This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show for 46, we were reading so many books, and just when do you know enough to get some skin in the game? You know, I would say it was probably three years close to before we actually made our first move. We overcame it really by just structuring it and reverse engineering. We want to get a house. So what do you have to do to get a house?

You're listening to a bigger pocket's radio simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from bigger pockets. Dotcom, your home for real estate, investing online. What's going on?

Let's bring in Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here in the shed. Not she said she shared with my buddy David Greene. David, man, how you been? It's been a whole, like, I don't know, ten minutes since we talked. Yes, it has.

And I've been in Hawaii for a while now, so I'm slowly acclimating to Iven life. I'm having a great time. Yeah, very cool. Well, I drove by your upcoming condo the other day that you're buying here in Maui. That looks super sweet.

And you got a couple of them you're to. But yeah, it's a it's cool stuff and I just got one under contract.

Well, we talk about a little bit on the show today, but just got to kind of I was getting the fever like you started buying all this stuff in Maui. And I'm like, oh, man, I want to I want a vacation rental.

Maui. So isn't that a great example of how it works when you get around other people who are doing the. I'm almost positive you would not have bought that condo if I was not talking about it and I wouldn't have bought the two condos I'm buying if you wouldn't have been like, you need to get out here to Hawaii and get a break. It's getting around the right people. Absolutely makes things happen.

That leads us to today's quick quick trip today is get around some people who are doing a little bit more than you. I'm not saying you have to go and hang out with, like, Grant Cardone or David Greene here, but I'm saying, like, get around people who are doing like who are like a year or two ahead of you right now and find a way to get around them. I know there's covid stuff going on, so it has to be digital, make it digital.

But the point being, get around some people on a regular basis in your area, preferably. I mean, just go find a landlord who's like been doing cool stuff and just take them out to lunch or whatever you got to do.

But don't get around people who are just awesome. You can find those people by going to bigger pockets. Dot com. We've got over two million members. If we just cross the two million mark recently, there are a lot of people that are on bigger pockets that are in your area. So connect with them, learn from them, grow with them and just provide value to them.

So that said, let's get into today's show. The today shows a lot of fun. We interview a couple that you may have seen because they're on the bigger pockets YouTube channel a lot they're on. They have a big Instagram account. Lauren and Kyle Klug, I hope it's in their last name correctly. They are awesome. And they invest in mostly BRX properties. They do a lot of the buy rehab refinance repeat.

We'll talk about that later today.

And they really go into detail how they got started. I mean, they're up to like ten properties or ten units or something like that now. And they talk about how they got from just nothing out of the book that actually most people have not read. But I wrote a long time ago and didn't like before my BP days, I wrote a book. They talk about that, how they kind of got them into the game and they talk about something called the dash line agreement.

Well, you got to listen for that term, the dash line agreement, really, really good stuff. We go in depth on how to estimate rehab costs. Like all four of us share our opinion on estimating rehab costs for projects. You're going to learn a few different ways to do that. We talk about overcoming analysis, paralysis and more and gives a really good acronym, Grip Grip. So listen, for that, if you're somebody that maybe is struggling with analysis paralysis to get started or to take things to the new level, that is a great segment there.

So listen for all that and more. But first, let's get to today's show sponsors.

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Again, that's fundrise dotcom slash bigger pockets. With that said, time to get into the show, just a quick shout out to Kyle and Lauren, who's on our show today, they actually are going to be doing a lot more for the bigger pockets YouTube channel. But here's the cool thing and we're announcing more later. But I'm giving you a little tease right now. The bigger pockets, YouTube channels changing a little bit right now. Every video goes on the YouTube channel, YouTube dotcom slash bigger pockets.

We're actually making some subchannels or different channels so you can follow different things. So there's going to be a rookie channel just for people getting started. They're going to be a heavy contributor to that channel. You know, David and I might even have a channel of our own. I don't know. Well, we'll see. So stay tuned for that. All right. With that said, let's get to the today's show with Lauren and Kyle Claxton.

All right, Lauren Kyle, welcome to the Bigger Pocket's podcast.

How are you guys doing? So good. Thank you so much for having us. Yes. We we're so excited to be here with you.

Good. Me, too, because I hear that you're called the Chip and Joanna Gaines of the Jersey Shore that somebody told me that I should call you that.

That's what we're going learn today is how you became the chip and Joanna of that you got there at Jersey. We are in Jersey.

We're across the state from the Jersey Shore. So and it was some pretty big shoes to fill and I don't know.

Yeah, we're just pumping while we're demoing and rehabbing. It's a good combo. We're that in rehab and we're not.

Yes, OK. OK, good. So let's get into your story. We're going to we're going to rewind back. And some people may have seen your videos all over Instagram and I follow you guys there and all over YouTube and doing stuff for bigger pockets. But let's hear the beginning story. First of all, where'd you guys meet? I'm going to start with that one.

We met in college. I believe Kyle was neighbors with one of my friends back in my freshman his sophomore year. So a little blurry back in the day, but we met back then and I have stuck it out since.

That's awesome. And how did you how did you discover real estate? Was that individually or together? And who led the charge on that?

I definitely I led the charge, yeah. We were getting ready to graduate and I didn't even know she was really researching this stuff in the secret for like the last two or three years prior to 2011, she actually dropped on the table. Brandon, in your E book, seven years, a seven figure as well. And I don't come from an investment family. My parents don't invest or anything like that. So I don't really know anything about whether it be stocks, real estate.

So that was an eye opener for me to read. That's all that I was hooked ever since. That's awesome.

Some of those I don't know if that is the Haubegger pockets. I had a little blog they called Real Estate, your twenties, dotcom. It's still there. I think I have updated it in eight years. But anyway, I wrote a little ebook today giveaway. There was called Seven Years Ten Figure Well. And then I shifted over now on bigger pockets, webinars. I give it out on almost every bigger pockets webinar that I hosted. I actually went looked at it the other day and it's actually funny.

I need to update it because I didn't realize how horrible the numbers were compared to where they are today. And what I mean by that is like it was like just by a fourplex for one hundred thousand. If you buy a fourplex for one hundred thousand dollars, that's like you can't even buy like even in a bad neighborhood, you could barely buy like. Yeah. Anyway, I need to update those numbers to twenty, twenty one levels.

But you know, as a side note though, that's a testament to how much inflation we've had. Yeah. Over the last eight years have doubled over just year period.

That's totally true.

There's so many lessons from that though, aside from the numbers that we took away and we look at now and it's like, you know, we implement so many of just little investor lessons aside from run numbers and things like that.

Yeah, well, that's cool, man. That's cool. All right. So you get inspired by this little book, I guess. And what happened from there?

From there we decided, well, we probably move in together. We graduate college with our parents for a little bit. And at first I had some decent savings, grew up. My family was like, it's smart to be frugal and save your money and pay yourself first. I had this nice chunk of change, and at first I was like, Oh, we could buy a house and cash. I'd be awesome. We wouldn't have this mortgage payment.

It'd be genius. And then obviously we read your ebook and we were so used to kind of living for free. We want to stay with our parents. I was like, I wish we could just keep doing that. And so house hacking became the solution to that answer or to that problem. And we had a little bit analysis, paralysis and lacking a lot. We knew how hacking was the thing for us and it took us a solid year of researching and just pushing through the fear to actually make it happen.

And we house hacked, renovated it, got that first rent check and we've been hooked ever since. That's cool.

All right. So what was that? Where were the first deal that was that out in New Jersey? It was South Jersey. Yeah, just outside of Philadelphia.

OK, so tell us about it. Well, what was the thing?

So, I mean, the benefit of the area and how we zoned in on it kind of was it had a nice central walking main street downtown with a lot of restaurants, but the taxes were low and kind of cost to entry was lower in the South Jersey area. So that's why we ended up honing in on there. And it just ended up in one of the only, I think, two multifamily that we toured that we ended up buying.

So why make the decision to get out of multifamily after you bought your first couple in question?

So after we bought the first one, we realized well, that we didn't realize you're looking for the next multi year. We had a unit count goal and all we could think about was the unit count, how many doors and obviously buying two. Says Triplex doesn't work like this is the quickest way to do that. We were just having trouble finding that. I think you guys made house hacking trendy and it was becoming a little difficult. So we were really frustrated and everyone always told you, like, put the blinders on and just focus on the one thing focused on the goal.

And that wasn't serving us well at the time. So just sort of like bored. I'm sitting on the couch, Netflix and siloing. We decided to just switch the parameter from multifamily to single family. And we found this like really awesome little pocket of the working class area with really affordable single family homes, low taxes, but weirdly high rent. And we went to go see this place and the numbers just made sense. And so we kind of figured, why are we forcing ourselves to do multifamily when the single family cassells just as good as our duplex does?

So that's how we got into single family.

It opened up a huge mindset shift on instead of doors, cash flow. And it was an eye opener to how well this place cash flow and how little renovation compared to our duplex in hided. So yeah, that was huge.

Yeah, that makes sense. It brings up a really good point to of like you hear people on a podcast like multifamily should do that or somebody that you should wholesale, you should flip at or whatever, you know, like how that is the way to go. The better strategy is the best thing you can do. And everyone's got this thing. But what's cool is how everything is like unique to a certain area. So like something worked in every area, but everything doesn't work in every area.

And so you guys just discovered that if you listen to blanket advice, you're going to you're going to struggle. But if you're like, hey, this area is unique. This has something different here. This kind of works here. It's just kind of cool that, like, you figure that out. And I think people listeners need to realize, like, again, not every strategy works in every area, but of what works in this area. And you guys found a little pocket in those pockets are all over the US where it's like, oh, this is weird.

Like lower taxes here, but higher rent or lower this, higher that or this really good school district. Yet the prices are half of what is over in this neighborhood, even though it's the same school district or whatever. Right. That's just the value of learning. You're learning your market.

So where do you guys invest today? I mean, what's your what's your portfolio look like today, kind of overall? And then where do you do all your stuff out here?

Still in South Jersey, we have a mix of single family homes and small multi. So we're under contract right now. Bring us to ten units. And we strategically are kind of investing in a more working class area where the single families are, where perfect birds are possible. And that gives us high cash flow and a little bit of appreciation. Property management takes a little bit more effort, though, and then we invest in another area that's only five minutes away.

But it's a lot nicer, definitely better chance for appreciation. Tenants are breeze. We still castle, but just not as good. And so we feel like we have a working class area that gets us that monthly profit and then we have the other area which really build our long term.

Well, yeah, one of the things I find and this is not a hard and fast rule, but a general guideline is your multifamily properties typically cash flow well, but they usually require more work, more effort and give you more headaches. And a lot of it is deals with zoning rules.

Right. Like in California where I am, the areas that are zoned for multifamily is where they stick every multifamily property. They're not sparse around all the single family homes. So you get no pride of ownership. It's all tenants living in that area, which usually means the single family homes.

Appreciate more. Have you found something similar in your experience that the houses that you bought that were single family but in better neighborhoods have gained value faster than the multis? So we actually do the opposite.

Our multifamily is our in the nicer areas and our single families and the working class area. And the reason why we think that works is because in the nicer areas, there's more demand for like one bedrooms and working class professionals work commuting into the city. So we get a lot of people our age who have decent professional jobs and then in the working class area, single family homes, because it's more families, they can't afford to buy their own home. So they're renting.

And then what's your portfolio look like at this point as far as how many singles and how many multis?

We have a triplex to duplexes and three single families. That's awesome.

That's super good. All right. So I want to I want to go into some details that I know you guys are good at. And I want to start with this question of how much work do you guys do yourself versus how much do you hire out?

So up until this new property, we've done all of the work aside from license. So electrical, plumbing, HVAC, but we still manage those subs. So whether we're swinging the hammer or managing, that's up. We're doing all of it. So with our next burred, we will have one hundred percent outsourced everything, hopefully. Yeah.

And we've been slowly doing it. Like we realize that maintenance calls are probably not the best use of our time. So we started working with the maintenance company, which has been great. Now I just send an email and consider it done. So we're slowly trying to pull ourselves away, but it's still our baby, we're still excited about it and we're still in the growth phase. So Kyle Lang, Elvie P is actually time decent? Well spent because he could bring it out in a day instead of paying a guy a couple of thousand dollars for it.

So yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Like whenever we get most people get started exactly where you are. I got started exactly where you are, where it's like I did my wife and I did all of our own work in the beginning, or at least most of it. Anything that we could do, we would tackle. Because at the time yeah, that was my like I. Felt anyway, that was my highest and best use, now today I realize that maybe finding deals would maybe help me, you know, I could find a deal twenty thousand dollars less and then that 20 thousand dollars would have covered somebody else to do the work.

And I could have been watching TV, but like, I didn't have anything to bring to the table. But my my labor and stuff like that was my leverage point that I used. And I think sometimes on the show here because so she goes, David and I are beyond that, like we're not doing our own work anymore.

I think people might feel like that, like doing that is wrong or inferior, like doing your own work, DIY and thing is inferior. And like, I just want to be clear, like, it's definitely not. It's just like it's a choice. Do you want to do that? Is that a good leverage point for you or not? Where we get at it is like is making sure people are asking that question and not just default into it.

I'm curious, what how do you guys divide up what work you do? Do both actively do everything or do you like. I'm I'm the demo person and I'm the, you know, floor person.

How do you divide that up? Saying that definitely came with DIY ing it because Lauren handles all the management and I can't handle all the project management. So we would step on each other all the time and it would lead to little arguments. And we read the book traction and that was a huge game changer for us. Also start treating it like a business and dividing those responsibilities. And it's something Lauren Coin's the dashed line, what do you call it?

Agreement. Detasseling agreement. So basically what was happening is we decided we need to stay in our own lands, and that works for a while. Kyle, you're going to do all construction on a new property management. But then we started realizing that there were times where our jobs overlapped. And because we were so black and white, like, nope, that's your job and this is my job, it created another area of friction because now we weren't being flexible.

And so the way we kind of are talking about it is if it's like a double yellow line, you guys are going in opposite directions, that's no good. First off, you to make sure you're driving in the same direction. But then there is the solid white line and that's you're both going in the same direction, but you're both staying in your lane and there's no option to go in any other lane. What we realize what is both efficient and that works for us and make sure balls don't get jobs is kind of like the dash line.

And that is we're both traveling in the same direction. We're both in our own lane. But we are allowed to come into each other's lane as long as the key, as long as you signal and let the other person know that you're coming into the lane, you do your task, and then more importantly, you signal that you're leaving the lane. So, I mean, it really just comes down to communication. And an example of that is like property management.

I'd get a maintenance call and I would want to call one of our subs to go do it. Well, technically, that has the relationship with Kyle, not me. So it started getting a little blurry. And then was I pulling a sub away from a renovation job to go do a maintenance call?

And that's where the weekly meetings really helped as well, scheduling out. So she knew where I was with subs that we have.

And I knew when they were tied up with her on maintenance calls, the smart, the whole like letting people know, because I found a lot of the drama that me and Heather would have if we had any, like, disagreements or arguments. It was because I wasn't signaling to get into her late. And so that's that's a good analogy because I just feel like I just pushed my way in or that I wouldn't let her know that I'm leaving the lanes and then just things get dropped.

So that's really, really good advice for for that. I know you understand them.

Yeah. It's just once again, this is coming down to business principles being applied into the world of real estate. Obviously, that's what we're talking about. It's recognizing we have to have weekly meetings to talk about where we are so each person understands what lane they're in and where that lane is going. We have to show respect to our business partners. If I want to borrow a person you're using or if I want to change the plan, that's a great analogy of signal to let me know you're coming in and then signal to let them know you're going back out.

People respect it when you show them respect. Hey, I can I borrow this person or hey, I can see a problem coming up. Let's talk about what we're going to do rather than the last minute. Hey, I grabbed the guy off your job site and that screws up everything they've been working on. I mean, frankly, just thinking about being in a relationship like you guys have and being business partner seems like that's high risk. High reward.

It could go great or it could go terrible.

Exactly. I mean, and that was something that we were coming up on, was that our business conversations were spreading out throughout the entire week instead of just Monday. We talk business and the rest of the week is husband and wife Kyle.

More so on that note, then, you mentioned traction that you read the book traction. Yeah. You said it changed your business.

How so? I'm wondering, you know, some specifics there. Like, how is your how do you currently run your business? Because most people don't get in the traction and like that level until much later. And I love the fact you guys are in it now. Like, what I mean by that is like it's like I got like I didn't start tractions and it was the model until I had six or five employees and, you know, millions of dollars coming in like I mean, it was until that level.

But I wish I would. It started when I was at your level. So what what do you do do what does that look like and how is that helped?

Yeah, it's advanced, but it's applicable, I think, to investors, whether you're just starting off or whether you have as much time on you, specifically just at weekly meetings, something as simple as that to take away. But good luck. Yeah.

When we first are reading it, we were kind of like business focus. There's nothing about real estate in here. And so it took us a minute to implement it and how it can reflect on what we're doing. And I think the biggest mindset shift is that we aren't real estate investors or. Business owners and real estate investing just happens to be a part of that. And so, like I said, we did weekly meetings, we started doing KPIs, and we did the whole organizational chart.

So what do we want our business to look like in three to five years for those people who are responsible for them? And how can we get there? So right now, yet we don't seem to have the super big structure. But I think knowing that we know what the structure is going to look like and we have that mindset in place now is going to help us grow and really develop into that ecosystem.

That is a great point, that getting the foundations sort of settled on how you're going to do it allows you to scale it. I think it affects your subconscious quite a bit when you're when, you know, if we go bigger, it'll be OK versus your subconscious. Knowing if we go bigger, the whole thing's going to collapse on us. You'll hold yourself back. I know one thing that stops a lot of people from getting into real estate investing is that they don't understand how to estimate rehabs when they're buying a property.

Usually it's their first property. But I think even after you've got one, if you see what could be a good fixer upper or a good deal and you just have zero idea of how to sell, how much is going to cost to fix it up, you guys are doing a lot of your own work. Can you walk us through what your process is when you first walk a property to figure out how much you need to budget for the remodel?

Yeah, so we at first were just walking it with a paper and pen and it just wasn't the most useful system. And very easily you miss things, you miscalculate and we're only talking about thirteen hundred square foot homes, three bed, one bath. You expand that to a 20, 500 square foot home and a three to five thousand dollar is now a ten to fifteen thousand dollar. So Lauren actually developed an er table program, which we have all the prices for material because we use the same material over and over again and our labor costs.

So we just go right in and punch whether the property needs it and it's given us a calculation while we walk the property. So by the time we leave, we already know what it's going to cost to renovate the place.

Do you mind walking us through what some of those would be? And when you're looking at flooring, when you're looking at a roof, when you're looking at plumbing, how do you sort of eyeball it so that people who don't have your background in construction or rehabs can feel somewhat confident that this is a property they should pursue, where they should walk away from?

Yeah. So when we first walk up to the house, I mean, looking at the roof, is there a green hue? A lot of our roofs in that area that we invest are there flat top roofs. So you can gauge a lot by just looking at the soffit, whether it's got water damage or not. And we just assume it is a roof repair. We just budget for a roof repair. Then as we go in, we try to save what we can and not just demo everything.

What can we keep so linear foot of cabinetry, things like that. We just pull measurements and kind of we know, like I said, when we leave.

But if you don't have construction experience or you have experience, I think the best thing is to have a contractor walk with you. And I know that's a hard relationship to build. Like, hey, at some point in the future, I might buy a property. Will you come and quote me? But I would say one definitely paying for their time once you get that first estimate, as long as they itemize it. And again, this might cost you, then you could kind of take those optimizations and you could really calculate any rehab moving forward, at least for what you see for the most part.

So, like, if you get an estimate and the guy's going to charge you three dollars for lying and that includes material and labor, well, then, you know, any time moving forward, you're just going to pull a measurement and you got that. So I think if you have no experience, unfortunately, it's got to bite the bullet and take that upfront cost of hiring a contractor and paying them to do a quote, even if they're not going to do the work just so you can get that itemized breakdown.

This is such a good point you bring up here. I want to I want to make this clear because it's about it's about more than real estate, but it will apply to real estate right now. And I'm using an analogy like I tend to do if I go to the gym. Right. So the first time you go to the gym, you have no idea what any of that equipment does. There's five hundred things of equipment. Then you have no idea.

But if you go there and you like you learn one of those things and you get kind of good at it, like and how do you learn it? You ask the people standing around you, have you pay for a personal trainer to go walk you through the first dozen equipment things you watch them, other people do it. You maybe watch a YouTube video and like, I'll put my YouTube like at the gym if there's a machine. I don't know what it does or even if it is.

I know I want to learn that. I want to make sure I'm doing the proper form. Right. So those are all things that I do. And then once I know that thing, this is what you were saying is like once you know that, you've got it from then on out. So what I think people that are new to real estate, especially, they get into it. They're like, well, I don't know how to estimate rehab cos there's all these complicated things.

Oh, I guess I better just sit down and watch some TV instead. Or like rather than realizing like if you just add that, like you figure out, OK, I don't know how to estimate Floriane, how am I going to figure that out. I bet you a Google search or talking to a contractor, paying a contractor, you'll figure that out and then you'll never need to figure that out again.

And unlike the gym where there's five hundred different machines, they're like in reality, they're probably like fifty things on a on a rental property or a borough rehab that you, like, need to learn.

There's like the plumbing. You need to figure out how the plumbing is estimated and electrical and it's not terribly complicated. Maybe fifty is even is more like I think there's eighteen categories that Jay Scott has in the book on estimating rehab costs the like. It's not a horribly complicated thing.

So I got my encouragement for people listening. This is just like it is going to be difficult in the beginning. Most things are, but the more you do it. And the more you practice and you ask the question, how do I do it? You'll figure it out and then never have to do it again. David, I want to throw this question over to you is how how do you from a distance especially estimate rehab cost?

What are you relying on there? Yeah, this I sort of got better at this from helping our clients that were buying houses for because they have these same questions. We find a deal. They say that's great. And we say, hey, here's the vision for how we're going to fix it up. This is what it'll be worth. We put together all the things that we're telling the people in bigger pockets. This is what you should look at.

But they still have the question of how do we know what it costs? So what we do now is we take a video of the inside of the property and we send it to our contractor and we'll say, OK, to do the flooring, to do the roof, to to remodel the kitchen. Give me a ballpark of what it would cost, make it a little more expensive than you actually think it's going to be so that they don't get caught off guard.

And then a lot of times the sellers will have inspection reports that we can also send. What would it cost to fix this electrical problem when they don't have inspection reports? You usually have to wait till you get your own. But oftentimes contractors have done this so many times they can tell you if you need new electrical, if we have to reroute plumbing, it'll be about this much. So I just started applying that same strategy to my own deals.

So now when I'm looking at properties, I'll ask the sellers, do you have any inspection reports? Do you have a report from when you bought the house? If they bought it two years ago or something, then there's a good chance that they still have something. And I have them send me the video, which I sent to my contractor. Now he's going to give me California prices. Usually if it's somewhere else, it'll be less. But shoot, if it'll work for California prices, it'll work if it's going to be less.

What about you?

What have you figured out to solve this problem? Yeah.

So like you, I do a video, like I'll do a video walk through. In fact, I was over in Oahu, the other island in Hawaii, and I live in Maui.

But doesn't Oahu with two weeks ago and my wife was here and then a deal came on the market. And I want to go look at right away. But I, I was on Oahu for a couple of days and I couldn't get back. And so my wife went and she just walked around with a camera. So this is what we typically do. And it showed how it worked really well. We just record a camera walking around the place, recording everything.

And then I usually just go home and I get on a on either a spreadsheet or like bigger pockets, actually has a rehab estimate or calculator, which we designed to work exactly like this. It just it divides everything into categories. So I'm like, OK, check one roof. Well, it's a condo. Don't worry about that. Right. Landscaping. Oh, it's kind of don't worry about that. Oh, Floriane. And I'll just say, OK, Floriane, how many square feet is this property.

Oh it's I don't know. Nine hundred square feet. OK, well if I figure three dollars a square foot, which is you could get by Googling that anywhere between two and four, two and five depending on the level you want to do. But I'm like, OK, three bucks per square foot. It's like we'll call it three thousand dollars for flooring boom. Now I'm done with flooring and I'm like I can move on. Like that's good enough.

And then when I came back from a war whose I did that whole thing, I estimated the rehab cost came back. Then I looked at the property in person. We just got under contract and looked at it and like I was exactly right on, even though I'd never seen the thing just because the video got me just by doing catagories, there was nothing surprising there anyway. So that's how I do it. I get a video and I sit down and I put into categories and then just ask the question, Florian, how much is it going to be here if I don't know, ask the question, how do I figure that out?

So anything you guys want to add onto that one, Cayler Lauran.

Yes. Just to take away from walking the properties, we had our local meet up. We had a member. We were in the middle of a rehab and he asked us if you could come walk the property with us. And he was just getting into it was going to be his first property. He was going to go put an offer in on. And he took a lot away from how we were going about renovating, how we came up with our numbers, because he was going to be investing in the same market that we were doing our property.

Yeah, that's smart.

I hope you're enjoying this episode of The Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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So let's shift gears a little bit from the rehab side and go backward in the funnel a little bit. How are you finding these properties in the first place?

Imex, we've done the MLS, we've done direct mail and wholesalers. So it's kind of just been we're putting leads out everywhere and seeing what works.

OK, so fill in your funnel, kind of run it through it so it works. So let's let's delve in the direct mail. What's worked with you with direct mail marketing?

Because that's something that it's a little more complicated strategy, but, you know, it's a Gulf market thing.

So we're doing this what I call like a DIY approach. So we're doing super targeted supernet. We're only sending out about 30 letters at a time, but we're driving four dollars. We are deploying expired listings, which has worked out super well for us. But we just like really narrowed down our criteria. So I know how I kind of said before that you don't want to have your blinders on, but now that we know what works, especially in this market for buyers, we are like super focused.

We know we want three bed, one bath, over a thousand square feet, preferably under thirteen hundred needs a certain amount of renovation. And so we're really targeting those owners. And granted, this might be a little bit beginner's luck, but our very first direct mail campaign, I think we sent out forty seven letters and we got a deal from it. So we're still doing that. But we just try to be like super hyperfocus. We put a picture of ourselves and the letter we talk about how we love the community like we don't want to be the we buy houses people we want to be Lauren and Kyle, your friends from down the street who are going to help you solve your problem.

That makes sense. You know, I was going to say you you may have gotten lucky on that, but really what you did is you're taking the rifle approach, right. Instead of like the shotgun approach. So like you're like, I'm going to target these specific properties and you get very, very specific on how you're going to do that. And yeah, you can get away higher conversion rate when that's what you do, simply driving for dollars. I mean, if you go download a list of, like every property for sale or every property in my area, that's absentee and then you mail all of them, that's like the you're going to mail ten thousand people.

You're going to like 12 phone calls maybe because everyone's doing that. And it's just it's not that it doesn't work, it can work. But you're taking a very different approach and it's kind of the approach we take as well. I got to open your capital with the mobile home parks and we pick specific ones and then we go after them hard with really good like info. Not just a crappy postcard necessarily, but we will write a letter or we'll send them a gift or we'll we'll do something creative, try to get it.

So, yeah, the raffle approach definitely works. If you're new and you don't have a five thousand dollar budget for direct mail. Yeah.

Then you got to compensate by doing a really, really good job on picking your the people you want to go after. And so you want to know.

I want to get a little bit of clarity from you guys. You mentioned the strategy. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means and then how you guys execute that strategy yourselves.

So Burmese by renovate, rent, refinance and repeat, hopefully at the end. And our very first budget deal happens where a wholesaler contacted us and we were able to get this off my good deal. And because we were able to DIY that one ourselves with renovations, we are able to save money and make it work. Now we're moving forward and we're like, we don't want to do the renovations. We want it to take a trooper. So our focus is now.

But what we learned from that first property is that when we got the appraisal report, the appraisal shows you exactly what items the appraiser is looking at when they're coming for the after repair value. So now we have this almost like the contractors quote that you paid for once and now you could use nothing for it. And we kind of just like work backwards and reverse engineer the appraisal report. So we know that an enclosed front porch adds two thousand dollars, we know, and end unit of a row home at three thousand dollars.

We know that a fenced in yard doesn't have to be vinyl. It could be chainlink adds a thousand dollars. So now we take that that thing we paid for once and we use that for all of our future buyers to do our renovations. We know should we do centrally or should we do stainless appliances? So that's been super helpful for us and is making our borders more efficient, smart.

I don't think I've ever actually heard that tip before is by looking at the appraisal report. Figure out where his appraiser. Yeah, that's really good. You have me wondering how you could get appraisal reports from other houses in the area. Like if you looked it up and you saw who the realtor was, can you ask them if they would talk to their client? If you gave him a hundred bucks, if they sent you over the appraisal from their property, you could put together a really good picture for a neighborhood and what properties are worth.

A thousand percent at our local meetup, we all invest in the same area. We are very open about being friends with our competition because you don't view it that way. We don't have enough money to buy the entire neighborhood. You'd rather be friends with them. And I don't know if this is kosher, but we all share our appraisal reports and we know so-and-so got screwed a little bit on his duplex. OK, we're noticing that single families are appraising a bit more.

OK, maybe we'll shift our focus and focus on that.

Yeah, that's that's really, really, really smart. I like that a lot. All right. So you're I love that the birth strategy is something the David I mean, David, you wrote a book called BRX by Rehabber and Refinance Repeat so people can check that out. Of course, in what's cool, too, is when when you talked about maybe it was beginner's luck with that first direct mail that you did and you got a deal. One thing I'll make the point is that the reason we all like birth's so much is because you're you're it's like flipping houses.

Right. But instead of selling them, you're going to keep the property. Because of that, we can pay more than house flippers. We can pay more than wholesaler's. We can pay more than what a lot of people can do. But the retail buyers, they don't want to touch those things. They're usually nasty properties. So we're in this really cool spot where you can pay more than everyone else. And therefore, some of the strategies that maybe are really competitive and hard for the flippers and the wholesalers, the investors can swoop in there.

So I'm sure, like a lot of flippers, I just hate the BR people because, like, we could just simply pay more. Like, I don't like this condo I'm buying right now. It's kind of a blur. I don't know if I'll actually end up refinancing them. I keep the money in there, but like, it needs a little bit of work to make it nicer.

But like we're in negotiations and they weren't like they were asking, I think it was like 800 and I offered them like 740. And we went back and forth and like, the guy just did not want to come down much. We ended up like seven eighty five.

But like, honestly, I hope these guys listen to but I don't really care like this stupid. But like if I paid seven fifty or seven seventy or seven seventy five because 30 years from now it just does not matter. I don't care that I paid seven eighty five versus 780.

So like the realtor was like oh man, they just won't, they won't do that final five thousand dollar drop. Do you want to walk.

I'm like well of course I don't want to walk over like a half a percent. Like come on. Like, like it just doesn't matter. And it's that mentality. Now I was not going to buy overpay that I to lose money on a on a cash flow that it's good a cash flow for me. But long term that's what's fun about the strategy.

You guys agree. And that's cool. So again, it's different strategies, learning different things, doing a better job of the direct mail or the reach out. Actually, one more one more story on that note.

There's a house I may have started telling the story once on another episode. I can't remember, but there's a house in my neighborhood that I really wanted. Like I'm driven by it 100 times. I started mailing the person just with like a like one of the driving apps and then send them some some postcards and stuff. And I just I put, like, half effort into it. And because it was one of many houses we've been mailing in in Maui and my partner and I and so I didn't put a lot of effort like it was a very generic, like letter and postcard.

I didn't do like what you guys are doing. Right.

And I didn't get like the guy never called me nothing. And then the other day I'm talking my buddy Tal Tara has been on the podcast a couple of times and he's a really good like he's a good investor and he's like, yeah, you know, that house because he lives up here to now and he's like, hey, you know that house over there?

He's like, I'm getting another contract. And I was like, I've been meeting that guy for like six months. He's like, oh yeah. I just like found his phone number and skip him. And then I found somebody that knew him, a neighbor. So I'm like that and asked for for introductions. That was a warm intro. And then I talked to the guy and I hit it off. We talked for like a half hour and then ended up getting it.

And I'm like, he did what I wasn't willing to do, right? Like he put in the work. He did the rifle approach on a property he knew he wanted. And I was a shotgun and stuff out there. And anyway, so just shows like, again, if you're new, if you're in a competitive market, put in the hustle, put in the time needed to get those things. And then if you're going to burn, you can pay more.

No one else in it. All the stuff still works, even in a super competitive market when you're smart like that.

So anyway, good job title for kicking my butt on that one. The title, my whole it to me. We don't know. We'll say, all right, so let's move on and talk about funding. How are you guys affording to buy these properties?

The first couple we started with our own savings. We moved on to using private money, which was one of our buyers, and that was luckily a family member. But we still set up the terms just like we would be using a private lender, because we do want to eventually use outside private lenders. And that was essentially a perfect board. We had no money left in that deal when we were done. Using private money has been a really good experience for us because we definitely started out as like, oh my God, I asked my parents to help us fund this deal.

And now our mindset definitely turned into now we're providing an investment opportunity for people and we feel like we have a better foundation to grow that private money aspect moving forward. And it all has been happening with like in the last six or 10 months with covid. Unfortunately, a lot of bad things have been happening, but it's really allowed us to really sit down and start treating this thing like a business. And so that growth has been happening in all areas of investing for us.

And it's just really cool to say our super excited about trying to buy one.

So this is an interesting topic as you broach this idea of private lending to whoever you're going to borrow from. How do you typically initiate that conversation?

If it's a family member, it would be a different approach and if it's somebody else. But what we have been doing is trying to really, like, legitimize ourselves. So we created and invest with us package, which is basically a downloadable PDF that introduced people to us a little bit. What we've been doing gives a full breakdown of our entire portfolio. What's the value, what are rents, what's going on? And then we share a vision of where we want to go.

And then we invite people to be a part of that vision with us. Then we also give them a sample deal. We got this from Matt Fair book. I definitely do not make this up, but get a sample deal, which looks just like a deal that you're hoping to do in the future and let them know, hey, if I brought you a deal that looks just like this, would you invest with us? And what questions do you have?

Do you need to bring this over to your spouse so you guys can marinate on a little bit, try to get all those conversations out of the way so that when a deal does come, you can just rock and roll and move forward. So having all this kind of like documents has been helpful for us.

This is so incredibly important, like this idea of what you're saying. I want everyone to listen very carefully to what you guys just said. Rewind this. Listen again.

It's like when you approach a private lender or really almost I mean, are you going to expand this beyond real estate? But like, if you approach a private lender and you're like, yeah, you know, I do real estate or I kind of want to I'm thinking about it. Anything you ever want to do with me, you'll let me know. Cool. Like it.

Just like it just shows you are just not professional. It doesn't exude confidence. There's like, OK, well that's just, you know, whatever. And it's going to be really, really difficult. But treat it like a business like we keep saying today, like put together like you said. What did you call it. The in invest with us. Invest with us. Yeah. Love, love, love, love.

That explains it. Here's why you should do it. And even if you're brand new, like find a reason why people should invest with you in credit and invest with us packett like it's just find your way to make yourself look professional and good because everyone understands this concept.

How you do anything is how you do everything that's talking with a buddy the other day about that. He's got a cleaning business that cleans houses for people and he doesn't have a website or business cards, no business cards, whatever. You know, you can take him or leave him. But at least like they show, like your professional, you have something. So when he's talking to people to ask about his business, there's like, well, yeah, I clean houses.

Oh, cool. You know, like what kind to learn more about. Well, there's nowhere really to learn more.

Just this is what it is like. I just put together like something simple, even like a one page piece of paper. You're like this is whatever home cleaning. And here's what we offer and here's what we charge. And here's four testimonials that how good we work. And here's our guarantee. And like all of a sudden, people like, oh, it's a it's a thing. And they'll they'll invest or their buy or they'll they'll work with a thing.

But people just want to work with somebody just, you know, throwing things in the air.

So and something that we didn't do strategically, but that's worked really well for us is having an Instagram account. We started putting stuff on Instagram just because, like, hey, we're doing this thing and I want to document it and not love my personal feed. My friends don't care as much. So we started it and it became a visual resume that we didn't know we had. So we had a private lender reach out to us and he invited us out to me.

And we're so prepared. We got our iPad, we got our investor with packett. We got everything. We're so excited. We're going to share all the numbers. We're going to show them all the pictures. And he was like, oh, no, I've seen the stuff you guys do on Instagram. Like I know you're good at this is more just like a sanity check.

OK, so you have someone who's interested. You've given them to invest with us package. They say, yeah, I think I would do this. What are the actual forms or documentation that you need to solidify this? So it's safe for them. It's safe for you. And everybody understands what the terms of the deal are.

There are two major things. One is the promissory note, which spells out the terms and basically you're personally guaranteeing the loan. And then the other thing is filing documents with the county and we'll just have a lawyer do that. So I can't dive deep into, like, what actual forms they are. But that's an example of I could spend a lot of time figuring out that process or I can just pay somebody to do it for me and make sure they do it correctly.

So in the scaling traction mindset, I was like, let's just hire a lawyer.

So what are you guys approximately what are you paying the lawyer to do this for you?

So I believe the first time she dropped it off the documents for us and I was like five hundred bucks and now we kind of just freeze them.

OK, so you paid five hundred bucks for paperwork that you can use every single time. Yeah, yeah. That I know. And people are like they want to save money on that like like. Oh yeah. That's such a good point that it doesn't cost. I think people are afraid of lawyers, one I think they're afraid are going to be thirty thousand. That's exactly why. Yes. Yeah. Because that's what everyone thinks is. Yeah. I can't afford a lawyer.

Yeah, what are lawyers costs? I don't know, but I know I can't afford one. And this came into play, too, when we were doing off my megadeal. So the first time we were done off Margaretville, I don't know how to close and off make a deal like our agent had always done that for us. And so we reached out to a lawyer and she's like, I could do it two ways. I could either drafted the documents and then you do everything else, or I can kind of like hold your hand through that process, like all work at the title company.

I'll order the appraisal on the survey or whatever. And so the first time I was like, I want the handholding. But what I did is during the handholding we took notes. We're like, OK, Shemale, the title company on this day, she sent this document to this person and basically it created an S.O.P of what she was doing. And now we just use her to draft the documents. And I do the process myself.

You know, this reminds me of your gym analogy, your first time in the gym. You don't know how the machines work, so you just won't go. But you pay your personal trainer to show you how to use them. And at a certain point you say, OK, I don't really need the personal trainer, I can do it. This is the same thing we're talking about. What I want to highlight is that I think what most people consider I'm going to go to the gym, let's it cost.

Well, this is your membership. This is what you're going to pay for suppliments. And this is your personal trainer fee. And you assume it will always be that expensive or people assume I'm always going to have to pay a lawyer. But like Lauren just said, no, you pay for that the first one or two times because you want the handholding. But once you've shown me how all this stuff works, it's not scary anymore. Now, I can kind of do it on my own.

I think we talk ourselves out of it is what I'm getting out of, assuming it's always going to be this expensive every single time we do it.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Also, it goes to the L.L.C. question. I mean, how many times you get you and I get these questions like, do I need an LLC to invest in real estate? Do I have to have an LLC? I never got the question. And the answer is like, yes, no, maybe. I don't know. Like like we say we'll talk to a lawyer and then people just never will. And the funny thing is, just like with the dollar amount thing, like if you had to get a phone call and this is why I tell people, if you're really concerned about the LLC thing, OK, get on a 30 minute phone call with an attorney, with an attorney and a CPA at the same time, three way call, you're going to pay one hundred and fifty bucks for a half hour with an attorney.

One hundred fifty bucks for that CPA. OK, so three hundred dollars for thirty minutes of really smart people telling you exactly what to do together. And they can they can bounce back and forth. In other words, you can answer the entire question for three hundred bucks, like specifically for you in your situation, you can learn exactly whether or not you should have an LLC or not in a thirty minute conversation for three dollars. And some people have been sitting on the sidelines of real estate thinking, well, I just can't get into it now for the last six months or a year because I don't know the answer to that question.

I don't know what to do.

And it's like in reality, it's pretty simple, like to go get that answer to that question and then do it.

So the real question is, is it the is that the money of the attorney and that what everyone's afraid of or that just the excuse that they're using because fear is causing them not to take action they don't want admit that there's defrayed.

So instead they said, well, I don't know the LLC thing, and that's where I would I would want people to really dig into their souls and ask what really is stopping me from moving forward today.

Well, let's ask you to that. Did you guys even care about opening an LLC or did you just jump in there and start buying properties?

We asked that question just like you said. I mean, hundreds of times we're still asking it, what's the correct answer? And we just started buying it. Our names. I mean, we just have a nice umbrella policy for asset protection, and that's where we sit down.

We're still kind of continuing to buy in on it and we try to stay educated throughout. So right now, we're really focusing on being an offensive protector. So LSD protects you once you get sued. But what are the things we could do to just prevent us from getting sued in the beginning? So those are the things that we're really focusing on, good contracts, working with licensed professionals, making sure we have everything really squared away. And as we're growing, yes, we realize and Alliss going to be part of our strategy moving forward.

But if we waited to answer that question, listen, we were already analysis paralysis. I didn't need to research El-Aziz now. So, like, let's just find her personally.

You can always change it later. Yes.

This is also a great point that you mentioned. Rather than trying to find the right answer for what I'm Sude, how do I avoid just ever getting sued? Such a smarter way to approach it.

And this comes up a lot for me when people like my own California property and I represent people and California is notoriously not a landlord friendly state. So it scares a lot of people like I don't want to buy in California. If it goes to court, I'm going to lose. And I I've never. Well, yes, the very first house I ever bought. I went to court because I did everything wrong. I didn't vet a tenant. I just grabbed him, threw him in there for someone off Craigslist, literally didn't call a reference, didn't check their credit.

Nothing. Since then, I hired a property manager my entire time of investing in real estate. Never, ever, ever have I needed to even have these landlord friendly or tenant friendly laws come into play because I buy in, be in a class areas. I have property management, Skout, the tenants and I rent to people that have something to lose. They don't want their credit hammered. They don't want to have like an eviction on their record.

They would be embarrassed if they did something like that. So these laws that are meant to protect landlords never come into play. And that's something I've realized is if you're choosing where you're going to invest based on the worst case scenario and where you're safest in that, you're probably doing it wrong. You're better off to avoid ever getting in a situation where where that would happen, and I think that this is just a great thing to point out, that you're taking the right approach.

How do I make sure I never get in that situation? Most of the questions that people ask Brandolini that are tough to answer have to do with like the equivalent of, OK, somebody's got my back. They've sunk in a rear naked choke. I've got three seconds to figure this out. How do I get out of this?

Right. Let's get another jujitsu. Yeah, we're doing a lot of those.

But the point is, you screwed up 12 times before you got to that point. Let's go back to that and try to avoid doing it. So the next question I want to ask you guys, when you've got the private money, you have an investor, you found the deal, you drove four dollars. You've got a seller who's willing to put it under contract.

What can someone expect as far as the timing and the logistical things that have to happen once all of the ink is dry and you've got a contract?

So it depends for us at least who's responsible for the certificate of occupancy, but it can be as quick as twenty four hours and it could be as long as 30 days and that we really kind of live up to the seller. If it's their primary residence, do they need time to move out? If they're an absentee landlord, do they want it off their books immediately or really just here trying to solve their problem as best as possible for us? Twenty days has been the sweet spot for everyone to kind of get their ducks in a row and make sure everyone's happy.

So what's happening during those twenty days? If you want an inspection, you're getting an inspection will sometimes waive those to get a cheaper price. The title company is doing the title report to make sure there's no liens. We have to communicate with the lender or the private lender to make sure that they have that proper instructions how to wire money either to the closing table or to us. So it really just kind of is a lot of logistics and a lot of that can be done in less than five days.

But twenty days has been what it's been for us.

Yeah, that's cool. I mean, I usually do like the whole like I can call within ten days and I would tell people that. And then I found that especially in Hawaii, you can't close in ten days. You know, I it's like, like this. They don't move that fast here.

This is like, like, well I can get you an inspection in a couple of weeks from now, you know, it just everything works very, very slow here. So I know I even like the condo that I just got under contract for. I'm going to do a vacation rental thing with it.

I'm going to like I gave myself sixty days of clothes just because of how much problems I've had in the past with just how slow some people move.

And that's just, you know, your area and do it as fast as you can. But if you need more time, take more time. I'd rather not be stressed right now.

Now, what about the private money that the money itself is something that a lot of new investors don't understand?

Like does a private lender just put all the cash in a duffel bag and then throw it on your front porch and you guys go and drop it off at the seller's house?

Like, well, obviously not. But walk us through a where does the flow of money go in that process?

Usually goes to an escrow account, so they'll wire it to the closing table and then you can take it out of there for renovation. So never actually comes into your personal pocket, which is nice. And then it keeps super clean. And then if your going to be doing a delayed financing, which is like the new trendy thing that everyone's doing, you want that money to be documented at the closing table because then when you go to refinance, there is documentation of that and then you could pull out that money plus the renovation costs.

Yeah, why don't you explain delayed financing for those who don't know what that is? I love that this is Lawrence Lane and it's not my way. He's not lingering. He's not coming in. So, Julie, financing is very similar to just cash out refinancing. But you can do it sooner than the six months seizing period that most banks want. And the reason is that you can't pull out any additional money then you actually put in. So at the closing table on the final documents, you're going to put the purchase price, you're going to put the estimated rehab cost and any additional cost, maybe like interest or closing fees.

And you're only going to be able to refinance the amount of money that's sitting on that closing statement. You're only to be able to refinance what's on that closing statement? So some banks will be able to refinance the day you finish renovations or maybe the day you place the tenant and then you'll get all that money back. And so the major difference is really just timing, financing. You could do sooner and you can't take out additional where a conventional cash out refinance usually has a four to six month, maybe nine months using period.

But if you do a great job, you can pull out additional cash if the equity sitting there.

Yeah. So this is something that I'm going I'm going to pick your brain on it. If you know the answer to this, I'm using you as my own personal. I'm going to pick your brain here. All right. So this condo that I got under control right now, like I said, seven eighty five, I think is where I'm at on it. It needs thirty five thousand dollars of work.

My plan is now this is going to get a little bit like legal reasons, like, can I do this for the ten thirty one. I'm not sure, but avoid that for now. So if I were to buy this property and then on the clothing for all cash flows, I just paid one hundred percent cash for this property.

Can I use delayed financing.

So that way I can then basically when I refinance it or finance it here a month from now, once the repairs are done, I can get back the money I put into repairs because like right now, like I can I can put the down payment down, but the repairs, I have to come out of pocket with it.

I'm going to invest that in the deal forever. So delay financing is a way for me to get my repairs back. Right. If I do it right on the closing statement, is that right? Correct.

And as long as the RV is there and it's seventy five. Over 80 percent of dairy. Yeah, yeah, interesting, I think I think I might have to look into that again. The thing that might throw a wrench in that is because the down payment is coming from a ten thirty one. I wonder how that would work. I use half my own cash, have ten thirty one, then refinanced the whole thing. I don't know, I'll figure that out later but it's an interesting one.

OK, before we move on to our next part of the show, let's take one last break to hear from our show sponsors.

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Fine, how much money you can save in just a few clicks. All right. So let's move over to one last topic before we kind of begin to wrap things up. And I want to talk. You mentioned the word analysis paralysis. I want to know, like, what is analysis paralysis and how did you guys overcome that to get your first deals, to start building momentum and to get to where you are today?

Well, we were reading so many books. And just when do you know enough to get some skin in the game? You know, I would say it was probably three years close to before we actually made our first move. We overcame it really by just structuring it. And reverse engineering law could kind of break it down. But we want to get a house. So what do you have to do to get a house go for it?

Well, because it was so scary, like buying a house is a huge, overwhelming task because there are so many steps and you just kind of don't know where to start. And we were just stuck in it. And it was to the point where I was like, we going to do this or move on because, you know, we took the advice. We're calling ourselves investors before we even had a property, because you got to be it, before you could be it.

I was like, we're just lying now and we're wasting a lot of time reading. And so we kind of broke it down. Like I said, reverse engineering. It was like, what is the one task I have to do right now to get me to the next task? Because I was so worried about. But then what about this later on? But it wasn't even doing the first step. Kind of like the LC analogy, for example, you're giving before you won't even buy your first deal because you don't know the answer to what's going to happen when you get sued ten years from now.

So, I mean, we kind of came up with a little acronym, acronyms called GRIP, but it's basically you really need to, like, get a grip on yourself. So first one's goal. So you've got to set a goal. Maybe that's buying your first property. Maybe it's switching to a new asset class. The next one is ah, and it's reverse engineer. So just starting with the end in mind, work backwards and break all the steps down into something as simple as possible.

And then I identify the first step. What is that first thing you need to do and then p perform. Do not even look at step number two until the first step is done. And what we realized is that like you started doing productive procrastination. Well, I'm not going to listen to Brandon and David one more time and I'll have more information and I'll totally be ready. But if you guys are talking about ten thirty one exchanges and I'm still working on my first property, is that really productive for me?

Obviously, everyone should keep listening to this podcast all the time, but take one thing from whatever you're doing and then go implement it and make sure that you're only focusing on that first task. So don't be reading about losses if you don't plan on starting one yet. And there are so many problems that you come across in the middle of these deals that you didn't read about and you only learn just by experience to them. And then it's that documentation that's going to help you on your next property to either avoid that problem or you don't know the answer to it.

Yeah, that's that's a good point, is that you will figure out as you go through the analogy of driving through fog, you drive through fog and you can't see the deer in the road a mile ahead. You don't know if there is one or the road and is a bridge out. You don't know any of that stuff. But if you pull over to the side of the road, you never get anywhere. So it's best just to just keep driving, maybe slow down a little bit if you need to.

But like, just keep driving through the fog, don't pull over. And if you just keep taking little baby steps forward, there's always a zone of clarity around you. Like when you really stop and think about, you can always figure out the next step. You can't always figure out the 10th next step because it's too far away. So just keep moving forward. Keep asking what does that next thing I got to do and you'll figure it out.

All right. Let's move on then to almost the last section of the show.

I do have one more question, actually, before we get to the famous four, I'm wondering what our audience can do to bring value to you guys right now. What are you looking for in your real estate business right now? And you're looking for deals, looking for something else like what do you need?

Looking for deals? Definitely looking for private money. I mean, not really. Our immediate need right now is we are doing a lot of video content like we get. Ed, if you guys want to trade editing time for some real estate knowledge, we'll make that happen, like coaching or something.

Or to get inundated, but smart, right, to tell you what you got and make it up and help somebody else and yeah, yeah, having a video editor changed my life. I got a guy named MJ. He's amazing. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, you should get that. It's awesome.

All right. Let's move on then to the last segment of the show.

It's time for our famous for.

This is the part of the show where we have the same four questions to every guest every week. We're to fire at you right now. Question number one, what is your favorite real estate related book?

I mean, what you said before, and I don't want to keep sucking up, but seven years to seven figure wealth was game changing for us. That paired with Stockport. I was I know everyone says was like, really what got us to invest. And people always ask us, you know, how do you convince your spouse or how do you get your partner on board? And kind of I spent so much time researching, really investing. How am I supposed to convey this is somebody who hasn't read a single blog and just slapping that ebook down was the answer.

I don't read convincing a guy that doesn't read books and then having that be the first real estate book. Yeah, it was a game changer. Well, that's cool, man.

Yeah, well, if anybody else wants to copy it, I just show up to any of the bigger pockets webinars that I teach every week. I give it away every week though, and that's awesome.

I don't think anybody ever said that on the show before. So yeah, I think. Very cool. Yeah. All right. All right. What is your favorite business book? We would have subtraction.

We've talked about that enough. Right now I'm reading the math and that kind of just really ties into traction and focusing on, like, I figure how they break it down. But you don't want to be the person that's like working in the business. You want to be the person working on it. And that's been really huge for us. We're fine right now putting all of this work in, but it's still fun. And I obviously hope real estate is going to stay being fun for us.

But we also need to have the future in mind. And like when we have kids and we have more responsibilities, it's just not going to be feasible for us. So the events are really fun to read.

Yeah, I feel like the math is like the emotional or the spiritual side of traction.

You know, like tractions. Like here is exactly how you do it. And the math is like I believe it. Like I get it now. So yeah. Amazing.

Amazing book. Right. OK, next question. What about your hobbies. Oh man.

Anything to do with On the beach. We love surfing, fishing or huge beach people.

So yeah, we got scuba certified last summer and it's been a little difficult to do that with covid. But yeah, anything that involves in the water boating, we just like to be outside.

That's awesome. All right. Last question for me. What do you think separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail or never get started? You alluded to this earlier in the conversation, but I really think it's just the fear of doing something that's uncomfortable. We have so many people reach out to us and they say, hey, look, what's the best first step? And we promote how we can just because we feel like it's a really great way to tip toe in a real Samsung.

And it's like, well, I'm married and have kids. OK, well, there's other ways you can house actually like the house for under contract on right now. It's a side by side duplex and each side has five bedrooms. Could you and your family live there? Probably. So I think it's just wanting the goal enough more than fearing the worst case scenario, you know, and like with analysis process, there's so much decision and decision. It's easy for you to stay stuck and not do anything.

She's got to pressure the fear. And I think that's really the big difference.

Anything you want to add on, like, oh, yeah, just you come up to a roadblock and instead just turn around and going home, you know, find a solution to that roadblock. This has been phenomenal. I guess I'll leave it to you. David, last question of the day. Where can people find out more about you?

Definitely Instagram. We're big there. If you DMAs, we promise we'll answer. And we just launched our own YouTube channel. So if you guys want to follow along with us as we're investing in growing our portfolio, we'd love to have you with us.

Right. Very cool. And what's that? What's the Instagram handle rentals to well. Oh, good cats. Friends also. Well, rentals to well.

All right. Go follow them right now. Yeah. Right now I'm talking to you guys listening right now. Go follow them and follow David while you're at it.

You need more followers. You got to go.

I'm I look really bad compared to Brad and I. It's pretty embarrassing. That's not your your account looks awesome. Anyway, David Greene. Twenty four rentals to wealth. And I'm, of course, beardie Brandon. And I'll let David you take a thought here. Thank you guys so much today for joining us. This has been a long time coming and I am just super glad to know you guys. You guys are great.

Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. Really great job, guys.

This is David Greene for Brandon. Writing books that are changing real estate. Turnour signing up.

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