BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 137: How to Use Systems to Scale Your Real Estate Business with Sam Craven

Episode Date: August 27, 2015

On this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we want to introduce you to a real estate investor who has figured out the secret to scaling his business: systems. Sam Craven, who was last on the BiggerPockets Podcast back on show 33, shares with us the processes he has implemented that have enabled him to build a team, putting him on track to buy nearly 100 homes this year. You’ll love the humor, the advice, and the examples Sam brings to the show and will walk away with new ideas to scale your own business. In This Episode We Cover: Sam’s progress since the last time he was on the show What his business model looks like Why he identifies as a “customer service business“ The importance of building processes What the people in his company do The vital importance of systemizing your business How to create a “franchise-able” business Why you should start with the end in mind How to use diversified methods in marketing What exactly high equity mailers are How they finance their deals The worst deal Sam’s ever done And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Webinar Pro Replay BiggerPockets Pro How to Close 27 Deals in Your First Year While Working Full Time with Sam Craven (Podcast) BiggerPockets Forums Becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Investor Using The One Thing with Jay Papasan (Podcast) BiggerPockets Facebook BiggerPockets Webinar Books Mentioned in this Show The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Good to Great by Jim Collins Tweetable Topics: “People call us because they have a problem that they need to be solved.” (Tweet This!) “Anyone who joins our company always have to fill out a goal sheet as well.” (Tweet This!) “One of the joys of growing a business is trying stuff and seeing if it works.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Sam Sam’s BiggerPockets Profile Sam’s Company Website Sam’s Instagram Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 137. We wanted to build an empire with the core competency of helping customers and identifying opportunity in the market. So that's really what we've strived for from the beginning. 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 to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-hosts, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, Brandon? Hey, not a whole lot. What's up with you? Oh, man, it's been a fun week. I hear you've got some drama. You know, dealing with insurance is never fun.

Let's just put it that way. I've got, you know, I've got some headaches. I bought a new house with a few problems. Let's just, let's just put it that way. You know, things that probably should have been disclosed that weren't, you know, some kinds of leaks and things like that that are damaging new wood floors. You know, it's stuff that, you know, makes you want to smile about humanity and really feel good about how people, you know, treat other people.

So, yeah, I love that. Let me ask you a piece of advice because you just bought a house and I'm in the process of buying a new. house for my wife and I. So here's my question. I'm buying it from a guy that I know and I know very, very well. You know, like, I got a church together for years. I've hung out with him. He actually built like all the trim in my current house because he's like a trim carpenter guy. Anyway, very good friend of mine. I'm buying his house. The inspection report came back yesterday. And there's, like, overall, it's a newer house. It's a beautiful, awesome, huge house. And I love it. But there's some things that are wrong with it. Like, I mean, a lot of the window trim has like,

like outside window trim has got like rotten it. stuff like that. This is the guy who's done trim on your other properties. Well, he did the inside trim. He cuts molding. So, like, he has a big machine. So the outside of his current house, which he actually didn't, you know, it was a built house that they bought. Do I bug him? They're already not making money on the house. I'm buying it for what they owe on it. Yeah. Do I make a big deal out of that? I mean, there's several thousand dollars worth of damage that I need to get fixed. Do I make a big deal or do I let it go? You know, business is business and friendship is friendship. You're paying, you know, you're paying probably retail for the property, you should ask him to get it fixed. You should definitely negotiate to get it done.

Okay. I think I probably won't. Now, you may not be able to talk to him at church afterwards. Keep that in mind. That's the fear. I don't want to be like, I'm leaving, like, I'm, you know, I'll be mad if you don't do it or I'll back out. But I kind of do, like, yeah. I mean, that's, it's not an insignificant amount of money. Yeah. I mean, this is, I will have to fix myself if not. So this is a business transaction. So you need to treat it as a business transaction. So you need to treat it as a business transaction. That's why you don't do business with friends. That is why you don't buy houses from friends. I mean, seriously, if the friendship's important to you, suck it up and eat up the thousands of dollars that you're going to eat up. If you're making a business transaction, then make the same business transaction that you would make if you were not friends with this guy. Yeah.

You know, a good solution might be is to trade him. He supplies the wood. I'll put it to put it on. You know, because he does it for a living anyway. So who knows? Anyway, let that throw that out there. If other people have suggestions, they can, uh, Put them in the show notes. Leave a comment in the show notes.

Biggerpockets.com slash show 137. Let me know what you do. And with that, let's get to the show. Actually, let me do today's quick tip. Today's quick tip is because we mentioned it in the show. We already recorded this about an hour ago. So we mentioned during the show with our guest the idea of the webinar replays. We actually do webinars every week on Bigger Pockets and teach stuff about real estate.

And we put all the replays up for pro members to watch. So if you are a pro member, make sure you check those out at Biggerpockets.com slash pro replay. And if you're not a pro, still go there and check it out and see what's there because there's like 30 hours now of video.

So check it out. If you're not a pro, go to biggerpockets.com slash pro to learn more about the benefits of going pro. There you go. All right, cool. Most investors spend more time

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Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. So today's show, Sam Craven, we had this guy in before. Didn't we show 33 of the Bigger Pockets podcast? Sam, Sam's been busy. Sam's been real busy.

And that first show, I mean, that was one of our more popular shows, wasn't it? It was, yeah, number 33. It was great. Yeah, so he was just talking about how he had pretty much gone from nothing and built up this business pretty quickly. Well, he's continued to do so. We talk with him about how he has raised all this money in private bank financing, how he has scaled his business, really dig deep into the scaling of a business, which I think is really interesting. They've done $15 million in business. in the past two and a half years. We talk about some struggles and all sorts of other stuff.

So definitely tune in. It's fascinating and it's really cool to see an investor who's kind of come out of nowhere, really in the past few years and built this really great scalable business that other people can probably emulate. And obviously, I'm not saying go and compete against them. But, you know, it's, you know, it shows you what can be done. He started with a full-time job working. just like everybody else.

And he bought a bunch of houses and kept improving and improving. And today he's doing this full-time, five people on the staff. And it's awesome. That's great. Let's bring him on. Let's do this. All right. All right.

He's back, ladies and gentlemen. It's Sam Craven. What's going on, Sam? Hey, guys, not much. Just coming to you live today from Ridgeway, Colorado Library. Nice. Why are you in Ridgeway? You're not from Ridgeway.

You don't even invest in Ridgeway, right? I don't invest in Ridgeway yet. Is that why you're there? No, we're here. My wife and I started a cross-country road trip last week on Friday. Did you? So, yeah. Are you copying me?

Straight up copying you, Brandon. I saw what you're doing. I said, you know what? That's one smart dude. I'm going to go do exactly what he's doing. Nice. So where is Ridgeway? I've never heard of this place.

You know where Montrose is? No. You know where Grand Junction is? Yep. Okay, it's a little south of Grand Junction. Got it, got it. In the middle of the hour. Middle of the middle of nowhere.

Right on, right on. Yeah. Right where we like to be. be frankly. That's awesome. Yeah, it is a pretty part of the country. You're right on the Utah border. Before we get into this, I do want to know,

and what's your plans for your road trip? Where you guys had it? You said cross-country. You're from, started to where? Where are you from? Yeah, we're in Houston. Okay. So we actually, we loaded up our lane cruiser,

piled in all of our stuff. We came out here. We actually fell in love with this part of the world. We decided not to take the Ferrari. Right? Exactly. You know, you can't camp out of a Ferrari. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, we really love this part of the world. So we rented a house. house here for a week. And then the following two weeks, we're going to be camping, actually, Colorado, Utah, what else, North and South Dakota, maybe Wyoming, that kind of stuff. Nice. Are you car camping like Brandon does? Like, he lays in the back of his Prius in camps out. So a little bit like that. So we have like the complete opposite of the Prius. So our Prius gets 11 miles per gallon and takes premium fuel. Is that a motorhome did you get?

No, it's our Toyota Land Cruiser that we have a rooftop tent on and refrigerator and drawers. We just live out of our car. Oh, wow. Technical term is an overlanding. We do it every year. Nice. Yeah, you need to take some pictures and share them with us because that sounds awesome. Yeah, we'll put them up on the show notes page.

Yeah. Okay, I'll do that. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So you, I mean, are we here to talk like about it? No, if you want. Watch this transition.

You guys watch this, ready? So I want to talk about how you're able to invest in real estate while still being able to travel the country. I mean, that's kind of a cool topic because most people can't do that. They can't just go and pack up and leave for weeks or how long you've gone for? Three weeks. They can't just leave for three weeks. We got to line. We'll get into that.

We'll get into that. Because Sam's been on the show before. You were on show, what was it, 30? What was it? This is show 137. He was 33, I think. You're on show. show 33. All right. So you guys who are listening, check it out, biggerpockets.com slash show 33,

and it was actually a pretty amazing show. Back then, I seem to recall you were working a full-time job or something. You were doing real estate on the side. I believe things have changed a lot since then. Is that right? They have changed quite a bit since then. You're exactly right. Bring us up to speed. Okay. So I think that show was maybe almost two years ago now, and we were maybe nine months into our first full calendar year of doing business. And I think we had done 25, 27 deals or so. Since then, honestly, I don't know the exact count. So maybe 115 houses or so we've done since we started our business. And this year we're on track to do 90 houses this year. Nice. Wow. And what do you mean by do? What are you doing with them? Yeah. So, okay,

that's a really good question. So our business model, our business model is basically, to build leads, create leads, and monetize every lead that comes in. The majority of the time... Go ahead. I was going to ask what on earth that means. Okay. Well, excellent question, Josh. So what that means to us is generate leads of motivated sellers and then take them to monetize it the best way that we can, whether that's we're going to hold it and rent it out, whether we're going to hold it, renovate it and sell it.

We're going to wholesale it, whether we do a net listing. I mean, it's really, subject two is another one that we do. I mean, we really take the lead and custom tailor a solution for that particular seller. We are a customer service business. People are calling us because they have a problem that they need to solve. And so we do whatever we can. And all of our staff is trained to do everything that they know how to solve. their problem the best way possible in a way that's profitable for us and makes the customer

happy in the end. That's awesome. So here's what I love about that, right? So, I mean, when people are starting out, don't necessarily listen to what I'm about to say, because when you're first starting out, you have to focus, obviously, and you don't know everything. But I love the fact that, you know, when you talk to motivated sellers, not everybody can be fit inside this one box. Like, you can't just wholesale everything. It doesn't always work. You can't just, you know, some people want to do a lease option. They can't just lease option. They can't just lease option. or just flip everything or just rent everything. Exactly.

And so the fact that you're able to then monetize the majority of your leads or a good number of them, you know, it just opens up the possibility for making so much more money and doing so many more deals. Well, and that was a pretty, you're exactly right. I mean, we spend a lot of money on marketing to generate the kind of leads that we do. And if we're not able to efficiently turn them into profit for us, you know, that's, to me, that's not a good business. if we're just doing one thing, if we're only making one offer, we're missing tons of opportunity. Part of growing this business is realizing places like that where you can grow

and you can find opportunity and you can gain market share. Nice. Well, so let's get into this. I mean, previously on the last show, your focus was what? It was wholesaling, right? No, actually, we were about kind of a similar model, except we really only had two methods then. It was just wholesaling and rehabbing. Okay. So, and now on Frank,

that's a few other strategies to the next. Wholesale and rehabbing is still the majority of our business. Okay. But we are expanding further. You know, where's more than, I think last time I was on the show, it was me and my dad that were in the business together, and that's it. Since then, we've hired three more people,

only two of which came two months ago. So we're really making that effort to grow the company, but at the same time grow efficiently. Yeah. We have competitors that are twice our size by the number of employees. And we focus on building the systems and the processes and putting that stuff in place beforehand. And then we hire someone and they can immediately slot into exactly what their job is. And frankly, once we hire them, they help us improve that process even further.

Nice. All right. So that sounds like a whole bunch of business mumbo-jumbo for the novice, right? So how do you go from somebody who's working with your dad who's kind of, you know, who's flipping and rehabbing to scale up your company to have a total five of you guys who have all these other various strategies? I mean, you can't just jump in and do that right away, right? Experience allows you to actually do that. Am I correct? You're absolutely right.

So experience, aka screwing it up, will allow you to. to seek out those opportunities and seek out those processes. But to get down to the core of your question, how do you, I guess kind of what you're saying, how do you plan for that? How do you kind of shoot for something like that? And I always go back to goals. We're really big on goals.

We always have a five-year goal, a one-year goal. Anyone who joins our company, they have to fill out a goal sheet as well. I want to know what their three-year goals are and how best we can help them achieve those goals within the context of our company. So I think everything is going to go back to goals. You know, when we started this company,

we didn't want to be just doing 10, 20, 30 deals a year. We wanted to build an empire with the, you know, core competency of helping customers and identifying opportunity in the market. So that's really what we've strived for from the beginning. I love that. I love that. That's great. Yeah, I love that.

So can we step in on in talk, first of all, I'll say this, the goal thing. anybody say that about bringing on employees and asking what their five-year goal is? I think that's fantastic. I love that. So Josh, you and I are going to talk about our goals. My goals later. Clearly, I don't do that. You know all my goals. So that's, that is the end of the show. It was nice having you on board, man. We really appreciate it. And good for you and your goals, buddy. All right. So, yeah, I think it's fantastic. I'm going to actually start doing that as well. But let me talk about the people you have working with you. You know, you already mentioned your dad. And on the last

episode we talked to you, number 33, we talked a little bit about working with family and how that all works. So we won't talk a lot about that now. But the other three people, exactly, what do they do? I mean, in your company, what do they do? Okay. Good question. So Matt, who's actually, we went to high school together. We weren't really great friends back then, but we actually connected through bigger pockets. He reached out, seriously. He reached out to me. He was like, hey, you may not remember. You remember me, but we went to high school together. I see you're doing some real estate stuff. And so we wound up wholesaling some deals together. I guess that was 2012 or so, 2013. And we realized we worked pretty well together. There was a good mix between the three of us that were in the business.

And so Matt joined us full time February of last year. His job is being the acquisition manager. So, well, previously, I'll say this. So back up, up until a couple months ago, he was just buying. He was the acquisition manager. He bought the houses. you know, managed all the metrics, things like that. Now we've brought in a new buyer who's a rock star, and now his primary job is to go buy. Since Matt is buying less houses, he's taken more of a managerial role.

So, and that I think is going to allow us to grow because instead of just being out there buying houses all the time, you can focus on the processes and improving those to help us grow even more. And I just mentioned Dan, he's our buyer. He's been with us for a couple months. I don't know. I think this is his first full month out buying.

I think he's probably bought four or five houses for us this month. I mean, he's doing very well. And then we've got Clarissa and her job. She's kind of the office manager. She keeps all of us in check, make sure, because lots of times we're running around all of us with our hair on fire. And she's kind of the glue that keeps all that stuff together because it is like herding cats.

I mean, when we were interviewing people for this, we were telling them, like, look, we're not going to be an easy company to work with. Some days you might be working late. But, you know, it's going to be funny. every single day, we're going to try to take care of all of our employees and really make sure we're all getting everything out of this that we really want to. But yes, that's our team right now. So, you know, I get the office manager. I get the person who's managing kind of the whole flow, the buyer. How does that work? I mean, do you guys just kind of set up your criteria and say,

get out there and buy as much as you can within these parameters and that's it? No, that's not how it goes. So it's kind of a, Well, man, I guess I was completely wrong. And, yeah. Thanks for playing, Josh. I appreciate it. Thanks, Sam. You're a great guy.

Hey, no problem. Glad to be here. Anyway, so we as the company, one of my roles in the company is to do the marketing. So the marketing generates the leads. The call goes to either Matt or Dan, and then they're trained on how to basically get as much information as we can out of the seller. in hopes that we can solve their problem. So like I said, before, everything goes back to customer service. How are we going to solve this person's problem?

And I hope we can do it by buying their house, right? So everything goes back to that kind of that customer service mentality. So the lead comes in, we take the lead, and then we basically ask them a few questions, talked on the phone, have a conversation with them, figure out their pain points. And from there, it really becomes, just following the lead, I guess.

Once we get the lead, it gets come in. It comes in. It goes into our CRM system. It gets assigned to different tasks. It assigned to different people, depending on where we are in the process. And then the appointment's set. And we go out there, we talk to them, see if we can buy the house, put under contract, if we can. And then, really, it's all downhill from there.

Yeah. You made it. No, downhill. It's easier. Typically downhill. Not always. We've all got more stories, right, after we go under contract with something. Yeah, I actually might side with Josh on that one.

Thank you. It does feel a little. Until the contracts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, actually to go back to that point a little bit, if we're asking the right questions and we're feeling the seller out appropriately, we try to get as much of those speed bumps out of the way ahead of time. Sure. So that we are nice and smooth through the closing process and everything else.

I mean, we have issues on houses sometimes. I'm not going to make it seem like we're perfect, but that's the name of the game. I mean, we are problem solvers. We're going after properties that sometimes have difficult title issues. That's the name of our game. We've got to figure out how to do that, how to do it effectively, and keep customers and buyers and everyone happy. Right on. All right.

So what are you doing different? I mean, you know, surely there's other folks in your market or the markets that you're looking at who have, have their own strategies. What makes you guys stand out? Why do you get to close on those deals when potentially other investors are coming in, prospecting the same leads, and not closing? What do you guys do that makes you special? That's a really good question. Thank you. I came up with all by myself. Did you really? No, actually, Brandon was writing it down and, you know, I decided to steal that one. I can leave that. I can leave that. I can leave that.

Just answer the question. So to answer your question, what makes us so different? You know, I think it really is the customer-focused mentality and how process-focused we are. I mean, you know, everyone else is out there to make that deal. When we pick up the phone and we talk to our sellers, everyone's trained to not make the deal, figure out why the seller has called us versus calling a realtor versus, you know, typical selling methods. So I think if I had to narrow it down, I would say that it's how professional we are, how we present ourselves to sellers, the way you present ourselves on the internet, the way that we present ourselves to anyone who comes in contact with our business is far and above, we strive for greatness far and above who our competitors are. We have a lot of really good competitors in Houston. We have a lot of not as good competitors in Houston, but we always strive to be the best at what we need to be when we're in front of the customer.

Sometimes they need a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes they just need to get this thing gone next week. Whatever it is a seller needs, we're there to solve their problem. And we want to make sure that they always know that when we're sitting down in front of them. Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, you know, being there, making sure that they understand, you know, this while your business is there to make deals, that's not your core, right? So, but you talk about the process, right?

Right. What does that mean to me? If I want to build a process-based business like you've got, you know, you talk about the customer service component. Okay, I get that. I can go out and I can give somebody a shoulder to grind, although mine's a little bony, you know, not going to be super comfortable. But, you know, what processes do I want to kind of put together to help systematize what I'm doing here? You know, can you dig in a little deeper on that? Or is that the secret sauce that you're unwilling to, and I'm going to ask about it anyway, but, you know.

You can ask all you want. I'll give you guys a little bit of a taste here. Okay. So when we were thinking about bringing someone on board to be a buyer, and what we had to do is we had to create a process for pulling comps. And I'm sure both of you are aware what it's like to pull comps. I mean, it's a little bit of an art form, right? Sure. Sure. It's not like exactly, you know, you can't just pull the comps, do your CMA, take your median price of the 10 houses you picked, and that's going to be your ARV, right? I mean, it's very dependent on the level of finish. You know, you can't. You know, you can't just pull the comps. You know, you can't. You can't be your A.RV., right? I mean, it's very dependent on the level of finish the part of town you are, things like that. And so what Matt did to get us prepared for that is he created about two hours worth of videos on how to pull comps. And then to go with those videos, we have, I don't know, 10, 15 pages of documents to lay out in supporting documents on how to pull comms. And so when people join our team, I mean, Clarissa,

she jumped in and she's pulling comps now and probably took about two weeks worth of oversight. But the reality is she was getting on it pretty quick. quick, and I think that has a lot do with, you know, that process that we built around that. We have written processes for everything in our business, from rehabbing houses to taking seller leads, to delivering documents to the title company, to, you know, everything, every which way in between. And so that's really, talk about processes, just a little, that's a little bit of a taste of kind of what we're talking about. Yeah, that's great. I love it. That makes a lot of sense,

and I think that's exceptionally helpful. Yeah, I mean, that's the working on your business, not in your business type of thing. Yeah. I love that. And the fact that you mentioned video, I think, you know, video is getting easier and easier and easier to create these days to show people how to do things, even if it's like a screen share or if it's just talking in front of your iPhone. I mean, videos are so cool because they're, they stay on the web forever. You mean, you put it into private YouTube room or whatever if you need to and then just send, you know, people you need to know the link. And then every time from that point forward, it's done. I mean, for a for a non-real example this morning, you know, I do webinars every week here on Bigger Pockets, right? And at every

webinar replay, we try to post them for our pro members to be able to watch. And so having to edit the replay, so it's like smooth and perfect for our pro members, that takes time. And I do it every week. And it takes a good hour of my time every week. This morning, I was like, this is stupid. I don't have, like, this is such an easy process. So this morning, I wrote up this detailed three page document and a video on exactly how to do it. And I will never have to do it. Now, Dave, who edits the podcast, we'll do it. Boom. And now you get to work on the important stuff. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Not the editing stuff. Exactly. Now that there's a process in place. And I do that in my real estate, at bigger pockets and everything I do. I'm like, how can I make this a repeatable process? And you said something before the show. You know, I first called you to do a sound check. You know, I just said, so what have you been up to? And you used a phrase I thought was perfect.

You said, we're trying to create a franchisable business. I think it was a word you used, right? Right. We're not necessarily that you want a franchise, but you wanted to create a franchisable business. Can you talk about that a minute? Sure. I mean, that kind of goes back to, you know, if you have a franchisable model, it's something that someone can buy, follow the systems that you have laid out word for word,

and make a profit, right? So if we're creating a business that is, quote, franchisable, right, that we have that we're going into it with the mindset that this is easily replicatable, we have so many options available to us. I mean, if we ever want to exit the company or possibly, sell the company, which I've never actually heard of, a house-thilling business being sold. Yeah. I know we have...

Oh, it could be. It could be. It absolutely could be. That's kind of what we want to create. I haven't seen that done. So if we're creating a franchiseable model, we have multiple options available to us. We have something where, okay, to some extent, I can go leave for three weeks and the business can still operate because we're doing it in that franchisable model.

It could be, we could be building the franchisable model. And who knows, one day we'll be in 30 cities and we'll still be the owners of it and it'll be incredible. At the same time, it could be something that we could sell, you know, five, 10, 15 years down the road because someone will be able to buy the business, buy it based on a multiple cash flow and go in and continue doing what we were doing because of the franchisable model that we've built. So it's really one of those things where it could pay off short term and it will pay off long term. Yeah. What I love about franchisable models or I mean, even anything, right, McDonald's or, you know, any of the fast food, whatever, what franchise it is, right?

The idea is it's scalable because the process has been written out for you. And so when you can take that, I mean, even like the idea of if you've got this process for how it works in one part of Houston, you could fairly easily go and translate that to another. Now, there's obviously going to be some differences you got to work through. Absolutely. And you could take that over to, you know, I don't know what's near you, Galveston, take it over to, you know, Austin, take it up, you, wherever you need to. I don't know. You know what I mean?

Sam shakes his head and his lack of geographic knowledge of the Texas area. I don't know. I just... I'm the voice in your head. That's what I thought. I drove through Galveston. I just wouldn't go down there. Okay.

Yeah. I drove through Galveston and then I drove through Houston and I forgot you lived there. Otherwise, I would have probably... Nowlinson's a nice area. Notice that he drove through your hometown and never stopped to say hi, Sam. I forgot you were there. If I were there, I would have visited. He forgot about me?

Wow. It's been two years, man. It's been two years. I haven't gotten your Christmas card in at least like 29 years. I don't know. Let's bring it back. Let's bring it back. System, systems. Systems. All right. So you're building this repeatable, scalable business that can work in Galveston. That can work in Austin. That can work pretty much everywhere. That's great. So what does that mean kind of looking forward, right? You've got your acquisition. There's five of you, right? Is your dad still part of the team? Oh, yeah. He's an integral part of the team still. Okay, so there's five of you guys.

How can we take this team of five and kind of translate it for somebody who's new? You know, what can they do to start their business and do it in a more efficient manner, kind of keeping in mind what you're talking about, which is the scalability and the systems and things like that? And I stole that from Brandon completely. I figured. Yeah, you know. Apparently I don't have a brain plugged in today. I didn't say it.

I think the best piece of advice I would have is to probably start with the end in mind. Figure out exactly what you want to build. Do you want to build a company that does 100 houses a year? A lot of people, they're going to want to pull their hair out. They want nothing to do with that. And they can build just as profitable business doing 20 houses a year. So I think really, if you start with the end in mind, it kind of goes back to setting your goals. What's your five-year goals?

In five years, do you want to just have 10 rental properties and do two flips a year? you can make a good live in doing that. If that's your goal, you may not necessarily have to focus as much on the systems and processes as we do with what our expansion plans are. So I think, as much as I hate to skirt the question like this, I think it's going to go back to setting what your five-year goals are or setting what your goals are and your milestones to hit and figuring out what are the systems and processes that you need to hit those goals. Do you want to have a business that does 50 houses a year with you not even in the same country? you're going to have different systems and processes than our company will. Yeah, sure. Because while I'm taking a three-week trip here, I cannot do this without the team that we have in place in Houston.

Yeah. This is more of a sanity trip than, hey, I want to get the heck out, you know, leave my business trip, right? Sure. I love my business. When I'm done with this podcast here, I'm going to be jumping on the computer and taking care of business like I need to. So, yeah, like I said, I think it's going to go back to setting your goals and what it is that you want to. to accomplish. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So what's next? I mean, you know, and we're going to rewind for those people who are listening. We're going to talk a little bit more about the deals that

you guys do. But, you know, I think we thought it was important to kind of dig in a little bit on the business itself. Absolutely. Who are the next hires? Who are you looking at potentially bringing on next? Who do you need to scale it even better? Right. Well, I think we're going to wind up probably hiring, you know, this could go a few different ways. It might be, if we continue buying at the rate that we are currently, we might need a new buyer at the same time. If we keep buying at the rate that we're buying, we're going to need a project manager. Right now, Robert, my dad, his primary job is managing our projects and our business. And, you know, he has a lot of business experience. He has a lot of know-how that needs to be put to work. And if he's out managing

contractors, it makes it that much more difficult, right? So that's where, putting the systems and process in place and how to manage rehabs and do it the way that Robert does it is going to pay off 10fold when we finally hire that project manager. Yeah. Because they're going to be able to jump right into the business, hit the ground running, and then Robert's time is going to be freed up to work on other stuff. So yeah, I think maybe a buyer or project manager. Yeah, cool. That's great. And do you want to scale?

I mean, you guys did what, like 100 deals in the past year or so? Do you want to do 150? You want to do 500? I mean, are you happy at that pace? What's kind of your thought on that? Well, so I think, to clarify, we've done 115 deals in the last three years. Three years. Okay, sorry. Right. We've done 45 or 50 or so far this year. We're going to finish the year at 90. We're well on track to do 90 houses this year. So I think next year I'd like to see the same kind of exponential growth that we've been experiencing.

You know, this year, I think our business has frankly tripled. Our revenues tripled every single year that we've been in business. I'd like to continue that, but I know that's not going to always be possible. Sure. I think for our expansion, you know, being in the real estate business, I want to make sure that we're making decisions, we're making expansion plans and growth plans based on what we're seeing in our market. You know, are we going to have to go to another market to be able to continue to expand the way that we have?

Is that something that's going to be right for us? it's going to be right for our employees. It's going to be right for our investors. I don't know. Very, very cool. Well, before we get on, I want to make one more point about the whole franchiseable, the systems, the processes, before we get on to the specifics. And that is, you know, we talked about, you know, a lot of the benefits to having that system, being able to sell it possibly or, you know, be able to franchise bigger. Another idea, though, and something that you're experiencing right now, is that ability to replace, you know, part of your business. This comes from the e-myth, you know, Michael Gerber's book, the E-Muth. But if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're

your business is a machine, right, that has all these cogs that are working, you can replace pieces of them, including yourself. And so you can, at some point, you could pull out yourself from that cog and put another person at its place. And the business wouldn't necessarily go down, you know, in flames. And so like the fact that you're on a three-big trip, you're, I mean, even though you're still working, you're not there in person, but you're able to kind of travel. And that might be the greatest benefit, I think, to that whole, that whole model of having systems and things in place. You know, that's kind of what enables me nowadays. You know, I worked super hard the first, what, seven years to build up a, you know, a system for my business so that I can step back. And that's why I spend so much time at BP now. And that's why I work here because I love this. I like the real estate. I like doing it. I still do it.

But I love bigger pockets. And so like, because I have that business, I can do what I love to do and still have the real estate working and generating passive income for the rest of my life. So I just one more benefit. Are you just saying that because Josh is on the phone? Yeah, Josh, pause it from me. it and Josh, and then I'll tell you the real truth, Sam. Yeah. Wow. Wow. There's no love for me today, man. No, like, I'm not saying I love Josh, but, you know, bigger pockets, though.

Man, I mean, like, I learned real estate through bigger pockets. I mean, I started when what I found it when I was 21 years old and like, yeah, I mean, what, eight and nine years ago now? How old are you now? 30. Yeah, so I've been on since you started pretty much. I mean, like, I think there was like 10, 10,000 people on the site when I joined or something. Wow. Yeah. If you want a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever.

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Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. All right. So anyway, that's just cool thing. So let's move on and shift gears from the systems. Like that, shift gears from the system. Yeah. Pretty good, right?

Thanks. Thanks. And we're going to shift gears and talk about these specifics of what you're doing right now that's making you so successful. So why don't we start with deals? where are you finding them? How are you getting them? You mentioned marketing. What does that mean? Okay. So our marketing engine is coming in from all different directions. One of the things that we experienced when we're starting this business is volatility in our monthly deal flow.

And I think it's something that anyone, especially if we're just starting out, you're going to experience that volatility. You know, you're going to be, okay, I'm ready. I'm spending my $500,000, $200,000 a month, whatever it is on marketing. And you're two months in, you're like, what the heck is going on? why isn't this working, right? Yeah. So that volatility we experienced, you know, for a long time, and we realized it had a lot to do with the fact that we were only marketing through one channel. So we decided a long time ago that we were going to slowly start to diversify our marketing.

And what that looked like is we would do absentee mailers, with postcards, you know, letters. We would do probate mailers with different types of sending, different types of media. we would also spend, what's it called, high equity mailers, and at the same time, so we slowly started to build up that, our direct mail, and we diversify within our direct mail. Next step was going to be diversifying in our website presence. So SEO, AdWords, that type of stuff.

So we're still doing absentee mailers. We're still doing our website, which is doing great for us currently. we also are actually buying houses on the MLS, surprisingly enough. And we're also, we started doing what we called our community marketing program where we don't do bandit signs anymore, but what we will do is we will approach homeowners, business owners, things like that, and ask them to put up a sign in their yard. And this is typically a more professional sign with a vanity number. And we're trying to get people, we're trying to work bandit signs a little bit more

legitimately, I guess is the best way to put it. And not something where we're having to be. having to put out signs every week, manage a sign putter out, go out, you know, buy signs every week, just things like that. We're trying to, going back to the franchisable model, we're trying to do bandit signs in a more franchisable way. You're trying to, I mean, you're trying to do it in a credible and legal way is what you're trying to say. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm not outspoken about it. I don't have a vendetta against anything. I just think people should run a business legitimately. And I think

bandit signs, you know, that violates city codes and or, you know, shouldn't be used. So I like what you're saying, and I want to hear more about it. So this community marketing program, how does that work? I love that, by the way. I really, really love that. So do you just go up to businesses and offer money, or how do you kind of make that happen? It's same with anything else. You know, we offer to lease sign space from them. And if they're on a street that we like in an area we want to target, we say we'll pay you X number of dollars per month to put up this sign at this location. And they don't have to pay for the sign. They don't have to pay for anything else. it's very straightforward.

As far as whether or not it works, honest to God, I don't know. We just... Fair enough. Yeah, one of the joys of, you know, growing a business is trying stuff and seeing if it works. I mean, it might all go to hell.

I have no idea. But we're definitely going to try it. We actually, we have purchased one sign from it so far. So one sign. We've purchased one house from it so far. So it works. So it works. works. There you go. It's work. Just got your answer. There you have it. You just learned live

on the Bigger Pockets podcast that you are in fact successful. Congratulations. Yeah, I like the idea a lot. I read a book recently called 80-20 sales and marketing. I've mentioned it a few times on the podcast. But in there, he talks about that, you know, 80% of the cars in the world drive on 20% of the roads out there. And then of those 20% of 80% of those cars driving 20% of those roads. So it works out to like 50 or 60% of every car drives on like 4% of all roads. So what he's, what he translated that to is in terms of marketing is that you could go put out 10,000 signs randomly or you could put out one sign on a strategic spot and get just as many people as all those other signs.

And that's why the big companies, you don't see Coca-Cola putting out bandit signs, right? They understand that. That there's a scalable model they're like you're talking about. And when you can hit people where it matters in the locations you matter that a lot of people we'll see it. Yeah, I think it's great. Good job. Really. Yeah. Can I jump in really quick? Because I know you're going to go somewhere else and I want to take it back to one more thing that Sam had said. By the way, this is the Bigger Pockets podcast, and we are on show 137. You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show

137. Connect with Sam and ask him questions, find resources and things that we've talked about in there. But all right, Sam, so you talked about high equity mailers. I don't think we've talked about that in 136 shows. So I'd like you to talk about that. I mean, it pretty much is what it sounds like. But for those people who don't know, what does that mean? So high equity means that the person has a lot of equity in the house. The debt to the house versus the value of the house is, but the reality is I don't do that anymore. We don't do high equity mailers anymore. Okay. Okay. They just, they're, they're too much of a low-hanging fruit to people in our area. There's too much competition. And we were no longer getting the ROI out of it.

that we demand of our marketing. Okay. Fair enough. So let me just ask for maybe for people who don't have a lot of competition with that and they maybe want to do that. How do they even get that list? And what does that come from? You just go to, yeah, it's really easy.

You can either get it through your local appraisal district or through list providers, yellow letters, list, source, things like that. And you basically just want to pull a list. Typically, if they're over 60 or so, you'll find some better motivation. So you want to put an age limitation on it, maybe an age of the house, maybe how long they've owned it. But definitely you want to make sure that they have a lot of equity in there. And that's where going to someone like a list source or yellow letters.com will allow you to choose the right list, try to find the best motivated people. Very cool. Very cool. Interesting. Awesome. All right. So, okay, you get all this stuff goes out. The mailers go out. The signs are out. Everything goes out. And you get start in phone calls. You already said your two guys will get those phone calls. They take them.

And now they go and they probably set up an appointment with the person, correct? Right. Okay. So they go set up the appointment. They talk to them. They kind of find out where they fit, you know, what they could possibly do. Then what happens next? I mean, you sign the contract with them.

Let's just say, for example, you guys decided you're going to flip the house. You're going to rehab the house. Like, how do you finance that deal? I mean, how are you financing those kind of deals, the ones that you're actually buying, not the wholesaling ones, but the ones you're buying to flip or, you know, do whatever else with? Okay. So we finance through private lenders and banks. Okay.

And what does that mean? What's the private lender? Okay. Yeah, private lender is an individual who has some money they want to put to work in real estate, but don't necessarily want to get their hands dirty flipping the house. So they'll come to someone like us who's built the systems and processes and everything to keep their money as safe as possible and could put as much of it to work as quickly as possible.

And we borrow the money at a set interest rate and a set loan to value. and get them in relatively safe compared to the market. You know, we don't go over 70 to 75% of the ARV. We put them on the insurance as a loss pay on the property. And then, of course, you know, walk them through the process every step of the way. Our lenders that have been with us for a while, you know, they're worth gold to us.

Just as a for instance, a lender that's been with us for a while. I was out of town a few weeks ago. We got a lead on a property that came back to us. We had to close it in three days. So I had to raise $300,000 in three days. I was out of town. Our lender was out of town.

There was so much trust in the relationship and the millions of dollars that I've borrowed from these people that we were able to get the job done, get it done right, make sure everyone was safe. And that's really what it comes down to processes. I mean, we're agreeing to buy a house. I'm out of town. I haven't seen the house in two weeks.

But everyone has to fall back on the processes and the systems that they know and just follow it to a T. I love that. Makes sense. But going back to your question, that was a little aside. We borrow money from private lenders and we borrow money from banks. Currently we have, I think, $2, $2.5 million in bank financing.

And we got very fortunate. We got our first bank line of credit of half a million. We were only 18 months old. And really that comes down to having a good balance sheet. So a lot of people that get into this business, you know, they don't like to show a profit. For all the right reasons, they don't like to show a profit on their balance sheet. We recognized pretty early that we were going to have to pay a lot of money and taxes if we're going to be able to go after the cheap bank financing.

So, I mean, our bank financing is anywhere between 5 and 6%. That's pretty tough to beat. Yeah, yeah. It's really tough to be. So in order to do that, that's where building that sustainable business comes from having a good balance sheet, having good processes. Even with bankers, man, you go to the good local regional banks. You can't go to the big banks.

Chase Bank, Wells Fargo Bank. They're not going to want to talk to you if you're wanting to borrow a million bucks from them. That's, you know, nothing to them. But you go to your little bank, you start building that relationship, you show them the processes that you have, you show them your past projects, you show them the before and after pictures, give them the whole dog and pony show, and they'll want to listen to you. They'll want to bring you into the office.

They'll want to be able to lend money to you. And as you build that relationship more and more, they're going to want to give you more and more money. So I'd encourage anyone who's getting out and starting their business. They got a few deals under their belt, go out and start talking to banks, see what they can get. I love that. You know, to add on to that point, you know, you mentioned about you're going to have to pay taxes.

I know a lot of investors. I mean, there's a lot of things that we can write off. And you can be very aggressive in your tax planning strategies. But like that oftentimes will shoot people in the foot by being too aggressive. I mean, there was a point. Yeah, two years ago, I decided I need to get a refinance on my apartment complex. I'm going to have a problem if I'm really aggressive. And so like I scaled back and I was not aggressive at all.

Like IRS loves me because I'm paying all these taxes. But this year when I went to get a lot. my refinance, like I had really good numbers to show them that were, you know, that they liked. And so I just, yeah, there's definitely ways that you can, yeah, be more conservative or more aggressive with your, with your tax planning. So that's just a tip for people. I mean, even just starting out, I mean, you could translate that somebody who's brand new. People ask all the time, like, I've got bad credit. Can I get started investing in real estate? You know, yes, you can invest in real estate without good credit. But look down the road two years, three years from now.

Eventually, you're going to want that cheap bank financing. So, you know, start getting that in shape right now, whether or not, you know, it doesn't mean you have to sit out on the sidelines, but at least start working that way, kind of looking towards the future. And talk to a CPA. I mean, that's going to be your best bet is, you know, what's the approach? I'm not going to tell it to you. Brandon's not going to tell it to you. And Sam's not going to, you know, we don't know what works for one of us is not necessarily

going to be what works for you. So having that core team member of a CPA is going to be huge. Yeah. Yeah, love it. Awesome. Well, cool. I think it's time probably to. shift gears once again.

Oh, look that. Transition over to the world famous. I want to, before we do that, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to rewind really, really, really quickly. I was giving Josh that looked the whole time like, do you have any other questions? I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, I thought you were going to jump with it. So, you know, I'm just going to, I'm going to take it from here, Brian. Take it from here. Thanks for the help. Thanks, host. Sam. Yes. In the past couple years since you've last been on the show.

tell us, tell us, you know, the coolest deal that you've done. What's been your absolute favorite deal that you've done? That's a good question, Josh. I know. We should probably ask everybody that question. You really put me on spot with this one. I'm going to have to think. I'm going to have to sink.

I know it's hard when you have a Rolodex of millions and millions of deals, but, you know, come on. Surely there's one. So you want to hear like our. I don't care. Profit deal? Do you want to hear one? Like we solve someone's. Absolutely. All the above. Oh, man. See, I wish you'd guys give me these questions ahead of time and I'd be able to prepare something.

I know you're having a hard time. You're on vacation. Coming up with, you know, fabulous deals. So what about awful? Like, you know, what was the worst experience you've had in the past couple of years as an investor? Okay. And this is a good one. Yeah, this is a good one because it was all my fault and it was because it didn't follow our process. So we have. had a deal where we had the trifecta go wrong. We bought this house and I walked the house. I negotiated the purchase of the house. Everything was great. I recall it a particularly good day because I think I bought three houses in a car that day. But this particular house was in fairly good shape. People, they smoked in the house. It wasn't that big of a deal. But we close on the house and then we find that we have like a huge amount of foundation issue that I apparently glossed right over

and missed because I wasn't following the process. Then, so we fix the foundation, then we get our roofer to go out there and just check the roof, which is standard procedure for us because we want to make sure that if it passes a roofer's inspection that we trust, it'll pass the seller's inspection. It failed. So we had to do a foundation. We had to do the roof. So we did the foundation, we did the roof, and then when they leveled the house,

part of the fireplace started to fall away from the wall. So I was like, okay, not a big deal. Really, that's $500, $700, whatever it was, to, pull the brick down and re-brick it back up. Well, we pulled a brick down, and the whole walls just chewed up with termites. Oh, nice. Oh, man. I thought we were going to find a dead body in there.

No. No. So the whole wall is chewed up with termites. So we have to do, treat the house for termites and replace all the bad wood. So at this point, the deal is not looking that great. I mean, it was probably a $35,000 profit deal for us, which is slightly below our average. And so, yeah, we do the termite. treatment, we do the roof treatment and foundation. At the end of the day, though, because I followed the

rest of the process and bought it at a low enough price, instead of losing money on that deal, we made $8,000. Okay. Now, if you look at making $8,000 over the course of three or four months, however long it took for us to do that deal, we lost money if you included our time. But at the end of the day, our private lender was made whole. Our private lender was never in a bad spot. We didn't lose money on the deal, but because I didn't follow the process that we all agreed on and wrote for walking a property, we wound up losing $20, $25,000 of potential income from it. So, yeah, there's a horror story for you. That's a good story.

Really nice family. I was really happy to help the family, but yeah. There you go. All right. All right. Fair enough. Good stuff, man. Good stuff.

Well, thanks for sharing. And if the other thing comes to mind, you know, obviously feel free to, you know, come on back. But I think this is a good time to transition, Brandon. I think this is a good time to the world famous. World famous. Fire round. It's time for the fire round.

All right. Fire round. These questions from the Bigger Pockets forums, which are listeners can get to at biggerpockets.com slash forums. So if you have a question that you want somebody to answer here on the Bigger Pockets podcast, make sure you leave your question there in the forums. So, Sam, number one. What type of property is best to fix and flip? Multi-units or single-family?

I would say that goes back to your goals, honestly. Because I think it really depends on where you are in the market, where you are personally. I mean, you can make really good money flipping multifamily, but you can also make really good money flipping single-family. Yeah, I would go back to, it depends on what you want to do and what you want to accomplish, but at the same time, go back to whatever, what numbers work.

If you're trying to evaluate doing one versus the other, go back to the numbers and see what the numbers tell you. What are the comparables tell you? What's the cap rate telling you on the multifamily? How much work do they both need? So, yeah, I think you're going to need some pretty in-depth analysis on that one. Okay. I like that.

Fair enough. All right. What's worse for a tenant applicant? Having an eviction or a felony? Geez. I'm going to go with neither one's renting from me. Okay. There you go.

By the way, do you have a rental property as well now? We do, yeah, we've got rental properties. Okay. Excellent. So you're not running out to convicts or, yeah. Nope. Nope. Nope.

All right. Nope. Fair enough. Easy for easy. Next one. How do you find cash buyers? If I'm a wholesaler, how do I get cash buyers in a small town? I know you're not in a small town.

Houston's, you know, a medium-sized town village, really. A little bit. Six, seven million people. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. But in a small town, how do you find cash buyers? So I think a good place to start would be.

your multiple listing service and see who has completed cash purchases in your area. And I imagine if you go back over the course of a year, you might see a few people repeated. So yeah, get on your local MLS. It would be a good place to start. Also network at the local diner, church, anyone? Cool. Nice. That's great.

And now, how does somebody get on the- That's good advice, by the way. How does somebody get the MLS if they're not an agent? Talk to someone who is. There you go. Beg, beg, borrow, do whatever you need to. access to the MLS, I think is critical in this business. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

All right, is it smart to invest in a red hot market? Last question. Well, I would say yes, but you have to be smart because I'd say we're in a red hot market in Houston right now. It is becoming more and more difficult for us to buy houses because it's easier for someone to sell it on the open market. And at the same time, you know, everyone in their brother thinks they want to be a real estate investor. And they're kind of flooding with market. The area is flooded with marketing. So I would say yes, it is okay to invest in a red hot real estate market, but you're going to want to make decisions based on the fact that you don't want to be in the house for very long.

So if the market's really hot or if it's looking kind of frothy or at the same time, you know, you want to look at other market indicators. Like in Houston, our housing demand is still high. We still have a lot of people moving in, even though oil has taken a bit of a, you know, hiccup. I guess if you could call it that lightly. Oh, just a little one. Yeah. Yeah. What's that 50% from its high. Yeah. Right. You know, we're still net adding jobs in all of Texas. We're still net adding jobs in Houston. We're seeing in Houston, like, it's taken a toll on prices on houses worth less than 150 and worth more than 500. So if you're in a red hot market, you know, look at those economic indicators and say, okay, maybe I should stick between 150 and 500, or less than 500, I should say. So, yeah. Cool. I like it. Right on. Excellent. All right. Let's transition over to the last section of this show, which we call the...

These are the questions we ask everyone, and we have asked you these two years ago. And actually, I looked here on the calendar for when this show is coming out. We were recording this a little bit early. This show is going to come out on the two-year anniversary of your last show coming out. No chance. Yeah, we did not plan that at all, but it's exactly two years later. Nice. Weird.

All right. So two years ago, maybe things have changed. So number one, what is your favorite real estate-related book? Real estate-related book. I don't remember what I said last time. Probably Gary Keller's book. The millionaire real estate investor. The millionaire real estate investor, yeah.

As far as real estate goes. Honestly, I don't think I've read in a real estate book since the last show. Okay. There you go. Okay. There you go. Just tune into the podcast. What do you need books for, right?

That's right. Tune to the podcast. Get on the course bigger pockets of forums. There you go. Look at that. By the way, don't forget Jay Papazon as co-author of said book. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Yes. He was also a guest on the podcast. So, you know, we got to plug Jay there. Yeah, we do. All right. So you haven't read any real estate books. Right. Yeah, well, you probably, I'm not going to ask that next question.

Well, should we just end the interview now? I mean, ask the next question because I read business books up and down. All right. Fine. If you make me, fine. Are you going to ask the question or you want me to just go? Business book. What is your favorite business book?

What are you reading these days? I'm actually three quarters of the way through a book right now. which I've fallen in love with. It's called Good to Great by Jim Collins. Yeah, classic. It's really, yeah. It's been an eye-opening book. I'm getting a lot of good information from that.

Yeah, I'm enjoying reading it. And honest to God, I do not typically enjoy reading. My wife will read like a book a day. I'll read if I'm lucky a book every quarter. So, yeah, that Jim Collins book, Good to Great, can't say enough good stuff about it. Perfect, perfect. All right, hobbies, what are you doing for fun these days?

besides, you know, trekking around the country, globally, whatever you do, you know, getting in the range. Yeah, that's, that's, seems like most of it is. Yeah. So, overlanding, whenever we can, camping. And at the same time, also I love cars. I have a huge addiction to cars. A previous life, I was a race car mechanic. So, yeah, I think to give you an idea of how bad it is, my wife and I live in a thousand square foot bungalow in Houston.

And we have six cars. Wow. Oh, man. Okay, so I'm on Google, and I just search for over lightning. I've heard the term, but I never do. And I'm flipping around, and I'm looking at these trucks with, like, tents on the roof. This is outstanding. Holy smokes. I see one. The guy's got a solar array parked on the ground in front of his truck. Wow. Is that what you guys do? That's what we do. That is outstanding. Self-sustained vehicle travel. Dude, you got a ditch of Prius, man. Yeah, that might be better than a My wife actually writes for a couple of adventure magazines as well. I take pictures. She does the writing. Yeah.

Well, send us a picture and again, we'll put it up on the show notes page. BiggerPockse.com slash show 137. For sure. Yeah, really cool stuff. Really cool stuff. All right. Brandon. All right. Let's see. My final question. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Boy, that's a really good question again. Perseverance. I feel like is a big one. Because the business, no matter what business you're in,

it's going to constantly kick you down. Something's not going to go your way. The marketing's not going to go your way. You're going to lose a deal. You're going to lose money. You're going to hurt a relationship or something like that. And I'd say it's the perseverance to stand back up and go do it all over again the next day.

Every single day it can kick your butt in this business. It's a fun business. It's a really rewarding business. but it's also a very hard business to do the kind of volume that we want to do and build the kind of business that we have. Yeah. So I would say that every single day the business just kicks you down, chews you up, spits you out, the perseverance to wake up the next day and jump right back into the fire.

Right on. That's great, man. Great. All right, Sam, well, listen, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Where can people find out more about you? Sure. Okay. So our website is sena housebuyers.com.

And that's S.E.N.N. and Nancy N is a Nancy A housefires.com. That's the best way to get a hold of me. If you want to follow around with our travel stuff on Instagram, I'm at the real Sam Craven. And that is a joke, by the way. I'm not that egotistical. And yeah, yeah. So if anyone must reach out to me, the best way is to go to the website and fill out a form on our website, and that goes direct to my email. Be happy to talk to anyone about anything. Nice. By the way, I'm like, your website right now, Santa Holmes, and I'm looking at you and your dad. Your dad's that looks like a nice guy.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a nice guy? Don't judge him. I like his mustache. No, I'm not expecting like a devil or? No, I'm just saying he looks like like like your typical like really like nice like TV dad. I don't know.

That's like a guy. Can you be my dad? He kind of actually looks like my dad. They have like the same mustache. Anyway, all right. So yeah, let's get out of here. Sam, thanks for your time. Man, it's been fun.

Yeah. I really appreciate it. This is always good. Brandon, next time you're driving to Houston, don't forget about me. I won't forget about you next time.

So I'll be looking for your Christmas car this year too. Tusha. We'll see you. Get out of here. Goodbye. Take it easy. It's been fun. See you guys.

Enjoy your trip. Bye. All right. All right, guys. That was Sam Craven. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the show. Lots of fun. Lots of great information.

Really, really good information. Cool show. It was a cool show. It was a fun guy. I do like Sam a lot. I remember that from last time. He's just a riot.

So that's good happen. Yeah, it was great. So definitely, you know, check out the show notes, guys, if you want to sync up with Sam. And you can do that at biggerpockets.com slash show 137. That's biggerpockets.com slash show 137. You can find Sam on Bigger Pockets at BiggerPockets.com slash users slash Sam C. And otherwise, if you are listening to this on iTunes and you're only seeing the last 20 shows on iTunes, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash podcast and find all of our old shows as well.

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Lots going on on Bigger Pockets. We're trying to make lots of cool new features and additions to improve your lives. And if you've got suggestions ever, please don't hesitate to reach out to us by email at biggerpockets.com slash contact. And let us know what you think. Let us know if there's anything that you'd like us to add on to make the site better for you. And otherwise, that's all I got. Follow us on Facebook. Jump in on our forums, biggerpockets.com slash forums.

And I don't know. That's it, man. Cool. That's good. That's good. Let's get out of here. Let's do it. Don't me to sign off? I can do it. All right. Follow us on all the social media channels and let's get out of here. For Bigger Pockets, this is Brandon and Josh.

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All right. What do you mean you don't listen all the way through, what are you talking about? Of course I do. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all. All our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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