Hey all 👋🏽 Kay here, coming in from Charlotte, NC. Quick on me: spent years in corporate as an IT PM before getting sucked into real estate. Built a short-term rental business across NC and GA — ran it almost six years, scaled it past 100 units, and somewhere in there the market shifted and the whole thing nearly ate me alive. Golden handcuffs, massive overhead, 20+ people on payroll, and a business draining me instead of giving me energy. I pulled myself out of it, sold a portion, and burned the boats into land in Sept 2024. Haven’t looked back. $2.1M+ in actualized revenue since, about 35% of that being net… and of course feeling pretty “dirt rich” like some of us with plenty inventory on hand currently that I’m working through dispo to actualize some new rev. These days I’m a full operator — direct mail is my weapon (always has been 💌), I design and produce everything in-house out of my Charlotte office. I’ll do light value-add, and lean hard into creative finance on acquisitions. Creative finance has been the unlock for me.. bigger deals, less capital strain, way more flexibility than straight cash. I work a mid-market sweet spot ($40k–$600k market value range) and stay extremely localized… I think that’s one of my real edges. Also a licensed NC broker, I've taken all dispo efforts in-house this year which has really vertically integrated the biz. I’m pretty sure I was very close to catching a case 🚔 last year dealing with realtors on the dispo side 😂 - even with all the handholding (handled the drone photos and even wrote the listings for them) they drove me insane and that affected not only my time, but the biz. Now the team part: It’s me, Rita, and a part-time guy who runs the physical mail side. Rita is my transaction coordinator and she’s a beast — came from years as a paralegal, so contracts and process are second nature to her. I’ve got her in real estate school right now and watching her level up in real time is easily one of the most rewarding parts of this whole chapter for me 🥲

Introduce yourself and share one or two of your joys and struggles with leading your team!