BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 545: Fat FI by 23: Building a 7-Figure Income & 8-Figure Portfolio in 3 Years

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Fat FI and generational wealth in THREE years?! How is that possible? The sooner you forge good money habits, the sooner YOU can achieve your FI goal. Today’s guest wanted to build wealth as soon as possible, and in this episode, he will share the secrets to his enormous (and rapid) success! Only a few years ago, Josh Janus was flipping sneakers he couldn’t afford and making DoorDash deliveries for a little cash. Today, he has a seven-figure income and an eight-figure real estate portfolio. Fat FI at the age of just twenty-three, Josh still has his entire life ahead of him and a significant net worth to deploy however he chooses. Will he continue to grind away as a real estate agent, working eighty-hour weeks and optimizing his time for even higherearnings? Or will he take his foot off the gas and enjoy some of the wealth he’s worked so hard to build? Now, you may be in a very different season of life than Josh. After a family, career, and maybe even a late start to your FI journey, this explosive wealth-building trajectory might not be in the cards. But even if you don’t aspire to build a $15 million multifamily portfolio or revitalize your hometown, a few years of extreme discipline and sacrifice will unlock all kinds of financial opportunities. Tune in to Josh’s incredible story and find out how! Support today’s show sponsor, BAM Capital, your path to generational wealth with premier real estate investment opportunities!  In This Episode We Cover How Josh achieved financial independence in just THREE years (at twenty-three!) How to grow a seven-figure income as a real estate agent and investor Building a large real estate portfolio (starting with little to no money!) Increasing your income by evaluating your schedule for delegable tasks How practicing discipline and sacrifice can fast-track your journey to FI And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group Network with Other Investors on The Path to FIRE Through the BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Join BiggerPockets for FREE Mindy on BiggerPockets Scott on BiggePockets Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area Find Investor-Friendly Lenders Property Manager Finder See Scott and Kyle at BPCON2024 in Cancun! BiggerPockets Real Estate - Episode 749: From DoorDasher to $1.5 MILLION in Real Estate (All at 22 Years Old!) with Josh Janus 00:00 Intro 02:03 Josh’s Money Snapshot 10:34 What’s the End Goal? 13:13 Flipping Sneakers to Learning Real Estate 25:12 Becoming an Agent & Leaving College 28:52 $600K in Year ONE?! 35:16 The Real Cost of Success 43:52 “Seasons” of Life 49:04 Connect with Josh! 50:04 Hustle for Your FI Goal! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-545 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From a sneaker side hustle at high school and learning the value of having your money to work for you to a seven-figure income and eight-figure small multifamily portfolio in three years by age 23. Good grief. Hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Scott Trench and with me today is Kyle Mast. Yes, good grief. This is Bigger Pockets.

The goal here is building a million millionaires and not just so we have a bunch of wealthy people running around, but so that we can have really great lives and live on purpose. If you want to get your financial house in order, this is where we need to be because we truly do believe that financial independence is attainable for everyone, no matter where or when you're starting. Today's guest is an example of how massive action taken consistently and starting very early in life can lead to ridiculous outputs in one's early 20s. This guy does things like scheduling his day from 5 a.m. until 8.30, including on weekends, putting 100-hour work weeks in, writing down every single activity set that he does throughout the day, and analyzing them for the ones that make money

or that can be delegated in our waste of time, and then leveraging those insights to build massive and scalable systems. We're going to hear about some of Josh's big lessons that he's learned on his journey to financial independence at 23 with easily a $5 plus million net worth. and the incredible costs that he's incurred and what he's given up to achieve that outcome. Yeah, we're going to get into seasons of life with Josh talking about different times of like really driving after something and when it's time to maybe pull back and transition to different things. This is going to be great. Josh was featured on the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast, episode 749 in April of 2023,

after his first year of investing, having accumulated 10 properties worth $1.5 million in asset value. Check out that episode if you want to hear the full backstory. Today, we're excited to hear about what's happened since that recording. Josh, can you give us a snapshot of where you are at now and how things have progressed since that recording in April 2023? For sure, yeah. So as a real estate agent, which is my primary role, I scaled from selling around 100 houses a year to around 200, so primarily to out-of-state investors looking in Cleveland and

Columbus, Ohio. And I continue to buy and burr small multi-families and single families. And I scale it up to right around 140, 150 units right now. And then I have a development company where I'll buy properties, renovate them, sell them as turnkey rentals to investors looking for, you know, less headache cash flow. So I do a couple of those a month as well. And Josh, remind me of your age? Yeah, I'm 23. 23. So 23 years old.

And then let's put some context behind that 150, 160 units you mentioned there and this volume you're doing as an agent. What is the income you derive from this agent business? And what is the value and equity value, the asset value and equity value of this rental portfolio you've built? For sure. So my realtor income last year was right around a million. And then I flipped a couple of properties and that made around 250. So that's where I was at last year. And I'm trying to triple it this year if I can.

I made a lot of mistakes with contractors and lost a lot of money on homes or didn't make money on homes that I could have made money on by going through a bunch of stuff. So that should be much stronger this year. You paid taxes in 2023 on an income of $1.25 million, give or take. Yes. Yeah. So, and I learned, you know, the importance of cost segregation, depreciation, because the year before my tax bill was actually four times higher on half the amount of income than it was last year. Okay. So you had an eight, you had, you know, because you are a real estate professional, an agent selling houses, you're able to take this 1.25 million, give or take income from your agent activities and selling properties to investors.

and your flipping income, which is active income, and offset it with losses from this passive investing portfolio. Now, can you walk us through what, how, give us the high level structure of this 140 units. How many properties are these units housed in? What are they worth? And what's the debt? Or what's the debt in equity ratio? For sure.

So it's around 50 to 60 properties. The market values are right around 15 million. and I'm sitting around $4 million personal equity as a result of that. Most of it is owned individually. Some of it is owned in a partnership 50-50 with two different people, two different partnerships. But yeah, that's the personal side. And tell us about the operations of this portfolio. What is the rent versus costs that are coming in?

Is this portfolio cash flowing today? Yeah. So a good chunk of them are still being renovated or in the process of being rented out because they basically were all acquired through the Burr method. But everything nets around $150 a door monthly cash flow, roughly. Okay. And is that $150 a month monthly cash flow after everything is rented out and your projection? Or is that what it's currently bringing in today averaged out across the portfolio?

That's when everything's rented, stabilized, assuming, you know, property management, vacancy, capex, maintenance, all that stuff. Okay, so for context, we have a cash flow negative current state portfolio that is in process of being stabilized. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, it's probably like, it's cash flowing a little bit, but not a ton, just because I'm still at a large proportion of renovating to stabilize units. Okay. And then I will stop peppering you with questions here shortly. I just need like two or three more minutes.

All of this has happened since April, 20, 23. We're sitting here. It's June 2024. That is 14 months and you had 10 properties. I imagine there were a few more units than that. But you now have at least 5x, 6xed that portfolio. All of this is going to be purchased at today's interest rates, not 2021 interest rates. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. My average fixed rates probably eight and a half, 8.25. Okay. And these are going to be financed with commercial or, or, or balance sheet debt, I presume, not with Fannie Mae 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, because you can't have that many loans on a portfolio like this.

Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. And I wasn't even lendable last year either. Phew. Thank you for letting me just pepper you with questions about the portfolio here. This is an really extraordinary outcome. I think it's our duty to kind of unpack those and provide some context here. Kyle, why don't you react to that?

Yeah, no, I think that's really good. I think it paints a really good picture of where we're at. like this is like a ramp up, you know, of like kind of an extraordinary portfolio for a 23-year-old. So like to just help me understand a little bit, the renovations that you're doing, like the capital for that, you know, you're in the process of doing that. Are you kind of funding that with your growing real estate agent business, like kind of pouring the money that you're making? I mean, that's a, that's a crazy income on the real estate agent business. Yeah, it's a lot of renovations. So all hard money. I basically buy everything with hard.

money. The first lender said I couldn't get any more loan. So I went to the next one. And the same thing happened there. So now I'm private money mostly. Okay. So when you buy a fixer up or essentially to burr it, you're buying it with hard money and then, you know, renovating it, trying to refinance back out of that. And then this, you know, like what you're bringing in from your, your other business, you know, you've got your active real estate brokering business and then you've got or agent and you've got your passive slash active burr strategy business. So the million you're bringing in a year in your agent business, are you using some of those funds to fund some of the deals also?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. And do anything else with the money is like your entire net worth what we just discussed here in the real estate? Or do you also have other assets like stocks? I just put a big chunk of money in a overfunded whole life insurance policy, which you can talk about if you want. 401k, other retirement, but probably 60, 70% is real estate right now.

Okay, wow. So you're well on track to have $10 million in net worth within a couple of years here, even if you cease your ordinary income activities that you're generating. Yeah, the goals a year from today. Okay. And then, you know, one more question here. Let's walk through the unit economics on like a bread and butter deal. You've done 50 deals in the last 14 months.

What is an average one look like? Not a home run, but like one of the ones that's just fair way for you. That's contributing to this huge portfolio. Yeah, classic deal is a duplex. I'll buy for 90. I'll put around 30 to 40,000 into it. It'll take like two to three months and then I'll refinance it at around $170, $180,000 valuation. Generally at a 75% A-R-V loan. So it'll pay back the old loan. Maybe I pull a little cash out. Maybe I leave a little cash in. But the idea is just like churn and burn. And this is all happening in Cleveland, Ohio or nearby. Is that right? Cleveland, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio. Yeah. Wow. So this is pretty extraordinary here. I have to ask, what is the end state here? You have, we set a goal of 10 million

net worth by the end of the year. But I want to observe that you earn an extraordinary income here. Cleveland is one of the few markets where I think you can actually get, like you can just kind of, you don't have to be, it's not quite average, you don't have to find home run deals to make this strategy work. You can do this with, with deals on a continuous basis here. I'm also observing a super highly leveraged portfolio with, you know, I think I was like 70% debt to equity at this point across the average portfolio. So how do you think about where this is going to end up? Because I could see this marching well past 10 million to 50 or $100 million in wealth in a reasonable period of time, like 10, 15, 20 years. Or I could see you letting it de-leverage and being done with $15 million in five or five years on this. So how do you think about it? Yeah.

One of the first people that I co-called in Columbus, Ohio, when I started doing this, owns like 1,200 units and he was like 39 years old. And it blew my mind. So my goal is honestly to try to get to a thousand as quickly as possible and slowly convert the C class that I own into nicer stuff, nicer bigger buildings in like packages of five to 10, you know, leveraging the 1031 exchange. And then what's what's the goal after that? So you do you just keep building into more B class, A class like leveraging up?

or what's like Josh in 10 years, what's life look like for you? Like what's the end goal? Yeah, I mean, I grew up 20 minutes outside of East Cleveland, and it needs a lot of help economically, structurally in many ways. That's something I really want to attack, and I'm trying to build up a bigger name, build up wealth, and figure out a way to help that area because it's in desperate need. And I know some people doing some things there,

and I'd love to build a fund what they're doing on a significant level. Awesome. So that's the mission is build up wealth so you can revitalize huge chunk of Cleveland. Yeah, that's kind of where it's coming from. Yep. Oh, actually, one more question here. Do you intend to raise capital at any point in time? Or do you not need it as a result of what you're doing?

Because you generate enough income and have enough private lending sources to allow this thing to roll for some time to come? If I get into the commercial space heavily where prices are much higher, then I would do that. I would like to syndicate eventually, but I'm just trying to make what I'm currently doing as efficient as I can. All right. We have a good understanding of where you're at, but I'm pretty curious to find out where the money story actually begins. And we'll get into that right after this break.

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All right, welcome back. We are here with Josh Janice. Okay, so you're able to roll all this without having to raise capital from that, which, by the way, I think is great. I think that 23-year-olds raising huge amounts of equity, capital and syndicated structures has not proven to be a winning formula for many investors, and that this is much more, much more, it's highly risky. You are highly leveraged at this point, but you're only risking your own money for the

most part in this. And I think you got a great crack at it and having this work out to an extraordinary degree over the next couple of years based on what I've heard so far. So with that premise set, let's go and understand how we got here. So where does your journey with money begin? And how is it compounded to this extraordinary outcome at the age of 23? Yeah. So I was a basketball player as a kid and I love sneakers and I couldn't afford any of the ones that I wanted.

So I started to look into like reselling shoes. That's really where it started. I would go to events, try to flip them. I'd go to stores early in the morning, wait and lines. And that's kind of where the journey started. And I learned the importance of time management. I could pay somebody 50 bucks or whatever to wait in line instead of me doing it. And then eventually I could have 5, 10 people doing it for me at different stores and different cities.

And it kind of goes from there. Walk us through what you were able to accumulate during your high school years and how you parlayed that into what happens next. So when I was at these sneaker shows, kids would make $300, $500 selling one or two pairs of shoes. and they would then go buy their own pair for $200, $300, $300 and wipe out most of their profit. And it was hard for me to see that as like scalable. Yeah, it was cool. They were the cool kid walking around now with the shoes that we all wanted. But I knew that, you know, if I could save all of the cash that I was making, eventually I could buy all the shoes and it wouldn't even be an issue.

So that's another thing that I really learned is like save your money early because it's very powerful in the beginning. once you figure out like a machine to put it into. Awesome. So how much did you save and what did you parlay this into? Yeah. So I probably saved around $20,000 selling shoes in high school and early college. And now I had this money sitting around. I didn't really know what to do with it.

I wasn't really wanting to go to college, but I went to the school both my parents went to. I was, you know, door dashing, listening to audio books, trying to learn about real estate and finance because I had a general. interest in it. Then it came across the concept of house hacking. And while door dashing, I learned even more like the importance of time management because, you know, I could drive 10 miles for $5 or I could drive two miles for $5. And over time, the person driving less is going to win per hour every time. So I was able to learn that. I read probably like 100 books on my audible

account multiple times at 1.5 times of speed because I'm doing stuff, but if I read it twice, eventually it'll get into my head. So I had money saved up. I put that together. Then I wanted to house hack at Ohio State in Columbus. And that's where I came across bigger pockets for the first time and found an agent that was on there working with investors. I hopped on a quick Zoom call. and I ended up going into his office to check things out when I went down there because I switched to colleges. And I was like, man, there's like 15 kids in here that own real estate under the age of 30. And they're just on the phones, banging the phones. Like it was basically the boiler room.

It's like one room with desks all around, everyone grinding. And, you know, instead of house hacking, I was like, let me try to do this. This looks way more fun than what I was studying in terms of computer science. And they gave me a list. And I started calling, you know, four to eight hours a day, depending on the day, sort of taking classes, door-ashing at night to pay my bills. And, you know, I just took my, took the money that I had. I was like, all right, I'm just going to call for three months.

I don't really care if I make a dollar. I'm just here to try to learn and see if I can meet any cool people because that's what they said. Like, if you call, you can eventually meet some people that. own. And if you're a young kid that is genuinely interested in how an investor built their portfolio, you know, these are generally old dudes that are rich, that own a bunch of real estate. They made it better than their friends. Their family doesn't really care that much about it. Their friends don't care because they didn't do it. But if you're, you know, a young person, you don't have to be. But if you're genuinely interested, like, hey, how did you get this property?

I see you own this too. Like, you know, they're going to pour their energy. into you. I met a bunch of people that way. It's just a numbers game too. You're going to get screamed at, yelled at, sworn at, all that stuff. But, you know, it's all about trying to find those couple owners that can teach you something and eventually bring your properties to sell because that's what it eventually turns into. So I learned patience through that, just consistently calling, you know, taking notes, trying to learn from every single call. I mean, not really because there's so many calls that you do. But conception. like what can I do differently? How can I approach just differently? And that's sort of when I

got into putting a couple deals together through calling. Then I made some marketing fees. Yeah, walk us through what putting together a deal meant. Is this a wholesale deal? Yeah. So I found a four unit, the first one for like 400K in an eight class area. I couldn't afford it at the time to house hack because I was actually calling to buy a house hack sort of too. But I was working under an agent. So I brought him the information. I was like, hey, this owner wants to sell it. Here's his rents.

Here's the age of the roof, furnace, hot water tank, here's the price. He's like, oh, yeah, I probably got a buyer for that. So then he put together an email saying the price. All he did was add 6% commission on top of what the seller wanted. So it's not really wholesaling. It's like hybrid wholesaling, which is the concept people said before. and yeah, that agent brought a buyer to the seller. They presented the offer.

The deal closed. I made a marketing fee. And it was like a check for like $2,500 or something. And I was like, all I do was call a person and give information over. And I got paid what I made almost every month driving for hours. How many calls did you make to get to that first $2,500? Yeah, I was really bad when I started. So it was probably three months of at least 20, 30, 40 plus hours.

a week before I actually put something together. And then that deal took another two months to close. Walk me through how you, and I'm just curious here, you have like two, there's two concepts that I see are like in conflict with what you just said in your mind, right? One is, I made one call and I got $2,500. And the other is I spent three months making 30 to four hours, 40 hours a week of calls before I got this one deal. Like how do you, how do you marry those two concepts in your head?

What did that, was that going through your mind at that? point in time. And how did you think about that? Yeah. I mean, my primary goal with calling was honestly just to learn and learn how to talk real estate and learn the space. So I mean, yeah, making money was cool, but I was making enough to live and save a little bit door dashing. And I was like, if I closed a deal, which I felt like it was kind of quick because I started like nervous to call because I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do and I got objections. Like I was starting from the floor. And I got that deal closed. Like, man, if I get good at this, I could probably do one of these a week.

Like, on that eventually, that's what started happening. How did you balance all this cold calling activity with having a social life in college? So I'm 23. I've never drank. I don't really party. Like, that's just not who I am. So I literally was working, calling, door dashing, seeing my girlfriend and my family. And that's it.

So this calling, you went into it. I was going to pull out the same thing's. Scott did there. You know, like, I could see myself going in for like one or two months. I'm like, this is terrible. I'm just calling and getting rejected all the time. I'm not making any headway. But I think maybe the listeners need to hear, you know, Josh was going into this. He was going into it to learn. And he had this other side hustle going on. His life is simple at this point. He's trying to just gain some experience and see if this is something he wants to do and learn how to do it. And then when he does get the hit, he, it's more of a confidence boost.

rather than like it took me three months to get here. It's more like, okay, you know, I've learned a lot in three months and then something happened. And let's see if we can make it happen faster and more after that. So I think sometimes people, you know, and the other piece, too, is making sure that you're still working hard in other ways, too, like to pay the bills. You know, I think sometimes people think they're just going to go all in and something and then they give up.

But you might have been able to go a little bit longer if you were door dashing on the side or you had some other income coming in on the side to kind of carry you. a little bit further through that new venture. So I think that's another thing good that you had going for you. Kyle, I think it's like the first 40 hours get you by and the next 40 hours get you ahead. Yeah. And that's what I'm hearing here from Josh, right? Like those 40 hours, 30 to 40 hours a week of cold calling were happening after you paid the bills with your door dash, got your homework done and made all your family and relationship commitments.

Is that right, Josh? Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the top priority when it started. And I was just trying to be basic about it. I'm going to call. And then once I can make more money calling than door dashing, I'll just stop door dashing. And then if I can figure out a way to make more money door dashing than what my college degree would make, then I would switch to just calling. And the other thing I learned, too, I had a really good mentor.

And another thing I learned is like the concept of following up, just how important that is. Like maybe I only closed one deal in the first three months. but I got 50 people that know my name, I know their address, I know their price-ish, and they're going to sell probably some of them in the next three months or six months or 12 months. And as long as I keep my foot in the door, I'll be that person. And that's what happens constantly. It's just like a fallover effect and you can't stop because then you ruin all of your, all of the buildup that you built in the past.

Josh, during this time period, um, Cash was going into your life during this period, right? You were not shelling out cash in the form of investing into this cold calling or other business activities. Your bank account was growing and increasing your optionality. Is that, is that correct? Yeah, I was probably like saving a little bit of money every month. I was just getting by with DoorDash versus saving like two, three thousand when I was doing a full time. Got it. Okay. And what, what did you put it all in cash or did you have investments going at this point? This is your freshman year. College for context, right?

Yeah, yeah. For a sophomore junior year, I just kind of had it sitting in cash because I was going to do something with it active. I didn't know what to do yet. Yeah, I want to call that out too here because, you know, there's a lot of talk about investing and like, oh, I'm not going to earn any money on that, especially in like 2021, I think when this is happening, 2022. But if you are like Josh and clearly going to do something entrepreneurial or keep

trying along a list of different things there. I think you're foolish to put it into a 401k, to put it into any type of market investment, to put it into real estate or anything else. You should be keeping it in cash and allowing yourself options. And options at 21, you weren't even 21. You're 20, 19 or 20 at this point in time. With that level of ambition and hustle and drive, I mean, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, taking your 10% market return.

It's so much better to have a 24-year-old with 50K, in cold hard cash, then 50K in a 401k, if they have your mindset and are reading all these books and taking all these actions at the same time. So, I don't know, just an observation I have there. Sounds like that's what you were doing. All right. Well, so we have our first deal. We made $2,500.

There's a long way to go between $2,500 and the $4 to $7 million that I'm mentally computing for your current net worth. So how do we progress from there and continue the journey here? Yeah. So the start of the new year, started 2020 is when I got my license. And all of those people that I called started to fall over and started to sell. Now, my first 11 deals from January to the end of March, early April, fell out. Because I was, as David Green said, which I didn't conceptualize, but he did a good job. I took unqualified buyers and unqualified sellers.

and I put them in a room together. And it never worked in the beginning. And all these things happened. And I was like losing my mind. But I was like, I'm going to have to figure this out because there's 15 people around me that have and thousands of others around. So every deal that fell out, I was like, all right, what can I do differently? And I kind of do that to the extreme. You know, you got to be conscious about it.

But if you can always adjust what you're doing, you can end up controlling as much as you can. So like with sellers, if they don't know enough about their property, if they like say, oh, the rent could be this or the roof could be this, like, they're probably not as invested in making a move as you are on your end trying to get the sale done. And then the buyer, like if they're not pre-approved or they don't have a clear buy box, if they haven't run their numbers on their end, like all of those things can cause issues down the road. So it was literally just, all right, this happened, this deal. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again over and over. And then the first deal closed in April of 22. And I think I closed like six deals that month and then like 10 the next month or close to it. And it all just was rolling.

And I basically just didn't stop. Josh, when did you get licensed as an agent? Yeah, the beginning of that year, January 22. Okay. So you didn't really close, you didn't make any money really until you got. licensed as an agent. The whole wholesaling, cold calling didn't really contribute to your income until you were licensed and doing it basically through the MLS and taking brokerage fees, I guess. Yeah. Did you graduate college? No. So I was 70% of the way there probably.

In your case, that would have been foolish, I think. What did your parents think about all this? I think that's a big thing here. You said earlier on that, you know, you weren't sure about college, but your parent, you went to the school, your parents wanted to. It sounds like that was Ohio State. I hear they have a mediocre football team, at least this last year. How did you get into and then out of college? And what was that dynamic like with your parents? It seems like we're, you know, are always an influence on someone prior to college graduation years, typically. Of course. And I look up to my parents heavily in many ways. Like, it wasn't easy. I think the main thing that really got me over it was like, hey, mom and dad, I made the last 90 days what I would make if I finish my degree, right? And I'm just getting started. You know, I had people had some doubts like, oh, you had one good month or two good months. Let's see. Right. And my motivation was like, I'm going to have that every single month. There's just like, I have to. I got to keep this up. And that's kind of what allowed me to stop doing college and have. And it be relatively smooth. All right, we want to hear what your first year looked like from an income perspective right after this quick ad break. For those listening, while we're out, please go search for Bigger Pockets Money in your podcast app and follow us so you can get the latest stories like Josh's. And, of course, our eternal gratitude. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending,

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Your first deal was in, what did you, you said, April, and you finished the year with $600,000 in commissions to you, like net to you? Correct. Net, yeah. That's not a bad first year. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. So, and you're generating this income by getting listings.

Like, I'll have a buyer that wants a turnkey duplex, and I'm going to go find it off market, and I'll be the only agent involved, and I'll just connect them, and I'll try to make 6%. that's the core of the business is like try to be the only agent involved. Not every deal is like that, but that's the ideal. You get to control the most. I get to represent the buyer and be aggressive to the seller. And what's the average price on these deals? I was selling more Columbus then, so probably like 200-ish.

Now I'm more Cleveland. So probably like 140, 150. So how many transactions, how many do the math here, to make $600,000 in net commissions, at $600,000 on $200,000? Yeah, I think my average commission, was like 4%, something like that, but it was around 120 transactions, 17 million gross. Did you have any staff or was this you as an individual? This was me and then one virtual assistant and then a second virtual assistant towards

the end of the year. And I still run the same business with the same setup. That's unbelievable. Yeah, that's unbelievable. I'm kind of like my mouth. I'm just trying to like pick it up. Like be like, what does he even happen here? So where are you sourcing your You said you're connecting buyers to sellers off market deals. So you have a buyer looking at. So where are you sourcing your buyers from? To find, I mean, people always want to find the deals. But where are you finding these specific buyers that you want to source? So as I was calling, I was learning things. And I just started posting on bigger pockets. So I found a ton on bigger pockets. LinkedIn, Facebook, you actually find a decent amount of buyers calling if you approach it the correct way. It was just a mixture of that. And then almost all the deals I found were, from cold calling or MLS or some pocket listings and just trying to connect the dots. Like, I have a notepad. I write down everything I do every single day, especially in the beginning, like every little thing.

I don't, like, I send email to a title agent about this. I texted this person this. Like, it should be like 100 plus things. Like at the end of the day, you want to look at it. And it's like, what did I repeat? What can I delegate? What makes me money? What doesn't make me money?

and write out procedures for everything, right? Because that's what allowed me to scale quickly and maintain it with little staff, is I think those processes. Well, I think something else, you mentioned there, the neat thing you mentioned your calls, and sometimes in the productivity world, if you can use the same action for multiple outcomes.

So you were, you kind of glossed over it, but you said something about if you call in the right way, you can find buyers too. You know, you're calling for like sellers, but you might find buyers as well. So, you know, you are, you are now like basically getting twice the benefit of your calls

as opposed to connecting these buyers and sellers. So that's, yeah, I think that's, I think that's a neat concept for people to think about when you're, when you're starting a side hustle, sometimes there's ways to make it easier that you're not even, not even looking at. Scott, you had something to say. Well, I was just going to say, I love that approach with writing everything down. I did that a lot more five years ago than I do today and definitely should get back into it.

I just love the analysis on an ongoing basis. I want to ask if this is a once you graduate, is this going to 40 hours, 60 hours, 80 hours? Is this an all-consuming obsession essentially with building the business in the first year? Where in that scale are you in terms of effort you're putting in to generate this $600,000 in income? and I begin building the real estate portfolio. Yeah, I mean, as soon as I stopped taking classes a little before the end of junior year, like this was 100 hours a week or stinking near close. Like, I would start working at 5 a.m. and I'd leave the office at 8 p.m. very frequently.

And then I would go to the gym a couple of days a week. But, and then Saturdays and Sunday mornings would be about building the business, taking the notes and implementing different procedures. and then Monday through Friday will be working in the business. So one of my best friends is a Navy SEAL and him and I worked out in high school and he's crazy. And I learned a lot of really cool things from him. And I just kind of meant what we did and to this. So this has been a natural extension of what you were doing in high school, essentially.

In terms of the amount of output of effort that is going into advancing your goals, nothing's changed. It's just been a, it's been more directed, more efficiently to the accumulation. of money. But is that a way to interpret what you just said? Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, yeah, Caden and I would go swimming in a freezing lake at 5.30 in the morning before school or do pull-ups. We would do MRFs. We would do all these things. And then we work out after school again. And I'd work on basketball or whatever. I just, now it's just real estate. All right. So, you know, this is a really interesting, I love what we've heard here. And I think it's not a stretch to understand, hey, that this system has now spit out.

out a compounding rate of return in terms of total income and then allowed you numerous investment opportunities. You can either, once you find a deal, you can either sell it or to one of your many, many contexts in your buyers list or buy it and turn it into a wealth building machine through your real estate investing and rehabbing business here. So it's not hard to understand how that kind of has snowballed at the highest level, although I'd love to cover that in great detail at some future point here. Walk me through, you know, when we talk about bigger pockets money, I would say that the vast majority of listeners here are folks working at W2 or have a small business that is nowhere near as explosive from an income perspective as yours. And, you know,

how do we translate your life lessons here into something that, you know, someone maybe with without the drive to do a hundred hour work weeks and relentlessly optimise. every single part of their life and, you know, those types of things. How do we translate that into something that someone who doesn't want to rebuild Cleveland from an ambition standpoint can take away as a message in the wealth building journey? Yeah, if you already have a cash flowing business or a W2 where money's coming in and maybe you have the desire to leave, right? Don't leave and then invest.

Like stay. cut your living expenses down as cheap as you can. I still live very cheap compared to what I make. That's never changed, never will. And use all of the money you have on the side to invest. Walk me through that point real quick. To interrupt, I see your background here, right? And this is not, this is not the home of a $1.2 million per year income generator, right, that one would expect. I mean, you would probably be able to pay off this home entirely or buy it in cash three times in a year would be my guess. Based on the background, we're looking at there. Remind me, and I know you said it, you want to rebuild Cleveland essentially here as your motivation.

But remind me, like, is there an intent to harvest any of this income to drive your lifestyle at some point? Or is that so far off in your mind that it just wouldn't be efficient? I bought two cars that I liked in the last year, and it's fun. What are the cars? What are the cars? I got a G-wagon last year, and then I just got a Porsche GT3. So I got two cool cars, and they're fun, but, like, that's not the motivating, like, drive at all. It's like, I get them to look at my garage and be like, I cannot slack.

Otherwise, I got to give the car back. It's more like a standard setter, I guess. But, yeah, I was making 100K a month in a $900 a month apartment driving a Honda Civic. Like, that I was fine, you know, two years ago. So sorry to interrupt you interrupt you there. You're conveying lessons. You're conveying, hey, like, help me understand how, you know, I think, I think what's what I'm hearing here and I'm reacting to is, yeah, it would have been great if I'd done this at 23. But let me ask you some hard questions here.

You know, do you regret not doing any of the partying or some of the other social activities that maybe some peers were doing at Ohio State at that point in time? Or, you know, how do you? Like, I'm trying to understand the costs associated with this incredible outcome that have come in place here. And can I pick up nuggets from you if I'm not willing or able to commit the 100 hours of just pure intensity that you? that you've sustained now for seven, eight years to get to this point. Does that make sense? For sure, there are definitely costs. This is not all upside. I mean, you know, I had to sacrifice a lot of family time. Like, I literally didn't see any friends for like two years, like nothing, zero. You know, I guess parties would have been fun. I mean, you know, here and there, like in this journey, you do get lonely. You know, it's 8.30 on a Friday and I'm tired. And I just worked all.

all day every day, but I have these things that I'm trying to implement so that I don't have to do this again. So I'm just going to sacrifice that night and then I'll sacrifice the next night. Like, you know, I'd rather do it now or be really intense for a couple years and then relax for 50 years to some degree, taking advantage of leverage of money and labor. So, but yeah, there's definitely emotional sacrifice that you have to deal with, a lot of. the way. It's not all upside. Josh, I would I would really like you. Could you reach out when you do take that foot off the gas and come back on the show? Because that that's going to be like, that's a super interesting, like, I think that's one of the things that's coming to me from this.

I have no doubt, like anything can happen. You could lose it all with all this. But like, this is consistent with what I would expect to hear from the extraordinary numbers you put, you talked about and posted at the beginning of the show here as the cost to achieving that. And I just wonder, like, I'm curious about when you will take that foot off the gas and what life will look like at that point because of the ridiculous amount of options you're going to have at 25 and then 27 and how that's going to explode for you. And I'm just super curious. Like, I don't know, I don't know very many people like you. I haven't talked with Mark Cuban, you know, or, you know, Mr. Wonderful or the other Shark Tank people.

that that probably went through some sort of parallel journey here in tech or whatever to get to this. But I'm just curious, like, what it will take for you to feel like you can take your foot off the gas and ease up and what you're going to do at that time. I don't know if you thought about that. No, that's fair. What I'm trying to achieve is, like, the conflict is I can still grow my dollar per hour by working harder in terms of volume. on a daily basis. And I have not mastered anywhere near people or teams or other forms of leverage or media. Like, I haven't gone to that point.

I'm starting there. But that's where I have to get to in order to not have my physical hours of working on something be so valuable. So that's just the conflict of being an operator switching over to an owner, it seems. Yeah, absolutely. But I will tell you this, like, I run bigger pockets with all this, right? And every day at 6 o'clock, 6.30, whatever it is, right? I stop my work. And there's always like a hundred grand activity that like has to wait till tomorrow

or a million dollar decision needs to go there because like, you know, there's other things there. And it's like that, I don't know, I'm empathizing with what you went through here because the same thing was going on for me in the early state. ages in my wealth building journey. I was nowhere near as successful as you are at this age or three or four years into my journey. But I read 100 books. I house hacked with all my free time. I would wake up early, read a book, go to work, after work, write for the Bigger Pockets blog, research with my next real estate investment or try my next side hustle, and I could sustain that

for a period of five years or whatever. If I started at 20 and really actually grew up, it out the way that you did and the way I admire. I, you know, something different. But I'm just curious, you know, it's just a philosophical thing around there's always more to chase on it. And when you have people involved and employees and those types of things, the leverage compounds even further. And that's, that was a hard one for me thinking about as a CEO is like, when do you, yeah,

well, at six o'clock and like, yes, I could make 50 more thousand dollars if I work through the night on this one. But should I? Can I? is that sustainable. So anyways, something to think about, and I think that this, I don't know if I'm, if I'm really dancing around it. I just haven't explored it as much with people on the show about what this cost of the

success that you're experiencing is. And I think that's it. It's that there's always, there's, the opportunity cost of your time is so high now that it presents conflict about the other parts of life. Yeah. No, it totally does. And, you know, I love the gym and working out and being physically fit. and I had to sacrifice that.

I mean, I wasn't like getting overweight necessarily, but I was just not, you know, making it a daily part of my life. And now I am again. And I implemented that. And it was a struggle because I'm like, man, I could do something else. We'll make money or whatever. But, you know, once you get over the hump on one thing, then it gets comfortable. And then you can go on to the next, go on the next.

I was just going to say, and hearing you both talk about your journey, is this really, really interesting. Hopefully our listeners are really getting a lot of. out of this. I am. So if no one is getting anything out of it, I'm enjoying it. But like this, I'm hearing seasons of life, you know, and I think it would be really cool to have you back on Josh down the road. Because from what I've seen with different investors, different business owners, especially, there is a grind for a season. And the people that come out later in life with fewer regrets usually are better at determining when seasons change. And,

And I've seen that again and again. So I would, and I feel like I'm like a fatherly figure, like talking to you right now or something. This is not, you know, you're way more successful. This is what I was getting at, Kyle. This is perfect. Thank you. Like, this is what I'm trying to wrap my head around is like total aberration. And this will not continue for 30 more years.

Well, yes, that's it. It can. And people do continue it for 30 years, but they pay a higher price. I think season, there are seasons for everything. I mean, there's a season, like in families, there's a season for young kids. There's a season for just busting your tail building a business. But if you do it until you're 35, you're going to have a heart attack. I mean, there's just so like these are, I'm listening to this.

And it's so cool that the season that you're in is just like a crush it season. But I think what you're going to run into is that you have such a drive and an intellect, honestly, of like analyzing and reanalyzing for optimization that you're going to, to you're going to have to at some point figure out when does the season change where that optimization is not the goal anymore like what is you know when you you know you have you've mentioned a big why here revitalizing uh part of your city so like where where does that transition take place when does that transition take place and you always have to there's this opportunity concept there is there are always tradeoffs so you will always to move into another season you

always give something up and it, but it just has to be better. You know, you just have to remember that you're giving up something for something better. But I, I'm, this is just like amazing hearing what you've got going on. But that's why what you said, Scott, having you back on in like three to five years and be like, okay, are you about ready to have a heart attack or have you figured out like what's, what, you know, is the season the same or is the season changed? You know, like, I think it'll be really interesting because you've got and I think people listening to this podcast, they don't have to be going 100 hours a week to be relating to this. They might need to grind something for a bit, but be ready to shift seasons before you lose your marriage, your kids,

or your life to get a little serious on it. But yeah, this is just, yeah, let's move on to the next thing, Scott here. But I just want to kind of wrap that in that season's thought there. I just think that is the main thing. Because again, like, Josh, we don't typically talk to folks like yourself on Bigger Pockets money because, you know, Bigger Pockets money is really geared towards folks trying to accumulate maybe a few million dollars and call it a day and retire and reap the rewards of that, right? Like, I think what most people want who are listening to Bigger Pockets Money is I want to walk my dog on Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock and not have to worry about a work call or I want to, you know, like travel through Europe for six months.

and hang out or I just want to like chill at home and you know homeschool my kid or whatever and I think that that's yours isn't you're just a completely different take than what we're used to on bigger pockets money obviously the real estate podcast has much many more ambitious entrepreneurs like yourself on on there and I I I'm glad that we explore this concept because I think that's the story here the story is yes you are a super talented genius level, ruthless optimizer with your time, making a huge impact, making tons of people better off, sellers, buyers, connecting the dots, housing. You have a big goal in all this. And the cost is 100 hours a week sustained for four or five years. And, you know, I think it's just a really

illuminating discussion here. So thank you. Yeah. I know that if I worked 100 hours every week for the next 10 years, I would probably die to a heart attack or stress or something. No, I'm not, no, I've scaled it back. I'm probably 60, 70 maybe, something like that. But like the one of the biggest joys in my process is honestly like teaching people around me to do as much of what I'm doing as they're willing and wanting to do. So like one of my goals was to help five people make $100,000 this year. I think I'm going to hit it. So, you know, and then try. to double it next year. Like, and then see those people help other people.

And that's been one of the coolest things in this whole process, honestly. Awesome, man. Well, where can people find out more about you, Josh? You can connect with me on bigger pockets or message me. It's Josh Janice on both. And I'll respond. Do you need to do a better job on social media? I don't feel like your time.

It's not worth it. Like, you know, it's just a black hole anyways. You just keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, I think you're doing just fine here. Well, Josh, thank you so much for coming on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Thank you for taking us down this philosophical rabbit hole here with it. That's not where I was, I think I was expecting it to go. But your journey is just so extraordinary and poses some really interesting high-level questions here.

Congratulations and all your success and the huge optionality you've created for yourself. And, yeah, come back on when you've made, when you're entering the next season of life. I'm really, I'm really curious to see what that looks like for you. I could see it going in so many ways and you're going to have such good choices for whatever that looks like. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on Scott. Pleasure, Josh.

Thank you, Kyle. All right. That was Josh Janice. Kyle, what did you think? I mean, I'm just kind of speechless. You know, this is, this was just a lot of fun. I loved how you kind of grilled him on his financials at the beginning to just dive in and make sure that we're talking to someone who's legit.

it. And he is. Like, this guy is just unassuming, like hands down, get it done, analyze what I did, redo it better, and just rinse and repeat. I mean, it just, this was really neat to talk with Josh. Yeah. I've, I've learned over the years to be a lot more skeptical about these kinds of claims, you know, $5 million by age 23, $4 million in equity. That's 60% of his portfolio. What was that? Five, six million dollar implied net worth by age 23. You know, but that's why I went out, you know, and we've learned to press on that because we've had a couple of folks over the years that haven't been all that on there.

But, and, you know, like, we haven't like gone in and, like, seen a financial statement from Josh. But I think that he passed you and my sniff test of telling the truth about what's going on here. And I believed him. And as a bonus and just little, you know, dig here at certain individuals. He's not selling a $50,000 mentorship or mastermind or whatever class around this. He's just hustling with his business and trying to buy and sell real estate and accumulate

as much of it for himself as possible. So I believe him and trust the guy. Maybe I'm wrong on that and we'll find something out. But congratulations to Josh. I think he's built a wonderful business and it's an awesome thing. And I think what was even cooler about today's show is understanding the cost. And as much as I admire Josh and what he's achieved. here, Kyle, I'm not sure I'd trade places with him in some of those things because of what he's

given up to attain it. And I think that's an awesome lesson from this. And that's not a dig on him at all. It's a compliment and an appreciation and I admire what he's done. But I also recognize the sacrifice, you know, and not having college, not seeing friends and family and putting in those work weeks to really bust it out and get to this position. He's going to have way better options than anybody I know by the time he's 30 in life. life as a result of that. And so he's he's super successful. But I think that was a super interesting and powerful takeaway from the conversation today. Yeah, for sure. That discussion on tradeoffs, it was just so good. I think that's something everyone needs to think about. We all live different

lives. We all have different priorities. We all have different stages of our lives. And what works for Josh might not work for Scott or me, but it might. And it might in a different season or the same season, but that was a really neat thing to dive into what he had chose to trade off for his vision of the future. And I think that was pretty neat. Yeah. And I think another thing is if anybody's coming out there and saying, here's a hack on how to do this. Here's how to, here's how to get to Josh's outcome without the cost that he put in, the things that he's given up, you should run away. Like, that's not how the world works. That's not how personal finance works. That's not how outlier success, like what Josh has seen here, works.

It is an all-out commitment sustained for multiple years. And if you go that all out, and if you're smart and work, if you work that hard and that smart, maybe you got a crack at something like that, that what Josh has had. But not without that combination. Well, Kyle, should we get out of here? Yep. Let's jump on out. All right.

From this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Kyle Mast and I'm Scott Trench, saying peace out girl scout bigger pockets money was created by mindy jensen and scott trench this episode was produced by eric canudson copywriting by calico content post production by exodus media and chris mickin thanks for listening