The Money Makin' Mamas Show (00:03)
Welcome to the Moneymaking Mama Show. I'm Nancy Wallace Laabs and today I'm joined by Crystal Rumer And Crystal and I met several years ago at a Quest Trust Company event. And since then, Crystal and her husband have continued to grow their businesses both as real estate investors and lenders.
Crystal is also a wife, a mom, and a business owner. And recently her and her husband rebranded their Texas Secured Notes into Refuge Lending. And we're gonna hear about an amazing and very meaningful story behind that rebranding. So Crystal had shared with me that her and her husband had been in Alaska where they were assisting and helping women and children.
From sex trafficking. And not only that, they took some of their resources and they built a home to help those women and children that had that they had helped escape. So we're going to hear about that story as well. So really today we're going to talk about Crystal, both sides of Crystal's journey. we're going to be talking about real estate investing, both on the from a lender's point of view, from real estate investor.
And really helping women understand their financial options as they look at real estate investing. But we're also gonna dive into a more meaningful, you know, what is stability, what is safety, and what is new beginnings all about, and how resources that you build through real estate investing can actually allow you to help make a difference in other people's lives. So, Crystal.
Welcome. We're so excited to have you here on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. And and you're talking about Quest. I remember when we were on a panel up there we use Quest funds to invest. And if people don't know Quest Trust Company, they're not in business anymore, unfortunately, but they were
Here in the Dallas area self-directed IRAs and how to invest and how to get private money from self-directed IRA people. it's just not the same. Right. Because we don't have that connection. And yes, I remember like when I called you, I was like, do you remember me? And you're like, Yeah, we were on a panel together.
Well, let's just dive into, you know, real estate investing. Now you guys did a little bit different type of investing. So tell the audience what you guys did. because one of the things I always talk about is there's so many different facets of real estate investing and how to make money. So why don't you just tell people what you guys do? So the short version is is we originate mortgage notes and we do that with land and single family.
For example, Bank of America originates your loan, your mortgage loan. Six months later they turn around and they sell it to another bank. You get a letter in the mail saying you're not paying Bank of America, you're now paying Bank of Southwest. So that's essentially what we do is we originate these loans. we do keep some, we love notes, and then we also sell them as well. So probably need to break it down a little bit like what is a note? Like 'cause
People that are listening, they're like, What is she talking about? Like a note to my teacher? What? Yeah. well, basically it is a promissory note, which is kind of funny. Most people know when you're say buying a real estate transaction, a home, you've got the buyer and the seller. Well, there's also the bank that's the third party in the middle, and there is a promise to pay that bank.
Each and every month, month after month, that you're gonna promise to pay. If you do default, then that bank is in first lien position and can take back that property. So it is backed by a hard asset. So really you're investing in paper, but it's backed by a hard asset, which is your house. And you guys did land, right? That's what you kind of really built your business on was.
purchasing because you actually purchased the notes or the land. The land. So large parcels of land. it could be forty acres, it could be three hundred acres, and then subdivide it into smaller tracts of land and then turn around and sell those smaller tracts of land on terms. Okay. So basically owner financing, seller financing, you've heard the different terms. And so then we have a promissory note where we have with the borrower
We sell it to them. They're promising to pay each month. We use a third party servicer just like a bank would use us, you know, either either their servicer or someone else. And we receive payment month after month. And so we'll do that on single family homes as well. But land is is our favorite. Yeah, and kind can you kind of talk about because I mean that was a few years ago when you and I met. So has the market for land increased? Is there less land?
And you typically buy in Texas, is that right? Or are you buying in other states too? Yeah. So that's a great question because we're yes, when we first met, it was mainly Texas, a little bit in Arkansas. So we've got a lot of people moving here to Texas, getting a little oversaturated. And so the land that we typically buy is gonna be outside of a larger city, outside of the a major
metropolitan area or central Texas and Waco, Austin, golden triangle. Okay. DFW down to Austin, San Antonio, Houston, that area. So we typically buy about 30 minutes outside of town. Okay. Where you can still see the stars. There's no one telling you what you can and can't do.
But land is getting more competitive and there's beginning to be more of a shortage. But a lot of times we'll buy like a hayfield or from a farmer land and then subdivide it up. in Arkansas right now there's more affordable land and why we chop it up is make it more affordable. And then right now we're actually looking at another market in Georgia as well. So
it it really kind of depends. We love Texas and right now there is no shortage of borrowers and we're still able to find some good acreage as well. But as we're continuing to grow, Arkansas's great, Georgia's looking good. just land is becoming more unaffordable in Texas was before. Because everybody's moving here, you know, and you know, it's finite. I mean, there's only so much. So like in the you know, work
talking from Frisco, Texas. And there's if there's any land to be bought, it's gonna be completely unaffordable. Right. Plano's landlocked. So I like secondary markets myself.
When you are looking at land, okay, so I talk about, you know, single family homes, right? So we're like three bedrooms, two bath or whatnot. So what are because these are gonna be mostly in unincorporated, meaning there's no utilities, no water, no or or sometimes they do have water. Right. Well, sometimes there there is, but basically what we look for is we make sure that there is road frontage. Like we want every parcel to have road frontage. We have brought in roads, but we want there to be road frontage as well as parcels.
power. So those are kind of the two bigger main things. But what we love about raw land selling it is that they're gonna come in and put their own well and they're gonna put their own septic okay onto that property, which makes a value every time they make improvements, it's gonna add value okay onto that property.
so when are you mostly on the sellers that you're working with, are they mostly like just landowners that have had the land? Are they companies? Are they L L Cs? Or does it just depend? most of are gonna be families with land that they're getting ready to sell. Either someone's past, the children have inherited the land, things like that. So
Those are the type of sellers that we mainly deal with. And we have a broker that will source a lot of those properties. Saying that we don't turn around and sell them to like a developer. we don't have to go through all the entitlement project. I mean, that could be eighteen, twenty-four months. I mean, just entitlement can take a long time, but we do have to get certain
approvals with county and all of that. There there are certain things saying that though it's nicer because we're outside of city and so we don't have to deal with all of the entitlements but for our borrowers, our buyers, there there's no HOA out there. So a lot of them like to put animals. So it could be in Arkansas we have some smaller lots, one to
20 acres, but in Texas they're typically gonna be 10 to 12 acre lots. So people like to put animals on there. They like the ag exemption of this. They like you can honestly pee outside, you know, the men pee outside and no one's watching. Nobody really cares, exactly. No one sees what's going on. So someone like me or someone who's listening.
So I had a guy call me, but it was eighteen acres. Had a mobile home on it. And so I was really struggling with how to run comps because that's kind of a
a specialty, and I don't know how to do that, efficiently. So if someone like me called you and said, Hey, you know, I have this seller down here, he's got 18 acres, I don't know what to do with it or what kind of offer, is that something that you help people with? Yes and no. I mean we can tell really quickly is that a property that we can chop up or or not? But the thing is we're taking the risk up
front with buying that property to see if it's going to sell. But what we love about buying these larger parcels of land is then we have, say there's a hundred acres. Well we break it up into 10, 10 acre lots. Well after we've sold, say three of them, we're starting to get comps. So then we sell all of those lots. Well now we have a subdivision that we have
Comps in that area. What and the great thing is about that is when someone wants to say buy a note from us, we can talk about that in a little bit. But if I turn around and sell that note, or if I had to foreclose on that borrower, I wanna know exactly how much that property is worth. The beauty is we already have comps and we already know what this property sold for, this one, this one, this one, and
We can take that property back, foreclose, reload on it. And the great thing about land is it's this steady incline where it doesn't do that. Right. And so typically the land value goes up over time. that's nice. We like the appreciation. Exactly. So you buy the land and then just walk us through how you create the note. So let's say you have the land.
And I'm somebody that's coming in, I'm like, okay, I wanna buy a piece of that. So how is that gonna work for me as the buyer? So we have agents that sell specifically land lots only. That's all all that they do. So you're gonna speak to the agent and they can pay cash, but most banks, why there's a niche where we're at is most banks aren't gonna lend
on land. They're gonna have to put either over fifty, sixty percent down, gonna have to be premium members at the credit union. I mean just banks aren't gonna lend on that. So that's why we offer then on terms or some financing.
Okay, so we're talking now about origination, which is creating the note. Correct. So let's say I come in, so now I'm not gonna be able to go to Chase or maybe my credit union, So I'm probably going to need either if I don't have a private money lender and if I don't have cash, I need to say, Okay, so you're basically owner financing it. Correct. Okay. Absolutely, a hundred percent. We owner finance.
And what we do is say you come in and you say, I've got X amount to put down. I want to to buy this land from you. Will you lend to me? So what we do is we go through a process, an RMLO, it's called a residential mortgage loan originator. So we do that, which basically vets the borrower, make sure that they have the ability to pay. We can get fifty to a hundred and fifty page document stating
Yeah you know, it's all their background of everything, bank financial. It's like applying for a loan, right? Yes. Yeah. So we go through that. we find out how much you're willing to to put down. We look at credit score, debt to income, all the things. we also get a lender's title policy to make sure that we as the
lender, we're in first lien position on that property. And then we we close. If they qualify, then we close. If there's something, say, for example, we had a borrower recently, he had some debt that needed to be paid off that we wanted him to pay off before we lent to him. So he got that done before closing and went to closing and I think he's like
Two months in and paying on time. I would say with our borrowers, majority of them, their intentions are that to be their primary residence. Okay, so they plan on building on it. Yes. Okay. I was because that was gonna be my next question. What do these buyers typically want to do with it? Yeah. So either a sticks and brick home, and that that's why they like to own or finance with us because they can keep that cash.
To pay out of pocket on building their home, or they may put like a manufactured home. there are actually some really nice manufactured homes out there that I'm shocked at what they put on these properties.
they are really nice. And I will say one thing as a lender on borrowing to on a land loan like that, because if again, l we always talk about worst case scenario. What's our exit strategy? So if we had to foreclose on that, great thing about Texas or Arkansas or these other states that we're in, it happens very quickly. They're lender friendly states. So we focus on that.
But the most that we've had to clear out on land is about twenty five hundred dollars But if they built a Sticks and brick home and we had to foreclose, then I get to keep that home. I know I get to keep that. Right. So I'm glad you brought that up about I talk about investor friendly states, you know, for because we do a lot of buy and holds and it's like
We love Texas, we love and I just say, you know, I wouldn't go to California, New York right now. I don't even know if they'll ever have landlords there, I think it's really interesting when people are learning about how to, get into real estate investing,
if they want to get into owner financing that you need if you want to be the owner finance person to be doing it in a state that's lender friendly as well because otherwise it could tie you up in court and cost you tens of thousands of dollars. So tons of money. Well I was gonna say with our single family property. So we will buy in the Midwest and other areas as well on single family, not with land. But what we do to kind of get around that on the single family
Is it's a contract for deed, a land contract. You can't do that here in Texas. so it's very different. But in order for us to protect us and our lender, we do what's called an ejectment if needed. So it's not a foreclosure, but it's still a very short amount of time, but we hold the deed on that. Eject them out. Get out. I'm not squatter friendly. I know, right? And I was happy when Texas changed.
the squatter laws. Now it's easier to evict people because that is crazy. yeah. Crazy that these squatters have rights. And we're like, Hello, they don't pay anything. That's a that's another podcast show.
Well, Crystal, I you know, I just find it fascinating what you do. So I have a couple of questions.
so first off I want you to kind of go back over how you got started in this whole thing when I first start talking to you, I was like, what? What what? And then how has it fit your lifestyle, like as a woman, as a mom? And then what do you think are the biggest lessons that you've learned
what was some things you wish you would have known before you started? So just start like how did your journey in this all start? Yeah, I so that's interesting. My husband, he used to be a financial advisor. And we started getting some rentals. We got a couple of rentals, thinking, okay, we could do this. We actually went to a course one time and
Man, it my mind kinda went blank. his group. So we went to like this weekend course of lifestyles, all that to say, learned how to do the rental thing. We're landlords and this really sucks actually because we're getting phone calls.
We actually had in the middle, we were living in Houston at the time. It was right after Christmas and it froze down there. And the tenant left, didn't pay, and pipes busted. So we had a complete flood in that rental house. So it was just one thing after another. We're like, we're done. we ended up using someone from Quest, their self-directed RA.
and ended up creating a note on a single family home. We actually were gonna do a fix and flip on it, rehabbed it, put too much money into it, and we used someone self-directed IRA and created a note with that borrower. Got a down payment, a nice chunk of a down payment, and created the note with the with our lender and we were like, this is great. No one's calling us in the middle of summer.
You know, going, hey, my AC went out. You still have to pay your mortgage and take care of that too, right? As a homeowner. And rentals were really big at that time where it was all about rentals, but that's kind of when we discovered the seller financing, owner financing route.
because of the cash flow. And and that's really why we love what we love doing is that cash flow, that monthly coming in that's what they really call the Mailbox money, right? Yes mailbox money. And and we always say this, we're like, okay, notes, they're not sexy, you know, they're not that home run hit. But it is a base hit month after month after month you're getting double digit returns.
You're getting monthly passive cash flow. You're diversifying your portfolio and you're in first lien position. And really it's like that slow and steady So looking back, I I think I wish we would have just jumped into that, but we had to learn a lot of lessons on what not to do. We even did some wholesaling as well, but we really had to find our place of what drew us to.
Real estate. I can't say that I'm a big real estate lover. Like I just love really the cash flow coming in. But what I truly love too is that we are providing homeownership for that borrower. We are offering them an opportunity to be a landowner and a homeowner. And that changes their mindset, the trajectory of their family of becoming a homeowner instead of a renter.
So I I would say that's the blessing. Yeah, and I think that you know, you're actually tackling what I really believe in is, you know, there's like the homelessness is just, you know, it's creeping up everywhere. And because it's so unaffordable. So I agree with you. I like owner financing. I like my rentals still, but you have to be you have to be a certain mindset to have rentals and be organized and you can't be the tenant's friend and you d you have to run it like a business or else, you know, those things will happen and they'll the
And you have to have contingency plans, right? When the pipes break or they leave or whatever. and I don't want to fix it up, you know, you can make a lot of money on, houses that maybe you would have fixed or would have wholesaled. Right. And people will buy them and they will buy them all day long. And also I always tell
my sellers when I go out and I work with distressed sellers and I like this afternoon I'm gonna go talk to a lady and her husband just passed away, you know, earlier this month. She's got to sell because financially she can't stay in the house. And what she told me is that she has a hundred thousand dollars that can be transferred. It's a VA loan at two point seven five. Yes. And she's willing to do that.
So I'm willing to pay a little bit more for the house. Now she the house is worth more, right? So we'll still have to do like a bridge loan or something like that. But just to get that hundred grand, you know, at that two point seven five, we could owner finance that house. we're thinking about rental because it's like perfect rental area, appreciating area
So I like both of them, Yeah. So as a mom and a woman, did you find as let's talk first about a woman, because you were a woman before you the mom. Did you was there any challenge? I mean you were always doing it with your husband, but did you ever have any obstacles from the woman's side? Yeah, I think because
I started with my husband, we're we're night and day. We're very different. I am a a bigger like visionary. he's definitely more of engineered financial mindset. So he's all about numbers and things like that. And I'm a big dreamer. Like, let's just go for it. Let's just go for it. So
in the beginning it's dreaming big but also coming back to reality going okay there's gotta be these steps put in place like what's next? How how do we do this and also pivoting as well. So I I think for being a woman in the beginning I was insecure. but then I really think, yes, I ha I have a great supportive spouse.
But also having community was huge for me, giving me the confidence of going, okay, I can do this. I can do this by myself, whatever. but I needed the support and the community. And I agree with that. So I think companies like Quest Trust Company actually gave us that platform of community because they would have panels and speakers that were women.
because, you know, from an investing standpoint, you know, women investing is very like the percentage is a lot lower than men. But when women do it, they're much more successful than men. I always talk about, is fear holding you back or is it self doubt? because fear will slow you down, but self doubt will just stop you. So when you have community, you meet people like you, me
the the other women that were on the panel and I think that that's so important because a lot of women I talk to they'll be widowed or divorced and you know they're probably asking them can they even do what you're doing? Can somebody that doesn't have the engineer type husband how could they do this? Yeah. Absolutely. I think it just what you're saying, connecting with a group like a Quest, or really there's different REI
groups and meetups but really kind of finding your people in the people I was gonna say the people. Yeah and and like you do a lot of coaching and things like that. I think that that's critical. I still have a coach. Yeah. So and especially someone in the the beginning, they're gonna get to learn from you on what not to do. I mean if we could go back we would have saved
a ton of money, you know, but we learned the kind of the hard way. And so looking back, I'm I'm thankful for that because we've got real life experiences, but we can share with other women where they won't make those that's why I like doing this is because if I went back and said, well what did now I I was very fortunate. I had a coach. I had a mentor. but there's just things that people don't tell you.
They just, you know, and they don't mean to. It's just it doesn't come up and you don't know what you don't know, so you don't ask. Right. Now, as a mom, how does, doing what you do fit in with being a mom?
I think it's a a balance for the longest time. I actually felt guilty of going, I'm working and I also am trying to be mom. How do you do both? And then I felt guilty of, well, well then I'm working, then I'm not with the kids. Anyways, it I think we all like go through that. I just became okay with not being okay some days and kind of being a mess.
You know, and in in business, yes, we are organized. We got systems set in place, things like that. But as on the mom side, there's some days where it's just late and the kids are like, What are we doing for dinner? And I'm going like last night, we're going for Mexican food 'cause mom's not cooking anything. And being okay with I don't have it all together and that's fine. And just finding that happy balance. We do have to go, okay, it's whatever time.
shutting phones off. Yeah. Done. Things are just gonna have to wait. Things may fall through the cracks here and there. But just knowing that they're gonna be a priority. That is so important because I think as women, we just take it all on. We just we absorb it. We take it all on. And especially in investing, you know, you'll
talk about it's gonna be like the perfect deal. There's no such thing. There's always gonna be something. And you just have to like you use the word pivot, market shifts, And I think, you can't beat yourself up, even if you make a mistake, because I've made mistakes. have you made any mistakes? Yeah. Okay talk about one of the mistakes that you've made. So that people go, she's she's okay, she she does make mistakes, but look, she bounced back. Yeah, well I will say
recently we had a note that went south. We had to foreclose on it. We actually split that note up with five other lenders that wanted to partner with us in that note. And it was having to do the hard thing.
And having to have the hard conversation. And so with our lenders, we had to go to them and say, Hey, this borrower isn't paying right now and we're looking to foreclose. Well, they went several months without getting their monthly cash flow coming in. We stepped in and took care of it saying that I would say in the past a mistake would be didn't overcommunicate. And for us,
number one. I wanna overcommunicate and I wanna make sure that even in the hard situation, you know everything. We're very transparent. That's what I like to be too just because You can just head off a lot of stuff, sometimes it works out for people and sometimes not. So you're talking about deals. I mean, there's no anyone that says they have a hundred percent track record and every deal's non perfect. Well
To be honest, our lenders actually want to hear, okay, tell me the worst thing that's happened. And so yes, we can tell you all about the great and how much money you make. Right. But what about when you lost money? You know Yeah, like tell us really like when you when you lost. And that's hard to swallow. we don't talk about this much, but we had an oil filled housing facility. We were looking at the time for
hotels. Well, we ended up building a hotel out in the middle of nowhere in Carnes it was when the kind of the oil boom was going on. So by Thanksgiving Day completely filled. It was we were even brokering other hotels because we were so packed and filled and we were with Halliburton and Schlumber Schlumber Day at the time. Anyways, we were using their
Frac crews to stay in our hotel. By Christmas crickets. Like there's no one there. OPEC came out with some kind of announcement. Anyways, the oil prices, everything just tanked. Our places empty, empty, empty. We lost it because you know, it took a number of years before things turned back around, but we had to
sell, lose a lot of money and you had to swallow it. Yeah. But thank you for sharing that. hearing that, you tried something, have you bought another hotel since then? No. oil and gas is not our specialty. But what I would say is that although we failed in that or people would say, well, you failed and you lost some a lot of money. Yes. But it really
built up our resilience I mean absolutely even when you lose money, the confidence that you get from, it stings a little bit, but now, you fast forward it's forgiving, 'cause you can make your money back
Well, and I've heard this recently. My husband and I laugh. We say, Scared money, don't make no money. So really, yes, you need to be wise. You need to have a coach, a mentor, and and have community as you're walking through, especially your first deals. But if we just stayed on the sidelines forever and be scared, I mean we wouldn't be willing to You wouldn't do anything. Right. And you would like have self doubt and that kind of thing. So now before we move into your
Other journey. I want to just talk briefly about one of the questions I get asked a lot is how much money do I need? I what would you answer that question?
That's a hard one. But so I'll give you two examples. I think everyone thinks that they have to have all of this money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I'll give you two examples just recently. I've got a land note that we've originated that's twenty three thousand.
Which for some that's a lot of money, but for others that's not. That's actually kind of a low entry into real estate. we got it for twenty one thousand dollars. my gosh. ARV on that is yeah. Yeah way, way higher. and that was just kind of a home run hit for us on that. But then on the the flip side there's deals that you know that's
just to enter in, you're gonna need over a hundred and fifty, two hundred thousand. But I think especially if you're getting into being an operator or a borrower side, there's private lending available out there. And I like to have a little skin in the game as we partner with lenders and things like that. But if you're just starting out and you don't have much money, I think you
people think that you need a ton of money and you really don't. You don't. You don't. And to also use private lending, someone that has the funds, but then you're the operator and and you're being the good steward of taking care of those funds. You know, I just think there's a lot of ways to slice up a deal. You know, I think we just look at it as it's this way and that's it, it's cut and dry. But it's really not. There's so many creative ways. There are.
And that's what I kind of share with my audience is there's a lot of creative ways. Are you gonna learn all over you know, and overnight? No, it took us years to learn some of these techniques my first property I I plunked down the twenty percent. In fact, my second property, I'll plunk down the twenty percent. And so, you know, to buy the property, so you know, I'm like shelling out money and then that's where I learned, as I'm talking to myself now back then
one of the things no one told you, well when you run out of those down payments, where do you get the money? And I mean it took me a while to find that answer. And so finally someone said, Hey Nancy, this is what you need to do and leverage and then and that's what I did. And then you can scale and you can buy more than one or two properties. So it kind of goes back to that what you don't know, you don't know what to ask unless you're working with somebody or in a community.
And I'll also share this. I actually went through a mobile home course. I've got a good friend that all that's all she does is mobile homes and I and she does this course and I was thinking, okay, we do so much with land, let me try this course. Maybe, you know, if we get some mobile homes come in, I can do something with them. Well, I found I didn't like it.
I didn't enjoy it. She's making a killing off of it. For me, I that was just not my cup of tea. Yeah, I'm not I'm not a mobile home gal either. And that's okay. So I feel like we all have to find what we like. And like you said, you just don't know what you don't know. But having a coach, someone to help guide you and then that community, I mean, it's priceless. It really is. I totally agree
out.
Okay, Crystal, we've talked about a lot of stuff and I'm really excited about the second part because I want you to share about the journey that you told me about because the way you and I reconnected, I got an email from you saying that you had rebranded into refuge lending and you had a short story on there about what that was about.
And I was very moved and I s I wanted to pick up the phone and call and say, Hey, can you come on the podcast? Because I think I was very intrigued. So just tell people what I'm talking about. yeah, so we sent that email out. the new company is refuge funding. back in 2015, we actually had finalized the adoption of our daughter.
And we had adopted her. Her and her mother came out of a hotel, they were sex trafficked. And so we ended up going up to Alaska. thinking we were going on this epic family road trip.
And so we went up to Alaska thinking we were gonna help do some missional work. Well, we get up there and then we really just felt this calling to stay. And we're going, What is going on? At the time we had our man man camps, and my husband was kind of like doing this back and forth from Texas to Alaska. We had a couple of other businesses, but we ended up staying up there and
We ended up building a place of refuge for women and children coming out of sex trafficking. And for us after our daughter story, we were just like, There's no way that we can ignore this and not do something about it. So we would provide housing for women and children that had been sex trafficked. We also were on the front lines. We would do some of the rescues. My husband also we would work with some FBI and local law enforcement and be
even help on the demand side as well. And so really it became just our heart and passion and our focus of being a place of refuge for a a safe haven. And so were these women and children was this all in Alaska and how did the FBI get involved? Yeah. Alaska is a large hub. Most people don't
realize that saying that though, we would get women from either all over the world or the US as well. In Alaska you've got a very large state land wise, but you got less than a million people out of that whole state. So there's only so many places you can get to by road. You have to fly boat.
things like that. So it's more secluded. so is a is a good way for hiding. we also partnered with another organization called Priceless, where they walked life with women coming out of that and worked directly with FBI. So FBI would do a rescue and then would call us and Priceless and say, hey, do you have a place that these girls can stay?
And that's really kind of how it got started. And then we built a place on the side of a mountain did you just wake up one day and say they don't have a place to go? How did how did that transpire that you actually wanted to build the place? Yeah, I I think w as we started working with Priceless, we started seeing that there needed to be
A lot of these women were coming out of the city as well. And then a lot of them didn't even know how to cook, do do the basic things, just basic hygiene stuff, all of that. And so in Alaska we kind of lived more off grid style. And what it did is it just rooted and grounded these women because we did just the the basic everyday things and we had a water
excuse me, a natural spring that came out of the mountain that we would get our water, we would heat up our home with with firewood. So it was kind of like homesteading in a way. But but what it did is it got them out of the city into a safe, comfortable place where then they started to open up and get healing.
And start to be able to take care of themselves as well. there's so much disruption there that again, just talking about basic steps of, let's go to the grocery store. This is what it looks like. This is what we're gonna cook, this is how we're gonna cook 'cause were a lot of these women in traffic for a long period of time or just from the emotional abuse that they just
both. Both. I mean, a lot of them were groomed for a long time. And I mean and that could start with social media. I mean, we used to do a lot of educating with teenagers and parents on social media and and also talking about pornography, things like that. I mean, we just really did a lot of educating because it's not just one demographic of of women, children that are being trafficked. I mean it it's all over.
There's a lot of blackmail that happens, you know, manipulation, just all of that corruption. But a lot of people just aren't aware, I guess. So we would do that. Well, and when you told me in like Alaska, I like, What? You know, 'cause you hear about it in you know, you go into a bathroom in Dallas, you know, po and there'll be a sign or whatnot.
Is the community are they pretty involved with in helping with this as well? I would say parts of are so up in Alaska we also had native Alaskans as well that would come out of the bush villages and that they would come into the city. Well, they were highly targeted as well by traffickers. Because there's a lot of vulnerability in the in the villages too. So the and and also get with Alaska, it was heavily men up there.
Yeah, you had the commercial fishing, you have the oil and gas up there. you also have all the tours. So they saw demand, is what you're saying? Absolutely. my goodness. Yeah. Now you went to Alaska as kind of a family vacation. So did I miss the part where
You on family vacation and then the next thing we're talking about you're working with the FBI and your husband's getting involved. So did I miss a step there? Well, yes. So we had some other businesses there. and that's kind of a whole nother segment. Lots of But we had a business partner that he was doing sadly some unethical things and we had to step away from from that business partner. So that's we ended up staying up there. So that we went through that first whole summer going
Okay, we're gonna tail back to Texas and see it was September that came around and everyone's like, If y'all are going back to Texas, I mean there's about to be snow here, so you might want to get moving quickly. And we just were so drawn to staying there. We really felt a calling that, you know what, let's stay here But at that time you didn't know. You didn't
We were just trying to figure things out. We had our businesses still and we were kinda going through this tough time with this business partner. So we were trying to figure out, okay, what's next? But we just didn't want to come back to Texas. We were just in love with the mountains and the people in Alaska. You had a higher calling. Yeah. Something was pulling on you. yeah. I remember my husband, he was down in the office and it was probably, I don't know, three, four in the morning.
And I go down there and he was just weeping. And he was and that is not him. And he just said, We're we're to stay. We're not to go back. And this is to be home right now. And and he just had it on his heart, like this is what we're called to do right now and stay. And we went to a priceless event.
And we started doing this in Houston a little bit as well, going into strip clubs, brothels, I would, and do some of the rescues there. So that's kind of how it really got started. Okay. But all after adopting our daughter. Okay, 'cause you really saw firsthand what she went through and what a blessing that you were to her life, right? Yeah. my gosh, this is very emotional. I just feel like I'm tearing up for it.
So Crystal, that story is amazing. and I'm I feel blessed we ended up I don't know, reconnecting and I hear your story and I have a platform that can get out there to some of the people
So as we're wrapping up, I wanted to ask you, so if somebody out there is listening and they're moved by, you know, either your work that you've been doing, with in in your businesses or even in the nonprofit, and they're sitting there on the couch, they're watching social media. What what is one or two things that you would say for people, women especially, to take action to do something that they've been dreaming about?
number one I would say because if you're you've been on social media, you've been listening and watching, like pick up the phone and call or meet with whether it's a coach or meeting at that REI meeting that you been wanting to go to but too afraid to go to or a self directed IRA group. I would say just go.
I have got a good friend. She's never done real estate before. And last year she made the decision to step forward. She's got five kids and she stays at home. And then she's like, I can't go to all these networking meetings. She actually found some networking groups online and became involved that way. She's done nine properties since then.
Good for her. Because she just said, You know what? No more watching the videos and scrolling on social media. She's like, I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna join one of these online groups. And she just started actually talking to people and gleaning from them and going, Okay, I'm gonna take my first step of doing my first property. And sure enough
Nine. that's awesome. That's an awesome story. Cause you know, that is it's just the first one is the hardest one. Yes. And then I'm not saying it's easier and easier, but it's a little bit easier, So and she didn't have a ton of money either, and she used private lenders. There you go. Yeah. There you go. So and she just knew, and you probably gave her some tips along the way. And then she got and she got her confidence. Absolutely. that's amazing. So you've just been amazing today. I'm I'm loving it. So I want you to tell people.
tell our viewers how they can get in touch with you. And we are gonna have your info below, but what's the best way to reach you? Okay. So our website, refugefunding.com. That's gonna have our direct emails and contacts with phone numbers. And I was gonna just also share that although we've been being a place of refuge for our investors as well, being that safe haven for them.
And for the borrowers too, providing that safe place for them. And but the website is the best place. Okay. Awesome. And we are gonna have all of the contact info okay below so that they can just click on there. And I know she answers her phone because I actually got your phone number from her website. So 'cause it wasn't on the email side.
well, thanks again, Crystal. I've so enjoyed seeing you. And I look forward to what more you guys are gonna be doing and now that we've reconnected and you're back here in Texas, we'll go have coffee. So thank you, Nancy. Thanks much. All right, talk to you soon. Okay, you too.
