Meet Stella Payton | Real Estate investor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stella Payton and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stella, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I originally started my business in 1997. Honestly, I didn’t have a great deal of thought going behind it because I didn’t have many other options. In 1992, I found myself with an unplanned pregnancy. I consider the option of abortion, but decided to have my child. I had saved some funds And withdrew those savings to live off of during my pregnancy. That money soon ran out, and eventually I landed on welfare Shortly after my son was born. I had a roommate during that time he was an infant. And that situation helped. But eventually I had to get out on my own. So when my son was about 18 months old, I got my own apartment. $490 welfare check wasn’t much and it didn’t even cover the cost of my rent which was $580 a month

And within a year after I had moved, I could not maintain my housing. The challenge was I couldn’t get childcare because I didn’t have a job and I couldn’t get a job because I didn’t have childcare. This Catch-22 eventually became somewhat of a blessing. Because once I was evicted from my home, I qualified for a special program That allowed me to get childcare while I got back on my feet.

I found a new place to stay. And in this window of time, a voice spoke to me and told me to start my own business. I know it was God even though I know it was crazy, but I really didn’t have any other option. With all the applications I had put in no one would hire me. So I started Writing Customer Service training programs. And I began looking for opportunities to speak about customer service.

Quite by chance, I landed an opportunity to speak about customer service on a radio show. It was call recycling black dollars back then. That radio show had a listener who owned a Kinko’s copies location. The owner of one of the locations in downtown LA invited me to come and speak to the employees. They paid me $200, that event led to my during the same service presentation to all 22 locations. And as the saying goes, the rest is history. One opportunity led to another until I eventually landed a contract with the city of Los Angeles to do Customer Service training for inner-city youth. That contract was $20,000. From there I worked for mini companies, like TurboTax, recruited for Home Depot, etc..

When I started making people priority consulting group, I had no plan. But I also had no options. It was the only thing that I could have done , my tenacity to find organizations who valued service kept my little business alive and I still have making people priority today.

I have always believed that the anchor of any financial house has to be built on the infrastructure of income streams. I’ve never felt safe with my money coming from one place. I’ve always wanted to make sure that I had funds from at least 3 to 5 different sources .

So Fast forward 35 years and I now have real estate as my primary income source, customer, service, training, conferences and seminars, I had written several books, and I also had created a line of jewelry called Chayil Bracelets. So why is this important?

In 2016, I was caught in a horrific divorce. I had three mortgages going into foreclosure at one time and not a clue about what I was going to do. I quickly found a job that sustained me and kept my head above water. But in the back of my mind I knew I needed to start Airbnb‘s

After miraculously, getting loan modifications on my properties, I did my first Airbnb conversion. Gradually little by little I kept doing one unit at a time. I couldn’t qualify for any money because I had been self-employed, so I cashed it. Every dime I made I put it into a rental property until I had , three Airbnb spaces and two long-term rentals.

Here I am at 60 years old. Life is not perfect by a long shot but I am truly grateful I made the choices and the sacrifices I needed to make as a young person. I could not have survived Covid financially, if I had not had my rental properties . People think being self-employed is hard. I don’t think so. It’s not nearly as hard as clocking in to somebody else’s business every day.

What should our readers know about your business?

I do three things. My primary income comes from real estate investing. I have four Airbnb units and two long-term rentals.

The next thing I do is run an online community. These are mostly women who have ideas that they want to launch, but ultimately lead them down the road to entrepreneurship. I believe very strongly that life begins at $100,000 a year. Most people can begin to experience some degree of freedom at that level. The community I run is called The Chayil Circle

The next thing I do is business consulting and coaching for budding entrepreneurs, who are interested in launching businesses , we coach them in to having the courage to get it done. My current passion is a project I just launched call Broken2beautifulstore.co. It is a Website where 100% of the profits go to fund sex trafficking ministries. These are organizations that work to help women and children come out of sex trafficking.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Well, I no longer live in Southern California. I live in South Mississippi! Oh, it is wonderful here. Mississippi is at the center of five major metropolitan areas. We are literally 90 minutes from the Mississippi gulf coast which is gorgeous, white sandy beaches, we are 90 minutes from New Orleans, Louisiana with some of the most delicious Southern cuisine on the planet. We are in 90 minutes from Jackson Mississippi the capital of the state. We are 90 minutes from Mobile Alabama and 90 minutes from Meridian Mississippi. All of these places have amazing things to do. My favorite thing to do is walk the beaches of Biloxi, Mississippi.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to give a shout out to all those single moms, whose children became the motivation to start their own business. I never wanted my son to have to say his mother had to work and she couldn’t come to his event. I always wanted to be there. But I also wanted control over my time in my life. Starting my own business was hard, but it gave me that freedom. And I still enjoy that freedom today.

Website: Stellapayton.com

Instagram: Stella_payton

Linkedin: Stella Payton

Twitter: @stellampp

Facebook: Stella Payton

Youtube: https://youtu.be/FK4xwuQkZE4?si=eF7Gty-AjuzCU9ue