BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 124: Building a Real Estate Empire At a Young Age with Jered Sturm
Episode Date: May 28, 2015Is it possible to invest in real estate when you don’t have decades of life-experiences? That’s the topic we dive into today on the BiggerPockets Podcast with special guest Jered Sturm. Jered, w...ho is in his mid-twenties, is an incredibly successful buy-and-hold investor as well as a house flipper and contractor. Jared’s unique strategy appeals to anyone who is looking to build a large portfolio in a short time. Today’s show is all about hustle, and doing what it takes to succeed! Whether you are 25 or 75, this interview is bound to inspire you to take massive action to find the success you desire. Stay tuned! In This Episode We Cover: How Jered bought his first property right out of high school Details on Jered’s journey to 20+ units How Jered has financed his deals The ins and outs of the flips he’s completed The importance of networking to finding properties How Jered and his team find deals The common trait that makes some landlords terrible The advantages and disadvantages of investing in real estate at a young age The power of exponential growth And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets AskBP Podcast BiggerPockets Calculators It’s a Wonderful Life How to Start Investing In Real Estate at a Young Age BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar Zillow Books Mentioned in this Show The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber J. Scott’s The Book on Flipping Houses Investing in Real Estate by Gary Eldred Business Brilliant by Lewis Schiff Tweetable Topics: “If we can do it for others, why not do it for ourselves?” (Tweet This!) “If you wait longer in life, you’re going to have all the responsibilities that usually come later in life.” (Tweet This!) “People can find the confidence in you if you just carry yourself the right way.” (Tweet This!) “There’s gonna be times in life where I’ll know I want free time more than I do now.” (Tweet This!) “No company cares about the property as much as an owner.” (Tweet This!) “Be someone that people will lend money to.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Jered Jered’s BiggerPockets Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 124.
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What's going on, everybody?
This is Josh Dorkin host at the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner.
What's up, Brandon?
What up, Josh?
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm good, man.
Excited about today's show.
Good.
Me too.
This is a good one because, you know, I'm a young guy.
You're an old guy.
So, you know, today we're talking about investing.
You got one up, man.
You got one up.
I did get one up.
This guy is showing me.
Like this young dude who like jumped in and,
and was successful really early.
And today, I mean, like, yeah, I think he beats you by like five years, doesn't he?
He's doing all right.
I think I got my 24 unit, which would have put me at 30 units when I was like 25.
And he's just 25 now.
He's got 20 units.
So, you know, he's, he might pass me up if he buys another one, you know, this year.
So it's a race.
You know, I'm showing off.
That's what I do.
Nice.
Yeah.
Very inspiring story.
Whether or not you're young or not listeners out there, I mean, if you're 50 or
60 or so I'm going to love this show. But the fact that it's very inspiring to see a guy
25 years old, just crushing it. It's awesome. Oh, yeah. And there's some really great tips.
And this and we'll talk about it in a minute here. But before we do, let's get to today's
quick tip. All right, guys, today's quick tip is, if you have not yet tuned in to the Ask BP
podcast, check it out. You can find it on YouTube. You can find it on iTunes. We've got it on
SoundCloud. This thing is all over the place. And it's great. It's a little quick, short,
what is it, like five, ten minute answers to your questions in audio slash video format.
If you have a question, leave me a question. Go to Twitter and just do like, you know,
sign bigger pockets and then hashtag Ask BP and then leave your question. And then I'll answer it
or somebody will on the Ask BP podcast. Awesome, guys. Hey, listen, really quick. Before we move on
and get started with the show. I just want to, first of all, thank everybody for listening. We really
appreciate all your listenership. I don't think you guys fully understand how much Brandon and I
truly, truly appreciate that you guys tune into us every week. It really means a lot to us,
and we're glad that we're helping you out. With that said, if you are one of our regulars and
have yet to jump on iTunes and leave us a rating or review, we would very much appreciate it.
Those things really, really help us. They help expand the visibility.
of the show. So if you could
just go to iTunes, and you could do this even if you're
a PC user, just go to iTunes,
find the Bigger Pockets podcast,
and leave us, go ahead, leave us a
rating. You could do four to five stars.
Well, hopefully five, but yeah,
zero to five, hopefully five.
And you could leave us a review, and
that's going to help other people find us.
But with that, why don't we get into
the show? Today's guest is
Jared Sturm.
Hopefully I didn't just
massacre his last name, Jared Strum.
Jared is a real estate investor in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, who's just crushing it.
He's really, really doing well.
The guy's a young, like Brandon mentioned earlier, is 25.
He's been doing this since he got his first house, as you'll find out, like literally
right after high school.
It's amazing, inspiring.
And there's really some great tips in here for everybody.
The guy has buying, hold, flipped houses, and working on flips now.
and we're kind of wholesale, so lots to learn.
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Let's get to it.
All right, Jared.
Welcome to the show, man.
It's good to have you here.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Awesome.
Well, good deal.
Well, you know, you came across our attention on the forums a while back.
You know, you've been participating there and writing blog posts and just kind of sharing what
you know.
And then I found out that you were actually a pretty young guy. I mean, you're not, you're not like old like Josh here.
You're still in high school, right? Yeah. Nice.
Now, how old are you? I'm 25. 25 and you're a real estate investor. That's pretty cool.
Yep. Yeah, but I've been a real estate investor for about three and a half years now.
Cool. Wow. Well, what inspires a 21 and a half year old to become a real estate investor?
I mean, that's, you know, a lot of people listening are like, that son of them, you know, I wish I did that.
Well, when I started, I really had no idea about real estate investment, but I did know a lot about houses and working on houses because even prior to the real estate investment, I was a contractor working on other people's houses doing kitchens, bathrooms, and running a small construction company with my brother doing that stuff.
and then it got to the point where it was like, well, if we can do it for others, why not do it for ourselves?
So I jumped into the real estate investment world, really not knowing much about real estate investment,
but knowing more about houses.
But you were doing this in high school, this construction stuff, right?
In high school, it was more of a handyman.
Okay.
Yeah, so I worked for a local real estate investor as his handyman, just doing stuff to his rentals.
Okay.
And didn't know much at all, but every time he would just say,
can you do this, I'd just say, yeah.
And we would figure it out along the way.
And then just started to pick up small jobs with friends and family.
You know, they won a bathroom updated.
And it just kind of grew and grew.
And then left the working for the real estate investor a couple years after that.
But with him, I made it from Handyman to, you know,
working on his flips and doing all of the, like a full flip for him.
Nice. Cool. Nice. And so you bought the first house, you bought, I understand it was like literally right after graduating high school. Is that right? Yeah, if I remember correctly, it was like, I can't remember exactly, but I know that graduation was in the way of closing. So like we moved it or it was, it was right there. I can't remember. Let me get my violins out for you. Yeah. So how do you do that? How do you buy a house that soon after high school? I don't know anybody that's ever bought one that quick.
A lot of it was help of parents.
So even, I guess that was my first investment property, but I had no idea what I was doing.
So not even a little bit.
It was a suggestion from mom and dad.
I took it, ran with it.
It really worked out.
I lived there for five years with my brother, who's my business partner now, and four other guys.
So I guess house hacked it.
Yeah, house hacked.
Yeah, so I did that for five years, and it worked out really well.
Isn't that called, like, you know, fraternity housing or something to that?
Yeah, it was interesting.
So five years of that.
Now, four of them were with all of the same guys, so it worked out pretty well.
And the reason we actually bought that house is because we knew we wanted to get into the contracting side of things,
and it had a 30 by 50 detached garage.
And so we were like, oh, we can store all of our.
tools, trucks, equipment. And that was the reason we got that house. We completely overpaid for it,
but we still haven't it today. Okay. And you don't live there anymore, though, right? You rent that
one or something? No, yeah, it's rented out to a nice family who takes better care of it than the
Yeah. Hey, what happened to the fifth guy, or do we not want to talk about that? What's this guy?
Yeah, that's what I thought. There was a guy that lived in the basement behind the furnace because
we added a room back there.
Was that troll? I mean, like, was this like, you imagine a guy that, you know, appeared when you guys were up late drinking?
He did. He was the guy that stayed up like weird hours.
Wake up in the afternoon when we were getting home from work and stuff.
That's awesome.
Well, cool. So how did you, I mean, how did you go from that to becoming a real estate investment?
Well, maybe I can ask you first. How many deals you have you done so far? And what, what are they?
Well, I own 20 units rentals. So me and my brother own 20 units rentals. And then we are transitioning
into flips now. So I am working, I just finished up my first flip and getting ready to list it
at the beginning of the week. And we already closed on our second flip to get started on that,
but haven't started any work. And in the process of working on my first wholesale deal now.
Wow. Cool. So right on.
Okay, so you, I mean, how do you get 20 units when you're 25 years old?
Like, why are they multifamily, single family?
You kind of walk us through that journey that you took.
Yeah.
It started as single family.
So the way we did it was we didn't have much money and no one would loan us money, rightfully
so because we had no idea what really what we were doing other than we knew how to work on houses.
So the way we did it was we built up capital through working on other people's houses
doing kitchens, bathrooms, decks, additions, whatever we could do.
And it was working well, and we made good money because we worked hard and kept getting referrals.
So that worked out well.
That gave us a little bit of money to start, and we bought our first property very cheap because it needed a ton of work.
And what we did was we had the time and we had the will, but we didn't have the money.
So we bought them really distressed and just put tons and tons of our own labor into it.
Nice, nice. And, you know, putting, I guess a lot of people come in and say, hey, what do I do? Or how do I do this? You know, I don't have the resources. I don't have the capacity. And what you did was you found away, right? You didn't say, hey, I don't have the resources. You said, well, I don't have the resources. What am I going to do about it? And, you know, built up the skill set that you can use within the realm of real estate to build up resources and then apply those towards, you know, buying.
that real estate, which is really a cool idea. And I think, you know, I hear from a lot of young people who are like,
I don't know what to do. Well, that's a great path. You know, hey, start learning the trade, start learning how to do the
construction side. You know, you know, what kills me is you actually said, hey, all you got to do is work
hard and do a good job and you're going to get referrals. You know, I think one of the biggest pet peeves
of whether it's investors
or homeowners
or anybody who's looking to get projects done
is that. Because
for some damn reason, 90%
of contractors don't know what that is.
They don't know what doing a good job is.
They don't realize that if you do a crap job,
you're not going to get referrals.
I'm talking personally about this
because right now I'm dealing with a bunch of contractors
once again, and I'm like pissed off
and I'm like, they all suck.
None of them ever want to be referred out to anybody.
Like just literally do it.
a B job, and I will send you to 50 people, and they will all gladly send you to 50 people.
So for all the contractors that are listening, because there are contractors listening,
just do that, and you will have a huge business. You have no idea. But anyway, back to your
whole thing. I love it. I think the idea of working, you know, getting your hands dirty,
and then, you know, buying the worst properties, like the ones that everyone else looks at and is like,
oh man, this is nasty.
You know, sink that time in because that's all you got, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It was pretty much substitute our time and labor for the capital that we lacked.
And the first ones took a long time because we were bouncing back and forth from working,
you know, the side jobs of, I say side jobs, but the working on other people's houses took priority.
So whenever we had a kitchen or bathroom for someone else, we were there.
And then if there was ever a gap, like that buffer time, we would be back working.
on our rentals. So they were slow in the beginning. And then as we got up to eight, I think once we
had eight, we said, okay, we're done working for other people. And we're going to go to now just
strictly working on our own properties. And even then at eight, you know, it's me and my brother.
It's really difficult. It's not that much money coming in to where you have to say,
okay, I'm going to give up all this time and really still not see any money because we
we're reinvesting everything back in.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I mean, I don't know.
I feel like you and I took very, very similar paths and how we did this.
Like, we both did the construction thing.
And I was a contractor for a very, very short time.
And I don't know.
Why was it so short?
I had a rough time.
I was not that good at being a contractor.
Okay.
I just wanted to make sure.
That's what I thought.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I was not that.
I mean, it was fine, but like, I made no money, like, at all.
He didn't get any referrals.
I could see Brandon with a hammer, just trying.
to actually hit the nail.
Yeah.
No, it was, it was rough.
I mean, it's harder than it looks.
I think like you can be good.
It's like the whole Emit thing, right?
Like, you can be good at swinging a hammer,
but it doesn't mean you're good at being a contractor.
Those are very two different skill sets to be good at.
Or the business side.
Or you might be good at the business side and terrible at swinging a hammer.
And you don't need to necessarily be good at both.
And most people aren't.
I know, it sounds like you, Jared, might be good at both.
But I'm definitely not.
Well, I wasn't.
Until like the fifth house,
I had no clue on the investment side of it.
But it worked because I knew how to take care of the properties
and I entered at the right time.
You know, I started in a market that could support mistakes.
But, yeah, I think until the fifth house,
I didn't really have a clue.
And maybe somewhere around House six or seven is when I found bigger pockets
and that kind of helped me put something behind what I was doing.
and more, I don't know, focused, I guess, as far as the investment side and understanding, really,
I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how to do the math correctly or anything like that.
So I was making good purchases based on the house itself, but yeah, the math behind the real estate didn't come until later.
So, yeah, six houses in and I had really no clue what I was doing.
That's cool.
That's great.
That's great.
And we, you know, we've got, we've got a couple of really good,
articles on real estate math, we'll link in the show notes to one or two of them. And also,
obviously, the bigger pockets calculators come in extremely handy for those folks who are
trying to get a better grasp on real estate math. And you can check those out at biggerpockts.com
slash calc. Yeah. Before we move on, do you mind if I. So one thing I wanted to touch on here is
the fact that you did your own, you do most of your own work or have. I mean, always did your own
work, correct? Yes. Yes. In the beginning, now on the flips, we're starting to.
to sub out a lot of the work, still being there as the general contractor and working on more
of the expensive things like the electric or plumbing. On a flip, you just can't do it that way
because you need to go a little quicker. Because we were buying inexpensive rentals.
So you could drag it out a little bit because holding costs weren't as bad. But yes, on all
of the rentals, all of the work was ourselves. And when I mean all of it, it was every bit,
electric plumbing, anything you could think of.
That's cool. And one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast is to talk about that,
because it's a different side than what most of our guests have done.
You know, most people are, you know, we're very like, you know, work on your business,
not in your business and hire people and outsource and whatever else.
But, I mean, that's not the way most of us began.
Whether or not we got there at some point, I mean, like, and you're getting there as well,
the fact is when you start out, that's oftentimes what you have to do.
And, you know, I just think it's cool that you did that and you made it work.
And it kind of goes back to that thing.
We talk about a lot here on the show, the idea of the unfair advantage.
Everybody has it.
Everybody's got something in their life that they can do to harness and leverage towards
their investing.
It might be, you know, a wealthy family member.
It might be having the ability to fix a toilet.
It might be the ability to talk to people and network very well and you can raise money.
I mean, everyone's got something.
Figure out what that is and run with it.
And it looks like you did exactly that.
So very cool.
All right, cool.
So let's go on.
I mean, you mentioned a second ago, you know, now that you're,
doing the flips, you have to work a lot quicker. Why is, I mean, is that because you're buying a
higher price point? And what are, you know, your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's a much higher price
point. So in our rentals, you know, we're looking at $25,000 houses, purchase price. Hey, where are
you really quick, Jared? Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay. Detroit. Okay.
It's that Rust Belt. I mean, there's, you know, there's like 20 states you just don't like.
I love them all. They love me. Maybe not. But.
But like there's there's that whole rust belt where, you know, it's possible.
By the end of the show, Josh is going to be thinking about investing in Cincinnati, though.
Oh, yeah, I'm coming, man.
I'm coming.
They're going to throw me out when I get there, but I'm coming.
He secretly has money tucked playing Detroit house.
Yeah.
That's his strategy.
He just keeps putting it down so nobody else takes his properties.
Let me clarify again.
I think Detroit, I think the rust belt is a really, really great place to invest.
If you know the areas that you're investing in, I think for an outsider coming in,
you just have to know the area because you know you go one block over and you're in deep trouble so
and that that applies for anywhere and everywhere but yeah um so what's your purchase price on your
flips then what what kind of ranges are you doing there uh the first one 25 and um it's we're
going to list it at 220 okay wow and what you put in on that 25 not bad good man that's pretty
good now is that you're doing a lot of the work yourself though correct
Yes, that flip took us 22 days, and we were there every day for about probably average
of 10 hours.
So if you take out your, if you actually apply labor costs to your work, you and your
brother, it sounds like, is that 25 really 50 or 40?
I would say 40.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
But yeah.
So we'd probably make, we would have charged our, we would charge 15 for that,
you know, that work roughly.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, I mean, for those people listening, I think it's really important that we actually talk about this because, you know, saying that, you know, it was 25 and you sold it for, what was it, 225, you know, obviously there was your time and your money, your time is worth something.
And so when you do the analysis of a flip or buy and hold, you know, and say you're managing the property yourself, you have to account for that time upfront to ensure that you have some kind of profitability at the.
the back end. Now, if you're doing the work yourself, it's, it's, you know, it's kind of no sweat off
you and it is money in your pocket. But, you know, at least for the new people who are listening,
who haven't yet to analyze deals, is really, really important to account for that time.
Because that could be the difference between a profit and loss.
And our second flip is purchase price was 155, needs a lot less work. We'll probably end up
listening for like 205.
But one thing we're doing with our flips is we're trying to, because we now have more capital and access to capital,
is we're trying to hit a point where we're at the top of the price point to where we can then rent it for at least what the mortgage is.
So that way we could always at least have that extra exit strategy.
So we're not, yes, we could go get a half a million dollar house and flip it, but we're, we're just, we're just.
just getting into flips. So I don't want to make the mistake. You know, I could probably make more money
that way if I, if it was successful, but I don't want to set myself up for, you know, big failure.
So we're at the, we're at the top of what we're comfortable with, even though we probably could go
higher. We're focusing there to begin. Yeah, I recommend that to people all the time. If you're just
getting started flipping, people lose money in their first flips all the time. So if you're going to go
flip a house, your very first one and you're going to decide to go tackle a, you know, $800,000
property, you think you can sell for $1.2 million. And then,
then something goes wrong and all of a sudden you find out you wind up owing $150,000 when you go to
sell you know like those are real things that could happen on an early flip now it sounds like your first
flip is going to turn out great but it doesn't always do that for people and so yeah if you can
start out small start out a little bit smaller until you know what you're doing better I think that's
smart yeah it's first flip we were fortunate to find a great deal so that's where it really
started and it was just through a personal connection a guy actually in my bowling league
Really? Oh, nice.
Yeah, his fiancé was there and talking about how much she hated the house. The pipes froze. It was his rental. They had no handy skills at all.
So, you know, it's the second time the pipes froze. I hate this thing. He ended up having his tenants come and stay at his own house. I mean, it was a mess.
And that's when I handed on my business card. There you go. There you go. That's great. That's great.
And have you, do you make that a regular habit, you know, giving your card out to pretty much everybody and letting everyone know?
Yes. In the past year, I've done a much better job of just talking to anyone that I can and got that from Bigger Pocket Podcast.
That's where I picked it up as I did a really bad job of networking to start with. It was more just like work harder, work harder, work harder.
And then in the past year, really, just started talking to anyone that I can, whether it be like, you know, the cast.
cash register lady at Kroger or anybody. And it's amazing how much stuff just comes together
once you put it all out there. So a minute ago you mentioned, you know, you found that property
via networking. Is that how you're finding most of your properties? Are you doing MLS? Are you doing
direct mail? How do you find them? A mix. So in the beginning, it was MLS all the way. There was more
there. I didn't know any other way. So that's what we did. And we used an agent at that time.
Now my business partner, my brother is licensed, and ever since he's got in his license, we have not bought a single one off the MLS.
That's funny.
We did some direct marketing and did a lot of drive for dollars, driving around, looking at distressed properties, and just writing down addresses, putting them in spreadsheets, cold calling the ones that we could get their numbers off the auditor's site and then mailing to anyone else.
And that was extremely time-consuming, but it turned out really well because we got our first
apartment building off of it and a duplex as well.
So it was a huge success from that standpoint.
Well, tell us some more about that, about that marketing.
Okay.
Well, it was just yellow letters.
Okay.
And it was my first and only crack at it.
And it was successful, which from what I hear, you know, it takes a lot to get a deal from
it, but I just happened to, it happened to work out for us on the first one.
And actually, we had our cold call list of about, I don't know, it was about 100 landlords.
So you can only get the phone numbers here in Cincinnati.
You can only get the phone numbers of registered rentals off the auditor's site.
So you can get their phone number if they're a landlord.
So I had about 100 phone numbers of landlords.
The very first one I called was a five-unit apartment building.
I gave him, I had like a general script typed out.
I gave him what I had, and it kind of ends with, are you interested in,
selling this property to me. And he's just like, yeah. I was like, man, I'm good. I'm really good.
The next 99 were hangups, nose, you know, I don't call me. I'll sell it for the right price,
you know, stuff like that. But yeah, we ended up purchasing it. And that's probably one of my
favorite deals because this guy was an older gentleman that was just really burnt out on being a landlord.
he had converted a five-unit apartment building into a four.
So it was built as a five, and he converted to a four,
then had only two units occupied,
which he was paying for the utilities,
and they're all separately metered.
Oh, man.
So he was running it like a mess, pretty much.
And so we were there.
We showed him how much money he was actually losing,
and then he was ready to sell immediately.
Well, then we found out,
that his friend who lived around the corner held a mortgage on it. So then we started to negotiate
if he would let us assume the mortgage. So it was a 25-year mortgage and he was 13 years in.
And to make a long story short, we ended up assuming that mortgage as is and just giving the
original or the owner, we gave him $5,000 and he was happy. He got out. We assumed the mortgage,
pick up the property for the purchase price of 75
after we turned it back into a five unit
to make it valued differently
than a four family.
The value right now is a little over 200,000.
Wow.
Now we did a lot of work to that.
I don't want to make it sound like we just
changed it from put a wall up,
made it a four to a five.
Now we separated all the water lines
and separately metered those
and put about $40,000 into it.
So you went $70,000.
put 40 and you're at 110.
You also paid $5 grand
for the assumption of the mortgage.
So you're $1.15.
No, the assumption fee,
there wasn't an assumption fee.
We paid...
There was a balance of $70,000 on the mortgage.
We assumed that and then paid $5,000 to the owner.
Okay, got you got.
Got it.
Either way, you have a lot of equity.
You have a ton of equity in that.
You know, a couple of things you mentioned there,
I just want to point out.
First of all, the fact that you, you know,
found this landlord that had two units out of four or five rented. It was really struggling. Like,
that is not, that's not an uncommon thing. You know, like, most landlords are terrible. I mean,
I talked to a person yesterday. I actually got a phone call from a friend of mine who was like,
hey, Brandon, I'm here with this friend of mine who's the manager of an apartment building here
in town, and she needs your help. And I'm like, okay. So we put her on speaker phone. And the girl's
like, yeah, I don't, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to evict this person. And I'm like,
what she's like yeah i got i go to a victim they haven't paid rent in months and i got a victim now for the
owner but the owner's out of the area and so i have to do it but i filed a bunch of paperwork and then
the county two weeks later told me i did it all wrong and i don't even know what i'm doing
and i'm like so anyway like those are so common everywhere oh yeah right and or then she said
this one funny thing she's like you know i've heard people do like background checks and stuff i
probably should i'm like oh yeah you probably should so anyway i'm like write down my number
give it to the owner. I'm going to talk with him. Maybe I can help take care of his problem.
Maybe I can help take care of this problem. Is this the lady that you hired like a couple
just back? No, I didn't. This is different, different property manager. But yeah, no, this. Yeah,
it was crazy. But anyway, um, where was it going with that? Okay, there are a lot of bad landlords out
there. If you just get in touch with them and say, look, especially with the multifamilies,
if you just say, hey, I can clean this mess up for you, uh, you know, walk away. Maybe a sum a
mortgage like that. Maybe you can do a, you know, whatever. There's just so much opportunity there.
I think that's very cool that you did that.
Hey, really quick, because I think the experience people understand it,
but the people who are new may not fully understand the assumption of a mortgage.
Can you just explain that really quickly, you know, how that works and so people get it?
Yeah, so the previous owner had a mortgage on the property,
so he borrowed the money from his friend to purchase this property.
Now, that mortgage still existed when he wanted to.
to sell it. So what we did was instead of paying it off with money we borrowed from someone else
or our own money is we just assumed the note that was drafted originally by the seller we purchased
it from and his lender. Just taking that over right where it was left off. And that's just done
through our attorneys, a couple documents. It's really simple because his mortgage was a one-page
mortgage really basic because it was between two friends. So it was really easy. Did I
explain that well
you use the word
to explain the word
but so
which no it was fine
the only clarification
I would say is
so you guys
instead of paying
off the note
were now
paying the note
to the
the note holder
instead of the other person
paying the note to the note
holder is that
is that better?
Yeah sure
the main thing
I mean
wow
tough around
yeah
just go to bigger
pockets
read about it. Yeah, the assumption of mortgage. I mean, it's a pretty, it used to be a lot more
common than it is today. Most mortgages don't allow assumptions anymore. And that's why people
do things like subject to or whatever to try to get around that. But most mortgages say, well,
if you assume a mortgage, we're going to foreclose on you. That's called the do-on-sale clause.
But a lot of mortgages in the past and ones that are done between friends like that can be
assumed without a problem. I mean, you're not going to go assume a Bank of America mortgage
very easily, but you might assume one from the guy that lives down the street like you did.
or if it's an old mortgage.
I think it was FHA back in the day
used to all be assumable, and then that changed
like 20 years ago or something, but I don't know.
Just taken over. I mean, at the end of the day, you're taking
over, you're now paying the
note to the same guy, the
same bank, who was the friend
who had the note. Yeah.
Yeah. And we did have to meet with him
prior, well,
we suggested it. You know, we sat down
with him, showed him
a portfolio that we give out to
the banks and said here,
here's everything you'll want to see, and then just chat it for probably 30 minutes. And by the
end of that, he said, I'm on board. So it was really simple. Hey, Jared, what is in that portfolio
that you share with the banks? That's your lender kit, right? What's in it? Yeah. So it's our business
plan, which I wrote specifically for that book. So I didn't have it prior to that. We typed it up
for that. We would have tax returns in there, P&Ls for any, you know, a year we don't have tax
returns, just rent rolls. I think, oh, you know, just description of our business, anyone that we
network worth or use, you know, lists of our team, I guess you would say. So any handyman we use,
any attorney, anyone, you know, I listed even my dad.
who's an accountant for a construction company.
As long as you word it right, you know, as a financial mentor, it will help you.
So it was, you know, it's 200 pages thick at the end of it.
Not the business plan, but every document in there returns and all of that, rent rolls,
anything you can come up with.
What I do is just give them anything and everything and they say, you know, I'm not going
to read all of this, but it looks good.
Yeah, yeah.
That's great.
To add on there, so I've told the story maybe before.
I'm sure if I was here on one of the webinars.
But so I needed a loan on my, I had a fourplex that I turned into a fiveplex as well.
Again, you and I are very similar in that I had this property.
I needed a loan on, but it was very tough for me to get this loan on the five plus.
I got turned down by like three different banks.
And then I was like, this is stupid.
So I went to and did exactly what you did.
I made this big thick like packet.
I put like a laminated cover on it that I bought a staples.
And then I put the, I went on bigger pockets, the rental property calculator,
put in the entire numbers for the current property that I'm analyzed or that I was
trying to get a refi on it, showed how good of a deal it was, took that, put it on the front of
the thing, so they opened it up and then handed that entire thing to this one bank.
And the guy was super impressed because nobody had ever given him something that organized
before and that put together for just a simple like, it was only $120,000 or $90,000 mortgage.
So he was blown away and they did the loan like two weeks later or three weeks later,
closed on it.
So professionalism matters so much.
Yeah, we actually, we use a portfolio lender as well now.
And later on, going back to him, he said,
the only reason I gave you the loan on the first meeting was because of that,
and you wore tides.
And I'm like, that's it?
And you wore, I didn't hear you.
And you wore what?
Ties.
Ties.
You know, like, because he was like, nobody wears ties anymore.
Yeah.
Nice.
And he admitted, like, you know, it's his decision.
It boils down to his decision.
He has, course, has to take it to the board.
But he's the one telling them, you know, yes or no, I think we should go ahead.
And he said, because of that book and because of you wore ties,
I gave it to you.
That's awesome.
I'm glad we wore ties.
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Okay, so Jared, you mentioned portfolio lender that you found one,
and that's what I used as well,
but maybe for those people who don't know what that is,
can you kind of explain that real quick?
Yeah, so it's a bank that I use,
and the only difference is they do not sell off the loan
after you take a loan with them.
They keep it in-house.
So they're actually making the decision,
do I want a loan to this person,
because I'm going to be the one collecting the payment, not selling it off to, you know,
Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or one of the big government agencies to where you have to meet all of
someone else's criteria being Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. So they make the criteria, and that could be
wearing a tie or anything they want it to be, really. So they make the decision. Yeah, I like that too.
Yeah, when I just did, I just got done with my 24 unit refinancing that.
And I mean, all they had to do was walk in, like the guy, like my lender walked into the board meeting with them and said, here's the deal.
I think we should do it.
They said, okay.
And it was done, I don't know, it was such a like old school way, I feel like of doing business.
Like that's how it used to be done back in the day before like, you know, 12 layers of regulators and it's got to go through this and this.
And it's just like, I think we should do this deal.
And the guys, you know, I don't know.
It reminds you of like, what's that movie?
It's a Wonderful Life.
Wasn't that like, you know, he was like a banker and like, I don't know.
Never seen it.
You never seen it?
It's a wonderful life.
Come on.
What's wrong with you?
It's my mom's favorite movie.
That movie is on every Christmas.
I've never seen it.
Yeah, it's a good one.
I haven't seen it in years, but it was a good one.
Anyway, moving back.
So I got here in my notes that I wanted to make sure we touch on, you know, that you, it says
here that after two years, you found a lender to do cash out refis on the properties.
You bought seven single family residences and then did a cash out refi.
Can we talk about?
that. What do you mean by that? Yeah. So the first seven were the way I described earlier of,
you know, buy them very cheap, put all the labor into it, fixed it up, rent it out. So at seven,
we owned seven free and clear. Wow. And still couldn't find, even then we were trying to find
someone to do cash out refies on them to pull the equity that we had in those properties out.
And still we couldn't find it. People thought, you know, too inexperienced,
you know, we did not hold W2 jobs. This was our full-time job from the very beginning. I haven't
had a W-2 job since I was 17. So going to a bank was really difficult. And even our age played a part
at that time. But so what we did was finally, I just said, well, I'm just going to cold call.
And we made a list of, you know, 30 banks. And I just called and called. And some of them
had things they would offer, variable rates, things like that. But being kind of conservative,
I did not want to hold my rentals in a variable rate.
I wanted something I could take and then forget about.
Sure.
And one of the banks, the one I mentioned earlier, when he told me what they were offering
and said that we could come in and talk, it was exactly what I was looking for.
It's a 20-year fixed at 4.75 from portfolio lender.
And I said, that's exactly what we're looking for.
And he said, we'll lend to an LLC.
We'll blanket the properties if you want to do it that way.
And so that's what we went with.
and that's what we've been doing to pull the equity out and move forward with our company.
I love it.
Yeah, I love it.
That's really like, I don't know.
I mean, I love the fact that you talk to a lot of different lenders and you just kept pushing for it and trying to find that ideal loan.
I mean, that might have been hard to find, but the fact that you finally got it is great.
I mean, that's what it takes to become a successful investor.
You've got to have that persistence.
And I love it.
So, cool.
Let's shift gears a little bit before we get out of here.
And I want to talk about the age thing a little more because, like, we said at the beginning of the show,
Oh, instead of the beginning of a show, you're 20, 25 years old, right?
Yep.
So that, I mean, obviously, people who at a young age, I was there too, and I guess, I don't know, 29 now.
You want me to give you my money?
Is that what?
What are you like?
You don't even shave yet, do you?
Exactly.
See?
People are like, I'm not going to take you seriously, am I?
Exactly.
People are, like, apprehensive about working with young people.
So, can we talk, I mean, how to, maybe we can just talk about, first of all, what are the advantages of being young?
Like, do you know, anything that comes to mind?
In real estate.
In real estate, sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For me, it was the lack of other responsibilities in life.
So like I mentioned, we put, we substituted our time for the capital that we lacked.
Now, if you wait longer in life, you're going to have all the responsibilities that usually come later in life, whether it be, you know, kids, spouse.
No, I do have a spouse now, but later in life, you know, kids, your parents are getting older,
you take care of them, things that take more time, where as a younger person, I could not only devote
the time, but had the energy to work the 12 hours of labor or 16 hours of labor and just do that
day after day. Now, I don't want to do that forever. I never planned on doing that forever.
One of my books that I have for later is the e-mith. So I had read that and I said, well, this is just
what I have to do now to get that going. But as far as in real estate, being younger, the advantages
is really just the power of exponential growth is the biggest thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can you expand
on that for a second? What do you mean by that? But I agree. Well, expand on exponential growth.
Yeah, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? For the people who don't know.
And how does it affect you better than it affects like an old fart like myself?
Yeah, it's already too late for Josh.
So we'll just insult it, you know, like 60% of the population.
So, you know, it's all right.
You're fine.
Seven billion people on the planet.
Yeah, it's okay.
Okay, so, no, the exponential growth being younger, it's just like, you know, starting out and doing the paying cash for that, it took a little bit of time.
But since we did it, you know, in our early 20s, now we can just literally roll those cash out refi.
one after the other, one after the other, and just snowball effect this to where, you know, if I'm
50 and I start and start rolling that snowball, obviously, if I want to retire at 60, the snowball is
much smaller than if I start at 20 and start rolling it and still want to retire at 60.
So, yeah, exponential growth is a huge factor of why I sacrificed so much in the early years
to line up my goals for the later years.
Yeah. That's great. That's great. Yeah, man. All right. So disadvantages. I was talking smack earlier.
You know, a young baby face, yada, yada, yada. The irony is both of us have a little bit more manly facial hair than the old guy here.
Yeah, I mean, I can actually get proofed when I go to a bar, whereas you probably would not with your, I don't know.
They don't even ask. Yeah. Anyway. All right. So disadvantages, obviously.
ones are, you know, people, some people won't take you seriously because you're young.
You know, are there other disadvantages that come with being young? I would say, like, not having
established credit probably could come in to play for some people. What else? Really, if you have
the right mentality and you just approach people the right way, I never ran into those obstacles.
So it's the way you carry yourself. If you're confident, even if you're, you know, even if you're 20,
if you are, you know, you hold the ball and you go into the conversation and you direct that conversation,
it doesn't matter if you're 18 or 20 or 40. People can find the confidence in you if you just
carry yourself the right way. Yeah. So what you're saying is there is not a single disadvantage to
being young and starting. So all you young people get started. Right. Yeah. There you go.
Actually, I say this quite often. I think age, invest in at a young age is like your greatest asset.
Like when you're young, like that's such a powerful asset.
And for the obviously the reasons you talked about, but one more that you didn't mention,
but I think I've seen in your life, I mean, in your story so far is that when you're young,
I feel like people want to help you get to where you're going.
Like I love to help young people when they're like, you know, like, I don't know,
trying to learn real estate.
They hit me up on the forums or they take me out to lunch or whatever.
Like I love that because I'm like, you know, I was there 10 years ago and now I want
to help that person.
And it doesn't matter if you're 30, 40, 50 years old.
but older people that are older than you that like the next generation up want to help you get to their point.
So I don't care how old you are. If you're 50, find a 70 year old that's an investor.
Or if you're 30, find a 50 year old or whatever.
Oh, yeah. A lot of the guys that we've done any kind of seller finance deals off of all comment on one way or the other like, like, oh, you remind me of myself back when I was getting into this.
Because a lot of these guys that were buying off of work contractors or something like that.
so I can relate to them.
And then they're like, you know, after talking for a little bit,
they're like, oh, I see you, I see myself and you and, you know, just that rapport that you
build with them immediately makes the deal so much easier.
Yep.
I get both those, I get both those things all the time.
It's just that I see myself in you or, you know, I see, I see myself and you when I was
that age or whatever.
Or they say, oh, if only I was like you when I was that age, I'd be so much further along now.
And so both those things, they want to help.
And, yeah, take advantage of that.
I have an article in the blog called How to Invest in Real Estate at a Young at a Young
Age.
Yeah, so I'll link to that in the show notes as well on the show.
But yeah, it just kind of lays out all those things.
Hey, Jared, before we go to the fire round, I just wanted to ask, I mean, for those young
people, whether there's somebody, you know, we have kids who are 17 who are coming on
bigger pockets, they're excited about real estate and they're thinking, you know, I want to do
this, you know, in a year or two.
Or, you know, anyone else who's kind of in a similar place that you are, what?
what would you advise them?
Not everybody's going to be able to swing a hammer.
So what would you tell that other young person
who's thinking about getting started in the real estate
investing business, how they should go about doing it?
Yeah, I'd say just take the sacrifices,
whatever you have to do now,
because they'll be easier to take now
than when you pile on all the other responsibilities
that will come with life as you move forward.
So whether, you know, for me,
it was taking the sacrifices of doing that, not spending the money that I could have earned
doing the contracting and then also sacrificing my own labor. But however that person needs to do it,
make the sacrifices now while you can because the power of exponential growth is so worth it
to do those things. Yeah. You could stop digging the knife in my back, man. I get it. I'm old.
I didn't start when I was 21. I mean, like, seriously. Sorry, young, old guy. No, I know so many people like my
age or not. I mean, like, yeah, like younger guys that are like in their 20s, like maybe late 20s,
whatever, complain about money. I know, I'm almost 30. I'm not there yet. I can still call
myself young until I'm 30, all right. No, but I know all these guys that are like complained about
not having any money yet they play, you know, 10, 15, 20 hours of Call of Duty every week. And so like,
you said that sacrifice, right? I mean, like, I didn't have a video game system until last year or
even like, I don't know, this six months ago. And I don't play it at all. That's why he doesn't
show up to work. That's why I was sitting to play. No, like I, I, I, I, I, I,
I played my Xbox. I got an Xbox one actually. Darren Sager traded me it for me building my website or something like that. And I don't even play it. Like, I mean, it sits in my room and I haven't played it in a month and a half. Because I don't know, when you're young, you've got to sacrifice your time. And I think it's huge. No, one thing I said to my brother the other day was there's going to be time. It's hard to see it right now for a lot of people. But there's going to be times in life where I know I'll want free time more than I do now. And that's a really hard thing. I think to,
a lot of people to wrap their head around, but
you know, I'm
planning to have children and when that
time comes, if I can have
the freedom to
not work, I'll
have it because I, you know, I
did what I needed to do now to set
that up. Yeah, I love that.
That's so smart. It's great. Cool.
Well, uh, why don't we move to the fire round?
Sure. It's time
for the fire round.
All right. The fire round
These questions come to you from the Bigger Pockets forums.
And so these, we plucked from different people
have asked questions over the past few weeks and months.
Number one, oh, by the way, people can get to the forums.
If you're not engaging there, you should.
Bigercutored.com slash forums.
Big shocker there.
But number one, I'm trying to flip a house
and I have no money at all.
Do you have any tips?
Save up some money first because you're going to be in big trouble
when you start to flip.
There you go.
Agreed.
It's pretty easy one.
Yeah.
Actually, so I did a web,
our last night. It was on the topic of no money down investing. And that was like, I have like the four
rules of no money down investing. And one of them is you can't do it without any money. Like,
you have to have at least a cushion or something to get you through. Like even if you want to do
creatively, you got to have something. You got to save up something. So hustle, work extra hours,
go be a contractor at night, whatever you got to do and and work hard and make some money. I love it.
Yeah. If you literally have zero money, I don't, I don't even think you're going to be able to get a
credit card to go put it on. So, uh, yeah, go save some of it. Yeah. Go save some,
money.
Cool.
It's interesting.
We actually had a member once who got mad at us because it was a woman and she's like,
I got no money and, you know, everything you guys say says money, but these infomercials,
they say you don't need money.
And everyone on the site is like, you can't do this, right?
You can't do this.
And she's like, no, well, you know what?
I'm out of here.
I'm going to go, I'm going to go to find a way to get money so I could give it to the
infomercial guy so that he can tell me how to do it with no money.
You're like, dude, you just slow down.
Well, the funny thing is you can do deals without money.
Right.
But I should say, you can do deals without using your money in the deals.
It doesn't say you can do deals if you're flat broke and you have $12 to your name.
There's a difference there, right?
You can do deals without money, but not without money in your checking account or you shouldn't maybe anyway.
So anyway.
Yeah.
It's just not the smartest move, right?
Yeah.
Save up with some money.
It's going to be different for each person.
But, all right, moving on.
Number two. Look at you, taking control.
Yeah.
Number two, should I focus more on cash flow deals, rentals, or should I focus on fix and flips?
So, you know, I'm guessing there's some contacts missing, but I guess generally, if somebody should, should they focus on rentals or fix and flips?
Yeah, that's pretty hard to answer.
It depends.
Let's say new investor, somebody who's like, maybe they have a little bit of cash and they've got a steady job.
should they do buy and hold or fix some flips?
I'll go buy and hold just because I'm a conservative kind of guy
and flips is definitely more of a job.
So if you had a full-time job and had a little bit of money,
you could just get a property that doesn't need rehab at all,
hire a property manager, and sit back.
So that's I guess what I would suggest with that little bit of information.
Cool.
Cool. Cool.
Third question, what would be the best way to find a fix and flip?
I need to find something to flip. How do I find it?
Good question. I'd like to know the answer to that.
I'm searching every day.
I think that's the key right there. I think you just said it.
Search every day.
Any way you can.
Yeah. Okay. I like it.
Hustle, hustle, right? I mean, do one of many things.
All right. Last one, I need to find a good property manager that is not like the property
manager that Brandon was telling us about earlier.
I think she was like resident manager also, not like a licensed property manager.
She was like a manager is a manager.
I need to find a good manager. Any tips?
Oh, yeah, can I answer this with a story?
Sure.
Yeah, we love to.
So I didn't bring this up, but I will be leaving Cincinnati in the summer of 2016
and moving to Atlanta.
So I'll also be doing real estate investment there, right down in northern
Atlanta, Jay Scott's area, because I read this book, I saw that. So anyway, he's not there anymore,
by the way. Okay. Yeah, he moved. Sorry. Okay, back to the story. The property manager,
so I need someone to take care of the rentals that we have here because we are not going to sell them.
So this plan went into action. We know we're going to move. So we said, we got to find a property
manager. We started by, we said, we're going to start from the inside out. And we went on to
Zillow or any other site where you can find rentals. And we said, we're going to start by acting
like tenants and making phone calls. And whoever is responsive and whoever answers, and then we'll
set up a showing and whoever gets us in quickly and as professional, we'll make a list of those
people and then. We'll go talk to their salespeople then. So you were taking it from the tenant side.
You want to see who serviced the tenants best? Is that? Yeah, yeah. We kind of started from the inside out.
And really, we had horrible, horrible results.
You know, phone call after phone call, talking about probably 100 phone calls.
No calls back.
No one would answer.
No one had emails.
And it was looking pretty dreary.
And it got to the point where we said, we're going to sell them because I can't hand this off to someone who's going to drive it into the ground.
And just then when we had decided to sell it and we were kind of doing the math on what the taxes would be,
a guy from Bigger Pockets that we had met at Bigger Pockets Meetup and were colleagues on there
approached me and said, you know, I'm looking to get into real estate and would you be open
to me managing your properties? You guys kind of show me how you're doing things and then you
don't have to pay me as much as a professional service, but then, you know, I can do that for you.
So we said, we thought about it a little bit and it came down to, well, if we hire an employee, you know,
one-person employee for 20 units, we can't really do that.
And if we do teach this guy, he's an entrepreneur at heart, we're going to teach him,
and then he's going to go get his own, he's going to leave, and we're going to be in Georgia
and all our rentals are going to be in Cincinnati, and then we're going to be driving up here
and trying to hire someone else.
So the way it ended was we, you know, this sounds quick, but after, you know, a lot of thought
and a lot of talking to this person and figuring out who they were, we decided to work
out a partnership. So later on at the end of the year, after he's going to work for us as a
property manager as an employee for a while and see how he does. And everything is working. He's doing
that now. Everything is working great. Then we will start to hand over equity shares of our company.
So that way, instead of him learning and leaving, he's going to control some of it and just take
it over. Brilliant. Interesting. Yeah. That's a cool idea.
That's really, really great.
Awesome.
To answer the fire round question, I couldn't find one.
So we had to find someone else that could do it and make them a partner because no company cared about the properties as much as the owner.
So we said, well, why not just bring on an owner?
Bring on an owner, yeah.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Awesome, man.
And I love that idea.
I've yet to hear somebody say that as a means for like Brandon coming to Denver.
for example and finding somebody to come take over his part of his portfolio.
But I digress.
I really liked the idea of calling them as a tenant because it's one thing they're going
to put on a show for you when you're coming on board and handing over your units.
But you're really going to get to know how they operate if you come in and call on
the units that they're promoting.
That's going to show you how they run their business.
I can't believe after all this time I've never.
even thought of that. Brilliant, brilliant, really, really good idea. And I encourage people who are
interviewing property managers to give that a go as well. It's a great tip. Yeah. Love it.
Yeah, not only the phone calls, but just looking at their listings that I'm sure other people will do
that. But the phone calls help. But yeah, just, you know, a lot of listings don't have pictures,
very vague. It just says three-bed, one bath. And it's like, man, how many phone calls do you actually
get from that? Because it's so big. You know, where ours are,
fully listed trying to eliminate wasteful time phone calls. But yeah, so start from the inside out.
Perfect. Love it. Love it. Awesome. All right. Moving on. Let's end this thing with the world famous.
Famous for. The world famous, famous for these questions we ask every single solitary guest.
So you know what's coming. Number one, what is your favorite real estate book? Okay. Well, I don't
read too much because I'm not a strong reader, but I listen to a lot of audiobooks.
while I'll do the monotonous parts of the contracting like painting or things like that.
It takes zero thought.
So I'll knock out a book in a day of painting.
That's great.
One I listened to that, it was not exciting, but it held probably the most information that I would suggest to other young investors is investing in real estate.
That's the title of it.
And it's the sixth edition is the one I read.
And it's Gary W. Elder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it was more textbooky.
It was not fun to read, but it was just packed full of information.
That was one of the first ones I ever read because I had at the library.
It was one of the earlier editions, but I got at the library.
It's very textbooky, but it's got a lot in there.
Right on.
What about business book?
What's your favorite audio business book?
Yeah, well, I listen to Emis, and I like that a lot because when I listened to it,
I was like, oh, this is the exact path I'm headed on.
So I need to correct that.
But I also liked business brilliance by Lewis Schiff.
And yeah, it just talked about different stories of people who have showed exemplary business brilliance.
So one of them like the Circus L.A. guy.
And it talked a lot about, I had a whole chapter on how dyslexics are really good at running businesses.
and being a dyslexic, I related to that.
Interesting.
Oh, right on.
Never heard of the book.
Sounds really interesting.
Yeah.
Very cool.
I've been doing a lot of audible listening lately too.
I like it.
Nice.
And by the way, like, you know, what I love about the show,
not only are you a young guy, but like, you know,
the fact that you're willing to share that with everybody listening.
And, you know, seeing how far you've come despite having that, the challenge of being dyslexic,
I think it's awesome.
It really just means some bad at reading and writing.
Yeah, yeah.
No, but listen, I mean, we all have something.
You know, there's all, everybody's got something.
But the reason I bring it up is this.
There are so many people listening to the show right now
that have never done anything in real estate before.
There's probably tens of thousands of people listening to your podcast.
Okay.
And I bet you a huge percentage of them are saying,
oh, I can't do it because of that.
I can't. And they all have their excuses and the reasons. And I'm not making fun of the people who have not yet done it. I'm saying, you know, take those excuses and get rid of them. Because, you know, if anyone's got an excuse, you know, Jared, you can say, oh, I can't do it because I was dyslexic. Well, that's BS, right? We all have our baggage. We all have the stuff that we are good at, that we're bad at. We have, you know, some people have problems. Some people have, whatever it is. We all have a way to get past that. And so if you, if you're good at,
really want to do it, you'll find a way to get past whatever it is that you can do. Now,
not 100% of people will be able to do that, but most people can probably get past that one or
two things that's holding them back. And so if you're one of those people, you know, stop and just
take a second and say, you know what, I've been making excuses for a long time about why I can't
do it. I'm going to just do it. I'm going to start, you know, planning, putting pen to paper,
making things happen and get out there and execute on what I want to do. Don't let the excuses
hold you back. Yeah, or just find an alternate way. I'm not a strong reader. I can't make it through a
book. Audio books, you know, simple. Same exact result. Awesome. Great. Cool, man. What about hobbies?
What do you do for fun besides real estate? I work a ton. So all of my free time is devoted to my wife,
my family, and my dog. So that's my fun as is them. So, and then work. What kind of
dog?
Pit bull lab mix.
Nice.
Nice.
Your dog would eat
Brandon's for breakfast.
Yeah, that's all that.
I would love to watch that.
I mean,
I didn't really say that.
His dog is so cute.
Charlie.
Yes, Charlie is adorable.
He won the cutest dog award again.
Nine years in a row.
Just keeps winning it.
Who gives out that award,
Brandon?
Is that the award issued by you?
Yes.
Yes.
I'm the judge.
So,
all right,
follow question.
What do you believe,
Jared sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started.
I would say self-discipline on not just the business side, but all aspects of life.
You know, it's when you're a business owner, it carries over. It blends together. It's not like,
oh, you know, I work. I have self-discipline, but then when I go home, it's different.
It's every moment and every choice, you know, there's billions of choices throughout your life
and having self-disciplined throughout all of those is what's going to make it happen.
One thing I couldn't remember from my childhood, my dad saying was be someone who people will lend
money to. And it had nothing to do with money when he told me that. It was just like the type of person
you are, people will trust you, even if you just said, hey, can I have some money? They trust you
to give it back even if you didn't say you were going to. So what I mean is, you know, the type of person
you are as a disciplined person, you carry yourself that way throughout life.
Love it.
Really, really love it.
Listen, man, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Before you go, where can people find out more about you?
Bigger Pockets would be the best place to go to talk to me, Facebook as well.
Right on.
And you have a website?
I don't.
You do not?
There you go.
All right.
Well, Jared, listen, it's, again, it's been a real pleasure.
A very fun show.
Lots of really great tips.
We definitely thank you for coming on board.
And for those people listening, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash show 124.
And check out the show notes with Jared.
And if you've got any questions about this show, please ask them.
And I'm sure he'll be happy to answer the questions.
Also, by the way, congrats on coming on board as a contributor to the Bigger Pockets blog.
We definitely are excited to have you on board.
and, hey, one thing I wanted to add to you guys, I want to say thank you, because if it wasn't for the Bigger Pocket podcast, I've listened to all of them.
I probably would have been either bankrupt or in jail by now because I started very aggressively and it kind of showed me a path on what not to do.
And yeah, thank you for putting that out there.
Awesome.
That's great, man.
We're glad that it has in fact helped you out.
And I mean, there's interviews like this are what make me happy.
They're what drive me.
It's seeing somebody who's succeeding, you know, in part thanks to what we're doing.
And so thank you for, you know, being part of our world, man.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Otherwise, listen, if you guys are looking to get going in the world of real estate,
bigger pockets is a really, really great place to be.
We definitely encourage you to check out the site, get involved, jump in, create a profile,
interact network, listen to the podcast, read the thousands of articles written by, you know,
experienced investors like Jared and Brandon and others and make this thing happen, take control
of your real estate because there is no reason that you can't do it. So get out there.
We'll see you on board, bigger pockets. And of course, if you are a fan of the show,
please jump on iTunes and leave us a rating and our review. We'd very much appreciate it.
Help spread the word about bigger pockets. And finally, if you are not,
yet watching slash listening to the Ask BP podcast. You can find that on iTunes as well or on BiggerPockets at
BiggerPockets.com slash ask BP. That said, 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
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