BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 133: Scaling Your Business From Scratch to $50 Million in Assets with Jason Cohen

Episode Date: July 30, 2015

How does a new real estate investor go from zero properties to over 1,000 units in under a decade? Through careful scaling! That’s the topic on today’s BiggerPockets Podcast with guest Jason Cohen, an investor who has built a sizable portfolio utilizing systems, processes and people. You’ll learn about the financing strategies needed to make this adventure possible, as well as Jason’s incredible strategy for finding real estate deals that no one else is finding. Prepare to be blown away – this is one show for the record books! In This Episode We Cover: What Jason Cohen does and the niche he targets How he scaled from 7 units to a massive 148-unit business The debacle he encountered with his first employees How he achieved the first “right” hire How many employees he has for his company How he built systems to run such a huge business Jason’s tips for getting started Proven ways to find properties How he grew his business in just 9 years How he finances his real estate deals The importance of building a good track record with the banks Insight on mentorships And SO much more! Links from the Show Top Ten Rookie Mistakes of the Multifamily Investor (blog) Building a Monster Wholesaling Business with Mike Nelson (podcast) LoopNet Austin BizJournal Pittsburgh Business Times BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Podcast Books Mentioned in this Show The Martian by Andy Weir How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie Tweetable Topics: “If you want it, you’re going to find a solution.” (Tweet This!) “At some point you have to pull the trigger.” (Tweet This!) “If you make a mistake, create a system to where you can’t make that mistake again.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Jason Jason’s BiggerPockets Profile Jason’s Company Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 133. So we own and manage over $50 million in real estate. 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 Dorkin.

Host at the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, sir? Not much. What's going on? You know, via e-ebella, man. Life is good. Life is good. Via-bel.

I don't abla, Spanish. That would be Italian or Spanish. I don't know. Man, life is good. Things are going well. We've had a, you know, interesting week at work here. Sure. We came under attack by some rogue overseas hackers trying to disable bigger pockets.

That was fun. I woke up the other morning. So I have keyword alert set for a lot of terms on BP. And then I also have subscribed to certain forums on BP. And one of those I have set up so that it sends me a text message. So I notice when there's like a new message on the site. Anyway, so I woke up with 700 text messages buzzing. I mean, my phone was just buzzing continually for like three hours.

And what it was was these spammers coming in and attacking the site trying to take it down. And that was a fun wake-up call, 700 text messages. Yeah, yeah, which led to a wake-up call for me and some of our other staff. So, yeah, it was fun, but we've handled it. And anyway, yeah, but things are good, man. Things are good. What's that thing Jordan said? Our buddy Jordan said, you know, you know you made it to the big time when you get attacked by North Korea.

There you go. I don't know if it was exactly. Yeah, I don't know. We're going to say that sounds really cool. It sounds like you know, like you and are Seth Rogan and James Franco. Yeah, who are you though? I'm clearly Seth Rogan. I'm clearly Seth Rogan.

You are clear. Well, James Franco is a better looking one than Seth Rogen. Yeah. So I don't know. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right, anyway, anyway, we got a cool show today. I'm pretty excited about it and definitely looking forward to digging into it.

Before we get to today's show, why don't we get to today's quick tip? Today's quick tip is, today's show is one of the best shows, in my opinion, that we've ever recorded. I firmly believe that. I think you guys are going to love this. Just the idea of scaling your business from nothing to $50 million. I think this is going to blow you guys out of the water. So my quick tip for you today is share this with one person. that you think would enjoy this.

Every single one of you know people who are into real estate, even just remotely kind of interested. I want to encourage you guys just today. If you enjoy this interview at all, just send an email, send a tweet, send a Facebook message. to say, hey, I just listen to this podcast. I think you'd like it. Just one person on your list.

That is my quick tip for today. Maybe we'll get this thing viral. Yeah, that'd be great. You guys can help us get there. So, all right. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent.

Well, and really, really quickly, I just want to talk about the show. this show. No, it's not allowed. I want to talk about. You can't talk about a show on the show. I want to talk about it. It's clearly not allowed. Can you stop?

It's like dividing by zero. You're dividing by zero. Have you guys done the Siri? What zero divided by zero yet? No. Have you done? Are you going to bust it out right now? I don't know where my phone is.

Dang it. Anyway, hold on. Do I need to see this? Yeah, hold up to the mic and say, what is zero divided by zero? What is zero divided by zero? Imagine that you have zero. cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See, it doesn't make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies. And you are sad that

you have no friends. Siri's kind of got a little attitude. Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income. Legally, 100% IRS compliant. That's instant cash flow improvement. Cost segregation guys is the number one firm nationwide,

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Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. 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, 10% below market value, in the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job. That's exactly what rent to retirement does.

They're a full-service, turnkey investment company, handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of our down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with Bigger Pockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Today's show, we've got a show that's, as Brandon said, it's all about building up this big business from nothing.

And so those are you guys who think, you know, hey, the guy's talking about, you know, 50 million in real estate. I can't even imagine getting to 50,000 in real estate. This show is actually for you. So before you hang up and, you know, disappear and stop listening, this show is for you. This show is also for the guy who's got 25,000, 50 million, 100 million. But this is really a show for everybody. So don't get intimidated by the numbers. I definitely want you to pay attention.

All right, guys, let's bring them on. All right, Jason, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it. How are you doing, Brandon? I am doing well. I'm doing well.

Today, we're doing something a little bit different in that. Josh and I usually have some, you know, a pretty long list of questions we want to ask. Today, actually, my goal on this was specifically to ask as few questions as possible because you're an intriguing guy. You've done a ton of stuff. And I just want to see where the conversation goes. So we're completely unprepared for this show. Completely unprepared.

But purposely so. I did it on purpose. Yeah, it was completely intentional. So let's swing it. Let's see how good we are. We'll be completely fall in our face. All right. I want to know, first of all, I mean, what do you do?

I mean, what's your niche? What's your strategy? What kind of investing do you do? And then we'll get into your history of how you got started. So we're a vertically integrated company. So we own and manage multifamily properties. It started off with, you know, duplexes, triplexes, that sort of thing.

And it's built up now to communities. It started with just some minor, you know, new carpet, new paint type of improvements. And now we're doing, we're doing major, major repositionings. Okay. And how big are we talking to me? Like, can you say communities? Like, how many? Yeah, what are we doing?

So the last one that we purchased, it was a 148 unit community. It was the purchase price was $4 million, and we're doing $3 million of renovations. Wow. Wow. I want to definitely dig into that later in the show. Sure. I don't remember to come back to that. But that's awesome.

I want to get right to the nitty gritty. So you said you started with two and three units. Now you're dealing with communities. How long have you been in the game? So I've been in the game for 10 years. I've bought my first property in December of 05. Okay. So in December 05, you bought a what?

It was a seven unit. So you bought a seven unit. How does one scale from a seven unit to a 148 unit? And so that's what I want to talk. about because I think, you know, our listeners, our viewers, our listeners, I think they're particularly interested in stories of people who can scale something. You know, you're not a guy who came in and started with, you know, an inheritance of all these properties. You built up a business. You built up this company. And so it's fascinating to hear how somebody actually went about doing that. So you start

with this seven unit. Now you're buying 150 units at a time, you know, for the four million with millions and renovations, how does one get there? Can we kind of quickly, because I, you know, not super quick, but can we kind of trace the pathway of, you know, how did you go, you know, tell us about the first couple deals you did, and then how did you start to scale? What did it take to get there? Well, well, the great thing about it is that I had no clue from the day that I bought my seven unit property. So, you know, if one of the listeners, you know, have a duplex or a triplex, and they have no way of knowing how to get to the next level. You were exactly where I was.

And, you know, the answer, the long and short of it really is, it's just a matter of finding solutions to the problems that come up. You know, I had, I bought my first seven-unit property. Well, you know, at that point, if there was a plumbing leak, what did I, what could I do? I didn't have a plumber on staff, right? So I had to call a plumber. Well, that plumber came and he charged me $95 an hour, and I really didn't like that. So that was a problem.

And so I kind of had to figure out a solution for that. So what was the solution? Well, the solution was if I buy more property, have more income coming in, I could support staff, maybe one day support a master plumber. Then I'll never have to do that again, right? So that's kind of the first problem. So I said, okay, well, let's go buy some more. So I look to acquire additional properties, and, you know, it kind of steamrolled from there.

Every additional asset to my portfolio was, you know, it was a headache. I mean, so there was a problem associated with it. So, you know, to answer your question in, you know, briefly, it's just a matter of, you know, what do you want? And for me, it was to build a large operation, to employ a lot of people. That was kind of my initial goal, just to see how big we could get it. And as we started buying more property, I could afford, you know, having my first employee. But my first employee, he didn't have a, he didn't have a car. So I had to drive 30 minutes to pick him up in the morning, 30 minutes back.

And the only thing he could do was paint. So you were the employee, by the way, just so you know. I've hung out many windows, painting the awnings. I've done a little bit of it all. And basically, after that employee, and I figured, okay, well, I don't want to have to drive 30 minutes. That was my next problem, right? So I think, I need to find somebody with a car. So I found somebody with a car.

The problem is he was driving under a suspended license, right? He was driving under a suspended license. And so I had to graduate from there. I figured I needed more rental income, so I bought additional property. And then, you know, I graduated. I graduated to a guy who had a car and he could get to work. Stop it. You know, believe it or not, it happened.

It happened. And just the craziest thing would happen. We would get a call here, there. It wasn't that often. It was, you know, maybe one, some month or so. But, you know, for example, I got a call from a tenant. She said, you know, I had a work order, somebody to come and fix a fixture. I can't remember what the work order was.

but she said, and my two laptops are gone. And we call the guy. We say, hey, you know, you had a work order for this unit, right? Now, funny thing is, immediately after you left that unit, they're missing their laptops. So a couple things started to disappear, you know, and that was kind of, you know, I realized, okay, I had to move on from there. And therefore, that was just the other headache. I graduated from there. Bought some more property.

And, you know, from there, it was just, you know, running more efficiently. And really, I think that's kind of one of the things that really projects and makes us successful. It's, you know, when you find a problem, you create a system to fix it. And I'm not talking about a system that's you internally saying, you know what, I'm not going to do that again. It's a system. It's a checklist. It's no way to go from A to B without correcting it and without letting that situation happen again. And if you can do that for a majority of the problems that you have, you know, there's really only one way to go from there.

That's awesome. There's so much good stuff in that that I want to dive into. And I want to start with this idea of, you know, the idea of facing problems and overcoming them. So the best book I've read, or this is the best fiction book I've read in the past year was The Martian. Have you guys read that? I have not. A fantastic book called The Martian. The movie coming out with Matt Damon here in the fall. But I mean, excellent book. The whole entire book is about this guy who's stuck on Mars and has like one massive problem after another after another. And the whole entire book is just him solving the. these problems. And when I was reading, I thought, this is exactly like an analogy for the life of a real estate investor, because that's all it is. Like, it's putting out fires and solving problems and then creating systems so those problems don't happen again. Exactly what you were just saying. It's absolutely right. I love that. I love, and like systems have been such a big, like, part of my life the last few months. It's just been everybody keeps talking about it. I'm like, man, I mean more systems. And so in my own investing, what I'm looking to do is exactly what you were looking to do is why I was excited to talk to you today is this idea of like,

I want to scale up in terms of hiring people. I finally, came to that conclusion about a month ago. I'm like, I'm tired of paying plumbers $100 an hour to come fix a stupid leak. I mean, a guy working for $15 an hour right now could do the same thing. I just can't find that guy, you know, to come work for two hours. That's exactly right. Yeah, so how, I mean, how do I get to that point? I mean, maybe I can, you know, get some free consulting here. How do I get? This show is about Jason. It's not about me. That's always about me. Pro bono. So how do I get, how do I get that first guy? How do I scale to get the right first hire? Do I have to make the same mistakes you did. Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I, you know,

talking to you right before we started the podcast, you had mentioned that, you know, you have a 24 unit property. And to me, that's, that's incredibly impressive, seeing as though you have another full-time job. The rule of thumb that I kind of always went by or that I was taught was, you know, if you have a full-time job, you never want to own more than about 12, 13 units or so. That's about the max. And if you are going to go into it, you need to go full-time into it and get quickly up to about 80 to 90 units at a minimum. And that's kind of what the rule of thumb is that I, you know, like I said, I've been taught. And it holds true today, having gone through this, the experience myself, you know, to have 24 units and operate 24 units and have another full-time

job, I mean, that, that is incredible. And that's, I mean, you're, you know, you're juggling a tremendous amount. My wife handles a lot of that. So she quit her job to handle a lot of that. So that helps definitely is having that. He's not that impressive. I'm not that impressive. No, but I'm, we're up to, we're up to 42 right now. And that's why we're at that awkward space, like we have the 24 unit and then a bunch of multi, like small ones. It's at that awkward place where it is. It's not big enough to hire a full-time crew. Absolutely.

But at 42, it's probably enough to kind of bring on that full-time handy guy or that kind of. That's what I looked at my expense numbers the other day, right? And I said, okay, we're spending, you know, what was it like 2,200 a month on average for maintenance. That's like normal maintenance. I'm like, well, I mean, even if it's not a full-time, could I, maybe that's a question I can ask you. can I start with a 30 hour a week or 20 hour a week employee?

You absolutely can, but, you know, again, you're going to kind of get what you pay for. Like you said, with a 24-unit property, you know, two hours a week, it doesn't interest the maintenance guy, you know? I mean, he's got, you know, Papa Bear over here that's given him, you know, the 40 hours every week. And then he's got, you know, Brandon that calls him once in the blue moon to come over there. You know, you're just not priority for him. Yes. And so, you know, that's just basically the bottom line. I mean, who knows?

Some people stumble upon just a phenomenal. nominal, you know, guy that's always kind of there for them. And, you know, but that's a rarity. So, you know, the answer to your question, and again, you know, I say 80 units, again, it's kind of a rule of thumb. I mean, if you happen to get 40 units and you buy it for the right price and it's cash flowing in the right way, sure, you know, look at your numbers. Look at your I and E.

And if you're able to afford the full-time guy, I agree, you might be right there where you can afford them. And absolutely, that's kind of the way to do it. But to scale, if I were you, if I was in your position, as many headaches as you may have at this moment. I'd kind of put the pedal to the metal a bit, buy a few more. And so you can, you can hire that staff. I love that. I love that. I'm taking this podcast is a sign. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to steal the show back to the people, not just to Brandon. Take it. Really quickly, I need, you're talking about income and expenses,

correct? Correct. Just making sure. Correct. I actually did not know that. So I'm glad you said that. Sorry, I'll clarify. No, please. I'm not very intelligent. So, all right. So, again, there's been a lot of Gold already talked about here. And I want to kind of circle back and get a few data points and then kind of move from there. So you talked about your goal being to build a large operation with lots of people. How many employees do you have today? So right now we have just over 30 employees. Okay. So 30 employees and how big is your business if you're willing to share that? I mean, how many properties do you have? How much in assets? I don't know if you're willing to share, but if you are. Sure. So we own and manage over $50 million in real estate. We have,

over 1,200 units. Okay. So the beginnings started with, like I mentioned, the duplexes and the triplexes. I amassed a portfolio of about 700 units, but it was comprised of about 75 different properties. In the last 12 months, we've acquired an additional 450, 500 units, buying communities, buying 100 unit communities, 130 unit, 150 unit, that type of scale. Got it. Got it. Okay. That's where the trajectory is headed. See, I mean, you've got a relatively, small business going there. It's not that, not that impressive, and I don't know why we have you on the show. Well, I'll give it my best. I mean, give me a chance.

And you're not, you're not like an older guy. I mean, you're a younger guy, right? I mean, what am I asked how old do you are? 34. Yeah, so, I mean, that's impressive. It's not, it's ridiculous. It's not impressive. I appreciate that. It's ludicrous.

Now, now, this is, this is ludicrous in a good way. It's very impressive. I kid. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. So let's kind of step back again because that's crazy. You know, you talked about systems. Clearly, you've got to manage 1,200 units. You got to have systems. And we throw that word around a lot.

You know, we really, really throw it around a lot. And I just want to simplify it really quickly for the folks who just don't get it. And I think you talked about it enough, but let's dig a tiny bit more. So by system, you mean finding a way to take. take something that I do on a regular basis or something that I'm trying to avoid doing, problems, mistakes, or things that, you know, happen regularly, and putting pen to paper, putting checklist, putting together a kind of an operations book to help run your company that you can bring other people in, they could read it, they can take over from you. It helps you scale.

Is that kind of what we're talking about here? I mean, that's exactly right. You know, I always say, you know, if you want it, you're going to find a solution. And if you don't want it as much, you're going to find an excuse. And there's really a solution to every problem. And the solution can be extremely fundamental. It can be as simple as a word document with a checklist, you know, step one, step two, step three, set four. And you can't go to step four without doing step three. And it's really as simple as that. And then once you kind of get those basics, you know, once you kind of, you know, learn those fundamentals, then yeah, your systems can get a little bit more advanced. Heck, once you start buying more assets,

and it starts generating additional income. You can afford systems that people, you know, the IT guys, the guys are much smarter than me have created to run things even more efficiently. You can utilize those systems and just get bigger and better systems. And so, you know, it's really, in all honesty, it's a mindset. And, you know, I wanted this. I wanted it. I wanted to grow.

And I want to grow even larger. And, you know, and I think that's really what it boils down to. I'm not the smart guy. You know, you say it's incredible. and all that, and I appreciate it. You know, I appreciate that tremendously and thank you. But at the same time, I'm not the smart guy. I mean, you know, I'll tell you how much in assets I have,

but I'm not going to tell you my SAT score because it's pretty embarrassing. It's pretty embarrassing. I think that'll give people hope, though, hearing about your, you know, 600 SAT score. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, and that's the bottom line. So, yeah, initially it's as simple as creating a checklist, and that's what we did. And then from there, you know, we've acquired additional systems. Happy to elaborate on that if you want to get into it.

No, I think that's enough. I think, you know, that'll give people an idea of generally what we're talking about. All right. Can I jump in real quick before we move on from Sever. I was going somewhere. We're winging it, Josh. Come on. What you got to do?

No, I was going to write a blog post this week, my next Bigger Pocket's blog post, which will be out by the time this interview comes out. But the title was going to be, if you're unhappy, your systems are broke or something along that line, which now I guess I guess I'm. have to do that title because I just said it. No, like, the idea of like, any time in my life that something's not working right and I'm upset or some things that are going like slow or whatever. Like if I'm, for example, yesterday for two hours, I spent painting the front of a rental property because my painter didn't show up for like two days in a row and it's got to be done by tomorrow. And so I went over there and painted for two hours with my wife.

And now I can give myself excuses all day long. I don't mind painting. I like painting. We got to hang out. but it was my anniversary, and we spent two hours in the evening painting because my system is broken. Happy anniversary. Thank you. Yeah.

And Brandon, don't beat yourself up, you know? I mean, I really wouldn't say that your system is necessarily broken because you had to do that. If anything, I would say that you're learning the ropes, and that's fundamental step, sure, step one in the business. I know what it takes to replace a toilet. So the next time that a plumber walks in here and tells me that it's a three-hour job, you know, I'm going to have him walk out just as quick as he came in, Because I've been there. I've done that. You know, and so, you know, you can't tell, I mean, and that's, you know, that's really

kind of the craziest thing. And it's one of the things that I wanted to get into about how, you know, you wear just so many hats in this business and how every step that you take, there's somebody in there kind of gunning for you, you know. And what I mean by that is, you know, from the initial offer, you're negotiating with the seller on the contract, right? Then from the due diligence, whether you hire an inspector, he's going to come in, he's going to try to get his cut.

Then you're dealing with the banks. They're going to try to put in a point. Then you deal with the insurance guy. He's going to start high. You're going to negotiate him low on and on and on and on. And for your listeners that are here, you know, studying up on this, that's just they're doing a tremendous deed by doing that. They're saving themselves thousands.

They're saving themselves tremendous amount of mistakes. But the mistakes are coming. Let's not, you know, let's not kid ourselves. The mistakes are going to come. But if you can minimize that, if you can limit that, you know, If you can negotiate the bank down to just so much or this person to just so much, then maybe you can keep your head above water long enough to build an operation where you have good quality people working for you, providing great services to your residents and so forth.

I love that. Jason, I want to dig into you a little more because I love how transparent you are. I love how you talk about the mistakes that you've made and you still make. Absolutely. And I think one of the hardest things for newer investors, and especially the new guys, are it's this fear. It's the fear to get started, the fear of making the mistakes, they want to know everything, they get paralyzed.

And you're this guy who's got this portfolio of $50 million in real estate telling us that you're still making mistakes. A lot of them are probably pretty unavoidable because you kind of got to get your hands dirty. There's, you know, from a guy who's doing pretty significant. stuff, you know, tell these listeners, tell the new guys who are, who are frozen and paralyzed. Let's, you know, what's your take on getting started and screwing up? Good, good question. Good question. So, you know, I write a blog also on Jason Cohen-Pittsburg.com,

and I have a, you know, top 10 list. And one of them is, you know, pull the trigger. Pull the trigger. Don't, don't be afraid to pull the trigger. I mean, I talk to just countless people that, you know, I want to get into real estate. And so I kind of, you know, get with them. And I, I coach them through some things and, you know, a great deal passes along that I'm not interested. I kind of hand it off to them. And, you know, I talked to them next week and, and, oh, yeah, I was going to do it, but I, you know, I was scared about this or that. At some point, you have to pull the trigger. Now, you know, the fear, fear, I would say for the most part is associated with the unknown, right? So if you want to get into this business, it's like my father always told me, you know, when I was getting out of college,

I didn't know what the heck to do, right? You know, I said, maybe I'll open up a friend. or something. He says, okay, well, what type of franchise? I don't know, you know, selling burgers or something. He says, well, you know, you want to open up a franchise? You want to sell burgers, you know, go work at McDonald's. What do you mean? Go work at McDonald's. No, no, no, I'm going to start my own thing. That's the whole purpose of this thing, right? I'm going to start my own thing. I'll be my own boss. He's like, look, you want to own thing. You want to do your own thing. Go flip burgers. Figure it out. And then start it. And, you know, it just, you know, it meant a tremendous amount to me as I kind of learned throughout the process, exactly what he was meaning by that. And so how I, how I transition that back to real estate is, you know, if you want to be in this business and you have a fear, start off small, start off with a triplex, start off with a four unit building, learn the ropes, learn the fundamentals, you know,

you're going to get taken by a contractor. You're going to get taken by the bank. You're going to get taken, you know, and so on and so forth. And it's going to happen. Try to minimize it. Try to study up. I mean, do exactly what your listeners are doing right now, which is studying up. And, you know, Once you learn those ropes, you know, jerk the hell out of it. You know, once you learn those ropes, go pull the trigger on something. Just, you know, study up and know what those headaches are going to be as they come to you. You know, as you grow, you're going to have these. You're going to have the guy that is going to take some things from your residence.

Suddenly things are going to start disappearing from your tenants' apartments. So you're going to have to deal with the guy that just disappears on you. You're going to have to deal with the guy that that steals your supplies. You're going to have to deal with all of that. But, you know, as long as you can kind of foresee that, study up, You can do great. And if you start small, you start with the six or seven units, you can get to the thousand units. You absolutely can if that's what you want. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Really, really great. And I think as putting myself in the place of somebody who's never done it, you know, that's scary. It's scary. But hearing that other people, you know, who are successful continue to face these things and fight through them, you know, it's not impossible. And you just have to deal with it. And I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah, but, you know, like you said, it's scary, but what you're doing now, I mean, I was reading you have, what, over 300,000 subscribers to bigger pockets. Is that right? Or has that number gone up? I mean, that's, oh, yeah, that number's gone up. I mean, you know, to start with the idea, hey, let's start, you know, let's start a forum for real estate. I mean, that's, that's, that's quite random, you know, but it's everything we all do is scary. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that, you know, so if you want it and you guys clearly want it, this is what you end up with, something amazing.

I think it's more scary to think of the people that, you know, are living off of, what, $870 or whatever from Social Security when they're 60 years old and they have 20 years of that, 30 years of that just sitting in front of a TV. That scares the hell out of me. Yeah. That scares the hell out of me. Absolutely. So, I mean, you're going to be scared about something. So I might as well do it about something that you can, you know, make some income on. Look at you all wise at your 30 years.

He's enlightening. He is enlightening. It's amazing. All right, man. Let's get back to your property. How do you find properties? So that's actually, you know, what I think makes us really, really good. And, you know, I got a job out of college buying properties in Philadelphia.

So they taught me how to buy real estate. And that's really the only thing that I knew how to do and how to do well. And then from there, you know, the management side, I had to learn that on my own through the mistakes that I've made. But, you know, how do we find property? You know, we do it by approaching owners directly. So driving the streets, finding the owners. You know, the excuse of, well, I can't get a hold of them. I can't find his phone number.

We found a solution to that. So I'm pretty confident that we can find just about anyone and everyone in their phone number. What's my phone number? Give me, I need five to ten minutes and I'll get it. I know your Skype for sure. There you go. I fully believe that. I mean, like in today's information age, like you can find anything you want to find if you want to find it.

I mean, I've even heard stories. I mean, there's a guy, oh, what's his name? I think was Mike Nelson, we interviewed a long time ago here on the podcast who would, like, send a cell phone to the PO box of the owner. And then as soon as he got that return receipt or whatever, like some kind of instant message, he would call the phone so that they would have to answer it because he know that they picked it. I mean, like, it was so creative and random, but what an interesting, like, if you wanted it bad enough, he'd get it.

That's exactly right. And Josh, you know, I'm glad you asked a question because one thing I wanted to kind of talk about is a lot of people ask that, I mean, in these, you know, 100, I don't know how many 130 podcasts that you've done, I'm sure the question comes up a lot. You know, how do you find your property? And, you know, taking it back more at a fundamental level, because I'm a, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, right? So I like to keep it simple. For your listeners out there, you know, how to find real estate. Well, the answer is to do what is, is not done by the masses, right? So you're not going to find it on LoopNet. Okay. You're not going to find it by calling your agent and asking them what's on the multi-list, okay? So what you want to do is how do I find an asset in a way that other people aren't doing, right? Other people are driving down, you know, to their realtor, finding their realtor that does the business or talking to a friend or a buddy, but how many people are driving down a street,

looking at the property that is dilapidated, has tall grass or something, going up to the door, knocking on the door, leaving a business card, or finding that person's address through the tax assessor records, sending them a letter. Not very many. Not very many. So if you can find kind of that unique approach, whatever it may be, I've heard a lot of variety. I know the yellow sticky pad or notepad or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So, you know, that's a great method. I mean, if you can do something different, it's going to pay off because everybody else, I mean, on LoopNet, how many thousands and thousands of eyes do you have on that property? What makes you feel so special that you're going to find something in that that those thousands and thousands of eyes have not seen?

And you just got to be honest with yourself. You know, you got to look for another way. So you're saying do the work. I mean, you're saying you got to do the work. You got to hustle. You got to just get out there. And I mean, a lot of people, I think, think, hey, you know, if there's nothing in my area. There's nothing for sale.

I see nothing listed. You know, I don't know what to do. This is so hard. You're saying, yeah, it's hard. you got to do the work. And if you do the work and if you hustle, you're going to find opportunities. There's no secret here. I mean, if you're looking for the easy way out, it's, you know, I'm sorry, you might want to go back to another podcast because I'm not able to provide that information. It is not easy by any stretch. I think one of the greatest life lessons, and I owe a tremendous amount

to the company that I got and actually my closest friend that got me the job. But, you know, one of the greatest life lessons that they taught me was basically in, you know, in week two. They told me, you know, I was out in Pittsburgh. They say, we want you to stop at, uh, at Walnut Capital. That was the, the company's name at the, which still is. And they owned, you know, thousands of units, thousands of units. I've been at the business for two weeks coming off of a bus boy, you know, temporary job at the island. You know, he says, yeah, I want you to go in there and I want you to try to buy their properties. What are you talking about? He says, I want you to walk into that office, ask for the owner of the company and try to buy their properties.

You've got to be kidding me. You know, I'm still learning the terms here, you know? And sure enough, I mean, I didn't want to disappoint. I put on my suit. I walked in there and I had my little briefcase and I knocked on the door and I asked to speak to the guy and I said, oh, hold on. I said, well, okay, I guess they're going to go get me a secretary or something. Sure enough, the guy walks down and I say, hey, you know, do you mind if I talk to you a little bit? He said, well, who the hell are you?

I represent a group of investors. They had seen your property and are interested in talking to you a little bit further about it. Would you mind sitting down with me and having a 10-minute conversation? I'm not going to occupy too much of your time. Sure enough, he took me up there. His partner was there. We were at a roundtable. And, you know, bottom line is within about 10, 20 minutes, you know, they kicked me out of there.

And I got nothing from it. So, you know, I'm sorry the story doesn't end with a great ending. But the bottom line is kind of looking back on it. you know, I basically felt if I could do that, you know, I could walk into anywhere. I could talk to anybody. And sure enough, it went from there. And don't get me wrong, I've been grabbed by the caller and escorted out of somebody's office because I didn't have my appointment lined up.

I've been told some choice words here or there. And, you know, I have built up a tough skin. But, you know, out of those 2,000 nose and 100 get the hells out of here and 10, you know, dubious situations, I've gotten some yeses. You know, I've gotten 1,200 units worth of yeses. And that's what it comes down to if you want to get to this level. You know, if you're looking for the 10, 20, 30 unit, there's other ways to go about it. There's other ways to achieve it and you don't have to kind of get the scrapes and bumps that I've gotten along the way.

But if you want it, you know, find a way to get it. I love that. It reminds me of Michael Jordan and his quotes about all the missed shots. I think I just pulled up one of the ones that, you know, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the weight game-winning shot and missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that's why I succeed.

Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player that ever lived. You've got to fail to succeed. He obviously says it much more eloquently than I do. You did all right. I'm not, you know, I've made a heck of a lot of mistakes. And, you know, that's the beauty of the forum here. People can come on here, learn about other people's mistakes, but don't think that you're going to go through it unscathed. And as long as you accept that these issues are going to come up, headaches are going to arise.

You know, there are going to be issues and obstacles. As long as you have, you know, accept that, I think you can minimize the level of fear. Nice. Yeah, I love that. You know, I was going to say one nice thing about multifamilies, too, is like you mentioned earlier, you're not going to find them necessarily on loop net. You're not going to necessarily find them, you know, on the MLS or whatever because you want to look for, you know, people aren't. aren't looking. And the fun thing about multifamilies is that because they're owned by investors, everyone is for sale. You know, it's not like single family homes where people, I mean,

obviously some people will not sell no matter what, but generally speaking, investors want to make money. And so there's always a price. Everything's for sale that you see at some multifamily pretty much. Yeah. And also kind of an extremely helpful thing is to learn your market. You know, I mean, exactly what you said, Brandon, everything's for sale. It's very interesting to really understand the dynamic. I mean, we started in Pittsburgh, right? Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania, which is an incredible, incredible city, and it's a sleeper city. I'll tell you what. I mean, that city in five to ten years, you know, it's going to be much more incredible than it already is showing signs of being. And to see the dynamic there and the conversations that you have

with owners there, I mean, there, you're dealing with a lot of situations where property owners are saying, you know, listen, my great-grandfather built this property with his bare hands. And, you know, there's no way in heck, I'm selling. And so there's a different approach to that. And I love Pittsburgh. I mean, that's where it all started for us. And, you know, that's a unique conversation to have where the dynamic here in Texas is somewhat shifted from that in the sense of, you know, we're calling about a property. It's an investor from, you know, California that's saying, you know, what property? Oh, well, it's this one here on so-and-so address.

You know, it's 150 unit property you own there. You might want to look that one up. But they say, yeah, absolutely, anything's for sale, you know, sure. Yeah. But, I mean, as long as you meet my number, you offer the cap rate that I'm looking for, you can have it. So it's a different approach. But learn your market and, you know, learn the fundamentals, start small, you know, learn the people, the owners of the property. When I was kind of doing the acquisition side of it, I felt comfortable in saying that any area that I'm purchasing real estate in,

over a four-unit property. I know them. I know who the owner is. I've either been kicked out of his office, or I know that his kids are taking over the property, or I know that he's going to sell in two or three years. I had my database. That's where you want to get to,

because once you have that data, you truly are an asset. You really become powerful. And you're able to cherry pick at that point. Okay, I'm going to dedicate my energy on this area town with these particular people. And you can kind of, you know, you can be dangerous at that point in time.

in regards to the amount of, you know, real estate you can acquire in a short period of time. Nice. Yeah, I love that. All right, let me relate back what you, we just talked about now to something we talked about way earlier, and that is the idea of systems with the idea of finding properties. My assumption is you're not the one out there driving and knocking on the doors. Is that right? Or do you have people for that now?

Well, you know, the way that I always explain it out of our 30 employees, I and one other guy, I say, are part of the expansion side of our business. Everybody else is part of the operational side. So, you know, Juan, Juan Maldonado, who's a subscriber and he's very active there on Bigger Pockets, has done just an incredible job for our company. And, you know, he is solely responsible for the acquisitions. You know, a lot of time we kind of, you know, we kind of tag team the situation. You know, he'll find a deal.

You know, he'll get the information. You know, maybe I'll get involved at that point. Am I cold calling, you know, not as much as I would love to be doing? but yes, I am involved in that side. I do negotiate. I am involved in the due diligence. I'm very involved at this point in time and kind of trying to work towards pulling myself away from that. But, you know, that's, that is where I'm at while where I'm at. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because, you know, like, that's something like I think of when I think of systems, I think a lot of the idea of, you know, a property manager or somebody to do maintenance. But, you know, I struggle a lot with like with that idea of scaling and bringing on somebody to do

acquisitions and that side of that's a whole different you know skill set and and thing that I don't have systems for at all I mean I'm very I'm pretty good at other systems that I have my business some of them whether they're broken or not and but yeah that acquisition side is just tough but it seems like you have a pretty good system that's working for you luckily for me that that was that was the part that was taught to me that was the the company that I joined that taught me how to do it taught me how to find a deal and but everything else like where you say you have the management systems and those type of thing that you're things, I knew nothing about it. And, you know, that's kind of where I started from scratch and made my

mistakes. And I wasn't smart enough to do what your listeners are doing, which is really, really dig deep in for that education and find that education. And so, you know, every, every one of them is in strides much more smarter to me in that regards. The route that I took was the route of the mistakes, the stumbles and fumbles and bumbles. And that's the route that I took. And, you know, it hurt. It definitely hurt. But along the way, you know, good came from it. And, and And I think where we're at right now is a really great position. And we're really positioned well to just expand aggressively. Like I mentioned, it took us 10 years or nine years to get to about 700 units.

In the last 12 months, we've acquired about 450s. So you can see kind of the expansion, the pace and where we're at today. Yeah, that's awesome. That's very like scaling like the kind of hockey stick kind of. And it's a lot easier for somebody with an operation with 30 people to acquire 400 units in a year than it is a guy like Brandon who doesn't have an infrastructure. No offense to Brandon. But, you know, you've got to build up to get to the point where you have the infrastructure, which will allow you to then accelerate how quickly you grow your portfolio.

That's exactly right. In fact, the acquisition specialist, which is the title of the position that we call it, you know, that was essentially the 30th position in our company, you know, in regards to the, you know, the number on the payroll. That is purely an overhead play. I mean, from day one, that guy is not making any money for us. You know, he's costing us money until he finds a deal that's cash flowing. he hasn't really added a dollar to the till. But once you kind of build that infrastructure and have that cash flow coming into a point where there's a little bit of excess cash flow that you can hire these kind of reinvest in the company in this way,

those are the decisions. Rather than take that money and put it in my pocket, I wanted to grow even larger. And like I mentioned, build an operation. And so instead of putting that money in my pocket, I put it in an acquisition specialist. And like I said, I mean, he's been incredible and has really taken our company to the next level. Did you know you can go on vacation and actually earn money?

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as low as 3.75%. They've been trusted partners with BiggerPockets for over a decade. And if you want to learn more, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement. I love that. I love it. Okay, let's move over to financing. I want to talk about how you're, I mean, how do you finance $50 million with a real estate or however many loans you got? I mean, how do you, are you doing partnerships? You doing bank loans? Well, you know, initially, you know, he's got $50 million in his pocket, Brandon. That's how it all started. I stumbled upon it. Clearly. Stumbled upon it and life's been over the rainbow. Yes, a pot of gold. You know, initially it was, and what I was taught was how to buy real estate with no money down. And I, and you guys,

I'm sure have talked about that a tremendous amount of times, you know, contacting the property owner, convincing the property owner to hold a second mortgage, going to the bank and request in a first mortgage. I mean, right now, you know, the banks, you know, certainly frown upon that a little bit more. I still believe it's possible. But that's how we initially started. The first property that we bought, I left with the keys and a check for $8,000. Nice.

And, you know, that to me was just, it was an eye-opener. And so that's how it happened. I went to it, and I typically like to work with local banks when I'm buying my properties. The smaller banks, typically they aren't able to cherry pick like the big guys, right? I mean, I'm not going to go to a Chase Bank or, you know, Bank of America and ask for a loan. Because it's just, you know, their terms are not going to be as aggressive as a little guy. So you want to go to a local bank that will look at the piece of real estate. And, you know, the way that I always explained it to a bank is say, listen, I'm not going to be knocking on your door.

every day of the week with a new deal. I got this deal. I got that deal on loop net. I got this deal. But when I find a deal, there's going to be something special about it. It's going to be substantially under market value or there's going to be a just major upside potential. And so I look for a bank that, you know, while they do look at me and yes, I have a reasonable credit score, you know, I'm not bankrupt. You know, I have those kind of just fundamentals that you really have to have to be in this business. You know, take them the deal, show on the deal, show them that it cash flows from day one. That's how I started. So initially started with no money down, bought several properties that way. Also then got a line of credit from a bank and started using that as some of my equity.

And then from there started, you know, every month when I was paying down my mortgage, I was building that equity, right? So every month I was worth more. My net worth was going up. My cash flow was starting to come in. But again, you know, this, especially at the beginning, it's a cash poor equity rich business, right? I mean, you never have the cash flow until you're able to scale. And so once we got to that other level, then, you know, I could start putting, instead of trying to find the deals that we had to convince the seller to hold a second mortgage, because we got, you know, we got kicked out a lot of those offices when we made those offers. You know, finding the deal that, yeah, it required 50,000 down or 25,000 down, you know, years into it, I was able to put that down. And, you know, at that point, you know, you know, one of the most valuable things is track record, you know. And so once you have that track record, um, then you have a very, very close relationship with the banks. They know what you're capable of doing. Um, and, and, and they believe in you. And so, you know, at some point, I really believe that they're investing more than you, um, then in the real estate or, or the

particular guarantee. And, you know, it, again, it, you know, it, you know, it all boils down to just, you know, you know, when you have that problem, you find a solution. And so if you get turned down by the first bank, you know, why don't you pitch to seven or eight banks on your first deal? So you get told, you know, your four or five knows and you figure out why they told you know. And the answer could just be, hey, we're Bank of America and we can cherry pick and, you know, we're not going to risk it on a first timer like you. Or the answer can be with a smaller bank that says, yeah, sounds good, makes sense. The numbers make sense.

You know, you have a good approach. Sure, we'll start with a seven unit with you and see where it goes from there. Hey, Jason, so, you know, you'll tell you. talked earlier about this 148 unit that you picked up for 4 million. Again, I think it was three million renovations. How did you finance that particular property? Was that from a bank loan? Did you put 20% 25% down? And then how are you financing the repairs? Great, great question. So, you know, my initial goal was to, you know, find somebody that had a car, right? I mean, that was my initial goal, you know? As we've scaled, you know, my goal is essentially to try to

get into the private equity realm and maybe after that after that get into the institutional realm right but what does so let's start with the private equity which is my obviously kind of my next goal in the process which we've been planting a lot of seeds with what's what a gas won't hurt that by the way yeah no thank you I thank you again for for having us on there so if you private equity guys are out there please give me a call but yeah I mean that that's kind of the next goal and and ultimately from you know kind of learning and and studying up about what it is that they're looking for, you know, really track record is kind of the number one thing, you know, track record. And so what they want to see is that you've been able to pull other people's money together, kind of buy a project. With their money,

do some proper reporting to them, you know, give them a positive return on their money, and kind of go full circle on the deal. Buy the deal, reposition the deal, stabilize it for a year or two, vest of it. And that's what they would like to see, or at least that's what I'm being told that they'd like to see. And so that's what we're going for. And initially, the way to do it is, you know, you start with your family. You know, you start with your cousins and your friend. You know, it gets in some dangerous territory in the sense that you don't want to, you know, ruin a relationship with your family because Thanksgiving dinner is going to be a quiet one, you know, but, you know, if you have the track record, you have the confidence, it's, yeah, it's, you know, you pull the trigger.

You pull the trigger. All right. So let's get back to the specifics on the 148 unit. Is that, you know, was this through a bank or was this through partners or was this through family? So I have a GP, right? So the general partnership is made up of myself and another very, very close friend of our family, a physician. And so we then went out and got a couple of our family members to put in some money via the LP side, the limited partnership side. You know, and there's a lot more related to that.

Sure. Related to the disclosures and then the paperwork that you have to do associated with that. And so, you know, this is certainly something that, you know, we're taking it very, very slowly and we're kind of just learning the ropes because it's kind of the next area that we want to get into. But this deal was made up of a few people put in some money together. going to a local bank that we have a relationship with, them fund in 80%, us funding 20%, and, you know, it's off to the races from there. And if we don't disappoint, we prove ourselves and we do the proper reporting and we send them the evidence that we're using their funds wisely and that the rent started at 500 a month

and now they're at 795 a month. And this is what the product looked like before. We have to be able to tell that story, not only to the bank and to my partners, but we have to prepare that story and package it next. for the private equity people. That's just, that's kind of where we're at. I think we're at a really, really exciting point, at least in our organization,

where a couple of these deals are probably going to come full circle in a year or two. And then, you know, hopefully that pace of what I mentioned before, which is buying 450 units in, in 12 months, is going to be, you know, compressed into maybe a couple months. And, you know, who knows, case? I think our experience and track record has proven that, you know,

We're on the right path. All right, cool. One more follow up on this. So presumably the bank is lending on the asset itself. The $3 million for repairs, is that coming from the bank as well? So we typically like to approach a bank and ask for about 80% LTC or loan to cost. So that's 80% of the purchase price of the property and 80% of the renovation funds. So they'll loan 80% of the $4 million.

they'll loan 80% of the 3 million. And we have to come up with in this particular situation, I think it was 1.6 million. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Cool.

Last question for you. Sure. You're a guy who's doing quite a bit of business and you're on this little site called Bigger Pockets with 320,000 plus members. Yes, more than 300. And I'm happy to be here. Why?

Why? Why does it, you know, I mean, a guy like you, why would you, you know, hopefully this is the right question to ask, but, you know, why do you join bigger pockets? A guy like me, I mean, I don't know, I really don't know what that means. Like I mentioned, I mean, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm not the smart guy. You know, when I was in college and I had to study for a test, you know, you always spotted those guys that like, it looks like, you know, they went to bed at nine, they woke up at seven, happy and ready to go, and they ace their exam. With me, I had to stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning. I barely made it in class, hair all a mess.

And, you know, I had to fight for my B-minus, you know, and that's just the guy I am. So being in a forum and just, you know, I learned a tremendous amount for it. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there's a, you know, although I've made a ton of mistakes, there's another ton I haven't, man, and I love to kind of hear about other obstacles that people are going through. And I, you know, the position that I got straight out of college was a mentor-mentory setup, the same way than it is for Juan and myself. I am his mentor. He is my mentoree. And that's the setup that we have. And it works just tremendously. I mean, where it's gone to us in just the short period of time that he's been with us is incredible. And so, you know, I have spoken to a couple people that have reached out to me. And I love sharing the knowledge. And if I can save them from the major headaches and problems that I've come across, I love to do it. I have to bring it up, Josh, in regards to, to, you know, how I, I ended up kind of on this podcast here.

And, you know, I'm, we had a little, little gathering at my house. And, you know, I'm sitting there and talking about, you know, this or that. And somehow real estate came up. And, you know, somebody spoke up and said, you know, how do I get into real estate? I said, well, you know, there's this phenomenal source that you should go on. It's bigger pockets. And, you know, out of the background, I hear my brother and say, hey, is that Josh Dorkin's bigger pockets? I look back and I look at this guy and I'm like, how the, what do you know about Josh Dorkin?

He's like, he's on my phone. Look, he's a contact. He's my buddy. What do you mean? He's your buddy. He says, yeah, we did a film together. And I said, listen, you know, I've been in this business for 10 years now. You know over the last few years where you didn't think it was important to mention that you

happen to have worked closely and your buddies with a guy that runs one of the most rapidly grow in real estate forums. You wouldn't think to at least just mention that to me. He says, hold up. I'll text them right now. I said, you should have texted him three years ago. And so Johnny texted me and told me about you guys hanging out. And we talked.

And he's like, you know, let's see what we can do. And yeah, man, it was, I didn't think we talk about it here. But yeah, man, it's, it's a great site. your brother, I love your brother, he's a great guy. I've known him for 15, I don't know, man, 15, 16 years back when, you know, the people who know this story. I mean, I did, you know, you were flipping burgers and McDonald's or thinking about it in order to get into the franchise business. I was doing like some real crap stuff to learn the film business. And, you know, I was working on every student film so I can learn how real films were made. And, you know, I ended up meeting your brother and we did some projects together. And, and I love. working with them and yet well it was completely random up until you know a couple weeks ago we had no idea that that he knew you and that i well i don't i don't know you but i feel as though i do listening to all the podcast and being on bigger pockets and it was just it was random it was it was hilarious and you know i'm glad to be here you know i really appreciate you guys you know let me

come on here and kind of blow the a for a bit and uh you know thank you yeah this is awesome it's all good man it's all good perfect well that's a good transition over to the world famous fire round it's time for the fire round all right the fire round these are questions that come directly from the bigger pockets forums which we've talked about numerous times in this episode already but people can get to that at biggerpockets.com slash forums go participate in the community there but question number one and you kind of already touched on this so i'm going to tweak the question the question was where's the best place to look for multifamily properties for sale i'm going to tweak that i'm going to say

Where's the best place? And maybe it's the same answer. Where's the best place to find like small multifamily? For those people who are just looking for a duplex, triplex, or fourplex. Where's the best place to find that? My answer to that would be pounding the pavement. Walking down the street and looking for the property that looks a little off, has some tall grass, has some shingles falling off the roof, looks a little bit dilapidated. And then grab that address and don't stop until you find the property owner.

Call them, ask them to sell. Simple as that. Get ready for a lot of nose, but again, there will be some yeses. Fantastic. All right. Looking to get into my first apartment acquisition, hopefully five to 10 units to start. What's the best route for financing with a small down payment 10 to 15K, but very high credit score? Okay.

That's exactly the next question that I was going to ask is what is your credit score and what type of financial situation are you in? So if your credit score is good, you know, as long as the numbers make sense, and certainly you want to study up on that. You know, you want to know how to run, how to underwrite a deal. You know, what to factor in. It's not as simple as the rent and my maintenance cost and my taxes and, you know, my utilities. It's not as simple as that.

But once you really have a good bearing on that and there's plenty of sources here on Bigger Pockets that provides that information, plenty of people, you know, offering pro forma for free, once you know that the numbers are right, your credit score is good. Like I mentioned, go to a local bank. nothing huge. Don't go to the big banks. Don't go to the big names. Go to local bank, ask to speak to their commercial department, and pitch them to a deal. Do that five or six times when you have the first deal under contract. And again, you'll be told many knows, but there will be a yes. Yeah. Awesome. Love it. That's great. All right. So what question should I ask when interviewing

a property management company? Wow. And I know you manage your own, but like, you know, if you were going to go and hire a property manager to look after some of your properties. I would like to see their reporting. What type of reports do they produce on a monthly basis? What's on the report? And, you know, kind of, you know, associated with that is what do they charge for? You know, some charge for a leasing expense. So they lease the apartment for you.

Some charge a strict management fee. But are they going to charge anything above and beyond that? What does the management fee cover? it's really just learning more on the financial side of it. Obviously, I'm going to do my due diligence before I go to a management company and study up on, you know, what others have to say about them, you know, what their track record is in the neighborhoods. I certainly don't want a company that has their entire portfolio, you know, 30 miles away from me. And now they're interested in taking on this, you know, duplex 30 miles away from where they, where, you know, their bread and butter is. And so there's some other things involved there.

I am sorry, it's not a simple direct question. but it's a combination of that, doing my due diligence on them and their reputation and seeing kind of what their billing practices are. Right on. Cool. Okay. Well, a follow up would be what should I know about building a successful property management business?

Hmm. As long as you can minimize your errors, you know, and keep your errors, you know, keeping your errors to the minimum is the most important part. You're going to have a lot of them. But if you can minimize them. So, again, it just comes to, if you make a mistake, you know, create a system to where you can't make that mistake again. Yep. And, you know, that's ultimately how you build a successful one.

You're expected to make mistakes. You're expected to fail in some areas. But as long as you can correct it quickly and try to never repeat it again, you're only going to get better from there. Right on. I love that. That perfectly sums up what I was saying earlier about the broken system, right? So if you make a mistake, look at that as, okay, how do I build a system that this mistake doesn't happen again? And that I love that. You put that perfectly right. I love that. Thank you. All right. Cool. All right, moving on. I guess it's time for the famous.

Famous for. All right. So the famous four, these questions come. Wait, no, these don't come directly. These are the same questions we ask every single week here on the show to every single guest. And so you've probably heard them before, but we're going to ask them anyway. Number one. What is your favorite real estate book? Favorite real estate book. Can I pick a newspaper? Okay. Sure. So I am a fan of the business journals or the business times, right? So in the markets that I'm in, I have the Austin Business Journal coming to me.

I have the Pittsburgh Business Times coming to me. Shout out to those guys. They do an incredible job. And to me, that is one of the best real estate books that I read on a weekly basis. You know, it provides you leads, right? It tells you who's going through some financial troubles. It'll show judgments or bankruptcies, things of that nature. Might be some people you want to make a phone call to.

It'll show deals that have kind of transacted. That to me was more of a damn it. I missed that one type of thing. But it's fun, read. And it also gives you knowledge about what's going on the market. That's huge. I mean, when you're talking with a seller, you're trying to negotiate with a seller. And he can tell you, hey, John Doe sold his property for twice.

as much as what you just offered. Yes, but John Doe just fully renovated, you know, their property and bought it so and so long ago for this amount of price. If you have that knowledge, that expertise, you know, they're more prone to listen to you. They're more prone to take your deals more seriously. And so if you know the industry, if you know the business, you can go talk to the players, you can talk to the bankers, you can talk to these other people much more intelligently and come across as somebody that, you know, they should invest with or somebody that should do business with you. I love that. I love that. Business journals, local business journals are absolutely amazing resources for real estate investors. And I don't think anyone's mentioned it in a 130 plus show.

So thank you. I accomplished something today. Yay. Some value. Some value. All right. How about business books? What's your favorite business book? You know, again, kind of keeping the theme of keeping it simple, fundamental. You know, my favorite book, and I'm sure it's probably been mentioned here before is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Del Carnegie. Okay. You know, that book, it has some, you know, some extremely fundamental tips about how to negotiate, you know, something as simple as smiling, something as simple as eye contact, something as simple as repeating the person's name. But it drives each one of those points home with some incredible statistics about how they can benefit you. It's been an incredibly helpful book that has guided me throughout the, you know, my entire.

career. And yeah, I think that's certainly a must read. That's the only book that is required reading for anybody that joins my team. I think it's just a great place to start. I love it. Cool. Solve it, solid. All right. Let's get to my last question, which is, what do you do for fun? And I know your brother's obsessed, absolutely obsessed with nine-inch nails. Are you like following them around the world like he likes to do? You know, he's absolutely obsessed with 9-inch Nels. He's obsessed with soccer. Big Argentine fans. Yes, you are. You know, suffered a tough loss, you know, recently against Chile in the finals. But we're over that. I'm, you know, unfortunately, real estate kind of consumes

me. And I really don't, I mean, you know, I go out to the bars with my buddies here or there or go out to dinner with some friends. And they're talking about stats. And they're talking about, you know, this guy rushed this many yards. And I think he's going to be this draft pick, because he has this type of whatever. I'm unfortunately quiet during those conversations because I just can't add any value there. But, you know, what I do for my hobbies, you know, it does shift from time to time. I really, you know, try to work out as much as I can. Unfortunately, you know, that's over the years that has dwindled down to very, very minimal.

But lately, you know, it's been spending time with friends and family, you know, usually it's in or near the water, you know, whether it's on a boat on the water or at the beach. That's really where I like to spend most of my free time. Sounds good. Great, great. And I'm going to add another question here because I wanted to ask it earlier and I just forgot, before I get to the final question of the final four, so this is like 3.5. What's your goal?

Like where are you headed now? It's a good question. So my goal or the next step really for us as a company is to team up with a private equity group. That's our goal. That, and I, you know, let's call it two goals, right? So, so that's my, you know, one of my priorities right now is to work with a private equity group that wants to come in and sees our track record and is interested in doing business with us. Secondly, I would like to expand our third party management platform. So I would like to take on clients.

So anybody out there in San Antonio, Austin, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that is looking for management. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, we'll just cut it off on its own. That's all. That's fine. It's fine. Yeah. And so we'd like to build that platform.

Sure. Okay. Cool. So my official last question, what do you believe sets apart the successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Again, I'm sure we touched on this a few times today. But I like to think that I find more solutions than the other guy. When he comes across a problem, he'll come across an excuse for why it can't be done or why it shouldn't be done or why it's impossible to be done or whatever the case may be.

I try to find solutions. I am decisive, I believe. You know, I pull the trigger. And I think ultimately that's what it comes down to. Again, it's not the smarts. It's not the, it's not the, you know, just the genius ideas that we come up with. I don't have them in this noggin of mine. But, you know, it's the decisiveness, the mentality, the mindset.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, listen, it's been a pleasure. Before I let you go, where can people find out more about you? Here's your chance to plug. Oh, okay. Plug away. Get to do it again.

Well, I always have a passion for Pittsburgh and I stay true to Pittsburgh. So if you can find me on Jason Cohen, Pittsburgh, dot anything, really. I didn't even know there was a dot info, but there's a dot info and Jason Cohen, pittsburg. I'm on there. I'm on dot com.net, dot biz, all of that. So, yeah, reach out to me, shoot me an email. I'm happy to talk about real estate at any time. Excellent.

Awesome. All right, Jason. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for sharing your story. Thank you, Josh. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll see around. All right, guys. That was Jason. Cohn here on the Bigger Pockets podcast show 133. You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 133. That's Biggerpockets.com slash show 133.

What is it? Like, show 133. Wait, I didn't hear you. It is show 133. Okay. Should I say it again? People can go there and ask questions and tell Jason you think he's awesome because that was an incredible interview.

That was awesome. It was great. I say awesome a lot, but it deserves it. Yeah, it's okay. People don't mind and the people that do. You know what? They're going to send us angry emails because that's what they do. That's what they do.

But they do it. And that's okay. They're going to stop paying for this podcast if we're not careful. Oh, stop paying for the free podcast. Yeah, they're going to stop paying for the free podcast. Anyway, guys, we have 57, 60,000 listeners per show. It's amazing. It is amazing.

We are so honored by that. It really, really means a lot. Yeah. We charge you nothing for this thing. The only thing we ask is that you share it. You share it and you help us by telling us what you think of the show. That's all we ask of you. So get out there and share this.

Link to the show on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, biggerpockets.com slash show 133. Jump on iTunes or Stitcher and leave us a review. If you don't already subscribe to the Bigger Pockets podcast, hit subscribe on Stitcher or iTunes or SoundCloud. these things will help us. They'll help you get more of us and they'll help other people learn about the Bigger Pockets podcast. So please help us out. We really appreciate it. We do ask one more thing. Oh yeah. What do we ask?

Like send chocolate chip cookies. Usually I ask that, but nobody ever send them. They always send them to the office and then I'm not in the office. But don't send it, like don't send the homemade stuff. Not that I think you're crazy stalkers sending poison chocolate chip cookies. That's true. send packaged chocolate chip cookies because, you know, it's kind of weird when you get a plate with cookies on it with, you know,

molds growing on it. Yeah, you know, I don't know. A little shady, but Brandon's address is... That was a terrible beep. In case you didn't get that. That was kind of pitchy. Was it? That was kind of pitchy.

You sound like Simon Cowell. That was pitchy. Isn't that, what's his name, Randy? I always said that. It's kind of pitchy. Pitchie. Pitchie, bro.

Anyway, that shows off the air now, isn't it? I think during their final season, I don't know. I haven't watched it from season one. Kind of sad. All right. All right, guys, well, listen, it's been a pleasure. And, you know, listen up, jump on the forums, create an account, get involved, get active, network with guys like this.

This guy is on bigger pockets. Get out there and meet him, you know. Get out there. If you do one thing, one action thing besides sharing the podcast, introduce yourself to him, to somebody else, make that happen. Take the steps that you need to build your business, build your community, build your profile, and make it happen. Thank you for listening. I'm Josh Dorkin. Sign it 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 height, 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. That's our sound effects. I like it. I'm very professional. Those are amazing. There was no button involved with that.

No sound. I mean, you just came out with it, right? That was natural. Natural. It's amazing. 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 Calicoke content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And Remember, past performance is not indicative of future results.

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