BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 139: Getting Started as a Businessman, Not a Handyman with Fat Tony

Episode Date: September 10, 2015

Many people struggle to get started, especially when they live in an expensive market. That’s why today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we’re excited to bring you this interview with a newer investor who’s figuring out how to make a passive investment business despite living in one of the most expensive cities in America. You’ll learn how Fat Tony (yes, that’s really what he goes by!) invests in out-of-state deals and how mindset has played a major role in his early success. In This Episode We Cover: Who is Fat Tony, and what’s with the name? How he got started in real estate investing Why it all starts with changing your mindset The value of continuing education His first deal: a short sale Whether it’s worth it to look into condos How to start doing the things you need to do The importance of tracking your net worth Why you should view real estate as a long term play What it takes to successfully invest out of state The importance of working with people who you can trust Why all investors should have cash reserves Why Tony believes in buying site unseen The worth of his properties today Tips for finding people who share the same mindset And SO much more! Links from the Show Want to be our sponsor? Email here BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Podcast BP Podcast 134: Creative Finance and Gaining a Millionaire Mindset with Pro BMX Rider Terry Adams The Secret BP Podcast 004: Commercial Real Estate Investing With Frank Gallinelli Books Mentioned in this Show Brandon Turner’s Investing With No or Low Money Down Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measuresby Frank Gallinelli The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Tweetable Topics: “I’m a businessman, not a handyman. And I’m okay with that.” (Tweet This!) “There’s gotta be a way. Other people are doing it. I just need to figure out the way.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Fat Tony Fat Tony’s BiggerPockets Profile Fat Tony’s Company Website Instagram Facebook Twitter The Expansion Project Podcast Break Parallel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 139. I figured I'm a businessman, not a handyman, and I'm okay with that. 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 good friend, Mr.

Brandon Turner. Hey, Brandon. How are you doing, Josh? I'm great, man. I'm great. Good. About yourself. I'm doing pretty good.

I'm moving in the next couple weeks, which is exciting, which you just found out apparently because I never told you. Yeah, yeah. Nice house. Yeah. Moving on up to the east side. It's the same. Yeah, I'm moving like two miles away.

but now I'll have a view in a hot tub. Yeah, man. It's a friend. Yeah. So I bought this house. I can kind of explain a friend of mine who was a, I mean, kind of sad. He went through a divorce a few years ago, back three years ago, whatever. And at the time, I talked to him about his house, obviously, because, you know, I'm a real estate guy and he wanted to have some questions.

So we talked about it. And, you know, it was way outside of my price range. And it was, you know, I just didn't even envision that I could ever live there. And it's not, I mean, we're talking $280,000. This isn't like a million dollar of land. But, you know, it was just out of my price. Anyway, so then I took a drive the other day with my wife and, well, I don't know, a month ago now. And I noticed it was listed with a real estate agent.

And I hadn't talked to him since that time a few years ago. So he's happy to get out of it. So I got a great deal on it. And I'm going to do a little live in flip. Live there for a couple of years. Fix it up. Hopefully make myself 100,000 by flipping it. So that's the goal.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thanks. It is pretty cool. And I'm doing an FHA loan. So I'm house hacking essentially like the live and flip version. I'm going to be in this entire thing for under 15.

grand, including like most of the, doesn't need much repairs. It just needs updating. And yeah, it's going to be an awesome living flip. So I'm kind of combining investment with my own advice that I give in the book on investing in real estate with no and low money down. Look at that. Look at that. Nice, nice, man. Now, that's great. Cool. Well, congratulations on that. Thank you. Cool. Yeah. Well, I don't really care. Fine. I want to tell you. I care. Come on. Come on. All right, man. Well, let's get into this thing. Today, we've got a pretty cool interview. It's a pretty interesting newbie show.

So for those of you who are listening, there's definitely a lot of, I'd say, inspiration for the new guy. Before we go there, big thanks to all of our listeners. We definitely appreciate you guys. We hope you spread the word and tell everybody about the Bigger Pockets podcast. And we also ask if you've got a minute or two

to jump on to iTunes or Stitcher or SoundCloud and leave us a rating review iTunes is obviously, well, it's not obviously, but it's probably the most important place to go and do it. I'm going to share a little review from one of our users really quickly. This is from D-S-A-R-V-23, and it's, I'm so glad I found this podcast. I'm 25 and married. Work is a security guard three and a half days a week on night shift Wednesday through Saturday. I'll be honest.

I only have a diploma under my belt as far as education, but I have a ton of drive to learn and plenty of work ethic to back it. recently started to get it to the learning curve of REI within the past month. This podcast has put a lot into perspective, especially not only how to build and start, how to maintain things and keep growing. This is definitely going to be my go-to place when I have questions and concerns in this new endeavor. Thank you, Bigger Pockets. I've listened to the first few episodes and can't wait to listen to the rest and catch up. Awesome.

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So, there you go. All right. Let's do our world famous quick tip. All right. A quick tip today is you may have seen this already. And we may even talked about it, but I wanted to bring it up again. We have this new thing called dashboard boxes. And if you go to your bigger pockets account and go to your dashboard,

click the little home icon in the upper left corner of the navigation bar, you go to your dashboard. And down below is a list of boxes of things that you can do that we recommend you do next. It might be check out this cool thing on the site. Or can you give us some more information? about this or what are you interested in, take a quick survey. There's things that are designed to help you get more out of BP. So go check out your dashboard boxes. And every couple weeks, there's new boxes appearing that are designed to help you and to help us present and bring better things to you. It's all about personalizing your experience, your own experience. And everybody's

going to have different boxes based upon the information they tell us. So yeah, definitely do that. Cool. All right. Well, let's get into this thing. Today's guest. His guest is Fat Tony. And you'll hear why we call him Fat Tony, why he calls himself Fat Tony later on. But Fat Tony is a real estate investor, lives in the Los Angeles area, which as most of you guys know, prices can be ridiculous. But he's figuring out of a way to make it work and actually invest in real estate at a distance. And so the thing that I love about this show is his adherence to lifestyle. He doesn't want to be a handyman. He doesn't want to do his own work. He doesn't want to be. trapped by his rental properties. And so he's figured out a way to make it work without being trapped.

So I love that. That's great. All right. Well, let's bring him on. All right. Fat Tony, welcome to the show, man. Let's just open up with that. Fat Tony, what on earth is that about? Yeah, good question. And get asked it a lot, believe it or not. Yeah, so in ninth grade, I was about 15 years old. And my friends thought it would be funny to give me a mafia name. My real name is Adam Christopher Taylor. And they said that's kind of just a dorky white kid name, which is exactly what I was. They're like, yeah, let's give you a tough mafia name. It'll be funny. And yeah, now more than half my life later, it's stuck around. That's awesome. So in your professional life, I mean, everything across the world, you are Fat Tony. That's it. Yeah, I worked at a big magazine for about five and a half

years and in the Mastead every month. Just said Fat Tony. And that's my name. I love it. I love it. For those people who are not watching this on YouTube, you know, sometimes we put out our episodes on YouTube. But if you're watching this on the actual, like, or listening on the podcast, you can't see, but Fat Tony is not actually an overweight guy. You're pretty in shape. I saw a picture of you in Hawaii, I think, on your Instagram. I think it looked like Hawaii because you were doing the hang loose side. I live in Southern California. Oh, maybe that was where I was. All right. Anyway, you look a little bit more in shape than a guy that named Fat Tony, I'd probably imagine. So you do like CrossFit, right? Is that is that your thing? I do, yeah, I grew up riding BMX bikes my whole life. And then about two and a half years ago now, I found this thing called CrossFit that a bunch of the pro riders had started doing. And it was improving their riding and everything. And I got to the point where I was like, all right, cool, let me try this out. Like, if I can become better on my bike and be able to not get hurt or just last longer

and endurance-wise, and, you know, I'm all for it. But I started doing it. And within a couple months, I got to the point where I just loved it so much. I was, like, afraid to go riding my bike because if I crashed, I wouldn't be able to go train in the gym, you know? Yeah. And now I've drank the Kool-Aid, as they say, and I'm pretty hooked and obsessed with it. Yeah, there is definitely an obsession with that CrossFit stuff, huh?

Yeah, there really is. I've heard people talk about it's kind of like the quickest way to reach the runners high of just like those endorphins when you're working out and, you know, sweating hard and stuff. But I think there's other things that are worse in this life to be addicted to if you're going to have a vice like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Cool, man. So let's get into this real estate thing. You do some real estate investing.

So how'd you get into that? Why'd you get into that? Yeah. So I guess, I mean, the very beginning of the story would be that I, you know, lived in small town, Louisiana my whole life, had a very kind of, you know, middle class upbringing or whatever, moved to Southern California right after college to get a job working for a magazine, as I mentioned. And the mindset shift that had to take place at that point was pretty big. I got to California and I was on a small salary and I remember being at this car wash and they

have those little like newspaper type booklets of houses nearby or whatever. I'm waiting for my car to your wash. I'm looking at this booklet and I'm just thinking like, how in the hell do people afford these houses in Southern California? Like where I'm from, my house doesn't cost this much. I was just like, man, I make like $33,000 a year. Like how am I ever going to do this, you know? And then a good friend of mine who you actually recently interviewed, his name is Terry Adams.

he was on episode 134 of your show. Him and another buddy of ours recommended this book called Secret to the Millionaire Mind. And I was kind of going through a tough breakup at the time where I was, you know, just needed kind of a big shift in my life. And I read this book and it just really changed my perspective, changed my mindset and in turn changed my life. So I went from how the hell do you ever afford a house in California to, okay, how am I going to afford a house in California? Like there's got to be a way. Other people are doing it. I just need to figure out the way.

So, yeah, that's kind of where it started was just shifting my mindset. Again, a big, big change for me. I mean, the distinction there was how the hell, like, it's never going to happen to how can I do it? How do I figure it out? Exactly. So it was this total, like, it's impossible to now I just have to solve the problem. Is that right? That's it.

Cool. Cool. All right. So how did that happen? How did you solve it? What did you do? What were the kind of the steps you took and tell us how it got? So after reading Secrets is the Millionaire Mind, which if anybody doesn't know, it's a book by

T. Harv Ecker, I recommend it to everybody I ever talked to. Like I said, it did change my life. After I read that book, I started to kind of ramp up the amount of freelance work that I was doing while I was working full-time at the magazine. And I just got really into hardcore, like, managing my money, saving my money, and just like balancing it all out. So I knew that based off my salary and based off the fact that I, you know, lived as a poor kid, you know, the previous year in college, whatever. I didn't have a lot of overhead. And so all the money that I was making on the side outside of my full-time job, I would just put it in the savings, put it in the savings. So I stayed for probably about two and a half years or so. And once I felt like I got to the

point where I could, you know, potentially start looking for a place and, you know, maybe put a down payment on using FHA loans or whatever if I needed to. I, you know, during that time, I also read other books like, you know, rich dad, poor dad, and kind of kept, you know, continuing my education and stuff. At that point, it was just like, okay, I've saved enough money over the last couple of years and I've learned enough to feel like I'm ready to take this step. Then, you know, let's go ahead and do this. And my original thing was that I was going to try to get a duplex here in California so that I can live in one side and rent out the other, you know, obviously a very common practice. And after many, many months of looking, that just didn't seem realistic

anymore. Like, I was looking at places that were a little bit out of my budget and even those were still like just in terrible shapes. They needed too much work. But it was a good learning process nonetheless, you know, going to these places, seeing how much work they were going to need, realizing that I wasn't capable of doing that kind of work and wasn't willing to invest the time and resources into learning it. So then I started looking for just, you know, a house or a condo or something that I could live in myself. Ended up finding a great short sale, which this was in 2010, so the market was still really kind of rock bottom at this point. The kind of that I ended up getting was $180,000, three blocks from the beach and Long Beach. And it had previously sold

2006 for like 350. So the short sale process kind of taught me a lot as well and just sort of continued with my real estate education, if you will. And it took, I think, close to 11 months from the time I put in my initial offer until the time I got the keys. Wow. And then I had a roommate living with me. It's a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-bathroom plates, and I had a roommate who was paying, you know, more than half the mortgage. So that helped out a bit as well. So let me ask you about the condo a little bit. This is something that a lot of our listeners are probably, they live in expensive areas like L.A. or, you know, San Francisco, whatever. And I get that question fairly often, should I go buy a condo to go live in something?

And now you did. A lot of times investors will say don't do it because of HOAs or whatever. But it sounds like you did it and we can hear the rest of that story. But do you recommend that for people who are in those kind of markets, should they look into a condo? Maybe I was a little bit naive at the time, so I didn't know a lot about it. I just knew that I had looked at so many places and so many of them were run down and in questionable areas because it is Long Beach after all. and when I walked into this place, I was like, okay, I can see myself living here. It's close to the beach.

It's a decent enough area. So I was pretty uneducated at the time about the HOA stuff. As I said, I'd really been looking for duplexes and it had really been kind of reading up on like the investment type of stuff. So I've had, you know, good success with it. And I'm very happy with it. It's a small association, only six units, which also means that I have to be involved in the board and everything. So, you know, I was the treasurer for a couple years. And this year it's my turn to be the president, which isn't super full.

fun. But it's really not that big a deal to me. I don't have any issues with it at all. Yeah. Yeah. And for those people listening, $180,000 in the Los Angeles area is a really good deal. Yeah. It's a really good. When people see this place, they're like, whoa, it's like, you know, been remodeled. Granite countertops, like nice cabinets, great floors and everything. It's kind of a funny, sidestepping story here. But I actually have a gated garage, which is amazing in this area. You know, downtown parking can be a bitch in some cities. But then a couple days after I move in, because of the short sale and the agent didn't know a lot, a couple days after I moved in, a neighbor mine was like, oh, you're so lucky you've got this storage room down there. And I was like,

what storage room? And sure enough, I had to get a locksmith to come open this room. And it's like a 10 by 10 just, you know, fully locked storage room with shelves and room for bikes and everything. Oh, nice little surprise there. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Well, so I want to circle back a little bit. You had talked about this mentality of money management, this mentality that you had developed where you were going to be smart with your cash. And can you share a little bit more about that? You know, for those people who are listening who are like, hey, I'm broke or I got a crappy job and I can't save anything, what do you do or what do you recommend people do

to start doing that? My mother, when I went to college, set me up with an Excel spreadsheet. And she told me, you know, a lot of people at that time, this was, you know, 2001. I first went to college and left the house. she was telling me about people balancing their checkbooks. They write a check or they spend money and they like, you know, deduct a line on their checkbook. They recalculate their balance. And I remember seeing her doing this and she's like, well, now you have a computer.

You're in college. You can do this on the computer. So from the time I was 18, I started using an Excel spreadsheet. And that first year, I was like so anal about it because I thought that's what you had to do with your money. Otherwise, you were going to go broke or something. So I kept track of every dime that I spent on this Excel spreadsheet throughout college or my first year at least. So I've adopted that and really built on it. And over the last seven or eight years that I've kind of been on this financial journey of mine,

I've really fine-tuned and tweaked a bunch of different Excel spreadsheets. So my first thing is to tell people to kind of calculate their expenses, figure out how much they're making each month, how much their monthly expenses are, figure out what's left over, and figure out a savings plan or an investing plan. And if that's, you know, 5% in the beginning or 10% in the beginning, at this point, I'm up to pretty much 30% of every paycheck. I put 10% into one investment vehicle, 10% into another, and then 10% into a different savings thing. So figuring out a way to divide up your money and, you know, all these people, you know, financial guru, self-help books, the whole deal is like they'll all tell you the same type of thing. Like even if it's a couple of dollars at first, like once you start managing it, you understand, you know, how things can grow and work and stuff.

Kind of at the same token, I met a guy that became a big financial mentor to me. And he said the very first thing that I should do is track my net worth. So I started a new spreadsheet for that. I found online kind of like a base template to use. I started tracking my net worth. And at the time, it was something like $11,000 or something. But I can look at it right now and see over the last eight years that has grown up to, you know, a couple hundred percent multiplied by that, you know,

know. So just seeing where your money is, seeing where you spend your money and tracking your money is kind of the first step. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Agreed completely. I mean, you know, until you start seeing what you're doing, you know, you can be, you know, you can have a lot of money. You know, rich, rich people burn through money too. You know, poor people, rich. It doesn't matter. But so, so until you're actually watching your pennies go by, it's hard to really see it. And, you know, Brandon and I've talked about this on the show, like his Starbucks. habit, you know, setting a budget. Like there's things that that you love and that you just can't give up, your vices. We all have them. You know, well, you know, you don't have to, but,

but constrain yourself and say, I'm going to limit myself to this. You know, having a budget, having a monthly budget is, is really powerful. I'll have you know. I have not had Starbucks in about two months now. Oh, my God. I know. Two whole months of that. My wife still goes. That's why you've been such a miserable. That's why I've been. I think that's actually a big reason why I was able to keep such low overhead. I never drank coffee because I didn't like the taste. I never drank alcohol. So I was able to save a lot of money that other people would spend kind of going out on a daily or weekly pieces.

So here's the trick. The trick is you don't get coffee, you get peppermint hot chocolate, 175 hot chocolate with whipped cream. It is the best Starbucks drink on planet Earth. But there's like a thousand calories in it. So that's why I stopped. I hired a personal trainer and he's like, are you stupid? What are you doing every day? I think it's water.

It's free out of the tap and it saves me money and it's healthy. And you are right about the booze thing. I mean, it's amazing how much money you can save by not drinking booze. And I married, my wife doesn't drink and never really drank. And so, you know, once that happened, she was a cheap date. I became a cheap date going out to dinner. You know, dinner, a nice dinner is 50, 60 bucks. You bring alcohol on board.

Now it's 80, 100 bucks. So, yeah, it's a great thing. All right. So you also said something that I made a note about, which I thought was awesome. You're like, you know, I found a bunch of really run down properties and I didn't want to mess with them because that's not my thing. And I think it's so important for listeners and, you know, for people in general, obviously, to know what you're good at and know what your skill set is. Because, you know, if you suck at that stuff and you go and you start, you know, try. trying to fix up a property and you're just not good at it or you don't like it.

You're going to start hating real estate. You're going to start hating being in this business. Yeah. So that's actually kind of a point that I wanted to bring up. One of the things that I wanted to kind of get across to the listeners and stuff is that I really have set up my whole kind of quote unquote investing career right now based off of keeping a good balance in life and finding, you know, what I still want to do with my time.

Because right now, I don't want to make real estate my full-time business or gig. I think at some point in my life, I might want to ramp that up. And I could sort of see that in the future at some point, but I'm not there right now. So right now my focus is building these businesses that I'm doing, working for myself, staying active in the BMX or CrossFit community, these niches that I'm really passionate about. I see real estate as a long-term play. And so I'm not right now taking that as my main focus. So yeah, when I started out, I knew that I didn't want to put in a bunch of work into a place.

And it's funny, when I got this condo, there was a handful of things that needed to be done. It needed a new garbage disposal. It was burnt out. I was like, oh, I'm sure I could do that myself. Well, after a couple hours and realizing I didn't have the right tool, trying to go buy the right tool, didn't get the right one again. I literally put an ad on Craigslist. I was like, I'll pay someone 20 bucks to come over here and just like remove this nut for the stupid foster because I don't have the right tool and I don't want to go back home to me, whatever. 20 minutes later, two guys showed up, and they switched it. They're like, oh, you want us to finish, put in the garbage disposal also?

I'm like, please, go ahead. And at that point, I came up with, or maybe somebody, I don't want to poach somebody's quote, but I figured I'm a businessman, not a handyman, and I'm okay with that. And there's people that, you know, get paid and make a living to do these things that I don't want to do. So I'm happy to pay them and help put food on their kids' plates. And, you know, so when it came time to paint my condo when I moved in, you know, I found somebody, paid them, I think, like 700 bucks to paint the whole thing. It took them a day.

It would have taken me a couple weeks. And that day, I left and went and rode my bike and I came home. My house was painted. And I'm like, this is what I like. This is my style. Nice, man. That's awesome. I think a lot of people think they have to get into the handyman to be in real estate.

They have to be good at construction or good at changing. And I've said this before in the show before, but I'll say it again now. I think being handy hurt me in my investing business. Like, yeah, I mean, it helped me get properties because I could get these rundown properties, but it made it so that I was an integral part of my business, and I could not escape that. Even like, you know, like I budgeted all my budgets at the beginning were based on me fixing things. So now I don't fix things anymore. So who I have to pay for that now, but I never budgeted that way in the beginning. So all my early properties now, they don't

cash flow very well anymore because I'm not doing the work anymore. So yeah, I think that it hurt me knowing that I thought I was a handyman and not a businessman. And there is not a single, you know, task that requires one trip to Home Depot. No, no. I mean, you know, there's, you, you always forget something. You always have to go back six times. Right. Yeah, it's not fun.

Cool, man. All right. So, what came after the condo? So you got this. Yeah, so sticking with that, that theme of kind of wanting to be a hands off, I started looking out of state because basically at that point, I knew that anything in state was really expensive or anything nearby me was really expensive.

And what really got me kind of in that, you know, out of state investment type mode. Again, my buddy Terry, who you spoke with on episode 134 of your show, he was talking to a mutual friend of ours at the time who was into construction and he lived in Saginaw, Michigan. And poor guy, I know. He was buying up tons of these like run-down places after the market crashed for, you know, $5,000, a couple thousand, even maybe a couple hundred dollars, I think.

But, you know, by the time I caught wind of it, he already had several places under his belt and was putting in the work himself. So Terry ended up buying a place over there in cash, and I just kind of saw through him. I was like, man, like, you made this look too easy, you know? So my next play was to try to use the same real estate agent as my friend did because I felt like that was a trusted person. And then to buy in the same area where our other friend lived

because that was kind of my eyes and ears on the ground. Well, what ended up happening was me and the other guy in Michigan kind of had a falling out of some sort and we just sort of lost touch. And then the agent that I was trying to work with was just really, really bad at communicating through emails. And I prefer to have everything in emails so I can see it in writing and not forget anything. And it just kind of threw up a red flag for me. And every time I asked questions, they didn't get answered. And I was like, okay, well, if my eyes and ears on the ground isn't there anymore and my trusted real estate agent doesn't seem trustworthy, now what am I going to do?

So I started calling around in Louisiana because that's where Terry lives. That's where my family lives. It's where I'm from. And things are cheaper there, but not as cheap in Michigan. I started calling around and basically just cold-called real estate agents in the area until I found someone on the phone that seemed to fit the bill. And I told them I'm an out-of-state investor. I want to buy a property that looks like this.

I need somebody that's dealt with out-of-state people before. And this lady ended up working out really well. And every time I emailed her questions, they came back point by point. I was like, okay, this is how I need somebody to communicate so that it's effective for me. and this is going to work for me. So the first place that I bought as an investment was a three-bedroom, two-bath, single family in Louisiana, and the same town that Terry lives in, which is a couple of towns over from both where my parents live.

Got it. Awesome. Awesome. And, you know, I'm sorry about, you know, the drama, but I love the story. And I like that you kind of stuck to your guns on, you know, you didn't feel comfortable in Michigan. You know, the boots on the ground kind of failed you. And that was something that I had experienced, you know, the exact same thing.

And that really is one of the big reasons I tell people to beware of investing at a state is, you know, once you lose your eyes and ears, you've got nothing and you're blind. And so just make sure that you can trust the folks that you're working with anywhere, but especially when you're investing at a distance. And, yeah, again, I love that you ended up not proceeding, not moving forward. in Michigan, not because I have this hate towards Detroit. I don't know why anyone would think such a thing, because, yeah, it's a smart move. So you pick up this three, two, what did you pay? What does it rent? Tell us a little bit about the numbers. Yep. So that one was like $63,000. I've got a sheet right here so I can give you actuals. 63,500, and it rents for between 7 to 800. I think it started out at 700. maybe went to 725, maybe it's up to 750 now.

So it was pretty good rent. And my buddy Terry also was working with a property manager at the time. So, you know, I was able to hire him on board. And I bought it without ever going down there to see the house or anything. So again, this was kind of in line with me wanting to stick to what I was enjoying doing in my personal life, but still been able to invest, you know, very much on the side. And of course, I did, you know, dedicate a lot of time and energy and focus into learning a lot of stuff before I made the plunge. You know, for instance, when I was by my condo, my real estate agent at the time was kind of a mentor of mine.

He was a new agent, and he was really trying to help me learn as we started looking for places. And he turned me on to this book, which I'm holding up for anybody looking. It's called whatever real estate investor needs to know about cash flow and 36 key financial measures. So I read that book and literally studied it like a textbook and took notes on it every morning before I went to work for a long period of time. So again, I put in work ahead of time, but by the time I was ready to actually do the investing, it was very much a hands-off thing. So I bought it sight unseen. The property manager took care of everything. You know, they had a checklist from the, you know, property inspector that told me what would need to be done.

And I kind of went over that with the property manager and told him what, you know, I felt comfortable doing. And I said, you know, you're the one renting it out, get it to where you need it to be to get a tenant in there for me, you know? I let him do his thing because that's his business. and I stayed back in California shooting photos and ride my bike and, you know, he was taking care of the property. So after that, I actually did go back to Michigan. Not physically, but so again, you know, I knew that places were still cheap out there. And at this point, I, again, was still on a very small salary. And actually at this point, I lost the salary because I quit my full-time job to be a freelance photographer.

So now if I tried to get a loan, things would look even worse for me on paper. I had the mortgage of the place I lived in. I just had got the financing done for the single family in Louisiana. So at this point I was like, well, my next step is going to have to be cash. Or so I thought, I'm sure there's other options. But for me, I felt like a cash deal would be the best of the time. So saved some more money. And then I was like, okay, let's look back in Michigan because I can afford a place in Michigan

in cash at this point. I didn't go back to the same real estate agent. I didn't contact, you know, the old friend of mine or anything. again, I picked up the phone and started cold calling. I feel like maybe this is exaggeration, but it might have been literally the first guy that picked up the phone at any of these offices I tried to call. And I was just like, you know, same deal.

I'm an out-of-state investor. This is what I'm looking for. I need somebody that deals at all-of-state investors. I want somebody that also has rental properties of your own so that I know you understand where I'm coming from, blah, blah, blah. Had my whole spiel down. And right of the way, the guy was like, yeah, I've got 10 rentals of my own.

You know, I was a full-time investor. whatever before I became an agent. I deal with out of state investors. I just sold one last month, yada yada. So I was like, okay, cool, show me what you got. He sent me an email with three properties listed and I bought one of them. It was that easy. So again, I never went there to see it.

I didn't go crazy on like the analysis stuff. It was like, okay, this is a three unit. Total rent's like $1,300. It costs $19,000. Yeah, there's going to be, you know, things wrong with it because it's old and it's in Saginaw and yeah there's going to be other you know surprises that come up but hey for this price let's let's go ahead and try it out and uh so yeah we just went ahead and sent off a cash cheer jack and had it a couple weeks later did it did it need a lot of work in that problem

i mean like after you got it did it need a lot of repairs at 19 000's pretty cheap for three units um well it was already rented out um all the all the units were filled when i got it uh so i figured if there's people in there and they were paying then you know it was good enough for them I can guarantee it's not a place that I would want to live in, but somebody wants to live there. And one of the ladies had been there for like 12 years or something. So, yeah, the property inspection report was pretty lengthy. The biggest thing at the time was the roof, you know, was going to need to be replaced or whatever. I knew that was going to be a big expense.

And that actually helped me negotiate the price down a little bit because I got a pretty high estimate and quote for the roof. And I was able to bring back that to the seller and say, you know, I need to take some money off because this is a much higher estimate than I originally planned for. But after I got it, I didn't necessarily, like, dump in a bunch of more money. Like I said, it was already rented out. So as those tenants moved out, and new ones came in, of course, we had to do some cleanup and light repairs and stuff. So that just kind of came as we went along. Okay, okay.

And how was that? When did you buy that? That was a couple years ago, I'm assuming? We pull up my Excel document here. Nice. I love it. And I'll tell you the date was October 9, 2013. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios.

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having done over 12,000 of these studies with $500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to Costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. Okay. So in the few years since you bought that, how has it been for you? You know, like, I mean, it hasn't been good, a lot of repairs. It's been a little bit of a pain in the ass. It hasn't been the best thing. But at the same time, you know, I look at this as a long-term play. You know, I'm going to have this thing for God knows how.

many years and just like you put money in the stock market, you don't watch it every day and start stressing out about it. You let it sit there and do its thing over time. So it hasn't like, you know, filled up my bank account exponentially by any stretch of the imagination. It's maybe brought in a little bit money, maybe broke even. I'm pretty sure it hasn't really lost money at this point. And there's been a few like, you know, larger things that have come up. One of them actually just again in keeping in the theme with kind of, you know, sticking to

my guns and living my life how I want to and being a very hands. hands-off investor. It needed a new air can, no, not it, it's your furnace because it's in Michigan, right? So I needed a new furnace. And this was, I don't know, last April or something. And I was in Louisiana hanging out with my seven-year-old niece at the time. We were at the bowling alley. I get a call saying that the furnace needs to be replaced. It's going to be $2,000. So I'm at the bowling alley. My niece is throwing the ball. And I'm like, okay, cool, here's a credit card number. I put the phone down, and then I went up to my turn to bowl. And it's like, you know, I've got money in my investing account for this purpose. I'm not going to stress out

about it because I'm not there to take care of it. The property manager is there. He knows what needs to be done. Here's a credit card. Let's pay for it and get back to hanging out with my niece and enjoying life. That's great. That's great. So, you know, I think that itself speaks to the importance of having reserves and having the capacity to invest. A lot of people will get in and they end up being the tired landlords, I think, you know, in many, many cases. They get into the game. You know, they're not prepared. They don't have reserve account to handle things. And so when something comes up, they flip out and, you know, they start going crazy and, you know, they ignore things because they don't want to spend the money on it. You know, you've got to have

those reserves. And, you know, you really have to, as a landlord, it is your responsibility to take care of things when they break. It is your responsibility. And so the fact that you're like, all right, you know, I trust this person. And I love, I love that you trust that person. You know, I wish every property manager, we're trustworthy, but the fact that you found somebody that's worked for you is great. I wanted to talk about the buying site unseen really quickly. Is that something, clearly you're not a risk-averse person. For other folks, do you recommend buying site unseen? What challenges come with doing that? For me, it's actually a little bit easier. Because for me, if I see a place, then I try to imagine myself living there and I look at every little thing of like, oh, this would need to be fixed.

This looks crappy. I wouldn't like this. And I would get more emotional about it if I saw it because it's hard for me to look at a place and feel like I wouldn't want to live here. You know what I mean? So for me, not seeing it actually helped because the property manager says that he can get it rented. I listen to him. I say go for it. So for me it's actually easier.

And I think there's kind of different levels of that emotional quality to money and finance and stuff. You hear people out in the stock market. Like I said, they look at it every day and they stress out about it or whatever. So if you're the kind of person that is going to be stressed out because you're not seeing it, then maybe you need to see it. And I think that kind of comes sort of with that secret to the millionaire mind or just like sort of working on yourself and conditioning your own mindset to get you in the right

place to not be emotional about money, to not be emotional about your investments and stuff. So for me, I think it actually works better. Do you, or have you visited that or your other investments or have you never seen them? So the one in Louisiana, it didn't get rented, or the first one in Louisiana, because I do have another one that I got after Michigan place. The first one in Louisiana, it didn't get rented right away. And just by chance, I ended up going to see my family before we got rented. So I did go in there and see it before we got rented.

And, you know, I've gone back to Louisiana to see my family. And I'll drive by it every once in a while. partly as part of a tax ride off because I'm going to quote unquote check in on my properties, you know. There you go. But, yeah, the one in Michigan, I've never been there and might not ever go there, you know. There you go. The third one in Louisiana, I actually did see before I bought it, not because I, you know,

was dying to or wanted to or needed to just because I happened to be there. And, you know, the agent who is also the property manners that I'm using now, he was like, yeah, let's go drive by and check it out. And, you know, I know the tenant, she'll let us walk through there and blah, blah. So I did go see that one, but not because I needed to. Cool, cool. So how was the property values fair? Do you know, I mean, do you track what they're worth today?

Like, for example, the Triplex in Michigan. Do you, could you sell that one for more than you bought it for today, do you think? That's a great question. I haven't looked at it too much. I feel like maybe I had asked my property manager about that at one point to update my Excel spreadsheet. Right now, I still say that it's worth the same. But I don't have a great answer for that one. Sure.

That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. I just know that like a lot of times with those really low-end properties, you know, sometimes they may never go up in value. And that's a conversation we have on the site a lot is, you know, they may, they may go up just with inflation. You know, so it's just something to keep in mind if people are buying, you know, those ones might not go up as much. But you buy a $300,000 house and a great neighborhood outside of Detroit. That one might actually go up because it's a nicer neighborhood. That's a great point because the condo that I live in now has been pretty much my best performer, but I'm, you know, living in it. because that one has gone up from about 180 to now is probably about 270. Wow. So that one's appreciated amazingly. But again, it's been two years since I got the one in Michigan,

and I do look at it as a long-term play. And provided we can keep tenants in there and keep the money rolling in, then I think it's going to be good. And keep improving it slowly, but surely over the years, and hopefully the long-term play works out. So what is the long-term play? What's the plan? I mean, it sounds like you've got a few in Louisiana, some in Michigan,

Are you going to stick to the small multis, you know, one to three, one to four units and just keep building? Is this, you know, do you eventually want to rely fully on this portfolio? Tell us a little bit about your plans. That's a really good question. And I wish I had a really, really solid answer for you because I am very big on writing down goals and, you know, sticking to gold and stuff. But I haven't necessarily mapped out like the long-term game plan. at this point, I do want to keep acquiring single families and small multis. I think at some point when I'm ready for it, I might try to find a partner to, you know,

kind of build up the business more and start getting a lot more aggressive with this. But again, that's not going to come until I feel like I'm kind of tired of, you know, where my other career paths have brought me. And eventually I do want, you know, the passive income for my real estate to allow me to not have to work. But for right now and the next, you know, I'd say five years or so, it still looks like, the single families and the small multis and stuff. I'm running into problems now, though, because as I said, I'm self-employed and getting loans and financing and stuff has been a big, big challenge.

So at this point, I'm working on, you know, different types of line of credit, which even that is challenging it with my, you know, job or lack of job situation. So time to get creative and figure out the next step, which, again, that is relatively difficult because I'm not, you know, making this a job right now because I'm kind of doing this on the side and stuff. Awesome. By the way, there's a really good book. I'm going to send him my book.

I'm going to send you a copy of my book. Bigger Pockets.com slash no money. The Bigger Pockets book on investing with little or I don't know. Why did you make the title so complicated? I like the title. Low and no money down. Bigger Pockets.com slash no money. All right.

We'll see your copy. What? Yeah, I'm going to send Fat Tony a copy. All right. Or he'll kill you. a mafia. He is a mafia. All right. So we talked a little bit about that. We talked a little bit about what you're going to do in the future now. You said maybe look for a partner, that kind of thing. Kind of the last question I want to get before we go to the fire round is what mistakes do you

feel like you've maybe made that you could help other people not make the same ones? Or what would you looking back, just reflecting on the last few years of your investing? What kind of advice would you give others based on that? I don't really feel like I've had any big mistakes or anything. That's good. Like I said, I don't think the Michigan property has been, you know, a grand slam home run, but I don't think it's necessarily bad, and it's only two years in. I guess with that maybe there are some things that I wasn't really aware of. Maybe I should have asked a few more questions about, you know, the expenses because

not growing up in a place where it snows and not living in a place where it snows, I didn't realize that during the winter months I would need a budget for snow removal and, you know, how high the gas bill would get up during the winters and stuff. or even that I would be paying the gas bill because it's on a single meter for the three units or whatever because of how the house was converted. So there's a few those type of things where maybe I should have asked a little bit more questions that I just wasn't aware that those questions existed, you know. But yeah, I don't really feel like I have big mistakes. And just advice for people for me is all about, you know, working on yourself. If you can condition your mind to be successful, then you're good to go.

again, the secret to the millionaire mind book, I sound like I'm promoting the dude. I have no affiliation, but it just changed my life so much that I feel like if I hadn't read that book, even the other like real estate books or the rich dad, dad, poor dad books, they wouldn't have sunk in and got down, you know, they wouldn't have had such an impact on me if I hadn't re kind of formatted my mindset to begin with. You know what I mean? I would have read these books and still left the book thinking, yeah, but I'm not like that. Or yeah, I can't do that because of this. and I'd be making excuses or whatever.

And being able to really start out with a great solid mindset, kind of set me out for success with everything else I did. Awesome. Yeah, it makes sense. I think mindset is so important. And something I did not focus on enough in the beginning. I just went out there and functionally tried to make things work. But I had a lot of limiting beliefs, things that I didn't think I could do.

I know, the mindset is so important. And that's why I really stress people should read the mindset books just as much as the books on how to actually do things. And the funny thing about that is, you know, I personally used to be, say, oh, it's a bunch of hullabaloo, right? You know, mindset, what the hell is mine? You know, who cares? It really matters. It really, you know, and whether that's in your business life and your personal life, how you look, you know, how you look at the world will determine your path.

And it'll determine your level of success in anything and everything that you do. So without a doubt, I was a major, major skeptic. in the world of kind of creating mindsets, I thought it was some, you know, self-help. Who needs a self-help book? Yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's great.

So the other advice that I have kind of comes in the form of mentors. Maybe this is a good plug for the Bigger Pockets website too, because at the same, when I was getting my condo, my real estate agent was a new agent. So he was kind of learning and he was also interested in investing. He was a mutual friend of mine. And we had actually played, what is that, cash flow game or whatever? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We had played that together. So I knew that he was, you know, into that real estate investing type thing. So him kind of working with me while we were finding the place and sort of helping me learn and, you know, recommending books and just having him kind of by my side that whole time made me feel like I wasn't alone. Which, again, you know, people can go on your website and find that same type of thing through the forms there and stuff. And then also kind of a co-worker acquaintance of mine who ended up becoming a very, very close friend. as I was talking to her about sort of my newfound mindset and my new

found desire to start on this financial journey. She was like, oh, you should talk to my dad. He's a wealth advisor. And sure enough, I got on the phone with him and he told me that when he got started in this game, in the financial game, he had a mentor that helped him and he said, I'll mentor you for free, but you just have to promise to pass along this knowledge to other people as you come up, you know?

So he kind of told me the same thing. And he's been a great resource to bounce ideas off of or to, you know, more or less just be a sounding board for things. And like I said, make me feel like I'm not alone in this and kind of just give me that extra push of confidence of like, yeah, you're on the right track. You're doing the right things, you know. So finding people that can, you know, share that mindset and share that journey with you a little bit is really helpful, I think. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I fully, fully agree. I think it's, yeah. And like you said, it's one of the valuable, the valuable things about bigger pockets is even if you don't have a,

you know, you don't have to go pay for a paid mentor and, you know, hire some coach to walk you through it. You can just find people that are doing this in real life. You know, I met people all over BP, and then I've hung out with them in the real world that have helped me learn and grow as an investor. So, yeah, very cool. All right, well, why do we transition this thing over to the fire round?

It's time for the fire round. All right, fire rounds. These questions come straight out of the Bigger Pockets forums, which we were just talking about. Fancy that. Question number one, I'm investing far away from the place I live. would you recommend as a first investment in a new area,

a single family home in a just a normal neighborhood, or look for a gated community? Well, all of my investments have been very far from any gated community. But I would say do the homework, run the numbers, and go with what makes sense financially. Again, don't get too emotional about it. Talk to the potential property manager that's going to be running the place. Ask him, do you feel comfortable,

managing this one that's not in the gated community? Are you going to be able to get tenants in there? Are they going to be good tenants that, you know, we're going to stay and pay the bills? And if he feels comfortable, then it doesn't matter for you if it's gated or not because the money is still going to be coming in. You're still going to be providing a house to somebody that needs it. Cool. Awesome. All right. What do you think? Is it smarter to invest in a single or multifamily home for my first investment? Let's see. Again, I think it all depends on the numbers. I don't necessarily think it matters that much aside from that. But if you do go for the multifamily, keep in mind those questions, like I said, that I forgot to ask of, you know, are you going to have

to pay some of the utilities? Do you have to pay for the yard maintenance? Because if it's a multifamily, you know, you can't, you know, tell them, oh, you guys each take every other week to cut the grass or snowplow. That doesn't happen. So you're going to have to pay for some of these expenses and stuff. So I don't think it matters. You just have to know ahead of time what questions to ask what you're going to be looking for. When you're looking at a multi-unit, if you're looking to buy a multifamily property, what do you specifically look for? Well, for me, I specifically look for a place that the property manager feels comfortable in getting tenants into. That's pretty much it.

Like I said, run the numbers. And if that guy says that he can get people to live in there to pay the bills, then I'm okay with it. Right on. You are about as hands off as they come in. And the next two questions that we have, I think we kind of have covered. Like, how do you balance your career with investing? And I know your career is primary and you got the managers. So I'll answer that one.

The other question we had was, what do you primarily look when looking for a new investment property, online paper, word of mouth? And I'll let you answer that one. I did look online a bit, but I feel like every time that I've bought one, it's been through an agent or the property manager himself, which I guess now in Louisiana, my property manager is also an agent because, again, Terry Adams talked about this on, again, I'll just plug for you as episode 134 of your show. He talked about how, you know, as the property manager, he deals with all these properties.

So he, you know, knows when the owners are getting ready to, you know, dump off the properties and when they're getting tired of them or, you know, when they've exhausted their liquid and their reserves and don't have money to fix stuff. So they just need to get rid of the place. So kind of having that inside track is super helpful, I think. Right on. Cool. Very cool. All right. Moving over to the world famous.

Famous for. All right. These questions we're asking every single guest. So we'll throw them at you now. Number one, what is your favorite real estate book? Secrets of the Millionaire Mine. Can I list off a few that I have here now? Yeah, go ahead.

So, Secrets of the Millionaire Mine, and then Rich Dad, Poor Dad came after that. Also, not a book, but just the movie The Secret, kind of more about that mindset type thing, like setting goals, visualizing stuff. And the one that I mentioned, whatever real estate investor needs to know about cash flow, it's a very, very long title. That book, I honestly couldn't tell you a damn thing about it at this point. Some of years later, like I read it six years ago. But like I said, I felt like I studied like a textbook. And even though I might never remember anything super specific from it, I think just

putting that time of time, kind of time and energy and focus into something like you're going to get something out of it. Yeah. Yeah. When I like I don't, I read that book, yeah, like six, seven years ago. And it was huge, like hugely influential of that Frank Gallinelli, which we had on the show back a couple years ago. But, you know, it was just so instrumental. Now I don't remember every single piece of the book, but I just know that it built that foundation that is so important, like, on understanding all those terms and what they mean. So, yeah, I love that book. Cool. Frank's a good guy. Thanks a good guy. All right. Favorite business book, non-real estate? Four hour work week. Okay. Okay. A business book? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Mindset.

Yeah. So, you know, like I said, I worked full time for a magazine. I did that for about five and a half years. And just to fill in a few of the gaps a little bit, I was a photographer and video producer for a BMX bike riding magazine. So my job was to travel all over the world basically documenting these professional riders and professional athletes. And all the guys that I was shooting with didn't have jobs and they just seemed like so carefree and just, you know, I was jealous of their lifestyle basically. So kind of with the help of that book, helped me realize like how you can run business and do business without, you know, living in the corporate world and having this influence from these guys that I was hanging out with. That was kind of like,

okay, I can do this. And it took several years for me to work and transition over to that. But now I've been on my own for, what, three and a half years or so of freelance work. And it's been incredible. And I've been able to travel more, build relationships, find new hobbies, work less, and make more money. Very cool. Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. What about hobbies? Sounds like your career is a hobby, which is a beautiful thing. What else do you do? Yes. It used to be BMX riding. I don't do that quite as much anymore because I'm so into CrossFit now. So CrossFit's a hobby.

And then I just recently, as I said, with the newfound freedom, I picked up snorkeling and surfing, which there's plenty of out here in Southern California. So yes, surfing, snorkeling, CrossFit. Very cool. Awesome, man. Good life. All right.

Final question. What do you believe sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Probably just to keep in theme, mindset and priorities and maybe goals and maybe that's kind of in line with priorities but I'm very, very big on making a game plan and setting action and following it to make your goals happen. So definitely those people that have the drive and the determination to set goals and follow them. I think that's going to set them apart. Awesome. All right, man, Fat Tony,

where can people reach out and find you, man? I have social networks all over the web. That's just Fat Tony BMX and even though I'm not really riding and BMX isn't really my career anymore. The name's been around for a long time so that's sticking. So Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and dot com Fat Tony BMX. Also, if I can give a quick plug, I have my own podcast called the Expansion Project, which I talk a lot about mindset and just kind of find interesting and successful people and sort of deconstruct what makes them tick. And I actually interviewed you, Joshua, on episode 25 of my podcast.

So that's called the Expansion Project. You can find that on iTunes or Stitcher or just go to the Expansion Project Podcast.com. And yeah, if I can do one more quick little plug, I recently started a new business kind of in the CrossFit world. It's an aggregate blog, very similar to the website that I ran for the BMX magazine, where basically find the coolest videos and the best photos and report on all the latest news in the industry. And that's called breakparallel.com. So there's any investors that are crossfitters? Go check that out.

Break parallel, you said? Breakparallel.com. It's like when you go to a bottom of the squad. You got a personal training now. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go there.

I'm going to go there. And I actually have from friends that are BPers that are also Crossfitters. So I'm going to send them that way too. It's a cult. I appreciate that. It is a cult. Yeah. It is.

Awesome, man. Well, listen. Yeah. And the podcast was great. We had a good time. I had a good time doing Fat Tony show. And we chatted about real estate and which is why he's here to talk about it today. All right, man.

Well, listen. Thanks again for being part of the podcast. We definitely appreciate it. And lots of luck to you on the ongoing budding investing career. And we'll look forward to keeping up. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. All right, fat.

Take it easy, man. Later. I take care. All right, everybody, that was Fat Tony. Yes. Fat Tony. Who's actually ripped? I didn't want to embarrass him.

He is ripped. He is ripped. And you know, if you need a new stereo, he could get you on off the back of a truck. it's yeah anyway well i don't even think he's italian is he italian is that is that how you say what do you say italian is that weird is that my northwest accent i don't know but it's weird italian italian is that what you say italian yeah i don't know man i don't know well anyway it was it was a fun show it was a fun show you know so what do you been what do you been thinking about the stock market man The stock market.

I'm glad I don't have anything in it. Yeah, I don't know. Hopefully in the time since we recorded this, it's been recovering hopefully because a lot of people lost a lot of money recently. Yeah, it's been kind of crazy. But that's how it goes. Well, it's how it goes. And it's another reason for those people who aren't in real estate to consider it. Because the housing market, you know, it can go up and down for sure.

But, you know, you have more control, I think, in how your destiny. plays out in real estate. Would you agree? Not at all. I hate real estate investing in that. No, yeah. I, what? I fully agree. I mean, like, so here's my problem with stocks I've always been. And I mean, you used to be a stock trader. But when the price of a stock drops by 20%, 30%, 50%, because some board director did something bad or there was a weird illegal case or just the market turned. Because China is trying to devalues there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, all you can do is sell or you can buy some more. Or you can hold on for 10 years, whatever.

I like that on my rental properties, if the market drops, I can hustle harder to recover that. So when the market did drop, I've got properties that the value dropped, but my cash flow say the same because I just hustled harder. I made sure that it wasn't sitting vacant. I made sure that it was still renting good. And yeah, I just, I like that assurance I got some. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's, I think that's one of the important things about it. Now, granted, you're not guaranteed to get the same rents. I mean, rents have been at crazy records lately. And, you know, you can't count on that continuing. But if it does turn, you know, there's ways to improve upon it, you know, fixing up the property, you know, making yours. You know, Scott and I were talking about this in the office. And, you know, he's got a rental property. It's doing well.

And, you know, he was shopping for another property and saw another. property in the area that was getting considerably more rent. Considerably more rent. And he went and he looked and he's like, wow, they really fix this thing up, you know, fantastically. And he's like, what am I doing? This is crazy. I need to fix my place up and capture, you know, that difference and get the rent difference.

So, you know, there's, again, you have more control. There's, I'd say far less external factors that can affect your rental property than then can affect, you know, potentially stocks that you're buying. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Cool, man. Cool, cool. Well, why don't we get out of here? Okay. What do you think? I'm going to go get some, uh, my second half of my breakfast since the first half got interrupted. Yeah, rub it in. Do you want to just drink your peppermint hot on front of me? I might, I might, 173 degrees. Two months. Two months. This has been tough.

Wow. So I'm down. Now you have enough, you have enough money now to buy another property as a result of not buying Starbucks for the irony is that I'm spending more of my personal trainer than I was on Starbucks but that's okay um I'm down like I started at 215 away to 215 and I'm down to 201 this morning really yeah and so so what are you doing uh I am eating only whole foods only like like not whole foods is a store but like real foods you know like that yeah nothing grains yeah okay yeah nothing pre-packaged yeah nothing pre-packaged everything's cooked um I don't know other than that I mean it's fruits vegetables meat yeah and a little bit of, you know, bread and you're exercising, and I'm exercising three times a week. And I'm trying

to walk, walk, I'm doing P90X three times a week and I'm walking 10,000 steps at least five times a week. Nice. Yeah, I saw you climbing up on the, on the chart of our, yeah, yeah, you know, my, my Fitbit here. Today, I'm only at 2,900, but yesterday I hit like 14,000, but that's because I stood for the webinar. I find out of seven. Yeah, I get a lot of stuff. Yeah, I get a, I got a I'm whooping. I'm whooping. I'm Wounded you. All right. I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the 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. 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. podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calico content, 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.com.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any

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