch of information and they’re like, good luck. And I ran with it.

I like hit the ground running. I had the full imagination. And honestly, I surrounded myself with other investors who knew all these things and we kept each other accountable.

We’d meet every week and we’d talk about it. But I was shocked to find out when I volunteered at the same boot camp like five or six years later after I attained financial freedom, that only 10% of the people had my outcome, which was just absolutely shocking because it changed my whole life. And so when I started thinking about how I was going to help people make this big transition in their life, this transformational experience, I realized it couldn’t be a weekend.

It had to be something where they had continuous touch points through the whole process. So I created what’s called the Seller Financing Academy. And it’s not only all the coursework to get you there and all the worksheets and deal analysis calculators, but we meet every single week and we talk through that transformation of what are the fears? What are the anxieties?

How do you handle objections? How do you find the right neighbors? How do you know they’re a good fit for your deal?

How do you craft something that’s truly going to benefit them and you? I believe that’s done in community. I think transformation happens in community. We learn behaviors by watching other people model it first so that we can believe it’s possible. That’s why world records, when they’re set, all of a sudden people break it, right? It’s like, it opens up the imagination. Okay, yeah, you can run a four minute mile or whatever it is right now. But same thing, we learn.

Speaker 1: It’s like a minute. Yeah, right? It’s like probably a minute. Yeah, it’s like impossible, but then somebody does it and then five more people do it. It’s the same thing. When you see people talking to their neighbors, building these relationships and it’s just like, oh yeah, she bought a 10 plex. It’s her second property.

Shoot, maybe I could buy 10 plex. Those are the kind of conversations we’re having in class regularly and it’s just beautiful to watch people go from, I’ve never even thought about real estate investing until I met you to, oh my gosh, I’m buying my first property, seller financed. And sort of the transformation both in their confidence and their courage and their articulating this idea and just also just to see who they’re becoming in that process rather than just, it’s not just about the money, it’s who they’re becoming. Totally. We’re so values aligned, right?

That is so incredible. And the ability for people to impact their own lives and their communities, I think is magic. And so a big component of your philosophy is around this community building. Can you share just anecdotally, what have you seen, right? As far as how communities have shifted and the impact of neighbors showing up for each other, what has that been like?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So for instance, my girlfriend, she was in the program, right? She didn’t know anything about real estate. She was like, I’m going to try this thing. And it was really beautiful. Like two weeks after she sent her first hundred letters, she got a call from a seller named Cynthia or Sylvia, sorry, Sylvia.

And Sylvia had just lost her husband, but she had seven properties to sell. And my girlfriend goes over there and has this like two hour conversation where the woman’s crying with her and they’re having this really deep connection. She comes back and she’s like, oh, I think I just met my best friend.

Like this person’s phenomenal. I was like, how the property conversation go? And she’s like, oh, we didn’t really get there. And I was like, yes, that’s what I want to hear. I want to hear that you had that first conversation with somebody and the property was an afterthought. So it’s like those kind of building relationships that I’m watching my students do in terms of like deals and stuff.

It’s cool. Like I’ve seen some of my students take $40,000 of their home equity, right? That they maybe have a little Airbnb.

They’re creating some cashflow and turn that into $45,000 of passive income by doing, let’s say, six lease options, which is another creative strategy where you lease with an option to purchase later. And so it’s just really cool to see like all the ways that I am teaching these tools and then the students are running with them in ways that I’ve never even imagined for myself. So just love seeing their creativity.

Speaker 1: Oh my God, so cool. I remember when I first met you and I got off the phone and I was like, I told my husband, I was like, oh my God, she’s figured this thing out. And it’s so amazing to think anybody can sit down and say, if I want to do this, there is a pathway for this. And for you to show up as an expander for those who maybe never thought real estate could be possible for them, right? Or never thought that they could go beyond just owning maybe their apartment or their house, that there’s an opportunity to make this into something that’s bigger is extremely powerful amount. Obviously, I’m sure you’ve thought about this question.

So when I ask him, sure you’re going to have either you’re going to hate me for asking this or you’re going to love it. But you are a woman on a really big mission. And it’s clear that there is a tremendous amount of impact you’ve already made and so much more that is to come. And we’re obviously living these days with technologies and obviously, being resourced, you will find yourself living a long life. And I imagine there will be a time at the age of 102, where you’re like, huh, looking back and being like, this is the body of work that I’ve built. And this is the legacy and the life that I’ve created. What does that vision look like? What does legacy look like for you?

Speaker 2: Oh, I love this question. My high level goal on this and if I was 102 looking back and if I was like, yes, I did it, I just want every American to know what seller financing is and that it’s an option for them. It’s not going to be right for everybody. It’s not going to be their ambition or their desire.

But just like they know what organic food is or fair trade coffee, I want them to know that there’s an economic alternative to what the mainstream society tells us. And I like, I on top of that, I’d love to speak at Devo’s. I’d love to have some big appearances maybe on the Glennon Doyle show where you know, it’s like, we can do hard things.

But like, yeah, high level goal, I want, I want every American to know what this is. And I would love if some celebrity just picked this up and made it their like thing. And that’s like, cool, I did my job. But until then, I’m going to try to become that celebrity and I’ll do the work myself.

Speaker 1: Oh, I love that, Mel. We’ve obviously, we’ve talked about money from the perspective of real estate and capitalism and certainly people and business and all these things. But money obviously, aside from supporting our families and our communities are in addition to that, we can also have a lot of fun with our money. And there can be some fabulous things that our money can do for us. What are some of the most fabulous things you’ve done with your money lately that you’ve really enjoyed?

Speaker 2: Yes, I love scuba diving. So I’m going to Palau for three weeks in December with my girlfriend. We’re going to be on a live aboard, watch Outworld. The last time I was on a live aboard, I showed up with a really big idea. And then yeah, next week, we’re going to Hawaii, we’re going to go scuba diving there. So I really love to just like take time away from everything, sit on a beach, really deeply think, you know, spend some time meditating under the water with the fish and just like really taking in experiences. Other than that, I’m not a very material person.

I joke. The only thing I really want is real estate. So good luck with my birthday present. But yeah, and you get a condo and you get a condo.

I don’t get too excited unless it has a deed. So good luck. But yeah, I love to travel. I love to have experiences. I love to invest in collecting memories.

Speaker 1: Oh, it’s beautiful. And then my final question, Mel, is all like, all right, like what, what does this perhuman need? How do we evangelize? How do we champion? So tell me, what is it you’re calling in right now? What do you need? How can we support you?

Speaker 2: I’m looking, I’m really looking for community leaders right now, folks who really believe in local ownership, who want to spread this idea to their community, plant the seeds of economic justice. I’m looking for people who want to learn this alongside my community. So whether that’s, you know, the listener or if they know somebody who’s ambitious and wants to learn how to build real estate in ethical and sustainable ways, just send them my way. I just want to have a conversation and teach them what I know and see if it’s a good fit. Amazing.

Speaker 1: Mel, Dorman, Mel, you are incredible, brilliant. I’m honored to have you here on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Getting Rich Together. My hope is that you leave every episode feeling more inspired, more powerful and more connected. Until next time, remember you have everything it takes to create wealth on your terms.