BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 141: 7 Ways to Find Incredible Real Estate Deals with Chad Carson

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

In today’s busy real estate world, great deals can be hard for investors to find. That is why today we are excited to bring you a special episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, recorded live at the TradeKing stage at FinCon 2015. In this interview with Chad Carson, you’ll learn his top seven favorite strategies for finding great deals even if your market is overheated! If you need to buy a great deal this year, the show is for you! In This Episode We Cover: What exactly FinCon is How long Chad Carson has been investing How to find amazing deals The importance of knowing what’s important for your niche 7 tips for unearthing great investments What to look for when driving for dollars What you should know about “vacant radar“ Why you should connect with experienced investors How to use Craigslist to find deals Tips for making successful phone calls How many units Chad currently has How to stay smart while using the MLS What exactly “referral prospecting” is The importance of keeping a good reputation How to use direct mail to find deals Why one might choose to let go of a property What you should know about guerrilla marketing And SO much more! Links from the Show BP Podcast 084: Getting Started with Creative Finance and Designing Your Ideal Lifestyle With Chad Carson BiggerPockets Forums Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing BiggerPockets Webinar Brandon’s rental property that was on fire BiggerPockets Forum Categories (including local sub forums) Hustle: The Single Most Important Factor to Finding Real Estate Deals (blog post) BiggerPockets Blog Books Mentioned in this Show The Warren Buffett Way by Robert G. Hagstrom What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack The Book on Investing with No or Low Money Down by Brandon Turner Tweetable Topics: “Real estate is like being an athlete—every single day you train and lift in order to perform well.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Chad Chad’s BiggerPockets Profile Chad’s BiggerPockets Blogs Chad’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast live from Charlotte, North Carolina, episode 141. 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-host, The Man, the Myth. No, he's not the legend.

That's somebody else. It's Brandon Turner. What's up, Josh? What's going on, man? Hey, it's good. I'm doing well despite, you know, some problems that have been, I've been dealing with last week with my rentals. That's been fun. Yeah, it's been an interesting week, an interesting week.

some quick context. This show that you're about to listen to was recorded live at a conference called FinCon down in Charlotte, North Carolina. A bunch of us went down there to hang out and rub elbows with a bunch of our friends in the financial blogger community. It was a lot of fun. And the show's great. This is a fantastic show with Chad Carson, who has previously done shows with this. But this one was really, really good. Yeah. But I've actually got a funny story for everybody. Do tell. Yeah. Do tell, Josh. Well, does this story involve me and flames and all that? It does. It does. Yeah, yeah. So,

we're in, we're in Charlotte. We're at a bar where it's, you know, 11 o'clock or so at night. We're having a few drinks, relaxing, having fun. And Brandon gets a text message. And this wouldn't be unusual because typically through the course of any conversation with Brandon, he gets about 800 text messages, loses focus, and can't continue a conversation. Wait, wait, what? What? Exactly. So, said text message, said, Brandon. It said, you need to call me, your house is on fire.

Okay. So, so let's get some context into the story here. This text message came from somebody who was one of Brandon's very first tenants. He's been attending for, like eight or nine years, right? Eight or nine? Yeah, I think eight years, something like that. Yeah, very first tenant. Back when you didn't really know what you were doing, you kind of did everything wrong, he's got your cell phone, right? He's got my cell phone, knows where I live, all that good stuff that you should not

probably do. He probably was never qualified to live there in the first place. Okay, okay. Back then, what's tenant screening, huh? Exactly. And now you're in the process of evicting, said gentleman, for about a month and a half, correct? Correct. Yeah, he was on his way out.

He was moving stuff out of the house, finally got out for the most part. and in the process decided to set a box on a stove and then leave and must have bumped the stove top and lit the box on fire, which then lit the kitchen on fire, which let and lit the house on fire. And while I'm in North Carolina, I get this call from the guy who I'm deliberately not talking to and I haven't answered any phone call. Right. Yeah, I got the text. Yeah. And I have not been answering, I mean, he's been texting me for a month now, you know, with the occasional, you know, cussing me out for me being a jerk landlord for evicting a guy for not paying rent. And I just refused to talk to him. I just didn't, I'm letting

the lawyer deal with it. And you have a property manager and a lawyer and everything, right? Yeah, yeah, they are dealing with it. This is one that I gave over to property management because I didn't want to deal with this guy because it was set up wrong in the first place. Anyway, so he lit the house on fire on accident. I do believe it was on accident, but you know. Yeah. And

it was funny because we get the follow up. I mean, like, this text message comes over. We're sitting there and we're sitting there like, what do we do? Is this guy like, you know, is he threatening to light it on fire? Is this a call for help? What's going on? Like, we're all trying to figure out how to help Brandon out here. And the phone rings.

And it's not his tenant, but it's the fireman, right? It is the fire department. It was there at the house putting out the fire. So yeah, so they're dealing with it. They took it down. I handled it from 2,000, 25, may 3,000 miles away. And, you know, it cleaned up. Insurance is going to take care of everything.

And, you know, the best news is, the tenant can't live there anymore because the house is completely smoke and fire damaged. So I kind of killed a couple birds with one stone. Well, you did not kill any birds with one stone. Oh, I didn't kill any of birds with any stones. Let's clarify. The timing worked very well in your favor. And, you know, I mean, insurance company is not going to like, not going to agree that this was a positive thing.

But, you know, that's one thing I like about real estate. The fact that, you know, people say, well, what happens if your house burns down? Okay, well, you deal with it. You know, you have the right insurance. So that is today's quick tip. get insurance on your properties because houses burn. And if you don't have the right insurance or something bad happens and, you know, call up your insurance company today. Make sure you have good insurance coverage on your properties, people. Exactly. Great. Great. Well, anyway, it's a tragic story,

but at the same time, it actually worked out well in the end for you. Thank God. He, you know, even though you were evicting him, thank goodness he didn't actually get hurt. Although there was somebody killed in the home, unfortunately. His fish. Oh, yeah, that's right. His fish was killed in the home, which was sad. But at least it wasn't a person. Yes, exactly, exactly. All right. Anyway, for decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios.

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He's from, I'm blanking out. He's from South Carolina. Clemson, Clemson. Clemson, South Carolina. Chad is going to teach us seven ways to find incredible real estate deals. And some of them you probably have never heard of before. So if you're looking, if you're struggling to find good deals, this show is going to help you. All right, let's bring on.

Finco! That's what I'm talking about. out. You ready for this? I'm ready. You ready? I'm ready. I'm ready. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast live at the Trade King stage here at FinCon 2015, Charlotte, North Carolina. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, your host here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? How are you, man? I'm good. I'm good. It's been a couple of good days here at FinCon getting very, very little sleep. And people who don't know what FinCon is, Josh, what is FinCon. FinCon. Fincon is the world's premier conference for financial bloggers, financial writers,

press, media, you name it. It's all about finance here at FinCon, Charlotte. That's all? That's it, man. Oh, okay. That doesn't sound as exciting as it really is. It is pretty excited. This is a conference. This year, there's like 880 amazing people networking, some of the top talent and blogging and writing all about real estate, finance, you name it. So I'm excited to be here. This is my fourth year. I think it's your third, right? Third year, third year.

And we recorded last year. We did a live show as well, which was episode. I'm not sure, but we'll link to it in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 141. That's right. Show 141. Yes, yes, yes. So today we've got a great show. We actually have a Bigger Pocket podcast.

Alumni? Alumni. That's the word. name Chad Carson, and we'll bring Chad out shortly for those of you who are here can see that he's sitting here next to us, but before we go there, man, how have things

been going lately? Everything good? Things are good. I bought a new house. That's exciting. They finally closed. We've been talking about it lately. We have. Congratulations. I haven't moved yet, but I hired a high school girl to move all my stuff while I'm here at FinCon. She's been moving for the last couple weeks, but she moved my kitchen. So I left

with one kitchen. I'm going to come back, and the new kitchen is going to be stocked, all the dishes, all the food completely put away. I'm pretty excited about that. That's great. That's outsourcing right there. That is outsourcing, and she's going to live with you guys now, I hear. She is not.

I wouldn't mind a maid, though, like full time. That'd be kind of cool. That's not a bad idea. Like Alice from, what's that show, the Brady Bunch? That's right. My wife actually told me that a few weeks ago. She said, you know what, we need an Alice just to hang out with us and cook us meals and do it.

Do it, do it. All right, man. Well, let's get to this. Okay. Let's make this thing happen here. So, Chad Carson. Chad Carson is a real estate investor, I believe from the Clemson area. And Chad, by the way, who many of you guys may not know, was a professional college athlete,

or a college athlete, non-professional, who played in front of tens of thousands of people, which is pretty fascinating to me, by the way. But Chad, Chad, you've been, Chad's been investing for how many years, Chad? It's been 13 years. So Chad's been investing for 13 years. We're really, really excited to have him back on the stage. So, Chad, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here.

I appreciate it, Josh. It's great to be here with you guys. And Fentcon is a wonderful place to hang out and get to know people and really network and learn a lot. So this is awesome to be here. Very cool. Yeah, you were last on the show back on episode 84, where we talked about getting started with creative finance and designing your ideal lifestyle. And so today we're going to shift gears a little bit. And, you know, people can go back and listen to that, of course, at biggerpockets.com slash

show 84. But today we're going to talk, we're going to precede that conversation a little bit, do a prequel, I guess you could say. It is. We're going to talk about how did you get to that point? You had to buy real estate deals. You had to buy a lot of deals. So how did you do that? That's what we're going to talk about today. How do you find amazing real estate deals? Because not every deal in the world is going to work. In fact, most of them won't. So how do you find the best ones? Hey, Brandon. Yeah. How do I find really good deals? I have no idea at all. I want to be real estate investor. What do I do? We should ask Chad, because Chad's actually here. We'll ask Kim, how do you find good real estate deals? Let's do it. Chad. Awesome. Well, I love the topic.

And I think it's important, though, to precede that a little bit and say, and Brandon and I were talking a little bit at another conversation that you can go out and try to find deals and you can do all this lead generation to find deals, which we're going to talk a lot about today. And I've got some tips for you guys to actually some specific things you can use to find good leads and deals. But I think it's important first of all to say just kind of what do you have to do before then so Brandon what do you think whether some of the first things that you did and I can bounce in there too but what do you recommend people when they when they first start before they even start looking for leads.

Oh look at that. You're turning the interview around to me. That's that's exciting. So I don't know what I mean I think that on you man. He did. I know I was unprepared. Okay. So I mean the first I mean I always tell people this mindset is probably most important thing. First of all you've got to get in the mindset that I'm going to go buy a good deal. Not just any deal, but you got to know mindset-wise, you got to buy a good deal. Would you agree? Yeah. I wanted to ask you because you guys, I listen to your podcast and I know how it goes. But yeah, I would say first, you have to get educated and you got to know kind of how to analyze a deal. And you got to know what's, most importantly, what's important for your niche. Because I think

somebody, when I first started, I was a wholesaler. So I was going out and finding deals that I would get under contract and assigned other people. And that business model is completely different than somebody who is working a full-time job and needs one or two rental properties on the side, and they're about to retire. So I guess I'm just bringing that point up because these are some really cool tips we're going to talk about, but there's some other homework that you want to do to kind of find your specific place within the real estate investment world first. Yeah, I mean, lots of people are like, hey, I'm going to be a real estate investor,

and they're like, you know, get all excited, and they're like, what do I do? You know, finding deals is one thing, but if you don't know, and we talk about this in our beginner's guide, right? I mean, biggerpockets.com slash UBG, the ultimate beginners guide. You've got to pick your strategy. You've got to pick your niche. You've got to know what you're going for. I mean, just now granted, if you find a good deal,

there's a whole lot that you can do with it. But you really need to know how to find that good deal. And you really need to know, what are my possible exits? How do I get out of this thing? What do I need to do? So we talk about that elsewhere. We cover that right now.

Let's get into this thing. How on earth do I find great deal. So you've got seven tips. The first of which is driving for dollars. So driving for dollars. Let's talk about that. What is it? All right. So this is a pretty cool strategy. First of all, because if you're if you're low budget or if you have a big budget for finding deals, either way, this is not a really expensive proposition. So basically you're going to get in your car, you're going to fill it up with gas, and you're going to look on Google Maps and say, this is my target area and I'm just going to drive. And this could be on your way to work, if you had an extra 10 minutes on the way to work, or this could be a plan Saturday afternoon, for example, like if you're

part-time working on the weekends, and you're just going to drive neighborhoods, but you're going to do it deliberately. You're going to be looking street by street by street in every little nook and cranny of a neighborhood, every little side street. And here's, there's a few things that you're going to look for. And so I've got three typical or kind of main things that are going to catch your eyes. And these are going to be just flags that you're going to stop. When you see these things, you're going to stop, you're going to do something. So the first thing you're looking for as you're driving around would be these houses with grass that's up to your waist. There's newspapers in the driveways. And they're vacant. So you're basically, you're looking for signs of houses where

somebody's moved out. And for whatever reason, you don't know why they moved out. It could be that they moved out across the country. It could be that they lost their foreclosure. It could be whatever. But you're going to be looking for those. And when you find one, you're going to stop, you're going to pull over and you're going to write it down on a notebook and say the address and maybe the address to the left in the right, and then you're just going to keep on creating a list, doing it that way. Right on. Right on. Yeah, that's a great way. That's a great way. And, you know, the great thing about finding vacant properties is anybody can do that. It costs you absolutely nothing. You get in your car, you drive around, you look for houses that look like crap, and suddenly you've

got a list of potential buys, correct? That's right. And I don't know about you guys, but we sort of call it our vacant radar, like my wife is in on this game and everybody I know in town's in on it. It's like, look, if you're riding around, I want you to be looking for these vacant houses and everybody I've taught how to look for these now, it's like a different driving experience now. You can't drive through a town without noticing these houses that before you were completely ignoring, but now that you're looking for them, you'll notice weird little things. Like, for example, a vacant house might not have any curtains in the windows or they might have something.

There's no toys for kids in the driveway or something. But you find all these little things in your, town that sort of indicate why a house is vacant and they're all over the place. I mean, you wouldn't believe how many there are. Yeah, that's so true. My wife and I do the same thing. I never heard vacant radar before, but that's exactly what it is. Yeah, it's like you just, you start to know, you're like, that looks like it might be a vacant house. And then like, sometimes if I have time, I'll like get out of the car and go kind of walk up to the house, maybe knock on the door and see if, you know, if it is vacant, if there's somebody there. I mean, you know, as I'm walking by the

window, you know, take a look inside and, you know, see somebody in there changing and they scream and call the cops. And it gets really awkward at that point. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Especially when you're like eight feet tall and scary looking. You wear a hood and you run at night and it's like midnight and it gets a little weird. Yeah, that's weird. I would sell brand in my house if he walked up at night too. He's a scary dude.

Give me your house. Yes. All right, cool. So we got vacants. That's fairly obvious. What else do we have? Well, the other ones, I'll just quickly say that you're going to see signs. And the sign I don't typically call are the realtor signs.

That's the one everybody else is calling. I like to call for sale by owner signs because they, potentially you can talk directly to the seller and not always work out a deal, but there might be some reason why they didn't list it with a realtor. They might need to sell it quickly. Maybe they hate realtors. I mean, there's no reason, no telling why, but I've bought some properties just by calling the for sale by owners. The uglier the sign, the better. You know, if they bought it, you know, they just bought a yellow sign and they hand-rooted on the air, or they used the old for-sale-by-owner sign they found in the dumpster. You know, you want some kind of just ugly sign.

That's really good because they're less apt to try to, they're just kind of amateur. honest. They haven't done their homework and they're more likely to be a motivated seller, which is what we're looking for. Right on, right on. So we got the for sale of our owners. We got vacants. This is driving for dollars. And a great thing to do, what you want to do is you want to create your quote farm, right? So you want to figure out what area do I want to invest in? And this is obviously not going to work when you're looking remote. This is going to have to be something when you're looking in a relatively local area. You're going to scatter out an area. And you can literally just make a grid, right? Just go up, down the blocks, you know, on your way to work,

wherever kind of your pathway is that you want to invest in. And essentially, over the course of time, things are going to change. You know, what's not vacant today might be vacant in three months, six months. So you just keep doing it over and over again, and you've always got a constant flow of leads, right? Exactly. Yeah. And the other thing is exactly what you said, you've got to pick a neighborhood and go after it and make that your farm. So, but the final one I was going to say the final thing you want to look for when you're riding around are for rent by owner signs. And not a lot of investors think about this. They think, oh, it's for rent, this is not for sale. But I've had a lot of success and other people I know have had success calling the for rent sign.

And you can ask, you can just be honest to say, I'm an investor as well. I sell your houses for rent. You know, tell me about it. Maybe I could refer you somebody. But by the end of the conversation, if you can turn it around and say, well, I see you're renting the house, but have you ever considered selling it. Yeah. That one question has bought me a lot of houses and has bought other people I know houses. So if you just get practice, it's very simple. And landlords, you know, a lot of us are landlords. So it's a person you can relate to and talk to. And so that's pretty cool. You can, you can have a conversation with them and you might even, it might even lead to other things. Maybe they're going to turn into a private money lender. Maybe they're going to be a referral source of other things for you.

So it's just like, it's a really good thing to call rental signs. Yeah, I was going to add that like when you do that, yeah, you might not get nine times out of 10, they're going to say probably not, maybe. But it doesn't matter. You might build that relationship. They might become a mentor. If you're brand new at real estate. What a terrific way to get into it to get a mentor and to get into it then by calling landlords who are doing exactly what you want to do. And if nothing else, maybe you'll hear their horror stories of what they screwed up on and you can try to avoid those things. Yeah, I love that stuff. And one of the things that we always talk about is, you know, taking out experienced investors for coffee or syncing up with them. And that's a great

way to meet people. You know, one of the tips that we, the actionable tips we always tell people is, you know, every week you've got to try and reach out to at least one new person or every day or however often you want to do it. And that's a perfect way to do it. So right on. All right, cool. Let's go to number two. So the first one was driving for dollars.

What's your second tip on finding great deals? All right. Well, I'm going to stick with another free one because I want everybody to have some budget ideas that they can do without having to spend a lot of money. But the second one is just going on to Craigslist. So a lot of us use Craigslist to buy appliances. We use them to sell our old furniture and things like that. But, you know, people sell houses on Craigslist.

People rent houses on Craigslist. And so I've got a few ways that you can, You can do this from home at night. You have to get home from work. You can look on Craigslist, and I would start off going to the for sale by owners section. So on most Craigslist, you can look in your area, and you can just search for any houses for sale by owner, and you can make a list of those and to start calling them. And it's kind of like you said earlier about the calling for rent by owner signs.

It's not necessarily going to be a high success ratio, so you've got to prepare yourself to get a lot of nose or maybe. But if you just, if you practice getting on the phone, there are all sorts of good things that happen. And one of those is that you might buy a house. And so this has been, it's a free way to do it. You can control it. Right on. Right on. Do you have any tips?

Because calling people can be really scary. So for those people who are afraid to pick up the phone and actually do it, you know, what tidbits might you want to give those folks? Yeah. I mean, my heart always races. Even to this day, I've made thousands of calls and had hundreds of appointments with people. But I like to write the first thing I'm going to say down because the worst thing that can happen is you just kind of freeze up on the phone and say, oh, wrong number.

Bye. You know, hang up. And so if you write down the first question or the first sentence, and if you write down the last question or the most important kind of call-to-action question, which would be, are you interested in selling your house, or what are you going to sell your house for? If you write those down, then when you freeze, you can go back to your paper. And I still do that sometimes, just write it down,

here are the questions I want to ask, and that'll sort of be your little handmade script. That's a great tip. So what, besides the for sale by owners, I mean, are there any types of ad titles that you are specifically going to be looking for, anything to help save time, filter out and find these properties? Yeah, there's a couple. One is an estate sale. So, you know, I've had some people, some people just try to sell their house on their own and probate or estate. That'd be sort of an indication. You know, a lot of people put stuff on there.

Not only houses, if you can look at furniture sales, people have estate sales in your town, and they put their stuff on Craigslist. So if you can talk to them about, hey, so you're having an estate sale, when is the state sale and ask about it? And you can say, well, you know, with my family, we sold all our furniture, and right after that, we sold the house. Are you going to be selling the house, too? That's great. It's a natural question, because the person who's dealing with the estate is typically not that excited about it. I've known, because I've had to help with my family, too, but they're not that excited about it, so they want to sell their house, and so that's a good way to kind of segue and do that. I went to an estate sale a few months ago, and I walked through,

and I was looking at the stuff that was for sale and all this stuff, but I went up to the owner, and I was just kind of talking to them, and I really wanted to ask them if they would sell their house. But I was like, I don't know, I felt like weird. And I was like, ah, you know, that feels awkward to do that. I don't want to, I don't want to bug them and ask them. So I didn't. And then, like, two months later, they sold their house for this, like, rock bottom price to some other investor who ended up flipping the house. And I'm like, dang it. Like, why did I just ask them? It would have been a 10 second thing. I was just afraid of hearing no. So I talked myself out of it, and I lost a deal because of it. So, yeah, I like that. It's just something

you got to do. You got to just get over. And I like you tip about the phone call a lot, like writing down your first line. I think that's just good. Even in person, you could come up with like a, you know, a phrase you always say and practice it ahead of time. I think that's awesome. Cool. The other tip I'll give and just final about any of these phone calls you're making. And if you're, if you're an introvert and you're not really used to making calls, you're going to have to psych yourself up a little bit.

You're going to have to think about why am I doing this. And so, you know, I like to think about the fact that I'm not calling them to bug them about something. I'm actually calling to help them about something. Yeah. And, you know, for some of us who already bought houses, we know that there's some people we've really helped a lot. And they were so happy that they bought their house. But if you've never done this before, you might be thinking, I'm just taking advantage of somebody or I'm buying their house cheap. No, you're actually going to, the person who's going to sell it to you is going to be very happy that you're buying it from them.

And so you've got to go in there with that attitude that I'm looking for that person who I can help. And if I, if you, the person who says no, it's just somebody you can't help. Don't worry, don't take it personally. You know, and it's interesting because not just in real estate investing, but, you know, here we're at FinCon and we got all these people who are little entrepreneurs doing their thing. across the gamut, fear is probably one of the most powerful things that stop us from accomplishing what we want to accomplish. And so whether it's making that phone call or whether it's getting out there and doing mailers or driving for dollars, you know, like, what do I do next? I found a property. Now what? You know, I'm freaking out. Or, hey, I've got this blog and how do I make, you know,

all these things, it's fear. And you have to get past the fear. And the key to get past the fear is to have a plan is to have a map. And by knowing whether it's a script on who you're going to talk to or at least a basic map on how you're going to accomplish your task, you're going to have an easier time getting past that fear. Really quickly before we go on, we've got you back. It's been a while since you're on the show. How many units do you have?

How many properties do you own? How many units do you have? How long you've been doing this now? Sure. I've been investing in real estate full-time for 13 years. So I'm 35 years old and I graduated from college and decided that before I figured out how to do a real job, I would just go and start buying some houses and just do that for a couple years. And I look back now and I've been doing it full time.

So I'm an entrepreneur, but we currently own 55 units and we're in a college town, Clemson, South Carolina. So some of those are college rentals. Some of them are just your typical single family houses, duplexes, that sort of thing. But I like to tell people I'm a little big business. So I have 55 units, which for a new person is going to sound like a lot, but for somebody who syndicates thousands of properties, that's very tiny. But I work out in my basement. We have a part-time person who helps us out, low overhead.

That's kind of, I'm a lifestyle business. I like to travel. I like to do other things. I like to write. And so the real estate's really, I think the most powerful part about it for me has been the kind of flexible lifestyle that is allowed to do so many other things. And that's what really I'm excited about. So with 55 units, you don't really have the credibility to talk about finding deals, do you? Not at all, no, no.

Right, cool. All right, cool. So we had Craig's list, we had Driving for Dollars. The next thing on the list is the MLS. All right, so this is one that probably a lot of people already do. So maybe we can go into some nuances of some different techniques. But, you know, most properties sell in MLS. You know, everybody knows.

It's the realtors list most of the properties, and they put it on this big database called MLS, which goes out on the Internet and syndicated everywhere else. And so it pays, pay attention to that for two reasons. one because there's a lot of properties there, two, because it's free. Again, if you're getting started, you want to try to exhaust every free resource you can. And so my strategy with MLS is to kind of filter out the ones that are actually have some potential for being interesting. And so one way I do that, you can hire a realtor if you're not a realtor yourself to do a search for you, and they have a computer where they can filter out and look for certain things.

And for me, one of the most important things is days on the market. And so I don't want to, unless a property is priced really low, the day it comes on the market, I'm not really interested. And even then, it's because there's going to be five or six other people bidding on it with me. And I don't like to bid against other people. What I like to do is come back after everybody else has forgotten about the property and after they've had to lower the price two or three times and it's at 200 days on the market, you know, they might have been not motivated to start off.

But for any of you, and I'm in this camp too, when you own the property and had it on the market for 200 days, you start listening to a lot of different options. And that doesn't mean you're going to take the low offer, but there's a lot of other things that you can get done. And so I ask my realtor to search for those. And then from there, we'll start looking for ones that are listed within the price range or kind of close. You know, if it's within $10,000 to $15,000 of our target price that we think it would be a good deal, then we'll start making offers on those and just start following up, following up, following up. Do you have like a minimum time on market before you start even looking?

Or is it just, you know, play by year? Not necessarily. No, but I divide the search into two different kind of categories. categories or buckets. One might be, here the long day on the market ones. And then the other ones might be, all right, it's only been 20 days on the market, but it's an REO, it's a bank foreclosure, it's an estate sale. And so you can get your realtor to use some other keywords like that. So fixer-upper, REO, estate sale. I was thinking about some other terms. Sometimes you can look for addendums required. That's sort of a back way that they might not list bank-owned property,

but they might, all the bank-owned properties, you have to sign addendums. And so you just, your realtor, if they really know their stuff in the local market, they know what the foreclosure motivated kind of sellers typically how they list them. So ask your realtor to help you figure out a search that gets those into a category. And then you just search down that list and find the ones that are in your target location that are already kind of below the full market value. And then you start going after those. Yeah. And just because it's on the MLS, obviously, doesn't mean it's going to be a good deal. And just because it's been on the market for 280 days, doesn't mean it's going to be a good deal either, right? Exactly. Yeah. Some people try to buy a

property, just because it's in foreclosure, they think it's below market value. And that's not the case. And this sort of goes back to our conversation in the beginning is that this is all assuming that you've done some work on your business plan. You've done some work on what my target neighborhood is. You've done some work on what a good deal means. I mean, do you know the numbers? Do you know the market values in your area? Because you have to know the value that knowing your values is such an important thing. And I equate to people that this is like lifting weights. If you're an athlete, every single day you train and you lift weights in order to perform well. Right.

Well, in the real estate business, our product, our commodity is a piece of real estate that has a certain value. And so if you want to lift weights every day, you've got to know your values before you go out and start doing all this stuff to try to find deals because that's how you recognize what a good deal is. Yeah, I love that. I love that analogy of kind of like lifting weights. It's something that they do every day.

Weightlifters work every day. And like, you know, I use an analogy of a lot. It's something you do every day, right? Well, you know, here. Obviously. Yeah, look at me. I'm ripped. You're a beefy dude, aren't you? No, at FinCon, this is my third day in a row working out there. You should be proud. I know, I stopped after like five minutes. Yeah, that's all right. I'm going to work out with you guys tomorrow.

I'm going to learn about this. But I love this analogy of working out because it's the everyday process of doing every day a little bit. You know, you don't have to, if you want to start investing in real estate, you don't have to start out by buying a whole ton of stuff. Start out by one activity every day that takes you 10 minutes. I mean, that might be analyzing three deals. I say that all the time on the bigger pockets webinars. I encourage people to analyze three deals every single day, every day without fail, right? Or maybe it's just meeting one new person that's investing in real estate in your area every week. Or maybe that's jumping in the forums on the bigger pockets and asking one question every day. You know, just that everyday action, I just love.

You know, there's that famous quote that says it's easier to work out seven days a week than it is to work out three days a week. Because when you work out every single day, you don't fail as often as you do working two or three days that we do. So anyway, I love that stuff. Cool. All right. Let's move on to number four here. What is that? So our fourth one is, I call it referral prospecting.

Referral prospecting. And so there's sort of a bigger bucket of things that you do to try to get other people bringing you leads. And I got to be honest, this is the one that sort of changed my business life when I realized and I was actually looking at other businesses. And I thought about it and I said, you know what? Most businesses, when they're in business four or five years, they don't have to do a whole lot of proactive marketing.

like in a little small town. If you're the local small town attorney or the small town dentist, my mother was a dentist, so I kind of saw this behind the scenes. You've got nice teeth, by the way. Yeah, look at this. I wish they could see it on the podcast,

but she's done a lot of work on those from all my football days, tearing my teeth up. But anyway, most local business people don't do a ton of marketing five years into their business because they get so many referrals to the point where most of their business

comes from referrals. And so in my real estate business, I thought about that. I said, what can I do? It's almost like planting seeds. You know, what can I do right now to start planting seeds with other people so that they'll bring me deals instead of me having to be out there hustling all the time, hustle, hustle, hustle. And so I'll give you a few ideas on ways that you can do that. And again, they're really inexpensive.

One is we're all on bigger pockets. And so one of the most valuable tools for me in my local market is to be in the local market forum on the bigger pockets. And so I'm in South Carolina and I'm in the upstate of South Carolina. And so if you let people know on that forum that here's my location, and for me, I'm the Clemson guy. I'm in the college town. I want people to know I buy Clemson properties. And the week does not go by when I don't have another investor in my area, who's apparently my competitor, but they're always bringing me leads because either they don't have time or they don't have the money this week or they don't have the inclination on this type of property. And so that's a often missed opportunity by telling other investors in your area in your area.

specifically through bigger pockets, which is a huge network of people in your area, that you buy properties, what you're looking for, what neighborhoods, and just let them come to you. So let's talk about that. I know we talk about that a lot, and I think it's important to stress every time it comes up, so I'm going to stress upon it again. You said, these people are my competitors. I am an investor in this market. I want to get good deals, and they are investors in the same market, and they also want to get good deals. They are your competitors. Why would you want to work with your competitors, there is a benefit to be gained. Is there not? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's counterintuitive for some people, but I mean, I just, I know for a fact,

the last two years, the best deals I've bought the last two years have become from a referral from somebody who does something fairly similar, but he just had a little bit different niche. For example, it was a one guy referred me a duplex. He didn't want to buy duplexes at the moment. He was buying 20 unit buildings. And so that made perfect sense for him that he was looking for bigger stuff. He had bigger fish to fry. This was just a little duplex, which was an awesome deal for me. I was right in my wheelhouse. And it happens every single day that there's some deal that another person is doing that they can refer to you. So yeah, absolutely. And not just if they're doing another niche. I mean, you might have a guy who does duplexes and you do duplexes, but he's tapped

out because he's got too many deals and he doesn't have the cash or the resources to get the next deal. So, you know, if he can work with you, get a small piece. Exactly. Yeah. And you can also start telling people, if you're somebody who has the capital to buy deals, like if you're a cash buyer or you have some sources of private money, start telling other investors that, hey, I've got money to loan. So if you're interested in being a private lender, a lot of the times, that's sort of a back door to getting deals because the person who has the deal, your competitor in your town, says, hey, I've got three deals under contract and now I've got a fourth one. I don't have the money. Can you loan me the money? And you can talk about it. So yeah, I'll loan you the money at 15%

with four points and, you know, whatever the case might be. And they say, well, I'm not going to do that. So I'll buy the property from you for $50,000. They say, okay, I'll make $3,000 and just pass it on to you. That's a great tip. And so, I mean, there's lots of- You're a terrible person. Yeah, I know. No, it is, but this is a common theme that Josh mentioned earlier is that if you get out and you start talking to people,

you know, there's so many people I think in the bigger pockets when we're talking on the forums, they think there's a technique or a trick that you're going to get some direct mail campaign or that we're talking about the MLS here, referral prospecting. You know, you need to do those, but the common theme is you need to start talking. to people and you need to start pitching people about what you do. If you do that every single day and whatever form that comes, then you're going to start having some opportunities. Yeah, I love that.

And you just mentioned, you know, you mentioned this idea of the local networking forums on Bigger Pockets. Just in case people aren't familiar what that is, we recently introduced these subforums in Bigger Pockets that you can go to, and your area has its own subforum, probably. And so there's, you know, hundreds of them. Yeah, we've got state, and then we've got major metros. And so you can go in there and just start networking in that. subforum like you do in the in the in the in the the the clemston or whatever you're in south

carolina we need to get an upstate one guys we got we have to we all the south carolina right now so there's you know everybody watching and listening you just call this out thank you thank you thank you hey can we find another guest Alexander come on up man you're an investor destructive feedback from your consumers yeah all right cool so we talk about bigger pockets I was kidding but it's okay what's up everyone this is Alexander another bigger pockets member I'm Alexander from cashflow diaries.com. Nice. And you write about real estate? I do write about real estate. I love real estate and I love bigger pockets.

I've been a member for years. And most of the information that I know is from bigger pockets. That's awesome. I love that. Well, we're going to get you on the show at some point full time. Is that cool? Hell yeah, man. We're doing it. Thanks. All right. All right. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real,

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launched 10-day DSCR closing. That's right, 10 days. And they're still the only lender with the DSCR price beat guarantee. That means faster closing. The best terms. Zero guesswork. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. All right, let's get back to this guy next to me. We're talking about bigger pockets, referral prospecting, local, local networking groups. So there's other stuff too, right? Yeah. So the other thing I would do, and I've had a lot of success with, is talk to all your professionals in your hometown. So you're kind of back into this, I think about when somebody has to sell a house, whether they're in financial straits or whether they inherited the house or

some reason they're selling this fixer-upper house that you're trying to buy. You know, who do they talk to in the town to get advice? Well, you think about it. I mean, what would you guys say? I don't want to put you on the spot again, but who do they talk to when they go to in the town to get good advice and when they have a situation in their family or whatever happens? The realtor, the pastor. They talk to you, don't they, Brent? You're a pastor, aren't you? I'm not a pastor. I'm a youth leader. They're different. He plays a mean guitar, though. I play a mean guitar. And ukulele too, right?

And a ukulele. I know three chords on the ukulele. Nice. I can do some damage. He'll be doing that later on, guys, for everybody who's alive. Yes. I was going to bring it, but I didn't. For everybody who's sober tonight.

Yeah. Come up to sweet. Whatever me? All right. So, yeah. I mean, I was thinking like insurance. If you have insurance question, go to your insurance agent. Real estate agent.

I was you go to a real estate agent. Mortgage, mortgage person. So your attorney, too. The attorney, yeah, yeah. Your attorney, your CPA, your financial advisor. Yep. So I just found that all these people in who a lot of real estate investors don't, they don't go talk to them and tell them what they do.

And that's a mistake because what happens is those people go, they're having their appointment with their financial planner, with their attorney. They say, you know what, I need to sell my house. I really don't know what to do at this point. And if they knew that you're a respectable person in your town who also buys properties, that attorney might say, well, you know, you can list it, but if you really need to sell it quickly, you could try talking to Chad. I know he buys houses.

But Chad, they know you're not respectable. Yeah, you need to be respectable first. So we'll pre-cursor that. I'm in a small town. That's kind of another conversation, but everybody's in a small town. If you're in a big city, you have your village. I think it's Warren Buffett who said this in one of his books,

that if somebody who's working for him loses money for them, he can forgive that. He doesn't like it, but he can forgive it. But if somebody loses one shred of reputation for Warren Buffett, they're gone right now. And I think if you run your business that way, I think that's really important because that is your equity in financial terms and your business is your reputation. So in a small town, that equity turns

into referrals going back to this whole conversation about referrals. If you have a good reputation, if you deliver, if you over deliver, then people who know you, other professionals in town are going to refer business to you. That's huge. That's huge. Yeah. And, you know, so many new real estate investors come in and they're like, you know, I hear about these all these marketing techniques and some of them might be kind of borderline. And, you know, they're going to try some, they may try some slightly shady stuff and think that, oh, you know, it's great because I got a deal from it. So it's okay to do. The problem is everybody else now knows that you did that. So you've kind of soiled your reputation to folks and they may not want to work with you. Just because you were

successful one times, two times, five times, you've kind of just used up your ability to be successful and you don't have a long-term business anymore. You've just screwed yourself. So you've got reputation is absolutely everything. I agree with you 1,000 percent. And that's fantastic feedback. Awesome. All right. So what else we got? We got referrals.

You want to go on in the next one? You got anything to wrap that up with? No, I think that's it. All right. So that was number four. Let's do a quick review. Number one was driving for dollars. Number two is Craigslist.

Number three is using the MLS, but using it a little bit smarter. Don't just try to grab the whole MLS, be targeted about it. Okay. Number four was referral prospecting. Okay. And number five is we're going to talk about direct mail. What is direct mail? All right.

So direct mail is, instead of going after the whole universe, of people who own houses in your town, you're going to try to build a list. So you can buy lists from different sources. There's online if you search for direct mail lists in my town. There are a number of people who will sell you a list for a few hundred bucks for a lot of names. So that's kind of another story. And maybe we can link to some and I can give you a couple names. Yeah, for sure.

We can link to. But basically, once you get a list, you can search for certain criteria of homeowners. So you don't want all of the homeowners. You want, for example, all of the homeowners who live in a different location than where the property is. That's called an absentee owner. And that's one of the most common lists. I mean, so you're going to have to test these. This is a, I didn't put this first because this is, I think there's a little bit more advanced technique,

even though on the forums and different places people talk about direct mail all the time. This is one of those techniques that you're going to have to spend money on. And it's a possibility that you send a thousand letters out because that's how many you have to send before you start getting results. You can't send two, three, four, five letters. You have to send a thousand and maybe get 10 calls or 15 calls. And there's a possibility, though, that in your market, if it's so competitive, or this niche doesn't work, you might send them out to the absentee owners and you get no calls

because there's 10 other letters going to that same person. That's just part of the deal. You have to experiment with it. So that's why I think it's a little bit more of an advanced technique is that you have to be willing to spend and lose a little bit of money in order to make some money to find the right list. But absentee owners is always a good place to start because if you just think about the motivation level, there are potentially people who live in another place who are having to take care of a property in your hometown. town, and that's, especially if they're managing themselves or they inherited it, that's just

not a fun situation to be in. I'm a local property owner. I like owning property in my backyard, and the people who own property out of town have to do a lot more work. They have to do a lot more and take a lot more effort than I do. When an emergency comes or something happens, I can just drive by it. And so that leads to motivation for some people, especially if they haven't done their homework, especially if they don't know how to manage properties. And so that's a really good potential list. Yeah, it's a great start. What else besides absence of owners, what other options do we have for direct mail or at least that you use? Right. Here's one that is not talked about a lot, but it was the first one that I ever did when I first started investing

right out of college was I found the people in your town who have filed an eviction to evict a tenant. So automatically you've taken the whole universe of property owners and you've narrowed it down to just landlords. And from there, I built a list. So you can go down, I used to have to go down with my laptop and kind of sit in this corner on this little desk on the edge of a edge of a little desk in my courthouse and I would type of my laptop for like three hours and these days things are on the internet so makes it a little bit easier but look in your hometown and look for the clerk of court for the in my area it's called the magistrate court but you want to look for the clerk of court and find wherever they have public records for every single court

proceeding that ever happens in any court is public knowledge and so you can you should be able to narrow it down by just eviction proceedings. And so you can build a list there. And from there, you narrow it down even further, though. I don't send them out to all the properties that have property managers, because they're doing a little bit better job management typically. So I look for the people who have the properties themselves and they filed their own eviction. They're the ones who are going to be completely frustrated by this tenant who's just torn their house up, who's probably not paying, who's not paying them, but they're filing the eviction. And they're just indicating that they have a higher likelihood of being motivated. And so if you send them a letter or you give them a call,

track down how to contact them, you have a pretty good chance of buying that property. It's a great idea. I've said this before. I'm actually going through an eviction right now. You are. Yeah. My longest tenant I've ever had. No. I'm not being evicted. And this is this is the property that you've got this fantastic property manager. She's awesome, right? I have a terrible property manager. I hope she's not listening. Actually, I hope she is listening. I have a terrible property manager. I know. You guys have been following along for the last six months about this terrible property manager. I have not fired her yet. But that's a whole different story of why I haven't.

But anyway, I want her to deal with the eviction. So we're evicting this guy. He's been with us for eight years now or whatever, and my longest tenant and just destroying the house in the process. I mean, it's just like every day is costing me thousands of damage to the house. I'm just watching this happen. And there's nothing that can do about it. So like, I know, like this feeling I have right now, if an investor came to me and was like,

hey, I want to buy your property that you're going through, I'll take care of the eviction, you know, or whatever. I'd be like, just take it. I don't want it. Like, I just have that. I'm so emotionally drained by this. stupid tenant that I just like I'm yeah I'm just want out so by the way the address of brandon's property I'm gonna get like a hundred direct mail letter brand you're gonna be getting a letter from yeah you're

tomorrow you know you guys don't want this one this is my very first property it was beautiful but apparently it's the property manager texted me the other day and said she almost cried when she looked through the text that's a really good text yeah I'm not going to read that I'll cry right here on the air all right so I mean the point is even somebody I mean Brandon is an experienced investor who's bought a lot of properties And I know I could say the same thing that brand is saying on properties in the past. Whatever price you would sell it for at the top of them, when you felt best, after you've been dealing with a tenant, you are going to be whatever that, you will sell it for a lower price.

It might not, I mean, it will be lower no matter what. I didn't really want to make a profit on that property anyway. I'm good. I'm good. I'll pay some people to take this property. Yeah, yeah. That's what I feel like. And a lot of people, I mean, hopefully I have the, you know, experience and know that I shouldn't

let my emotions drive my decisions. But a lot of people don't. They simply say, you know what, I've had enough. I'm done. I've, you know, had this guy, my brother-in-law living there for 17 years and he has never paid rent. And, you know, like, yeah. And you guys, you know, this is Brandon talking here, right? I mean, those of you who know the show have been listening for almost three years. Brandon's been doing this for a long time. If this can happen to him, it can happen to anybody. Evictions happen. They're exhausting. They're difficult. Hopefully you have a good property manager who's helping you out. But you can understand. why this is a good motivator for a potential person to want to sell their property. The property is just a constant headache. The tenant there's a pain in the neck or, you know, one tenant's fine. The next one's a headache. Whatever it is, you know, it's time to move on, time to sell.

And I don't think we've actually talked about this. So thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. I just want to piggyback what you said, Josh. And there's a common misconception in the real estate world is that when you buy a property as an investor that you have to take advantage of somebody else who's just going to let it go really cheap and they don't know what they're doing. Well, I think what we're getting at here is that there are intelligent people who have bad moments, but also there's intelligent people who make

strategic decisions to get rid of a property because they might have a better opportunity somewhere else. So Brandon, for example, this is the first property he bought. He might have a lot of, he might have another deal here that he can make a 20% return on. He might be willing to sell it at a loss in order to get rid of it, to get his capital back, to go to another deal. And I've had plenty of deals like that where a very intelligent person chose to sell it because I would close in a week and pay him cash and he could be done with it. Yeah, you never know what people's motivations are. And if you don't ask, you'll never know. So awesome. All right. Number six, guerrilla marketing. All right. So this is another big category, but we're going to a couple little specific things.

But guerrilla marketing means just low-cost ways to get the word out about yourself. And so the first one I'll say, just kind of basic, you know, business one-on-one, get a business card and put something on that business card about you buying properties. And so when I first started, I got 500 business cards for like $15, you know. And every time I, you know, pump in my car, I put the business card on the top of the gas pump. Every time I went to a coffee shop. That's great.

People always pick my car. This is a really good technique. I like that. I know. Don't tell the local magistrate police, you know. I won't feel worried. Yeah. Anyway, and so I would put my car, where you get creative on where you can put your cars,

but you can go to the coffee shop and put them on the bulletin board. You can go to your local church or your organization. might have places to put them. Those cards go around. So get a business card. It's cheap. It's easy. That's a real market.

And you also hand it to everybody that you meet, correct? Exactly. Yeah. So, again, we're talking about professionals. If you're going to an attorney's office, if you're going somewhere else, you're going to hand those cards out and they spread out. Right on. Cool.

So we've got business cards. What else? So other inexpensive things like that, we can just list them. Things like flyers, things like magnetic signs for your car. At one point, I don't do magnetic signs anymore because I don't really. have to and I don't want to have to drive around with them on my car. But when I had to, in the very beginning, when every single deal I bought was the difference between being able to put food, put food on the table or not, I put magnetic signs and stickers all in my car because I needed to

pay the bills. And for every year, for five years, I bought a property off of a sign I had on my car every year for five years. That's awesome. So it's like, it costs me 50 bucks or 100 bucks and it put food on the table. So, right on. Cool. What other techniques do you have for guerrilla? Well, you could dress up like a gorilla and stand out there with that. sign. Or you could look like my co-host who was born that way. I was nicknamed Sasquatch in high school. Right on. All right. I think that's it for the grill on marketing. All right. So we're running out of time. We've got five minutes left. Let's go to number seven. The last on the list, which is what? All right. So this is really simple, but sometimes you just want to handpick a property.

So in my town, there's certain properties that, for example, there might be a 20 unit building if you buy multi-unit buildings. There might be a rental property you think is just a good location. Just handpick that property. Look up the address, look up the owner, send them a letter, call them. You just get a list of like 10 or 20 properties in town that you want to buy and just keep bugging them for a long time. I bought one this last year that I'd been bugging them for seven years about buying their property, off and on. I mean, we met, I talked to them. They knew me. But, I mean, situations happen in life and they changed, and they need to know that you want to buy their property. Yep. And that that works. That's awesome. You're like Scott, who works for us? He bugs people too. He does. He boomerangs them.

The last property I bought was that exact way. I've been watching it for two years and just waiting and waiting and waiting and watching it. And then it was a little different that it came on the market. It was like a foreclosure sort of. But I've been watching it for years and then it went into foreclosure and I knew I wanted that house. And when it came on, I watched it, I jumped on it, I got it. And I handpicked that house and I wanted it. So let me ask you guys this really quickly because, you know, one of the things that we learn as real estate investors is not to get emotionally attached to a house.

Are you guys not then emotionally attached to that person? property? Well, I'll qualify it. The reason I handpicked that property was there's certain locations in town that attract better rents, that attract better tenants. For me, I'm in a college town. The closer you are to campus, the better. And so what I found is just there's a limited number of good properties close to town. And so it just pays to narrow those down. And if you're in Clemson, send those deals to me, by the way. But in any case, in your town, it's the same way. the farther you get from the good places, the schools or the interior, the village center of your town, the walkable locations, the parks, it's not as attractive of a rental.

So what I'm saying is go to the best locations. You still have to have a good deal. You're not going to be emotional and overpay for that property. But all you want is a call, and that's what we're saying. Send letters to people who own properties and good locations. Right on. All right. So finding great deals, guys.

Chad has been awesome. Let's run through this list really fast. Top seven tips are driving for dollars. We got Craigslist. We got MLS, referral prospecting, direct mail, guerrilla marketing, and handpicked properties. Chad, we got you. What do you got going on? Really quickly, what do you got planned for the next, you know, foreseeable future with your real estate?

Well, we're sort of in a maintenance mode. You know, we have a certain number of properties that we're happy with. We sell off a few. We buy a few. But, you know, we're in a mode of trying to get our properties paid off free and clear, buy a few strategic properties here and there. But, you know, really my big picture when I first started was to have. have income producing properties that paid for my lifestyle. And we're getting closer and closer

to that to where I can do other stuff like this. And I can talk with you guys, write on my blog, do stuff like that. And that's what I'm all about. Right on. Right on. All right. So it's now time for the world famous. Famous Four. Yes. Yeah. We now have a recording that does that, but that was how we used to do it. So famous Ford. So what is your, and we've asked you this before, Chad, when you were on the show back in number 80, whatever it was, number 84. But we'll see if it changed it all. So number one, what is your favorite, like, real estate related book? Yeah, I had a hard time with this one.

And so I hope you all allow me a little bit of leeway. But I like reading books outside of the real estate niche because I get a lot of good ideas that I can then apply to it. And so for me, the number one guy I like to study is Warren Buffett. And so I really enjoyed the Warren Buffett way. And this is Robert Haxstrom was the author. And it goes through a lot of the fundamentals of what Warren Buff is looking for in businesses. But for example, I've noticed that a lot of the same things he's looking for.

If you translate that to real estate language is very similar. Like I just mentioned buying them in good locations. I didn't believe that apparently when I first started buying properties and I bought a bunch of crap in bad locations and now I'm paying for it. And I've learned why buying good locations and maybe paying up a little bit for those properties can actually make you more money over the long run. And that's a classic Warren Buffett. He buys good companies at below market prices, but he buys them. Right on. I thought you were going to say the book on investing with no and low money down, but, you know. Josh, that was the first time you've ever said the title right. I want to give a round of applause for Josh. Yeah. I've been studying really hard.

He got my book title right. Really, really hard. I do like that book too. It's a good book. It's a book. All right. So that was a non-real estate, real estate book. How about other business books? So is there another business book that you've really gotten a lot out of lately? Yeah, I've got a kind of, I've got one I just pulled out last week. That's a classic. from, again, from like 80s or 90s, but it's called What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School. And he was an agent. He was an attorney and an agent for a lot of high-profile athletes. But he talks to, the whole book is about street-smart kind of business advice and that you wouldn't pick up in a business class. And it's things like, how do you communicate with people? How do you write, you know, write thank you notes? And it's just a lot of really handy, practical advice that I think is awesome. And whatever business you're in, you can really benefit

from that kind of advice. That's great. I never heard of that one. All right on. All right. Hobbies, what do you do for fun, man? I've got a two-year-old and a four-year-old little girl, so my hobbies involve them, basically. But we like to walk and hike and get outdoors. Sing frozen songs. Yeah, I sing, oh, man. Let it go. I've got the whole frozen song memorized. We can do that for a post-script, maybe. Nice, nice. Awesome, awesome. Brandon.

All right, cool. Final question. I'm going to tweak it a little bit for today's show about finding good deal. So what do you believe overall sets apart investors who are able to consistently find deals from those who struggle and never find a deal to buy. All right. I'm going to do a little plug for an article I wrote on bigger pockets, but to me, the number one thing is hustle. So, I mean, we've given you techniques here. You could pick one of these techniques and run with it.

But really, the difference between the people I know who get a lot of deals in my hometown are the people who just hustle like crazy. And what I mean by that is just when you get up in the morning, you're looking after deals, you're going after deals, every single day consistently without fail. and if you hustle, good things are going to happen. And so I would say that. Awesome. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

I will also say, like, for those people who don't read the blog very often, the Bigger Pockets blog, like Chad is by far one of my favorite writers we've ever had on the Bigger Pockers blog. He's like one of the few people that, like, I have to read every post that comes out. And so, yeah, I'm going to link to all his posts in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com. So, yeah, anyway, Chad, thank you so much for being with us today. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Oh, you want to ask them? I got an important question, Chad.

All right, fine. Where can people find more information about you, man? All right, so I'm on Bigger Pockets, so you can find my profile there and has a link to all my articles. And I also write some kind of non-real estate stuff at a blog called Coach Carson.com. It's about business, money, and life,

kind of how that all intersects and wealth building. So you can check me out there as well. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, FinCon. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us perform here on the Trade King stage. I'm Josh Dorkin. And I'm Brandon Turner. Signing off. All right. That was Chad Carson live on the Bigger Pockets podcast from Charlotte, North Carolina. Pretty cool interview, man. Lots of great tips, huh? Chalk full of information. It was. It definitely makes me rethink a lot of what I do, you know, in finding deals. I'm like, I should do this and I should do this. And maybe I'll start to incorporate. I know I'll start to incorporate a lot more of those in my business.

Because today you have to be creative. You know, deals are hard to find. Exactly. Exactly. Cool. Yeah. We'll get out of here. Big thanks to Chad for coming on.

Yeah, let's do this. All right, guys. Well, hopefully you enjoyed show 141 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Definitely make sure to check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash one for one. You can also find all of the rest of our podcast at biggerpockets.com slash podcasts. and that's it. If you're not yet a member of our amazing community,

I definitely encourage you to get involved. Jump on BiggerPockets.com, sign up, create an account. You get to hang out and network with guys like Chad and Alexander who came in and so kindly interrupted our show earlier. And it was awesome. It was awesome. But yeah, jump on the site. We hope to see you there.

Thanks for being a listener. And we'll see you next week on the Bigger Pockets podcast. 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.

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