Ep. 53: She Lost Everything at 40 — Then Built a Real Estate Business From Zero with Kristin Boekhoff

What do you do when you lose your company, your savings, your apartment, and your job — all on your 40th birthday? For Kristin Boekhoff, the answer was to start over, reinvent herself as a single mom by choice, and build a thriving real estate investing business from the ground up. In this episode of the From Corporate to Cash Flow Podcast, hosts Andrea Cannon and Liz Schwab sit down with one of the most extraordinary guests to grace the show. --- **WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:**  **[00:00 – 10:00]** Kristin's journey from PWC management consultant to NYU real estate master's graduate to VP managing $7 billion in real estate funds at Related Capital — by age 30.  **[10:00 – 14:00]** How a single Cornell lecture about global poverty led her to apply for a Fulbright Fellowship, quit her job, donate everything she owned to charity, and move to Bangladesh — a country she'd never visited.  **[14:00 – 19:00]** The hard truth about her eight-year project in Bangladesh: building an eco-resort, raising equity from the country's top businessmen, and ultimately losing everything when a key investor's wife died of brain cancer. What she learned about resilience, failure, and the real cost of education.  **[19:00 – 30:00]** Her path back to U.S. real estate, from commercial brokerage to a W-2 at a design-build firm, discovering the BRRRR strategy on BiggerPockets, and accidentally getting fired (and why she hugged the woman who let her go).  **[30:00 – 39:00]** The two habits that transformed her productivity as a full-time real estate investor: calendar time-blocking and building detailed SOPs from Day 1. Plus her buy box for fix-and-flip deals in Maryland and Central Florida. --- **KEY TAKEAWAYS:** - Don't wait until you have all the answers. Grit matters more than degrees. - Treat early losses as tuition, just don't bet your entire savings on your first deal. - If you have a W-2, don't get into flipping. Match your investment strategy to your time. - Save 10–20% of your income off the top before you do anything else. - Build SOPs from your very first deal — your future self (and your VAs) will thank you. --- Kristin is actively looking for:  Fix-and-flip deal flow in Baltimore County, Prince George County MD, and the Space Coast to Tampa corridor in Florida (ARV ~$650K, purchase at ~60% ARV)  Private money lenders for her flip properties ---  **From Corporate to Cash Flow** is hosted by Andrea Cannon and Liz Schwab — two pharmacists building time and financial freedom through real estate investing and lending while working their day jobs. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.  Leave us a review — it helps more people find the show! ---  Connect with Kristin:  Check out Kristin Boekhoff’s profile on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinboekhoff https://www.instagram.com/brightdoorhomes  https://www.tiktok.com/@brightdoorhomes  Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theandreacannon  Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAndreaCannon