BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 107: Making $47,000 On Your First Deal with Jonathan Makovsky

Episode Date: January 29, 2015

Many new investors lose money on their first, second, and third deal. There is a steep learning curve when trying to invest in real estate and, while the loss is painful, it’s very common. However, not for today’s guest. Today we sit down with Jonathan Makovsky, a new investor from the tri-state area who had incredible success right out of the gate! If you are a new investor trying to find the right way to get started or if you’ve been investing for years but want to improve your game – don’t miss this impressive interview with Jonathan! In This Show We Cover: How Jonathan got started with a push from mom Tips on taking advice to best push your business forward Exactly how many houses Jonathan looked at per day in search of a deal The benefits of having a real estate license The lessons to be learned by failing on your first deals How to use direct mail for marketing The details of Jonathan’s first property, purchased for $150,000 How to find a partner through BiggerPockets What exactly “racer math” is The pros and cons of letters and postcards Jonathan’s experiences with office building How to make a partnership work Tips on using BiggerPockets as a tool for success Plus MUCH more! Links From the Show: BiggerPockets’ Plus and Pro BiggerPockets’ Wholesaling Calculator BiggerPockets’ Podcast Show 106 BiggerPockets’ Podcast Show 92 7 Years to 7 Figure Wealth BiggerPocket’s Events and Happenings Forbes The Wall Street Journal Books Mentioned in the Show The Book on Flipping Houses by Mr. J Scott Brandon Turner’s The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie Connect with Jonathan Jonathan’s BiggerPockets Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 107. You're listening to Bigger Pockets 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 biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork and host to the Bigger Pocket. It's podcast here with my freshly relaxed friend, Mr. I spent a week and a half in Hawaii,

Brandon Turner. What up, Brandon? Hello, it's good to be back. First day back. Aloha. Aloha. It's always a depressing day or first day back from vacation. But today's been good, though. Today's been good. Good. Good. Well, I hope you had a good trip. Did you guys do anything exciting in Hawaii? I rented a moped. That was cool. And I kind of sailed around the southern part of the island and I looked at real estate because I can't help it. Wait a vacation. I know. I know.

I don't like go into any places. So we just like, you know, every time we drive around the island or whatever, we see one of those like, you know, realtor boxes that you can go and grab one of the flyers every time I had to grab it. So I found like a duplex for like $900,000 like right on the ocean on the opposite side of the island. And I'm like, I could live in that little one bedroom unit on the bottom, you know, the mother-in-law apartment and rent the top of vacation rental.

So who knows? Let's do it. You can rent the top out. Bigger Pockets will fund it. I love it. I'm looking forward to spending the weekend there when you buy it. All right. We're doing it. Anyway, other than that, yeah, it was a good week. It was a good vacation away. And now I'm back. So if anybody emailed me or PM me in the last week, sorry. I'll get back to you. Welcome back. It's good to have you here. All right. Well, the year is moving along nicely. And we are as well here at Bigger Pockets. Today, we have a quick tip that we are super excited about.

today's quick tip is we are proud to announce after all right so we've been talking about this thing since the beginning of the last year and we put up the coming soon well soon is here soon as relative in the whole distance of the universe it was pretty soon there you go

it was pretty soon but today we are excited to announce the launch of the bigger pockets wholesaling calculator And this thing came together after lots and lots of work. We collaborated with lots of folks, Anson Young, Jay Scott, a bunch of other people. And we really, really appreciate all their feedback and input in making this happen. And really, the guy that was instrumental behind it was Brandon.

And it's awesome. It's awesome. Yes. No, you, Brandon. You don't have to look behind you. I'm talking about you. I spent, me and Anson went out to lunch and we spent like two hours brainstorming this thing back like last year. So, Anson was the brainchild behind this.

But yeah, it's exciting to be out there. So here's what's cool about it. There's a couple things that I like a lot that when we designed it, it's more, it's bigger than the rental property calc or the flipping calc in that there's a little bit more you can do with it. Because wholesaling is a little bit more complicated in that you need to be able to sell to a flipper or to a landlord. So you could actually work backwards, just like a wholesaler works backwards. This calculator actually works backwards.

You start with the ARV. You work backwards to discover how much you should. should pay for a property. So if you're looking to get started with wholesaling or, I mean, you can use this for flipping just as easily or buy and hold. But if you're looking to get, you know, get started, you're not sure how much you should offer on a property. You can work backwards. And with the rental side of it, you can actually put in like a, I mean, a yield, a return on investment, an ROI. Like, what does your landlord want to get an ROI of? And you can actually base that, get a final number based on that. So anyway, I'm pretty happy with it. I love it. I use it on my

own stuff now all the time just for analyzing anything because it's my favorite calculator we've done yet. So check it up. And where do they find it? Biggerpock.com slash kelc. All of the calculators are there and you can get specifically to the wholesaling one on BiggerPockts.com slash kelk. So check it out. Douglas. Good stuff. All right. Well, this is show 107 of the Bigger Pockets podcast and you could check out the show notes at Biggerpockets.com slash 107 really, really quickly before we get into this. if you are listening to the show and you have not yet left us a rating or review on iTunes. We really, really ask that you go ahead and do that. Those ratings and reviews are extremely helpful for folks who are exploring their podcasting options.

And when they see what you think about our show, it certainly helps motivate them to jump on. So please check out. You can find the link on any of our show notes and just go to iTunes and find the Bigger Pockets show and leave us a rating and review. That would be extremely helpful. All right. All right. So let's bring him on.

Today's guest, Jonathan Macawski. Jonathan is a Miami-born man who has moved up to the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, tri-state area. And he's a relatively new investor. But the cool thing, this is not necessarily a newbie podcast. We get into some pretty cool things. Jonathan's got some great. tips. He's wholesale. He's flipped. He's worked with partner. He's doing all sorts of great stuff. And I think there's a lot of great advice in here. So pay attention. I know Brandon wants to

chime in and yeah. I was going to say the thing I liked about the show most was that, and I talk about this in the show later on, but most beginners lose money in their first deal or two. But he went out and together with a partner made almost $50,000 on their first flip. And then they wholesale the deal right after that. And now they did a buy and hold. And I, you looking at a commercial property. Like the first few deals, he's just like right out the gate is just rocketed. And I love to see that. And he's got some good tips on how you can do the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, that's key. I mean, I think those were extremely important to listen to for anybody, you know, regardless of how experienced you are. So definitely stay tuned. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction homes,

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And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at Fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood

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It's good to have you here. Hey, great being here, Josh. Great being here, Brandon. Thank you. Yeah, well, thanks for coming on. This is going to be fun. I'm excited to talk about your story because I, I know, I've been kind of following you.

We've been hanging out online for a couple years now. You and I are a year now. I don't know something like that. And, yeah, I don't actually know your whole story. So today let's get into it. Yeah. And thank you in advance for showing up during the middle of the biggest blizzard in the history of New York.

You know, that's dedication to the listeners. dedication. Yeah, well, it's being determined. The media likes to hype this stuff up. So we'll see what happens. It gets good ratings for them. That it does. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Cool, man. Well, so I don't know much about you. I know you and Brandon have been chit-chatting for a bit. So let's just start with the beginning. Who are you? How did you get into real estate? Tell us kind of your background here. Sure. Well, the funny thing is I'll just fast forward and then rewind for a second. I would be on the podcast with probably without the BP podcast. I'll go back and explain kind of how that all that ties in.

I'm a CPA by trait. I started at one of the big four accounting firms and then went to another big financial institution as a CPA in their real estate group. Work there wasn't so much. I mean, both firms were fantastic, but I was stuck behind an Excel spreadsheet all day, 12, 13 hours a day. And it wasn't my speed. At the time, I figured, hey, you know what, if I'm being miserable my whole life, let me be miserable and make a lot more money. so I applied to law school. Nice.

Really. I figured combine a JD, CPA, and, you know, maybe that'll do something better for me. Fortunately, once I got accepted to law school, I gave notice to the company I was working, and this was back in January 2010, and my brother-in-law was starting out a restaurant. So he figured, hey, we're both talking. He said, why don't you come work for me until you start law school? And I figured, hey, this is a great idea. I loved what I was doing.

It wasn't necessarily the food, per se, but being. an entrepreneur and being out there and making things happen in a, you know, kind of new establishment. So worked with him and told law school, you know, thank you very much for the acceptance, but I'm not going. From there, went to a, my friend's father started to go packaging company in the quick service restaurant space. And they had no sales in the U.S. And it was kind of like, hey, why don't you come and just try to make things happen?

So it really gave me. And they were actually not in the country working here. So it was really for me wearing a lot of different hats. My primary role was sales, but also was doing a lot of pitching to help raise money, doing the accounting and really everything else that's needed to run a business. I was helping them out. And it was fantastic. We were growing.

We got a lot of big accounts. But at the end of the day, it wasn't my business. And I really wanted something of my own. So I looked at a lot of different businesses, laundromats and things in the health care industry. And my mom kept pushing me to real estate. I always figured, you know, to get in real estate, you really need to, you know, your family needs to be in real estate or, you know, you need to have a lot of money to get in real estate. So I didn't know how to really transition.

And I, at the time I didn't, this is summer of 2013. I had not yet found bigger pockets. So I knew about valuations just from my financial background. So, you know, my mom's like, just go check out buildings. Just go check things out. And so I was like, all right. So I was looking at different things, looking at things in the Bronx. Everyone's saying, ah, the Bronx is going to explode just like Brooklyn's exploding.

It's the next big place. You can't get in the city. So I was looking at things. And I'm like, these valuations are just through the roof. You know, people are in accounting for vacancies. People are in accounting for CAP X. So before I found BP, and I love the suggestion of, you know, kind of going outside, you know, go within a 60 to 100 mile range of places to looks.

And that's kind of the strategy that I was employing. I was going to Connecticut. I was going to Pennsylvania. I was going to Jersey. And I was doing this for some time. And, you know, figuring, hey, at some point, I'll hit it. November of 2013, a friend of mine was saying, hey, did you, he kind of told me about the BP podcast.

And I was looking, I still wasn't finding any deals again. No deals really coming back that to me made sense. But on the ways, wherever I travel, I'd be listening to the BP podcast. And I figured, you know, I can make a go of this. So a year ago, almost to date, somewhere January 2014. I gave notice to the company. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to make real estate a full-time go. I felt with BP and, you know, despite some of the advice that a lot of people say, hey, don't quit your job until you know. It's not my fault, by the way.

Well, I think, Brandon, blame it on somebody. It's not my fault. I tell everyone to quit their job. Do it. Well, I think it's great advice. And, you know, one thing that I've kind of learned is, you know, just a little side tip here. You know, you can't listen to all the advice that everyone says. You know, everyone's situation is different. Everyone's situation is personal. You know, I was just listening to actually the podcast with Mike. Sumski. Sumski.

Yeah. So last way, I listened to all 106 and then I think I'm about a third of the way through the listening to them a second time ago around. That's awesome. They're great. Yeah, you guys sound slow. I usually listen to you about 20% faster. That is funny. I do that too a lot.

We made that a quick tip back a long time ago, and maybe I'll rehash it here, that if people want to listen to the podcast but want to get through it quicker, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you can do a faster speeds when you listen to it and you can get going pretty good. So, anyway, quick tip. Anyway, all right, so you were saying you were listening to the podcast, driving around, learning stuff and not coming across deals. So doing a lot of stuff. And I actually, I was getting engaged in bigger pockets. Again, listening to the quick tips that, you know, you guys would always say. The bigger pockets, by the way. I'm married.

Engaged on bigger pockets. Yes, yes. Oh, I see. Anyway. Okay. So you were, yeah. All right. So you were listening, getting involved because of quick tips.

And not discriminating, you know, only listening to the buy and hold podcast, even though that's what I was really looking to do. Because, you know, for me, flipping was in wholesaling was so beyond what I thought I can do. And I also networked with a lot of people in BP, but one of them, who's now my partner, him and I were sitting down to breakfast one morning in Connecticut. He's been there for a while. He has a few smaller multis. And I was just talking, hey, George, I said, what's, you know, how are you doing with your investing? Are you looking at deals?

And he said, they're trying to look at estate and find different things, but it's not working. His investor group's shy to pull the trigger. And just talking more. And I found out his background's GC. And I said, that's interesting. I said, did you ever consider flipping? I've kind of been learning all about it through the BP podcast. And he's like, yeah, you know, I kind of thought about it, but never really pulled the trigger.

I said, look, I got my license in real estate. I said, you know, would you consider maybe let's, you know, give it a go? And he said, sure, we could try it out. You know, we started slow. And this, I want to say it goes to this is about end of February or March of 2014, somewhere around that time period. And we were taking it really slowly about it. You know, we were kind of looking at, you know, just going.

I had my real estate license, so we didn't need to wait on anyone else. I was able to just go to any house that I wanted to. Also, it was part of a great brokerage that kind of gave me some places, hey, you know, go here, don't go, you know what I mean? Go to this area. This area is hot. This area is not, you know, really, really guided me along the way. And so, but again, we were doing about, this is March, April. I think March and April, we were still weren't finding any deals. We were doing sometimes about 12, 15 houses a day just going through looking at our Well, I was going to say, not to like cut you off there, but like you mentioned something there that's really important that maybe we can touch on now, maybe we can talk about later. I don't know. But the idea of you were looking at 12 to 15 house of the day and you said you had your license at this point, right? Correct. So there's there's a good reason why you shoot your license, right? Because a normal real estate agent probably isn't going to show you 12 to 15 houses a day while you go out and search for a good deal.

point. Absolutely. Yeah, and I, and that was one of the, so I had taken the real estate course in New York. I had to take some more hours because they added some more since I took it last. And I got my license. Actually, in the middle of this, I read Jay Scott's book, the book on flipping houses, which total life changer for me. And he talked, he talked about the advantages of having a real estate license. And that was one of them, just really being able to plow through deals. And, you know, we'd go and make tons of offers. I was able to write my own offers. deal, because we disregarded the list price when we would offer, because otherwise we couldn't make money. So finally, after again, not coming across any deals, George and I said, you know what? I said, I've been learning all about these direct mail marketing campaigns from the podcast. Maybe we can give that a go. So we did a few home-cooked direct mailers. The first one was kind of a dud.

We got some responses, but I also didn't know what to do when I, you know, when the sellers called me and picked up the phone. And, you know, so we kind of let it go. we redid the mailers back in May. I think it was first or second week of May of last year. And the responses were through the roof. We were getting a lot of tire kickers. But, you know, we got a ton of responses in every deal.

And I don't know if this was a Jerry Puckett Tip or one of the other, you know, great people on the podcast. You know, just, you know, be persistent and just keep following up. And I had their phone numbers. So it was just easy. And it was just, hey, you know, will you sell? Will you sell? Will you sell? Finally, we got one, we got one of the people.

And he's like, you know, can you bring. your number up a little bit and we're ready to go. So we reran the numbers. I went back to the brokerage, which going back to having a real estate license, and one of the advantages, I'm also able to leverage off my brokers. And they'll give me undivided attention because, you know, they know I'm kind of a go-getter. And they also, they're getting a piece of every pie that I'm doing without really doing too much work. So, and kind of to your book, Brandon, which was fantastic about partnership. That's one of the partnerships I don't hear too many people talk about, but being associated with a good brokerage, someone that's going to kind of show you and kind of mentor you without mentor,

without really taking too much of their time. That was a really good partnership that I had. So we were kind of able to narrow down our ARV a lot better. And we still say conservative. I just, you know, still hung around the more conservative side. So we, on July 1st of last year, we purchased the property for 154,000. Okay. Where was this? This was in Trumbull, Connecticut. Okay.

Trumbled Connecticut. I don't even know what it is. And I'm going to roll back a quick second. Man, you say we're slow because you listen at 20%. I'm going to have to slow down this recording because you talk fast, man. Holy Moses. I love the energy. Wow.

All right. So the Bronx really, really quickly. I've got a good friend. He's been investing for a long time. He started up in Harlem, moved over to the Bronx. definitely is not as hot as Brooklyn. Brooklyn's insane, absolutely crazy. But the Bronx is, it's a great place that's starting to come up. And there's definitely the chance for opportunities. But like you said, I love that.

You're patient, you're patient, you're not going to dive in and just buy anything because you're desperate to do it. And for those people who are listening, I think it's really, really important to understand that. It's so easy to get caught up in this. you know what, I'm going to skip the fundamentals. I'm going to bypass the numbers because I can't find a deal right now. Well, then you can't find a deal right now. Set your criteria, look somewhere else. Keep looking until you find one within your little dome, your little farm, and go with that. But don't change your criteria and bend so that you can make it work because that's the fastest way to screw

yourself. So I really love that. Anyway, I just wanted to kind of get that in. I tried to get it in about 10 minutes ago. Like I said, you talk, you talk fat too fast. All right. So, so you're in on this first deal. You paid 150K. What was it again? 100. Yeah, 154. Payed it 154. Really, George, you said, was your partner, yeah? Yes. Okay. Where'd you find George? We're going to get to this deal really quickly. But where'd you find this guy? George and I met on bigger pockets. Okay. I think I mentioned that what I was looking at a few, primarily multi-finding. family deals before. That was kind of really the space that I wanted to play on, figure, hey, it's a lot more of a recession-proof kind of product to have. And couldn't find anything.

And there was one deal that the seller and I agreed on a price and I was going through my due diligence list. At the time, I was on Bigger Pockets. And George had posted one of his forum post. He was in Connecticut due diligence checklist. So I emailed him, just had some questions about it. So we kind of just chatted loosely. And like I said, I think this was in November of 2013. And then I reached back out to him when I wasn't finding deals. And I was just kind of asking him his experience and where he's looking in Connecticut to pick up properties because I know he has some. And he said he couldn't have. He said he wasn't finding any.

So George and I, so I messaged George and say, hey, would you want to sit down and just grab coffee one morning and just talk about things? Do you have any recommendations for people? Because I get that question a lot. Like how do I find a partner on Bigger Pockets? How do I use Bigger Pockets to find somebody to work with? I mean, in your experience now, do you have any recommendations that people can do? Yeah, one of the best advice that I had when I was looking at a lot of different businesses was just talk to everyone and anyone.

And I know you guys speak a lot about that. You know, for me, I always, when we're looking at a property, I always, you know, if there's a neighbor or there's a mailman nearby, I'll always go. I'm not too shy. So I'll always go and say, hey, what's to deal with this house? That's smart. It's smart. I mean, that is an incredible tip right there.

because, I mean, sometimes guys like the mailmen, they know more about the neighborhood than even the people that live there a lot of times do. You know, they see, and they see, you know, I don't know, I mean, they see everything. They see the mail. They see the mail. That's supposed to really know what's happening in the mailmen. They get an idea. Yeah. So you never know who's going to be the bright guy.

I think that's good advice. Anything else you want to add on that? Well, just on that to further that, you also never know kind of when you speak to people, kind of down the line when you're going to go and and have speak to them again. I've had so many times recently. I actually something, I don't know if we'll get to this, but there's a deal in Boston. I didn't end up doing,

but I don't know how to make this long story. Sure, we'll probably be the end at this part. Can we come back to it after we go? Absolutely. Because I know we still want to get to the flip. I know people listening want to get to the flip. And I know you were going somewhere. But why don't we kind of go in some kind of order?

Because I think, I think. You got some energy, boy. All right, let's... 154. All right, I'm going to cut back. We're 154. We got this flip. You picked it up.

What on earth, you know, did it take to rehab? Had that first experience go. I'm assuming George led the way as the G.C. And just kind of walk us through the process quickly. And then let's kind of crank out what the numbers look like through and through. I'm just going to rewind first for one quick second here about. Before the purchase. Just one quick tip. We were going through. We had an inspector come do it because George, like I said, his dad was a GC. He's been around the industry. He's not a general contractor. So we did have an official GC do our jobs. But again, he's, you know, he has all the contacts in the industry to kind of, you know, lead the way. But we did get an inspector. We did feel comfortable with our purchase price. And one of the things that the inspector saw was an oil tank underground. And that, you know, that was something, again, research through BP. And that was one of the big things and just really, you know, got to express a lot of

the people out there. I mean, you could be starting way in the red even before if there's some spillage in the oil tank. We had to remove it with the fire marshal. So kind of, you know, right before our inspection period ended, I called a seller and just said, hey, look, we just can't do this deal. There's just way too much risk involved before the tank is pulled. And I said, look, we'll pull the tank, we'll pull the tank for you. We'll pay the money if the deal goes through. We'll just add that to the purchase price because originally we agreed on a 151 purchase price. And so he pulled it, everything came out clean. But I just think that that might be a good tip for anyone wanting to get involved. Because if that leaks, you could be looking at a $5,000, $10,000 excavation. But if it goes to the

foundation of the house, I mean, you could be looking at a six-figure excavation to get rid of oil. And those oil things, I mean, that's pretty common back home. We had one at my house growing up in Long Island. I don't know exactly where it's typical, but I know it's a New York thing for sure. Interesting. I didn't even know that. Yeah. Hey, and the town that you purchased in, where exactly is it as it pertains to Manhattan? So we are just outside. We're in Riverdale and the Bronx.

This is about 50 miles from where I am. So it takes me an hour to get there. So you're telling me, because, you know, I'm on the Bigger Pockets podcast. 40,000 people are going to be listening to this 50, 100, whatever it is. You're telling me that New York City, Manhattan, like, one of the most expensive places on planet Earth to buy real estate within 50 miles of where you are, you were able to buy a property for $150,000. Yeah, and an excellent town too. There you go. So if you guys are listening, you cannot complain anymore that I can't

find deals where I live because there's always deals. Yep. Absolutely. I love it. All right. All right. So 150, you ended up buying the 154, you ended up paying the extra because he removed the tank. Correct? Okay. 154. Yep. It was 151 plus a 3 grand for the tank removal.

Okay. And so we're at 154. We went in, we, George and I had, I think, we put about 25 each into the deal. And we had raised private money for the rest. And so we had, so this was July 1st. HUD statement was pretty simple. and we projected five months to do it. And we were kind of going back and forth how we should do the rehab. We had projected $93,000 of a rehab cost. And we overshot that. We went to

134. Wow. So you were predicting 90-something. You went to 134. That's a big change. Which is fairly common for people's first flips. But I mean, how did that turn out then? So we changed a couple of things with the flip. We, the, the, way it was, it was a, it was a, on a town record, it was a four bed two bath, including the finished basement downstairs, although the finished basement was never permitted. So, but there was, so there's no master bathroom. And the only way we could fit a master bath in there, which we wanted to put in, again, speaking to the brokers that we leveraged off of, was to change the entrance to the home. So we changed the entrance to the home. We opened up all the walls to make it an open floor

concept. And the funny thing is, so we went 41, we overshot our rehab budget by 41,000. Again, that was due to opening walls, putting the master bath in, changing the entrance. Once we opened up the walls, which, you know, for new rehabbers out there, just be aware. I mean, we had to bring up everything, you know, all the insulation to code, all the electric to code. That was a big nut for us that we didn't. It's a great tip, by the way. So, so once we had our ARV at 330 and we ended up getting, we sold to 371. So it was kind of almost dollar for dollar of the 41,000 that we overshot the budget. We got it back on our ARV. Nice. What I'm trying to, I'm not doing the math in my head. I'm lost. What was your profit? The profit was 47K, $47,000. And you split that with your

partner. Yeah. Funny story about that again, going back to the partnership thing, I had one friend when I told him, hey, you know, we got this deal and we got it done. And, you know, he's like, how much did you make? I said, 47K. And he's like, oh, what do you do with your partner? I said, no, we split a 50-50. He's like, oh, that must have been tough to write him that check. And I think of myself, man, we wouldn't have, I wouldn't have been here without him. Yeah. And funny thing is, when we close that deal, we also close a wholesale deal on the same day from the same seller that we purchased that property. Really? Okay. So the same seller that you purchased that, you purchased that when you did a wholesale deal. Correct. Wow. Okay. Tell us about that real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You tell us about that

real quick. I mean, why didn't you end up flipping that one? Why did you wholesale it? So that property was around the corner from the one that we did. And so we purchased this one for 154. He didn't want to let this one go for under 160. He was pretty adamant. The location was not as good as our first one. Our first one had 1,700 plus square feet. This one had about 1,300 square feet. And we just knew how much work. And there was just, there was just a ton of issues that we came across in the situation, how they treated their properties, wasn't, wasn't the, it just tons of, deferred maintenance across the board. They were evicting both of their tenants. So there were a lot of issues in both the properties. And we just knew the risk was too great for that. So we had

under contract while we were doing our inspection. I was kind of shopping out the deal to a couple of people that I had got some, I guess I built my buyer's list, so to speak. I'll tell you how I got that in the second. And so I sent it to one person and he's like, I got a buyer for you. So the person who referred the buyer, we wholesale that for 185. So I gave him 10K and we took 15K on that wholesale deal. Nice. So 15, that's great. Yeah, it's not bad.

I mean, what's cool about your story is that a lot of people get involved in real estate, their first deal, the first two deals, whatever. Like, they lose money on the first one or two. And that's why I generally don't recommend people, you know, if you don't have a lot of money to get started, like, let's quit your job and go and flip a house and that'll be the income I'm going to live on, is the success of that flip. And I usually tell people, you'll probably lose money on your first flip. It's very, very common. So I think that's awesome that you didn't.

I mean, what would you attribute that to? Like, why did you succeed on your first, both your first wholesale and your first? He's the CPA, man. Those guys are in the tenant, dude. Jeez, can you not tell? I don't know. Yeah, what do you think? That's probably true. It is true. I mean, we're certified pain in the, you know what the CPA stands for. Self-acknowledged. I love that. Yeah, yeah. George and I are pretty conservative. So, again, I mean, we don't subscribe to Eraser Math, which, you know, if you're during your underwriting and you're just saying, you know, I don't need to calculate this cost in or I don't need to calculate that. Now, again, we didn't know everything.

You know, again, not all 41,000 that we overshot our budget was due to opening walls. I mean, you know, there were unexpected costs that we had and, you know, some, you know, bad content. You know, subcontractors and, you know, so on, so forth. But, but we stay pretty conservative with the numbers. I mean, the, you know, a lot of the brokers were kind of telling us, you know, that house, you know, you'll easily get 340, 350 for ARV. And we're kind of like, I was like, I don't see that support for those numbers. I'm like, I see plenty of houses kind of in that 330 mark. And I'm not going to, you know, lean towards the ones that did really well.

I'll lean towards the crappy ones that, or the ones that didn't sell for the, the sell for, the sell for so much. Again, whether it's a short sale or whether, you know, there might have been less square footage, but, you know, maybe it was a better location. And so, again, we, we stayed pretty conservative for that. And again, another smart thing there. You know, I think if all investors were to do that and be conservative with their numbers, you know, overshoot your rehab cost, undershoot what you're going to walk out with, you know, and odds are you're probably going to do better than, you know, the over the under, right? So, so I think that's, I think that's great. Really quickly on the rehab, you talked about the subcontractor issues. I'm just curious, what were those issues and how did you overcome them?

So George could, it was really involved. I mean, I guess kind of the delegation of duties was I would really do everything. Well, not everything. I mean, George was, you know, with me. We were kind of together from the beginning. But I was really handling all of our marketing. I was, you know, taking all the calls. do, you know, finding, you know, looking into ARVs. And, you know, George's kind of role is, you know, once the acquisition, once we've done with the acquisition process, he would take over and, you know, again, for lack of a better word, G.C. The job, although he wasn't the G.C. So he could speak a little bit more to, you know, some of the subcontractor things. I mean, you know, some of the, you know, common issues that we paid, you know, we paid some of the people, you know, too early in the process and they didn't, you know, bother of showing back up, although they did, but, you know, that cost us two weeks.

One quick tip that we kind of learned as we're doing our second rehab, well, just finishing it up, is, again, George is handy, and he spent a lot of time on the job, you know, swing in a hammer. And I think because we, you know, we kind of didn't see the big picture at that point, that also costs us, you know, some dollars by, again, it saved us money, obviously, too. but I think, you know, being able to look at it, and, you know, we spoke a lot about this to scale our operations up. It's like, hey, you can't be swinging a hammer and doing this. And, you know, we have to take into your cost into account. So those were probably the two big takeaways. That's great. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, really good. Really good stuff. Cool. Brandon, I know you had some thoughts. Well, I just, I mean, I don't know, I had a lot of thoughts in there. But one of the things you said earlier about the eraser math, I wanted to touch on that for a second. Because, you know, that's something that people do.

A lot. And that's something that I've, I've been guilty of many times. Like, I, I've told the story a number of times about this. It was like a single family house or the duplex. We decided to turn into a single family house. And on episode 92 of the podcast, I told that story. And I, yeah, we tried to sell it for 170. I ended up selling for 125. I wasted two years of my life. It was a miserable thing. And one of the things that fault there was the eraser mouth. Like, I looked at like, what does that mean, guys? Because some people may not know. It's just like fudging the numbers because emotion makes, you know, it better, right? So like, just like you said, when you looked at there was a range between one, or you said like what, 330 and 370, you looked at the 330 ones. So when I did that property, there was a range between, you know, 130 and 170. And I said, well, mine's going to be really, really nice. So I think 170, right? Like that, and I think even it was more like, 130 to 160. And I was like, well, mine's going to be really nice. And my agent was like, yes, it is. We can get 170. I'm like, yes, we can. And no, we can't. Because, Like, that's eraser math.

And that's what one of the things that got me in trouble. And that's one of the reasons I harp on people all the time is to use the bigger pockets calculators because it makes the eraser math, you know, there's no eraser on a computer, right? Like whether or not use the bigger pockets one or a really fancy Excel one, the fact is, like, when you do the numbers on paper and you have other people look over them, those things really help to get rid of that emotional eraser math. So anyway, that's why I push on that stuff all the time. And you can find those calculators at?

Biggerpockets.com slash analysis. There you go. Yeah. By the way. Yeah. What? At the time of this recording or before around, we are actually announcing launching at some point. We either just launched or if you haven't heard about it, we're going to launch our wholesaling calculator.

It's done. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's awesome. And you can find it at the biggerpockets.com slash analysis if you were not aware. And it's really, really helpful. So, sorry, I had to plug. Got to plug.

Do it. Do it. All right, I'm going to go back to it. That's where I learned, all from plugs. Nice. Okay, good. Nice. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors

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stuff that you've done that intrigues me. Mainly direct mail. Can we kind of dive into like your numbers? I mean, like, that's something that we hear about a lot on the podcast. A lot of people talk about using it successfully. But it's nervous. I mean, it's nerve-wracking to go and take all that money and just throw it end of the mail and hope something comes. So you said that at first you just kind of,

you know, half did it and didn't really get a great response. And then you all of a sudden got a good one. So can I ask, like, what did you do that made that better? And what kind of response is good? Like, what do you mean by good? Can you go to the details on that direct mail? Sure. Sure. So the first, the first mailer that we did, I found a tip on YouTube. people, people did is they just took a blank white paper, wrote on it, and made photocopies, just leaving out the person's name and the address of where they would buy. And they would put it on to, I guess it could be yellow or white letters, doesn't make a difference. And it would just sort of run. So, you know, George and I were sitting there writing out the names and the

addresses and writing out the things. And aside from the fact that, I mean, we can't tell you exactly what our response rate was. It just at the time, we also, I just didn't take it as seriously as I should have. But on top of that, it was just way too time-consuming. The second time around, and I don't have the numbers to track what a response rate was from that first mailing. The second time around, again, I got a lot of tips from the BP podcast. Like I said, as I was driving, I was just talking, you know, I just paused the podcast,

talking to my phone, just say, hey, that's a really good tip. One, for example, I think was, I believe it was Jerry Puckett, who he said, you You know, we use these, again, I can't remember if it was bright color or, you know, different color envelopes. And it just stands out in the mail and people open it. And, you know, it's just a little more personal than a typical white letter. So we did that. I went to Staples or have the self-stick adhesive mailers. We bought a ton of those.

Just put some, you know, I spent a lot of time with getting our mailer down and kind of the words and what we did. Our response rate has been, I think we mailed out about 3,000 to date or maybe a little more, so it's not a tremendous sample size, but we've been getting about an 8 to 14% response rate on each mailer. That's good. That's good. And they're letters. They're not postcards, right? They're actually letters in an envelope that you're sending out, right? Yes, yes.

Okay. And did you consider the postcard idea? And if not, I mean, why did you go with the letter over postcard? So it's a great question. It's one thing that I think about a lot. I can't remember who said it, but, I believe it was on one of the podcast. Someone said, you know, the postcards are great because it really eliminates a lot of the tire kickers out there.

You know, you really only get the serious leads and it's a lot less money. And I think that's a great, and I think that's great reasoning. For me, I would say one of my bigger strengths is talking to people. I'm not someone. I never was someone on a sales call that could, you know, nail something down on the first one. I more look to build relationships. And so the first deal that we got, and again, I can talk about a few others, were really, once the person called, they may have been a tire kicker to some, or they may have been

someone that wouldn't really have responded through a postcard because they weren't really looking to sell at the time. But it was just, you know, once I got it, it was like, hey, you know, are you looking to sell and just, you know, just being persistent every week and I'd either send them a text or give them a call. And, you know, a lot of times it was, you know, four letter words and stop calling me or I told you my kids are doing the house. So, you know, don't, you know, don't bother me anymore, but hey, you know what? If they, until they tell me that, I'll keep, I'll keep calling them or texting. Nice.

Relentless. Relentless. That's awesome. I have a great little quick story here. You don't have any quick stories. That's true. It's a long story. Let's hear it.

But it's a non-business minded friend of mine who was in his master's program and he was just way too busy to date. And so this was about 10 years ago when MySpace was popular. And his methodology was, hey, I'm going to go out and every night send out 100 messages to girls on MySpace. And he was kind of telling me about this. And his response rate was about 10%. And of the 10%, seven of them are like, hey, Joe, I told you to stop sending me this message. This is the ninth time you're sending it to me.

And of the other two or three, I mean, he'd get his dates. And he just didn't have time to date traditionally. So this is what he was doing. And I was like, that's brilliant. That's what we're going to do in our mailers. It's like, you know, so we get people that are like, hey, you know, four-letter words, like stop mailing. But you just got to know that it's a numbers game. That's funny.

I think there's a fine line between stalker and email marketer. I think your buddy airs on the side of stalker with the MySpace, like just a little bit, just a little bit. I wish I had thought of that back of the day. man. Well, he wasn't, he wasn't, you know, going to each profile. He was just, again, mass marketing. Just, you know, he was just copy and paste. It was just like, he wasn't saying a name.

Hi, my name is Joe. I'd like to get to know you. And that was it. That's funny. Historical. Yeah. I wish I had like a dating podcast because I want to, I want to, Joe on the show. I know, I want to like split test that now and like do all these, you know, like, have

them say one message versus another. And I do all these marketing techniques with picking up girls. Wow. Amazing. Okay. Okay. So we talked about the direct mail a little bit. I had another question and now I'm drawing a blank. So Josh, anything you want to jump on? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm going to move past direct mail. If we need to come back, we'll come back. And the notes here talks about you being in the early stages of moving into office buildings. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. you know, you're still pretty damn new at real estate. So what's got you interested in getting into office real estate and tell us a little bit about kind of where you're at?

Sure. So big picture is kind of, I'd like to be a commercial buy and hold investor. Refer to commercial as in more than mortgage sense of, you know, multifamily is included in that. And so the office building, it's not necessarily that we want to be in office buildings per se, but one of the properties that we acquired, the second one that we're working on, the seller also owns an office building actually right next door to the property. And I would text her pretty much every week, if not more, and just say, hey, are you looking to sell the office building yet? You know, we'd like to buy. And, you know, it was no, no, no.

And all of a sudden one day it was, you know, we're ready. So we're still in the due diligence stage. There are some things that have come up that, you know, we weren't aware of, before. So it's still to be determined whether that deal will go through or not. But bigger picture, I mean, that's kind of, you know, we're always, we're always looking to, I don't want to say move to that space because I don't see any reason that we can flip and, you know, make this a scalable business while we're doing bigger deals. Got you. Okay. Okay. And, you know, really quick, you're doing marketing as you're, you're not a wholesaler by definition, right? No. Okay. So what's

interesting. I think Brandon and I have had this debate a lot, which is, hey, you know, the only people who are out there marketing doing the direct mail are wholesalers. And that's typically what you hear. I love that you're the guy who's not really focused primarily on that and you're doing the marketing, using it for rehabbing, potentially buy and hold and everything else. And I think that's something that buy and hold folks and flippers should be listening to. Like, you know, hey, you don't have to just wait for the wholesalers to come up with deals or to find these off-market deals. If you're out there doing your own marketing, they're going to come to you as well. You just have to, you know, be like Jonathan over here and his buddy, the MySpace stalker who just

go, go, go, go, call, call, call, call until they say yes or no. So I think, I think it's awesome. I was just going to say, and I think it goes back to your point originally, Brandon, about, you know, about partnering and where to look for partners. I mean, if, you know, if you have complimentary skills, which George and I have, and George has tremendous skills on the financial side and acquisition side. I mean, he's fantastic on that side. But just more of our delegation is he's more on the, you know, the rehab side of things. I mean, that might be a good way for people to start. I mean, if you have, if you're a wholesale and you say, hey, I want to, I really want to rehab because I really want to make more money. And you're a rehabber and you say, hey, I want to be on the wholesale side.

It also hedges your bets a little bit, right? I mean, I have, you know, George is financially invested throughout the deal, you know, as am I. So we're really communicating back and forth the whole way through, making sure that it's, you know, that it works on both ends. Yeah, that's great. Like you said, I love partnerships. I think that's one of the most valuable ways to invest in real estate, especially if you don't have a lot of money to get started. And just when you're not good, I mean, nobody's good at everything. I mean, I'm not good on the phone.

I don't really like it. And so, like, if I was going to jump in to be a wholesaler, hands down, I would have somebody else answer the phones because I just don't know. You would answer the phones for me. I would just, yeah, I don't know. I can put together the financing pretty well, but yeah, it's the phone stuff. I just don't like people. No, so I think that's great. And going back to Josh's point where you just said about, like, you know, only wholesalers typically do direct mail. But man, like, if you do like the numbers, like, you know, I'm a huge, I'm a huge fan of planning future, right?

I love the idea. I wrote that book that's in the bigger pockets file place called like seven years, a seven figure wealth. And it's like my seven year plan for if I buy this property and then I buy this one and then I buy this one and I buy this one and I buy this one and I fold them all into the next one and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I love that forward thinking. Let's plan the next seven, ten, ten, fifteen years. The reason I bring that up is because the idea of adding direct mail marketing into that can like rocket off your results so much faster. than what normal people do. If you're paying market rate and you've got to wait for the market to climb up as a buy and hold investor, imagine if you can get 20, 30, 40, 50% off of a deal and then go forward from that point and try to do those long term. It's amazing how fast you can grow when a buy and hold investor applies the flipping or wholesaling principles to their business. It's crazy. So it's cool to see that you're doing it. Cool. I want to wrap up with

one more question before we head on to like the famous four and all that. And we've kind of touched on this throughout this podcast a few times. But I want to know, is there anything else you can add to what has bigger pockets, you know, how has bigger pockets helped you in your business? Like anything you want to add on to that just because I like hearing people talk about us. Well, it's, I mean, it's, it's hard to say it's a, it's a, there's a laundry list of things that it's done. It's, it's been really, you know, one of the driving factors of how our business has succeeded. Like I said, I mean, I've met my partner there. I've learned. really how to value deals.

I've learned who. You're on the spot, boy. Come on. It's okay. There's no wrong answer here. Just say you like hearing Brandon's voice and I thought you happy. I did tell him that at one of the meetups that it came to in the York. Brandon, I listen because I listen to the podcast, you know, especially when I got started,

really just about every chance I could get. If I'd be taking my daughter to school, I'd listen to the podcast. If I'd be shaving, I listen to the podcast. Obviously, when I was driving, I listened to the podcast. And it was just easy ways. I wasn't, you know, because the way I look at bigger pockets and it's, you know, really one of the biggest tools for our success in our business. But I really, and I, you know, I encourage people that are on the site to use it as a supplement. You got to take action and consult with bigger pockets.

You know, being on bigger pockets all day, I mean, it's a lot of fun and it's great and you'll meet some amazing people. And I think to get started, it's worthwhile. You need to know the education piece. But at some point, you got to get out and you got to get started. We're having technical difficulties. I'm sorry. This message can't be relayed. What?

Hey, what was he talking about, Brandon? I don't know. I don't know. What? Are you drunk, Josh? No, I think your point is. You are correct. Right on.

You are correct. Yeah, yeah. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just, you know, I don't know. No, you didn't. You were totally speaking counter to everything that I thought. I'm just kidding. No, he's right.

You got to get out. I mean, you really can't just sit and sit and sit and think and think. At some point, you got to pull the trigger. Brandon talks about it every other episode and apparently just shot me with his little finger gun. I pulled the trigger. Come on. Yeah.

But, yeah, no, that's really, really good advice. And I'm glad the site's been so valuable to you and your business. And that's great. It's really great. One other thing I'd like to add that, you know, that was a great tool is I started a meetup. Again, I think it was one of the quick tips or whatever it was, you know, became a pro member. That was pretty fast into it. I dove into that and that's been amazing.

I've been able to post things in the marketplace. I've been able to, you know, really start this meetup. You know, that's one of the benefits, I think, at the pro member account that you could post in the meetup spot. And we've had, I think there are times where we had maybe even over 40 people there. one of the people that's come that's one of the first books I read in real estate was Frank Allen Elliott is semi-regular at some of the meetups. So that was a nice endorsement. Frank's awesome. Yeah, that's great. That's really cool. Well, that's and that's awesome. Here's what happens, right? You know, you have the option to go and attend other meetups,

other groups. You said, you know what, I want to have a group. I'm kind of the guy who people think of as the connector, right? So you become the connector. Now, everybody knows you, everybody in your area, sees you as the man and turns to you when there's opportunities. I think it's a fantastic idea. If you're a real estate investor and there's not a meetup, or even if there is a meetup, there's room for two, three, four, five meetup in areas. Have your own, put your own spin on it. You become kind of the master of that domain. And it's great for business. So, you know, great idea, great idea. And I'm glad again that the site kind of came in handy to help you do that. That's awesome. Good stuff. By the way, I got an email

from somebody who's an English teacher and she said to me, you know, Josh, you and Brandon say this awesome word. And as Brandon is holding up, I told her, I was going to print it out in the list. We've got impressive, remarkable, awe-inspiring, formidable, stunning, wonderful, striking, mind-blowing, grand, unbelievable, outstanding, stupendous to burb, marvelous, phenomenal, magnificent, all good and swell. Well, that was a magnificent quote. That was a superb email from that lady. So we're going to attempt to use more vocabulary.

Yeah, I love that. That's what I actually meant to talk to you about that, Josh. I was going to joke with you earlier. We never touched on it. That's funny. Yeah. All right. Anyway, moving on.

We got to get out of here. Let's go to the world famous. Famous for... By the way, this is show 107 of the Bigger Pockets podcast, and you could check out the show notes. at biggerpockets.com slash show 107. That you can. All right.

Famous Four, you know what these are. You listen to the show a few times. So I probably don't even need to say it, but I'm going to. What is your favorite real estate book and why? I'm going to name too just because I think both have been really important. The first one is Jay Scott's book on flipping cows. That was a very actionable book that really gave us. solid step by step on what to do. And you know, you don't need to read the whole book to start

taking action. You can, you know, go chapter and start doing it. And he gave a lot of good tips, I think also on wholesaling, which you wouldn't think of. So that was very instrumental in us starting out. Also, Frank Allenelli's book on, I haven't written down somewhere because it's a pretty long title. Yeah. I forgot the whole title. What every real estate investor needs to know about cash flow and 36 other key financial measures. See, Josh makes fun. I mean. because my title is so long. With the how to invest in real estate with no and low money down.

Frank takes the cake on that, though. Yeah, we'll let you and Frank have a title off. We might. Next book is going to be like 400 words. All right. Very good. All right, very good.

Awesome. Business book. I stole it. What is your favorite business book? And why? So I'm also going to say two over here. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie was great on just

just relationship building. I mean, just one quick, there's a poker tip that I love. It's, you know, poker's not a game of cards played with people. It's a game of people played with cards. And I think the same thing applies to real estate. It's really, it's not a game of, you know, properties played with people. It's a game of people. So, you know, be good to people, learn how to treat people.

And I think, you know, that's a lot of what Dale Carnegie's, you know, book talks about. I love it. What else you got? Stupendez. Striking. Stunning. Yes, yes. And the other one is a little off the cuff here.

But I think, you know, for Wall Street Journal, just reading the paper, it doesn't need to be every day. But it's really, it just shows you how to run a business. It's really the big players. What are they doing? Dead and equity and everything else that you need to know. Again, it's not something, I know it's not a sexy, fluffy kind of book that people are going to go out and be inspired. But it also helps to know what's going on in the world. especially when investing in real estate.

Nice. I love it. You know what I would say? You know, one of the things I used to read when I was like 16. You can read? Yes. Boy, when I was 16, I came across the Forbes. And it was like sitting somewhere and it was the Forbes 400 or something like that.

And I just got to reading it and I was like, oh my God, this is so inspiring. I read the stories of like the richest, the richest lists. And every time it came out, every year I got, you know, exciting until, you know, I knew every richest person in the world and their stories weren't new to me. But like hearing these new stories for me was always really inspiring. So, you know, it's kind of similar to Wall Street. But, you know, just hearing kind of, hey, this guy started with, you know, one donut shop. And now he's got Dunkin' Donuts, you know, the biggest franchise on the planet. How do you do it?

Figuring it out. Anyway, a little offset. But great. Nice. Awesome. Hobbies. What do you do? I do expensive things, so I don't get it, and time-consuming, so I don't get around to doing

them as much as I like, travel, skiing, and golf. Nice. And obviously love spending time with family. Fantastic. Where do you ski? On the ice coast. The ice coast. What's the ice coast? That's East Coast. All those ski slopes are made of ice.

Yeah, it's very different skiing back east versus skiing in the West. It's like night and day. Yep. I grew up in Miami, so it's, it's, It's been something I've taken up in the last six years. Oh, cool. I used to ski race. And for those of you who don't know that about me, I was a little ski racer back in New York.

And so I raced, I was on the Hunter Mountain ski team. Wow. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Interesting. Cool. All right, Brandon, final question. Let's let this guy get out of here.

What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? So I've heard this question, I don't know, like I said, 1006 times plus another, you know, 30 on repeat or something like that. I'll try to give a little different, a little bit of a different spin on here. I think there's really three different personalities in the question. I think there's people that never get started, people that give up and people that fail. There's a million reasons for each of them. And obviously, again, every situation is different. For people that take action, for people that never get started, you've got to take action, use BP, educate yourself and go out there.

You know, like I said before, use BP as a supplement. It's great. Every step of the way they're there, they have answers for you. And that's kind of what it's been for us is taking us from the beginning, you know, to kind of where we are today. For people that give up, again, we've spoken about this a lot. There's real estate encompasses so much. Use partners. I mean, don't, you know, it's so important to get that experience. I mean, after our first deal, just a quick tidbit here, I've had people come out of the woodwork saying, hey, I heard you did your first deal. Let me know And the next one is I got money to invest. And I was trying, I was looking for so many people on our first deal to get money for. And it's like, you know, all of a sudden we did that first deal. And, you know, we're experienced investors all the sudden. So, you know, don't, again, my advice here, and I know it's hard to say, but don't worry about how much money you're going to make on that first deal. You know, if you need to make a little less and give and give one of your partners a little bit more, if that's how you can get started because it's so easy to give up. There's so much, there's so much going on in this space. And for people that fail, again, spoke about this too.

Reputations everything. You know, be good to people. You know, you may lose a little in the short run, but it really comes back. People know who you are. They'll want to work with you. So those are kind of the three things that I would say for, to answer your question. I love it. I will tell you that 106 shows, that is probably my favorite answer to that question.

I thought it was fantastic. Nicely done. Well done. All right. Jonathan, where can people find out more about you? Bigger pockets, best place to reach out to me. And you can find me there, email me, message me, and ask me anything. Be happy to help as much as I can.

Fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much for being on the show. We really, really appreciate it. And best of luck to you going forward. We're excited to hear about the progress. And I know you'll be sharing updates with everybody on the success story. So thanks for being a part of our world and for coming on the show. You went from listener to guests, see?

Look at that. It is possible. It is possible. Nice. All right. Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you so much, guys. All right, guys, that was show 107 of the Bigger Pockets podcast with Jonathan McAvsky.

Jonathan, thanks again for being on. We really do appreciate it. Again, Brandon. That was stupendous and superb and marvelous. Wow. I might have been called phenomenal and magnificent. Why don't you give a shout to the nice lady who gave us those? Oh, apparently you don't know.

I forgot her name as well. Amanda, I think. All right. We'll be props to Amanda or whatever her name is for the awesome list. We're sorry that we forgot. Should we re-record this? No, keep going. Keep going on.

I'm going to figure her name out here in just a second. We're going to figure it out. All right. All right. Amanda. I was right. Amanda Cook. You're awesome. Nicely done.

Nicely done. And if you guys have tips for helping us out, we're always open for it. We are looking for some jingles to improve the show. So if anyone wants to put together a jingle for the show, put it together, send it to Brandon or I, Brandon of Bigger Pockets, Josh are bigger pockets, and hit us up. Otherwise, as I say every week, if you are not already a member of Bigger Pockets, jump on, get active. The show of Jonathan is proof as to why you should do that. It's an amazing place, if I do say so myself, but it has nothing to do with me at this point. It's all about you guys, the listeners, the community,

and we love it. And you guys are amazing. So thank you for being a part of our world. Check us out on Facebook at facebook.com slash bigger pockets, YouTube, YouTube. dot com slash bigger pockets, Twitter.com slash bigger pockets. And, you know, give us a shout wherever you are. That's it. Spread the word. BP Nation, thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets 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. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com.

Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content,

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