Attiyah Blair went to college for broadcast journalism because growing up she was super chatty. Her mom was always telling her, “You’re gonna be on TV, you’re gonna be on TV.” She was right.
Attiyah worked in television for 10 years, both on the air and as a producer.
Then she started a new chapter: entrepreneurship. Figured she’d replace her nine-to-five income in no time. Boy was she wrong. The first five years were a struggle.
Attiyah had two options: figure it out, or figure it out. C’mon girl, you got this, she told herself. You’re an entrepreneur at heart. You had a candy hustle as a kid. Think!
“And that’s when I did my first flip,” she recalls. “I made more money on that flip than I had made all year in the other [health coaching] business I was doing prior. So I fired all my clients, shut down that business, and went full-time in real estate at that point.”
“I did three more projects like that that year; I made 6-figures my first year as a real estate investor; and the rest is history.”
Attiyah says living below her means and pursuing self-education was the difference-maker.
If you’re trying to get into real estate but you feel like you don’t have the time or the money or the know-how, you’re looking at it wrong. Your day job is a blessing. It’s your biggest investor if you would just start saving instead of blowing money.
And all those car rides bumpin’ Cardi B could just as easily be spent listening to podcasts, right?
Then you swap nightly Netflix for books, and now you’re the one making money moves.
But yeah, Attiyah loved the freedom she had as a real estate investor. She didn’t have to do all this marketing and advertising and then get people to sign up and then babysit them for eons.
“I just had to buy houses,” she explains. “And the houses would let me buy them whenever I wanted to, as long as I beat out whatever competition there was. And so I liked the control of being able to make a certain amount of money, control over the outcome, my time.”
“I got to be the boss. It just felt great.”
Fast forward to present day. Attiyah’s goal is to buy at least a million dollars worth of real estate a year.
She primarily buys, holds, provides beautiful homes for families to rent long-term.
Flipping’s cool and all, but it eats up a lot of time, it’s risky, it’s cutthroat, and even if it works out, you only get paid once. Then Uncle Sam gets his and you realize, damn, I’m gonna have to do a lot of flips to get anywhere. And the minute I stop, so does my income.
It’s hard to get rich flipping houses and almost impossible to build generational wealth that way.
“Whereas, with what I’m doing now, I get paid at least three times on every deal,” Attiyah says. “I do cash-out refinance, so I’m able to pull cash from the equity. Then I take that cash, from one property, that my tenants are paying for, and I use that cash to buy another building. So essentially, my tenants are buying more real estate for me.”
“And then my second way is the monthly cash flow.”
“And then the last way, and this is where the wealth is built, is the equity – the increase in the value of the property – over time.”
Wanna be a millionaire like Attiyah? Solve more problems for more people, she says.
Wanna go beyond that and become truly wealthy? Then solve a large problem for a large group of people.
That’s why she’s killing it as a real estate investor. Housing is a huge problem for billions of people on the planet.
So set your goal, work backwards, figure out how many rentals you’d need to get there. Simple, not easy.
Attiyah’s got a number of events you can attend or courses you can sign up for if you need some help.