BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 153: From $600k in Debt to 108 Single Family Rentals with Linda McKissack

Episode Date: December 17, 2015

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we are excited to bring you an interview with a prolific investor (and author of one of the world’s biggest real estate books, HOLD: How to Find,... Buy, and Rent Houses for Wealth), Linda McKissack! Linda currently owns 108 single family homes — but she didn’t start out that way. Learn how Linda discovered the power that real estate can have on a lifestyle and the mindset needed to make your dreams a reality. This show will blow you away with Linda’s honesty, integrity, and story of excellence. Don’t miss a second of it! In This Episode We Cover: Who Linda is and how she started investing with huge debt The size of her portfolio Why she dropped out of college to become an entrepreneur How she bought property without money or good credit A look at financing back in the ’80s How to recession-proof your life A discussion on speculation vs. investing How every market is different What her freedom number is How to get deals by helping others build wealth Partnerships and whether newbies should seek them out Why freedom means having options The importance of taking the next step and avoiding analysis paralysis Linda’s formula for finding good deals How to figure out the best criteria for you What keeps her continuing to invest despite reaching her goals Tips for forming a team And SO much more! Links from the Show Be a Guest on the Podcast Finding Your “Freedom Number” with Clayton Morris Books Mentioned in this Show HOLD: How to Find, Buy, and Rent Houses for Wealth by Steve Chader Brandon Turner’s The Book on Investing with No or Low Money Down Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Building Wealth One House at a Time by John Schaub The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner Tweetable Topics: “If you do the right activities, the money shows up.” (Tweet This!) “The more money you make, the more options you have and the more good things you can do.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Linda Linda’s BiggerPockets Profile Linda’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 153. Really, and kind of like you guys now, our passion now is helping other people do this, you know, because you see how it's changed your life. 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.
Starting point is 00:00:32 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, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? I'm chilly because I forgot to turn my heater on in my office, so I'm a little cold, you know? I'm sorry. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:49 I want a hug. I want some cheese with that wine. But I'll get it. Really? Really? Yeah. My dad always said that to me. Anyway, how are you doing?
Starting point is 00:00:59 What's going on? I'm great, man. Besides launching the best real estate book ever written again. We did. We just, we had a big launch, which probably can take us to today's quick tip. But yeah, we are, I'm pretty excited. Pretty excited. The books are doing great.
Starting point is 00:01:19 And yeah, why don't we go to the quick tip? Today's quick tip is, quick tip. All right, today's quick tip is if you've not yet picked up a copy of the book on rental property investing that we talked about last week, or the book on managing rental properties, the book that I co-wrote with my wife. You guys should pick up a copy of that right now because it's awesome.
Starting point is 00:01:36 It's there. It's for sale. And you can get some good bonus stuff with it. So check it out, biggerpockets.com slash rental book. You won't be sorry. Awesome. Awesome.
Starting point is 00:01:44 And I've got a quick tip, which is if you're interested in being a guest on the Bigger Pockets podcast, go to BiggerPockets.com slash guest. And it'll give you information on what we're looking for. And obviously, if we select you, you'll be a guest on our show.
Starting point is 00:02:02 If we do not get in touch with you, do not worry. It doesn't mean that you're a bad person or not qualified. We have lots of things that we look for at different times. And anyway... There's like 500 people on the list already. Yeah, it's a big list.
Starting point is 00:02:18 Yeah. Otherwise, guys, definitely, definitely get on iTunes for us. And please leave us a rating and review. You can also do that on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, on any of these players, but we love having those iTunes reviews. So please go on iTunes to the Bigger Pockets podcast, which has a really cool new cover image of Brandon and I. It's pretty swanky.
Starting point is 00:02:41 Check out the Bigger Pockets podcast and leave us a rating and review. We do appreciate it. And it helps expand the exposure of the show. That is true. That is true. That's it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:50 Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the outside. action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn
Starting point is 00:03:26 money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taken care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Here's the thing about traveling. If you buy food at the airport, a burrito, salad, bag of peanuts, you start wondering if you should have opened a savings account for snacks.
Starting point is 00:04:11 So wouldn't it be great if you could actually earn money while you're traveling? Well, you can. Airbnb has something called the co-host network. While you're away, you can hire a vetted local co-host with hosting experience to help take care of things, communicating with guests, preparing your space, managing reservations, everything runs smoothly while you're off making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership, short-term stays, or properties mid-rehab. That's where blind spots
Starting point is 00:04:49 can creep in. NREG works exclusively with real estate investors. They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow, and why insurance should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NREG.com slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash BP pod. Well, all right, guys, we have an amazing show today with Linda McKissick. Linda is the author of Hold.
Starting point is 00:05:22 It's one of the top of real estate books out there. And her story is amazing. I mean, they went from, I think it was $600,000 in debt to build this portfolio of 100 plus properties. And they're just crushing it and doing all sorts of cool stuff and the philosophies and mindset that she talks about in today's show is really unbelievable. So whether you're a newbie or somebody who's been in the game a long time, she's definitely somebody to learn from. So let's bring her out. All right. Linda, welcome to the show. It's good to have you. Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Starting point is 00:05:56 Yeah, yeah, this will be fun. So you are an author, is that right? As well as an investor. I want to get that right on the table right now. You wrote a book, right? Absolutely. We wrote a book on our investment strategies. And what is that book? It's called Hold, How to Find Buy and Rent Houses to Build Well. Okay. That's like one of the top books in real estate, isn't it? I hope so. You're kind of a big to do. That's awesome. It is. And I've read the book. It's awesome.
Starting point is 00:06:21 That was one of the, yeah, it was a few years ago. I need actually, I should have reread it for the show, but you know. Yeah, you should have. I didn't read it at all because I don't, I don't want to come in with a mind. I don't want to slackers. Well, it's been a while. So I want to pick your brain on the, on what, obviously what you talk about in the book. But obviously, we're going to talk about just you and your investing in what you've done and all the good stuff.
Starting point is 00:06:41 So why don't we start at the beginning? Who are you? I mean, where do you live? What do you do? How did you get into real estate? Okay. I actually live in Flower Mound, Texas, just outside of Denton, Texas. Most people know Denton because it's a major, two major universities in it. It's a college town, if you will. And actually got started in real estate investing in the early 90s. We actually, I don't know, for people that were in
Starting point is 00:07:09 Texas or Oklahoma or Arkansas in the late 80s and early 90s, we actually had a pretty good size crash that happened to our economy. And that sent my husband and I, out of the nightclub and restaurant business and into the real estate sales business. But because of that kind of crash, it really kind of shook our world a little bit and made us realize how little we were in control of. You know, ultimately we're not in control at all, but of our financing and economic situation, it just kind of turned us upside down, honestly. And so it made us really wanted to start understanding what are some things we could do so that no matter what we did for a living, we would always have money coming in passively. And when we studied wealth, we realized there's
Starting point is 00:07:53 only three ways to do it, real estate, stocks, or businesses. And so because we had actually entered the real estate sales world, we thought, hmm, that must be the easiest one for us to do. So we started to understand and study real estate investing. And that's how we got into investing. Cool. And what was your, let me ask you this first. How many properties I mean, just to give our audience a picture of who you are now, how many properties you have total now are units about? And then how many, like, what else have you done with that? Okay. We have 108 single family properties right now. Most of those are all located around us within about 45 minutes of us here in Texas. However, we do have 12 nightly rentals and we're building three more. Those are kind of like cabin type properties up in Branson, Missouri right now. And then the only other properties we have outside of Texas are two in Florida, where we actually have just have a relative contact there that can oversee them for us. Wow.
Starting point is 00:08:54 Oh, cool. That's awesome. 108 single family rentals. That's a lot of rentals. Somebody at the gym asked me this morning, how did you get to 108? I said one at a time. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:05 Hey, I wanted to ask, you said nightclub and restaurants before that. So were you guys owners and operators in the businesses? or were you guys just employees? Yeah, actually, no, my husband was an owner. He, both of us went to college, neither one of us graduated from college. And one of the reasons he didn't graduate from college is he decided it would be a great idea to open Denton's first nightclub. There were no nightclubs in Denton.
Starting point is 00:09:30 And so his dad had done that. And so he got the bug to do it, and he's an entrepreneur. And at that time, I'm only 23 years old. I don't even understand what the word entrepreneur means, much less whether I was one or wasn't one. Sure. And, but I, I'm a hard worker, have always been a hard worker, come from a family of hard workers. And I really loved his kind of multiple opportunity thing he did.
Starting point is 00:09:53 He ran nightclubs and we had a vending company. And so we just had all these many things that we did. And so he was the owner and had, he opened it instead of finishing college, he decided to be better to own businesses and open the first nightclub. So we, he actually owned them. I didn't understand a lot about them. I worked in them because I'm kind of person. I'm going to be there. Let's just let me work and make some money, right? Let me be the waitress or something.
Starting point is 00:10:16 So I was going to college trying to figure out what I could do to make any money because to date, I'd had two or three jobs at any given time, but none of them paid very much money. And so it was actually his recommendation to me when he, the market crashed and we found ourselves $600,000 in debt. It was his recommendation to me. And when I looked at him and said, I'm happy to help you, but what can I do? You know, I'm a hard worker, but nothing pays. And he's the one that suggested I get into real estate sales. And so getting into real estate sales was actually a perfect vehicle for us to start climbing our way out of this debt. And we actually bought our first three properties while we were still in debt. We were, you know, we were working our way out. And we did that with a
Starting point is 00:10:58 partner. We took a partner, a friend of mine that had been a builder in my area. And I knew him and knew his integrity and thought he would trust me on the opportunity and approached him. And he said, absolutely. So that's how we bought our first three properties without any money or not really good credit at the time. Right on. Right on. So I want to just rehash a little bit because there were a few things that kind of stood out. Primarily, the $600,000 in debt. I mean, that's not an insignificant amount. Obviously we are America. We are kings of debt and the average American probably has more debt than they do wealth. And so 600,000, to go from that to a place where you are today, where I mean, you've got, you know, a sizable portfolio is quite the transition. Can you talk about
Starting point is 00:11:46 that kind of tweaking mindset from, you know, deep in debt to, you know, somebody who's obviously the opposite? Sure, absolutely. Well, the good news about our debt back at that time is it was lines of credit from my husband's businesses, which was very common in the 80s. You'd go to your banker and you'd just get another line of credit and, you know, it kind of would help with cash flow. And so one of the good things about that period and that particular crash is we didn't have credit card debt. It wasn't that kind of debt. It was business debt. And so it was savings and loans that crashed, real estate and oil and gas that crashed in Texas during that period. And so because the savings and loans were readjusting and bankers would come to us and they would
Starting point is 00:12:30 give us an opportunity to come up with, let's say, 40 cents on the dollar of a note that we had. And so we would have an opportunity to try to get that paid off. So that was one great thing in our favor. It wasn't a bunch of credit card debt. And we didn't own real estate at the time. So everybody we knew that did own real estate at the time lost it during that period. So you would think that would be kind of a deterrent to ever own real estate, right? But what we saw was they were over leveraged in it. They were more speculators than they were what we call investors. And so, you know, I think the first thing that has to happen with anybody is you have to kind of get mad at your situation and say, I'm going to get control of this. I'm going to learn.
Starting point is 00:13:09 I'm going to be smarter. Because, you know, once you're smarter about certain things, you can take certain steps to put yourself in a position to say, well, you know, I'm not always going to be in these great income earning years that I'm in right now. So how will money come in later? And so we just started asking ourselves those deeper questions. what are wealthy people do? I mean, how do they, you know, manage to always come in and out of every crash and still have money? And so we first started to study it. And honestly, the best book we read on it, most people read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Kiyosaki,
Starting point is 00:13:42 but the ones that was a game changer for us and our mindset was a cash flow quadrant. Because he talks about that there's only three ways to build wealth. And so I love it when people take something that seems complicated and make it simple. and so that's what that book did for me. It said, okay, look, here's three ways. Pick one or pick two, but do something. Because if you don't do anything, then I don't know how you ever expect to survive any kind of economic bump. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Starting point is 00:14:10 And making your life recession proof is certainly an important thing. And we wholeheartedly support that. Let's talk about the speculation versus investing. You made a distinction there. I think it's an important one. but I want to hear what is the difference in your mind between the two? For us, we have a very simple formula. We're very simple people.
Starting point is 00:14:31 If I've got to be able to scratch it out on a piece of paper, I don't want something I have to have this fancy calculator to figure out. And so for us, you know, speculation means you buy an appreciation. It's not a good deal when you buy it. That's not part of our formula. You know, speculation means you go into an area that's booming and you consider it's always going to be booming. You're over leveraged in a problem.
Starting point is 00:14:54 property, you know, and so you maybe have a negative cash flow. We would never do that. And so it's those types of things that I think people thought they were investing, but they were really speculating. And so to me, that's the difference. Yeah. And speculating, obviously, I mean, some people, you know, everyone's got an uncle, whatever, who bought a house for 50,000 and sold it for 200,000, and breaks about that, right, for the rest of their life. And so obviously it sometimes works. And, you know, some people just get lucky or they do time the market correctly. But yeah, for me, the vast majority. I want to know that no matter what the market does, I'm going to be okay. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:15:29 Yeah. It's funny. I was reading this morning, there was a debate on the Redfin about the Bigger Pockets Market Index that we had put out about a month ago, which was a study of the best combined appreciation with cash flow. And, you know, it was mostly agents. And they were kind of, you know, ripping the study saying, you know, well, you know, appreciation is so important. How do you guys stand by yourselves and sleep at night when you don't take it this into consideration. The question, well, yeah, they asked, why is San Francisco not at the top of this list? And we're like, because San Francisco is a terrible place to invest for cash flow. Yeah, they've had some good appreciation, but I wouldn't recommend people go out and buy a bunch of rental properties in San Francisco.
Starting point is 00:16:09 Yeah, we just did a Google talk in San Francisco. Nice. And that was one of the things that came up. It's a whole different market, you know, and so every market's different. And some of them are you're going to have to put a whole, whole lot more money down to do things that we do. And so we're just real honest about that. If you're in Canada or you're in California, you're going to have to put a lot more money down, but we still feel like sometimes your money is better placed there than somewhere else, but
Starting point is 00:16:37 not ever buying because we think that market's just going to keep going up and up and up. Yeah, I love that. All right. So you mentioned earlier this idea that your first few deals you did without a lot of money using a partner. I want to talk about that strategy a little bit. I wrote a book not as popular as your book, but I wrote a book a couple of years ago called, or a year ago came out, the book on investing with no and low money down. It was just a bunch of different ideas, different strategies for investing. And one of those I talked a lot about because one of my favorite strategies is the partnership. So let's talk about that a little bit. How does that work? I mean, how did that, how did you guys structure
Starting point is 00:17:09 that and should newbies, you know, do that today? Do you still recommend that? Absolutely. Yeah. For us, it was, it was perfect. We had built a plan on how we wanted to create, you know, we were trying to figure out what's our freedom number, what's our life? lifestyle number that we need money coming in to have a lifestyle that we want to have. And of course, back then, with our limited knowledge about what we would actually be able to do, we said, you know what, I feel like I'm pretty good at selling real estate. I'm probably going to make good money selling real estate. By this time, my husband had quit the nightclub business and got into real estate with me. So we said, you know, we think we're going to be able to make some decent money there. So what if we had
Starting point is 00:17:45 $250,000 coming in passively? So we wrote the plan for that. That, you know, based on our formula, we'd have to have them, you know, bringing in a thousand dollars a month rent, free and clear, you know, buy about 20 properties. We just kind of came up with a simple plan. And I always say a goal is just something to get you started. You know, the goal can change and all that stuff. But for me, when I see it on paper and I see how simple it is, it kind of gives me the momentum to get started. And so that's what we did. Well, once we made the plan, I'm all excited and ready to do the plan. And so I find the first property. I come home. I'm all excited. I found the great property. This is awesome. You know, we're going to make $15,000. Now, at that time, we hadn't,
Starting point is 00:18:26 we hadn't decided that our long-term strategy would be hold. We just, we're going to do investing. So I said, you know, we're going to make $15,000 on this property. I'm so excited. My husband said, that's great. Where are we're going to get the money? I'm like, God, what a naysayer you are, right? Or maybe your realist is what he would call it. But I'm like, darn. And I said, you know what? I just put my entrepreneurial hat on and I thought about it. And I said, you know what? I think Lou Craft will do this with me. I've been in business. with him for three years selling his properties. I know how the deal, how the man acts when there's money on the table. You know, there were certain things before you go into a partnership,
Starting point is 00:19:00 you might want to know about someone. And I felt like I knew those important things about Lou Craft. Plus, he had the ability to do the remodeling. And so that's why I approached him and said, hey, Lou, I found a great deal on a property. I think we can make 15. And by the time we bought that first property, absolutely to a penny. It was $15,000. Another one, from the RTC came up over by the college, and it was like an old dilapidated big house that we took Lou over to, and I said, we can either take the 15 and split it, or this house is exactly 15,000. We could buy it if you think you could fix it up. And he said, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:19:38 We'll make it a fourplex. And we laughed today because my husband got his notice about whatever that money is you get when you stop working. I don't even know what it's called. Social security. Social security. Thank you. Anyway.
Starting point is 00:19:50 I thought you're making a joke because I'll never see Social Security or Brandon, but you know. Absolutely. So, you know, his is like, his was like $1,300. I can't remember what it was. And that first property is free and clear today and brings us in, I don't know, 21 or 2,200 a month. So it's a better plan we feel like than Social Security. But that was our second property.
Starting point is 00:20:11 And then we eventually found a third one over by the other university in Denton. And, you know, I just, you know, I think when you find, when you find, when you really buy into something, you know, we move on emotion and justify with logic. And I was so emotionally tied to what we needed to do in this plan that I think you just kind of, you figure the rest out. You do. And so I like partnerships to some degree, you know, because if you're real careful about them and you know how people are with integrity and money and those kind of things. And especially now, we've got so many people that are not happy with the money they're making in a stock market and any other places, you could probably find people that you feel very
Starting point is 00:20:48 comfortable with, that would be your partner in real estate, I feel like. So I love it. I say do it whatever way you can do it. And so if partnering is the most logical way for you, absolutely. I would do it again today if it was my only entry way in. And I still do it today. We have key people that work for us that part of what we do as their plan is help them build wealth. And so they'll go find the properties. And, you know, it's mostly our financing that gets the deal done. And so we still have partners today. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I love about partners is that, you know, not everybody has everything they want, right? I mean, like some people want more return on their investment. Some people want to quit their job. Some people want to retire in 10
Starting point is 00:21:26 years. And you bring multiple people together. And you can, if you get the right person, I mean, not, you can't just grab any guy, you know, just because of your brother-in-law, you think you'd be a good partner. But, you know, just you find the right guy and that, that has what you're lacking and has similar goals. And yeah, it can be awesome. So, so do you think new, I mean, like, you think it's a good idea. Newbies should definitely approach that kind of that strategy with partners? If it's their only way, absolutely. I mean, if you can do it without partners, it makes things a less complicated. Yeah. Because most of our partnerships, not for bad reasons, but just for reasons for simplicity, we've undone them later,
Starting point is 00:22:03 like Lou. Sure. We eventually sold one of the properties, the one we made 15,000 on the first one. We flipped it, kept the other two. And at some point, we just said, hey, Lou, you pick, which house do you want. We don't really care. They're both kind of the same big old houses close to a college. And he picked the one closest to Texas Women's University. And so that left us with the one closest to University of North Texas. And we still have it today. And I assume his family or his estate still has his today. So yeah, I think it's, if it's your only way in, absolutely. If you can do it without it, then I would probably recommend that just because there are complications that come along with partnership sometimes. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, so, you know, I'm going to cycle back again.
Starting point is 00:22:43 You talked about freedom number, lifestyle number. We just didn't interview, and I'm not sure actually the order, whether it's going to come up before or after this one, but with Clayton Morris. And he kind of talked about a freedom number too. His number was basically, it figured out how much money he needs to kind of live off of. And then you kind of go and reverse it and do the math and say, hey, I need 16 houses or 23 houses in order to generate the cash flow. Is that what you're talking about? Is that the same thing?
Starting point is 00:23:12 That's exactly what we did. we came up with 250,000 around, and we decided it would be 20 properties free and clear in 15 years. Because when we started our investments, my husband was already, he had just turned 40. And so he said, hey, by 60, I'd like to have this much money coming in passively. You know, of course, we've blown way past that because of other great opportunities that we've had, not just in investing, but owning businesses. We eventually took on the business side of that quadrant also. We said, look, okay, if wealthy people, I'm kind of, I'm kind of.
Starting point is 00:23:43 kind of a plan and a backup plan and a backup plan kind of person. Just because we've had so many different things we've seen happen and fall through. It's like, you know, I'm thinking, oh, well, that's easy. Let's go ahead and have another. And I actually had a business coach years ago, start us on the path of understanding and believing that one stream of income wouldn't be enough for anyone anymore. You know, and if you were raising a family in 1950, maybe one stream was enough.
Starting point is 00:24:06 But 2015 and moving forward, we just truly don't believe one stream will be enough. So we eventually tackled owning businesses. and we own real estate offices and franchises. And then our company has a profit share plan that they pay you on a residual basis for helping them grow the company. And we've been a big part of that. So I think the plan, the number you need, because I used to always be bothered with how much is enough. I hated that question. And I would eventually learn it's because if you answer that question, that makes it about the money.
Starting point is 00:24:34 And I truly don't believe in most people's cases it's ever about the money. If you do enough of the right activities, the money just shows up. and it's kind of a scorecard or a byproduct. But freedom number makes sense to me. I'm very strong on freedom options. And what that money coming in passively to you gives you freedom and options. We tell a story of losing a son-in-law three years ago. And for 10 and a half months, we had a choice to stay where we were
Starting point is 00:25:03 or to be six hours south of us with our daughter, our granddaughter, and our son-in-law as he would go into the battle for his life. and unfortunately eventually lose. And I said, the decisions we made 20 years ago about passive money allowed us to be there for every bit of that journey. Where we needed to be for as long as we needed to be there. Those are the kind of choices and options that you're going to need to have someday that you don't even know right now. So for me, that freedom, that's what freedom allows is options. That's fantastic.
Starting point is 00:25:37 Yeah, I love it. Say, I want to ask you about, you know, you said the first few you own free and clear then. Do you own all 108 free and clear? Do you use leverage? No, no, no. Okay, so you have mortgages on. Yeah, we have mortgages, which I didn't realize until I was speaking to another investor the other day that that's actually pretty miraculous what we've done. Because, you know, I know there's limits. Of course I know that. I think when we first started, the limit was 10 for like with a mortgage company. And now I think it's back to eight or 10. It's pretty close to that. I think it dropped a four and then went back up to 10 again, but not all the banks are saying it's okay.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Yeah, now they're still saying four or some of them. But anyway. So, so. So how have you done that? So we tell people, well, we tell people to go there first, which is what we did. We went to, you know, of course we did the first three with a partner, so those don't count really, you know, as much. And then all of a sudden we took the others and we went to, I think it was like, I'm trying to remember fourth mortgage. I mean, it's like a mortgage company. And so we did our limit there. And then we built relationships. with locally owned banks. Okay, yep. You know, that's one of the benefits
Starting point is 00:26:42 of being in a small town. The president of our bank lived next door to us and we, you know, we became good friends with him. Now we probably have three or four banks that we do.
Starting point is 00:26:52 And what we work off of today, matter of fact, I just heard from my husband and my son, we bought two properties before lunch. I'm not sure if we bought one after lunch at the foreclosure sale. I'll let you know later.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Nice. But we have a line of credit. And so it's about a half a million and we pull that line of credit and either take it to the foreclosure, your sale or we might find a deal that we need to close quickly on. We'll use that line of credit, fix the property up. And back in 08, 2009 through really almost 2011, we were buying like crazy because the market had crashed and we were actually in a position to have money at the time
Starting point is 00:27:25 and good credit so we could go get mortgages. And back then they would let you finance 80% of the appraise value. And so as long as they fit our formula, meaning we never were higher than a 70 to 30 loan to value ratio, we would go ahead and finance almost all of it. So, but pretty much we use leveraged money. We don't go, the only, the only reason we pay cash is because we have a line of credit. And we have to for the foreclosure sale. But otherwise, we're using, I mean, interest rates are so good right now. It's like, it's almost free money. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. I mean, interest rates are extremely low. And, you know, maybe people listen to this five years in the future are going to be like, you know, five percent interest. Like what?
Starting point is 00:28:05 Like, I don't know, it'll probably be a lot higher than. But yeah, it's, it's good. right now and so, you know, get it while taught. But I love that strategy, by the way. I love the idea of using a line of credit or something like that, whether it's a, you know, a business line of credit, a home equity line of credit, whatever. I like that strategy. If you have a line of credit, buying a property, maybe fixing it up and then maybe going to a local bank and refinancing it. I call it the Burr strategy, which is the buy rehab, rent, refinance repeat. So I do, I do that a lot. It's one of my favorite ways to buy. You know, one of our biggest issues, we were just talking about this yesterday. We went into our banker and we just with a phone call said, hey, this
Starting point is 00:28:38 rates kind of high. Can we get this lower down? We got it down to five, I think, or something. And it was, I don't know, it was, I don't know what it was, but it was seven or it was something, whatever it was. And just with a phone call got it lowered and we went in to sign those papers yesterday. And my husband and I were talking and were saying, you know, do we, we've got something so close to being paid off. Do we pay them off? And I said, where's that book? You know, where's that book? Okay, you have 108 properties. Now here's what you do. You know, there is no book like that. And so we battle with all the time. And I said, well, if we call the C. EPA, he's going to say, well, you know, if you do, then you're just going to, you know, pay more taxes and all that stuff. So it's just kind of hard to, I don't know where step two is when you, you know, have all those properties. Do you go ahead and pay them off? Do you leave them? I mean, there's just, you know, I don't know. And I don't think there's an answer to it. There isn't one, yeah. There's no path, right? There's no singular way for anyone to go. And it really depends on where you guys are, right? What your risk tolerance is. What your accountant says is the best. I mean, yeah. And, and. And. And. we like to harp on that because a lot of investors want that handhold like, hey, I'm at property one, now what? Or I'm at property zero, now what? What path do I take? And there is no one path for you to take it. So you got to find your way. And the beauty is, no offense, but Linda here with 108 properties who's been doing this for quite a long time, you still don't know what you're doing. And we're still trying to find our way. And we're all trying to find her path, right?
Starting point is 00:30:08 Absolutely. And but here, the beauty is in what you just said, but we still go ahead and take the next step and do it. I think one of our things we said is sometimes if people overanalyze, they get paralysis and they don't do anything or if they, that's why our formula is so simple and we don't, you know, figure all that stuff and people start asking questions like, well, what all's in there? I mean, do you count?
Starting point is 00:30:28 And I'm like, no, if we counted everything, we probably wouldn't do it. Yeah, yeah. So that is the magic, though, is just, you don't, you don't, you have a why and the how shows up if you look, it's there, like your podcast, our books. And you know, the how is there. But you do have to do a little bit of it just in gray space and faith that if other investors did it and it worked out, it's going to work out okay for you too. I love that. I love that. Yeah, you mentioned formula. What do you mean by your formula if it meets your formula? Well, our formula is real simple. You know, it has to be a 70 to 30 loan to value ratio because we're, we don't want to be
Starting point is 00:31:02 over leveraged and we watch people lose money by being over leveraged. Um, it. It's going to needs to cash flow about $150 to $200 a month. And we want to finance it on 15. We've done as far as 20. But remember, we started when my husband was 40. And so we were trying to do it based on his age and his timeline. And it has to be, you know, 3-22 or 4-22-brick. We no longer.
Starting point is 00:31:26 We used to fall in love with the really old houses. And with the hardwood floors, we fell out of love with those pretty quickly. You know, just those simple things that it has to cash flow that much. We have to pay it. We want it paid off on a 15 to 20 years. your mortgage, 70 to 30 loan to value ratio has to be 10% below market when we buy it at least. So it has to be a good deal when we buy it, not assuming it's going to be a good deal. And we've got a lot of speculation going on on what's going to happen in Texas.
Starting point is 00:31:50 And man, some of these properties we bought no eight, no nine, we could triple, almost triple our money on right now. So it's like, oh, it's really testing us on our whole strategy. Yep. Yep. And that's that appreciation, right? So you got the bonus, which is like you didn't plan for the appreciation, but it's, It's the icing on the cake, right?
Starting point is 00:32:09 Yep, absolutely. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, and I like how also, you know, like you looked at your situation of being in the 40s or, you know, just turning 40 and you look down the road and you didn't want 30-year mortgages for that reason. I love that too, that it just shows that, you know, you can't have a top-down guru, some guy saying this is what you should do because they don't know how old you are. They don't know how anything, right? Like, that's why people got to learn this stuff and then figure it out on their own in a way and, you know, get advice and get opinions. But, yeah, I have nephew that started investing early on in his 20s and he has like 20 or 30 properties now.
Starting point is 00:32:41 And his goal was to not have to go have a regular job. So he did them on 30 years because he wanted the cash flow to live off of. We knew we were in our highest income earning years we were ever going to be more than likely. So that wasn't what we were after. We were after cash flow later, much later when we wanted options or choices or to work because we wanted to work, not because we had to work. Yeah. So in my young 20s, you know, my goal was to quit my job. That's all I wanted in life was to quit my job.
Starting point is 00:33:06 I hated my job. Yeah. So I said, what's my freedom number essentially? And I said, I need 30 units. I was by multifamily. So I said, I need 30 units total at $100 a piece. Would give me $3,000 a month. I'll be okay.
Starting point is 00:33:17 So I did that. I quit my job and I'm okay, I'm done. And now my life shifted. Now I'm like, you know, doing other things. I got bigger pockets here. Like, you know, I like this as well. So my strategy for real estate changed because my life changed. And I think that's okay.
Starting point is 00:33:30 I think that's what happens. Absolutely. And you're not quitting your job, right? I'm not quitting my job. Oh, yeah, I'm just checking. I mean, just getting nervous there. No, you know, like I quit my, I was talking about my, I worked at a bank and it was a terrible job. It was really, really bad.
Starting point is 00:33:43 I was a sales guy at a bank, and it was so bad. But yeah, but like, you know, real estate helped me accomplish that goal. And now my next goal, you know, is to, you know, let's say get a million dollars a year or whatever, you know, my goal is. Yeah. Now I'm changing my strategy to hit that instead of just quit my job. Absolutely. Yeah, very cool. The emotion from the quit the job.
Starting point is 00:34:03 Yep. that caused you to take the first step. It was that emotional wanting to get out of that job that made you take the risk, right? Yep, exactly. Yeah, because I don't know if I would have. I mean, if I didn't hate my job, you know, what's that phrase that says, like,
Starting point is 00:34:15 the enemy of progress is like passivity or something like that? You know, like people who are just comfortable in life. Like, it's hard to get the motivation to get out and do things and take those risks and buy rentals and flip houses or do anything of that because it's scary. Absolutely. They're lacking, you know, your house gets bored when you leave.
Starting point is 00:34:35 I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle.
Starting point is 00:34:52 Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport, while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money.
Starting point is 00:35:08 Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle
Starting point is 00:35:20 guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can rely on.
Starting point is 00:35:31 Relax, knowing guests are taken care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there.
Starting point is 00:35:59 Airbnb has a great feature called the co-host network, which makes hosting your home so easy. If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. These co-hosts are vetted locals who already have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests, creating your host space, and managing reservations. So everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip. Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making. memory somewhere else. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at
Starting point is 00:36:33 Airbnb.com slash host. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance, and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BP pod. That's NREIG.com managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments,
Starting point is 00:37:17 chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills,
Starting point is 00:37:40 and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like same-day ACH, international wires, card, or check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property
Starting point is 00:38:06 to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100.com.com slash bigger pockets. Cool. Hey, Linda, so you gave us your criteria. I mean, I think it's great. And I love how defined it is. And it's something that I think is important for any of the listeners to heed. You know, 70-30 LTV, he's got a cash flow, 150 to 200 a month, 15 to 20-year financing, 4-22-3-2-2, brick, 10 percent. You know, you've got these very, very specific criteria. Like, if you are a new investor and you are listening, you need to go and figure out what that is for you. You know,
Starting point is 00:38:46 what is that criteria for you. And nobody's going to answer that. You just have to kind of figure out what's going to work. So I just wanted to kind of harp on that. But back to you, you set a goal. Your goal was, hey, we're going to, presumably somewhat was getting out of debt, I'm going to assume, but also creating this freedom number where you can, you know, have the cash flow to live off of. Well, with 108 units, 150 to 200 a month, you've well exceeded your goal. So why do you continue? you, why are you still buying properties? Why is your husband at the auction sale picking up foreclosures? Why not just stop? Is it greed? Are you a greedy pig, as they say, on the shark tank? Or are you guys, I mean, did the goal line just change? Is there a new bar? How did that all
Starting point is 00:39:35 happen? You know, I think if anything, the bar and the number kind of went away and it got bigger when that happened. The goal eventually really was more, you know, what was the emotion behind us even being willing to do this because we just didn't want to ever be in that situation and we wanted options. But, you know, I think really life is about achieving, I mean, about becoming and the way you become is get up and achieve. And, you know, really, and kind of like you guys now, our passion now is helping other people do this, you know, because you see how it's changed your life. And the way you become is to get up and achieve. And achieving means you've got to get it and put energy in something. and you've got to, you know, get excited about something different.
Starting point is 00:40:18 You know, the nightly rentals kind of have us excited right now because I've learned how to, you know, you have to get them all finished out and, you know, people write in the guest book, how most wonderful family vacation they've ever had. So, you know, that's kind of a shift and it's fun and it's different. And I think, you know, that's where, you know, they talk about, you know, it's about the journey. That's the journey. The journey is where it's, you know, you're learning and you're growing and then you're helping other people do it. and that's got a whole charge of its own like you guys know.
Starting point is 00:40:47 And so, you know, it just, the money and the number kind of goes away. But also what you learn is the more money you make, the more options you have and the more good things you can do. I think we're the first generation that has had to help somewhere financially with our kids and our parents. You know, I'm listening to friends whose parents are in a situation where they can either put them in whatever the homes are that you have that you can put people in that doesn't cost you any money. or they can put them in private care. And that's costing $9,000, $12,000, you know, a month. And so what I've found is the bigger that number gets, the more options you have in life. Whatever that is for you.
Starting point is 00:41:26 And for everybody, it's going to be different. It's going to be different charities. It's going to be different experiences, whatever you do with that. And so I think if anything, you know, I don't, you know, I don't now say, you know, now we're at $3 million and we want to make $5 million. I don't say that. I just say, okay, what can we do next? this is kind of fun and we now know what we're doing and the options seem to come to you more
Starting point is 00:41:46 once you know what you're doing and you've been doing this a while. It's like you'd have to put blindfolds on to not see deals now. You know, Houston, you're like, where is a deal? And that's what most people say was where is a deal. But I think it just, it really now becomes about becoming in the way you become is get up and achieve. You know, sports teams don't get up and, you know, they don't win a Super Bowl and quit, right?
Starting point is 00:42:06 They go back to the practice field. If you're the Seahawks, that might not be true. Yeah, I just gave that. in Seattle, and that was a bad place to give that analogy. Yeah, it's been a... I need to watch more football before I use that. Nice. Nice.
Starting point is 00:42:21 No, that's too. Hey, so you also talked about people working for you earlier on. You said that, you know, and I think you were referring to money working for you and the people work. I don't know if you were referring to your team. Have you built out a team of folks who work underneath your husband and you who manage, I mean, the business, or is that something else you were. you were referring to. Well, we actually have multiple businesses, but, you know, and businesses are people making you money, whereas a real estate investment might be an investment making you money. However, once you get to 108 properties, you do need a team. So we have a lady that has been our
Starting point is 00:42:57 chief financial officer for 14 years or more. So she does all the finances. And we have a guy that it's actually his second career. He was extremely successful at his first career. I call him our boomer. He's a baby boomer. He's a 70. Our biggest. we always laugh and say our biggest fear is Tom's going to get sick, you know, because he's so good. And he works only for us, which we love. You know, we've tried it all. We've owned our own property management company. Gosh, I say the best day of my life, two best days of my life is when I had my children
Starting point is 00:43:26 and when I sold our property management company. Really? That was just not a good business. You know, we weren't as well-versed on all the things. Plus you make money on pennies, and we weren't good at watching the pennies. So we've had property management companies. We've been the property management company. This has been the best situation.
Starting point is 00:43:42 question we had. This gentleman works for us. He gets a percentage of the rent. So he's excited about always making sure they're rented, but we don't have a lot of the other fees, like half a month's lease-up fees and all those things that you'd normally have. Plus, he has full attention. You know, sometimes in property management companies, you know, they're set vacant a little bit longer because they've got a bunch of properties to handle. You know, he's got just our properties, and that's how he makes money. So we do have a team of people. We are training our son to try to do the investing side of it. Because quite honestly, like I said earlier with the question, we do, we do sometimes to go, how many more properties do we need? Because at this point, you know,
Starting point is 00:44:21 20 years in the future, are we really going to care about that? So we do try to ask some deeper questions about that stuff. But so we said, look, you know, next generation is going to need to worry about what we grow this to. So we're teaching him right now. But we do have a team of people in all of our businesses. It's all about great people. Yeah, it really is. I mean, if you want success long term in real estate, you got to have the right people on board. You know, like, we use a phrase a lot of times around bigger pockets of get people on the bus. Like when we're, you know, we don't exactly know what they're going to do, but we just find great people.
Starting point is 00:44:49 Or like, just get them on the bus. We'll figure out where they're going to sit later. And, you know, I'm all about finding good people. So, all right, I want to go back to something before we get out of here. I want to talk about two kind of fundamental questions. Well, really just one, because you kind of answered the management part. But why single family homes? You know, people who know me know I'm a multifamily guy a lot, but why single family?
Starting point is 00:45:06 You know, I think it was easier for us because I was selling real estate, and so somehow in my mind, I found them easier or I thought I would find them easier. That's a great question because, and I think by the time we really looked into multifamily, our other thought on single family as opposed to multifamily is we knew that the end buyer of our product would be retail. so we knew there was a possibility of a bigger upside, whereas on a multifamily, one of the things we always considered was you're really only, it's only about the cash flow. And so I'm going to have to sell to another investor on the cash flow. And by the way, we have bought apartments on the foreclosure and fixed them up and made a couple hundred thousand dollars on. So we've made good money on apartments, but we just, it never was our path. I think it's a great strategy. And if we probably would have started sooner, we probably maybe would have looked into that.
Starting point is 00:45:58 but for whatever reason we just kind of started down that path and didn't get off of it, you know, and not that we don't, we have some commercial, we have six commercial buildings and we have, we've had apartments before, but, you know, it just didn't seem to catch with us. Sure. And I think that's great, right? I have everybody, different strokes for different folks, right? I mean, some people like, yeah, I think that's great. And I think that changes throughout your life too.
Starting point is 00:46:19 You know, as you get later, you maybe want more passive investments when you're younger. Maybe you want, you know, like, oh, and when I was 21, I wanted anything. I'd buy the crappiest property in town. And now today I'm like, I don't know what I look. I don't want to drive over there. Yeah, you do get more selective. Yeah. Yep.
Starting point is 00:46:34 Yeah, definitely. So cool. And so six commercial buildings. Are those like, you know, actual like, you know, you own like a Walgreens kind of building? Or I mean, what is this? What do you mean by commercial? Actually, they all are, we have a business in each one of those.
Starting point is 00:46:47 We do not have a single commercial building. Let me think about this. We don't have a single commercial building that we don't have a business that we own in it. Okay. So it just made sense if we felt good about our business. businesses and the kind of money they were making to own the real estate that they were in. Do you mind me asking like when you talk about your businesses? I'm assuming you're Keller Williams agent, correct? Is that right? Right. So is that what you're talking about or do
Starting point is 00:47:08 you have other businesses as well? Yeah, we own three of these Keller Williams franchises. Okay. Ourself, two in Texas, one in Kentucky. And then we actually own the regional rights for Keller Williams, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. So that means we service and support those real estate franchises that are there. But we also own three of them ourselves. And in those, we have agents. And in two of our offices, we have so many agents. We have them in two buildings.
Starting point is 00:47:39 So we own both the buildings. So that's kind of how that works out. But yeah, it's real estate franchises. Okay. Good on. Good on. So I just have two more quick questions before we move to the next part of the show. So in building your portfolio, we've got a lot of people who always ask,
Starting point is 00:47:55 hey, you know, should I get my real estate license? You know, should I become a real estate agent? Did your license help you in the building of your portfolio or not at all? Not at all. Okay. What did help or what has helped is we've used the strategy to go to agents in our town and say, look, we don't want the commission. You can have all of it. We're not, we don't really care about that part of it. We just want the investment. So we've been brought a few deals probably because of that. But at the end of the day, it's not about having a real estate license. That was our job. That was my job. It was the way I made money because you do have to get in the middle of money. Yes. Somewhere.
Starting point is 00:48:32 So you have money to support your investing habit. Absolutely. And my lifestyle, yeah. Okay, cool. And then my last question, you own these franchises, these KW franchises. This to me has been a bit of a pet peeve for a long time. I was an agent over at Coldwell Banker for about three minutes. I was an agent at Keller Williams for about a minute and a half.
Starting point is 00:48:55 I wish it had been a little bit longer than the other one. You know, I just, it wasn't for me. It just wasn't for me. I was just trying to feel it out, right? But my question, it's a fundamental question that really annoys me, and I don't know that I have yet to find a good answer. You going to get to it? Really?
Starting point is 00:49:16 You know, I have a problem here, and you're busting my chops. All right, all right, all right. Let me just go. The question is Brandon Turner, and it's not for you. it's for Ms. Linda. Why don't more agents invest? Yeah, that is a great question. I was laughing when you guys said earlier that some agents were best in your chops because I wanted to pop in and say most of those probably don't own real estate investing, but I will tell you that is changing. Jim and I have been teaching for 20 plus years in the real estate industry. We teach once or twice
Starting point is 00:49:46 a year. We allow our agents to bring their investor clients with them for all of our market centers. And I will tell you that, because I've taught for 20 plus years on how to build a real estate business, and that number has changed, but it's changed very slowly. And I think it's for the same reason. A lot of people, you know, there's 80, 20, or 90, 10, or 955 in anything. People get comfortable. They don't think about what their life would be like if they don't do something. They just kind of live in the moment of whatever that is, and they're just trying to put food on their table. I think the number would shuffle out. no matter what industry or business you were in, it just doesn't make sense, especially to me,
Starting point is 00:50:26 that you're in the real estate business and you're not investing. But I will tell you from the time we started teaching this years ago, or just teaching anything, because I always ask about wealth building and passive income, because if you do real estate for 20 or 30 years, you have had nothing but a job. You didn't do a business. You had a job. And so it's my pet peeve that people aren't creating passive income. I will tell you that number has changed. It's changed way too slowly, in my opinion, but it is changing. And I think it's humans or humans, they're risk adverse. They're not thinking, you know, we think more about our vacation than we do what our life's going to look like in 20 years. And so I think it's for all the same reasons that everything kind of
Starting point is 00:51:04 gets in a mess because we don't plan enough. We don't, as people, we just don't think through, you know, if I keep doing this, what's my life going to look like in 20 years? Yeah. And I'll contend, you know, my belief is that plus a little more. I think the major brokerage firms don't care. Oh, of course. They have a different agenda. Yeah, the agenda is different. And at the end of the day, I do think that it would behoove them to help educate those agents.
Starting point is 00:51:33 And furthermore, I actually ask, why are more agents not versed in real estate investing such that they can work with investor clients, which troubles. me even more than the fact that most agents don't invest is why are most agents not versed in investing, at least in the capacity where they can help their clients, because I'd say it's probably closer to the 95 to 5 rule versus the 80, 20 or anything, 7030. Most agents don't know top from bottom when it comes to how to analyze the property or anything else. And the problem with that is those that don't know what they're doing and go ahead and work with particularly new investors do a dramatic disservice to those people and frankly are aiding and abetting people
Starting point is 00:52:22 getting into bad deals. And that to me is a major pet peeve that I have. And frankly, I think being investor savvy as an agent should be a requirement for licensing. Yeah, it wouldn't be a bad plan. It's certainly a vehicle. And we're putting together an online course right now for agents and the very last module is going to be on wealth building because it's such an important piece, but absolutely part of what we teach in the lead generation section is to use investing seminars as a tool to lead generate. It just makes sense. If you can have 50 people looking at you instead of two, you know, or a couple, why wouldn't you be doing that all the time? Yeah. And we have the books and we have the PowerPoint and we have all the tools to help them do that. And so we do,
Starting point is 00:53:09 You know, I do a webinar for Keloimms International once a month on multiple streams of income. So there are companies out there that do educate that do genuinely care about the age and having the best life possible and the best business possible. It's just not enough yet. You know, it hasn't caught on enough. Yeah, right on. Right on. We'll pass the word to everybody. Spread the word.
Starting point is 00:53:30 All right. So we move on to the. We shall. We're going to go to the fire round, which is sponsored by. All right. Today's sponsor is Booth, a complete phone and voice. mail service ideal for the active real estate investor. You can use Booth to accept phone calls from potential sellers, tenants, and more on your own device, but with a new local or toll-free number.
Starting point is 00:53:49 You can control how, who and when you receive phone calls, and set up pre-recorded messages to save you time and hassle, and you can even get one of those, press one for this, two for that, auto attendance, which can be really helpful in making your company stand out like a big deal. So give Booth a try today by visiting www.tribooth.com slash bigger pockets. Again, that's tribooth.com forward slash bigger pockets. It's time for the fire round. All right, the fire round. These questions come direct out of the bigger pockets forum.
Starting point is 00:54:24 So these are real members asking these questions and we thought we'd throw them at you. Number one, should I invest out of state if it's too expensive to invest near where I live? Yeah. Only if you have a really, really key person. Our trick to any investing outside of our state is a person. I can point you to the person and the reason we did it was that person. And the reason we're still there is that person. So only if you have a great contact or connection that would be on that end of it.
Starting point is 00:54:53 Otherwise, figure out our model would be figure out what you've got to do to invest where you are to make the numbers work. I love it. Oh, man, I love that so much. You have no idea. The person is key. And I like how you said when, if the person's no longer the person, then potentially, it's time to get out and that that holds very true that holds very very true. Question two, what are some common exit strategies for a buy and hold investor?
Starting point is 00:55:23 Not sure I'm clear on what exit strategy means from getting out of the property. Yeah, when to get out. Well, we're still in. The markets tripled on some of the properties that we have bought. And if it's not going to be tempting to get out at that moment, we're standing firm with the hold because it depends on what you're at. after. I mean, we're after cash flow long term. And so when all those properties are paid off, we're talking about $146,000 a month approximately, you know, coming in passively. That's what our
Starting point is 00:55:51 original goal was, and that's still what our goal is, is that cash flow. So again, what's your in, what are you trying to accomplish? Are you looking for money when you, when you don't necessarily want to work or you want options so you don't have to work? What's your plan? Because ours is to hold and hold long term, and we've never lost money when we've held long term either. So that's another reason. Not that we don't ever flip, but what's your long-term plan? And that's going to dictate what you do. Cool. I love it. Should I invest in student rentals? I assume you mean properties that are close to a college. I think that's what they're, yeah. Yeah, we love them. Our first property, the fourplex that we still have is close to the college.
Starting point is 00:56:32 I love college properties. I'm not sure how that game is changing with so many of the universities getting into housing and stuff, mostly apartments, I would probably still tend to go single family because there's something about a house. Everybody wants a house. You know, and so I love colleges. I love properties near the college. Cool, cool, cool, cool. All right, last question on the fire round. What is your, what was your worst landlord headache ever? What was the bit, your landlord nightmare story? We all have one. Oh, wow, we do. Let me think of Now 100 plus. She does outsource all that.
Starting point is 00:57:09 Yeah, that's a great. You know, I'd probably say early on when we were collecting the rent, we were such softies, you know, especially if I sent my husband and they were an elderly couple, they're going to live there for free as long as it. So that was when we realized we can't do the management of it. That just is not going to work because, you know, you're going to listen to somebody's story and oh my gosh. And then we said, look, the banker's not listening to our story. We've got to get somebody in here to get the rent. So I would probably say on the front end, maybe when we were collecting the rent and you kind of get buy into their stories if they, and they all have them.
Starting point is 00:57:43 Yep. I love it. Right on. All right. Let's move over to the last segment of the show, which we call lovingly our famous four. All right. The Famous Four, these questions are asked of every single guest. So we're going to throw them at you.
Starting point is 00:57:54 Number one, what is your favorite, not your own real estate book? Oh, seriously? Yeah. Oh, gosh. No one told me I couldn't answer my own. Okay, this one is, it's, I can't remember exactly the name of it, but it's getting rich one house at a time. John Schwab, is that, that one? Maybe we used to give people that book early on until we had our own book.
Starting point is 00:58:17 Okay. And I'd say the millionaire real estate investor. Okay. I think that's a great one. Cool. Right on, right on. All right. So, what was it building wealth one house at a time by John Schwab?
Starting point is 00:58:27 Yeah, that was it, building wealth. That's it. There you go. All right. Favorite business book? Oh, definitely right now the one thing. Gary Keller's book, the one thing. I'm telling you, as entrepreneurs, it's squirrel and rabbit and what's the new shiny thing. And so, you know, I have to be reminded always, what's the one thing on whatever this is that's going to make the biggest difference? And how do I keep myself focused on that? I talk about that book so much. People think I'm getting paid for it, I think. But I'm going to switch the question. I'm going to switch it because, all right, what is the favorite business book, non-affiliated? Okay, cash flow quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. It was a game changer for us. Most people read
Starting point is 00:59:06 Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Very few read Cash Flow Quadrant. I think he gives you the answers in the print and the plan in that book. So I'm going to have to say Cash Flow Quadrant because it was such a game changer for us by Robert Kiyosaki. Right on. All right. What do you do for fun? What kind of hobbies do you have outside of running businesses and real estate and building this empire? This was really hard. I'm glad I had 24 hours to think on this one because I love to do. You know, You're just wired to do that. It's like, is it Monday yet? But you know what?
Starting point is 00:59:34 We're big family people. We have four great kids and four great grandkids that we love spending time with. And so we spend a lot of our time with family, but I'm a runner and I love to read. So if I can do any me time, I'm running or I'm reading. Great. Perfect. Yeah. Love it.
Starting point is 00:59:52 I'll race you. All right. Well, I'm a long distance runner, so you go ahead. I'll lose. I get five steps and I'm hoping. I'm hoping. My final question of the day. Linda, what do you think sets apart the successful real estate investors from those who give up or fail or never even get started?
Starting point is 01:00:10 You know, I think it's being connected to a bigger reason. In other words, something that's an emotionally charged reason. You know, I always say, you know, our $600,000 in debt was a have to. It wasn't a why. The why was I love freedom. And when I started realizing, like when I had my first job after 18, I had many jobs before 18. Like I would work two or three jobs and, you know, one didn't work out on a weekend thing I had planned. I just quit one and go get me another one the next week.
Starting point is 01:00:40 But when I turned 18, someone got me a job at General Telephone. And that's the first real job I'd ever had. And on Sunday afternoon, my stomach would start to hurt and I didn't know why. And later I would figure out it's because, and then I got into real estate where you go in way before eight and get off way after five, right? but it was different. It was something I was doing for me. There were options. There were freedom.
Starting point is 01:01:03 I got the major result from that outcome. And so I think what are you connected to? Is it freedom? Is it options? You know, is something happened in your life that you realize I'm not in control of this stuff and I need to get in better control of it? I mean, what is it? There's something that you've got to be emotionally charged and connected to.
Starting point is 01:01:24 And I think that makes a difference. I had a little kid that's been a friend of my son since three. They're educators. And she said, why in the world aren't investment properties headaches? And I said, yeah, but you know what? Being 80 and no money, that's a headache too. And so I think thinking about the consequences or what you're saying no to, what you're really saying no to, if you did that enough, I think more people would do it.
Starting point is 01:01:47 But they don't do that. They think, hey, my life's great. I'm making good money. You know, whatever. I'll have a nice house. But fast forward, what is it? look like. And I think they don't spend enough time there. Me personally, that's what I think. Perfect. Yeah, I love that answer. That's great. All right. Last question for me, where can people
Starting point is 01:02:05 find out more about you? And also, if you would, please tell us the name of your book once again. Okay. The name of the book is called Hold, How to Find, Buy, and Rent, Real Estate to Build Wealth. And you can find it on Amazon. I think we have it on her website. It's Linda McKissick.com. and if it's okay with you guys, we have a free giveaway that we give away if they'll text rentals to 3-3-4-4-4. And we actually take them through our last property that we refurbish because we got a lot of questions about
Starting point is 01:02:35 what does that process look like? And so if they'll text to 3-3-44-4, the word rentals, R-E-N-T-A-L-L-S, they'll get a free link and they can watch that whole process of that investment property. Very cool. Cool. All right, Linda, well, thank you so much for sharing your story.
Starting point is 01:02:54 Thanks for coming on. We really, really do appreciate it. Lots of fun chatting with you. And we definitely appreciate all that you do. My pleasure. I appreciate you guys, too. Thanks for spreading the word and making more investors out there. We're trying.
Starting point is 01:03:09 Keep it up. Hey, thank you, Linda. We'll see you around. You'll have a great day. Thank you. Nice talking to you both. Hey, thank you, too. Bye.
Starting point is 01:03:15 Bye-bye. All right, guys, that was Linda McKissick. We do appreciate Linda being on the show, that was, it was great, man. Lots of, lots of really great advice, particularly in the mindset arena, huh? Yeah, I mean, definitely. And I love the fact that, I don't know, she's not one of those, this is how you should do it kind of people. There's a lot of ways to do it, and there's a lot of ways to invest in real estate. And I mean, like, let me plug again. I mean, it's almost like she could have written my book. Like, I'm not saying she, you know, Dave, but like everything she says in there
Starting point is 01:03:44 is, like, stuff that, like, I firmly believe in. Like, this is all stuff that, like, I don't know. I just love this concept of like, of anybody can do it, make a plan, stick to that plan, you know, and it changes a little bit, that's okay. I don't know. I just love that stuff. It's like me and her are BFFs now. Nice. Nice.
Starting point is 01:04:03 Yeah. Cool. You guys are going to be on Christmas cards together? We are. We might with, you know, dogs and cats and stuff. Send me one. Okay. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:09 Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, good stuff. Good stuff. Again, a quick reminder to everybody. Check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 153. That's biggerpockets.
Starting point is 01:04:19 com slash show 153. Otherwise, again, please do leave us ratings and reviews on all the various podcast players out there. And that's it. If you're not engage active on bigger pockets, I definitely recommend you get out there and do that. The site is amazing. There's so many great people networking, making things happen just like Linda is. And it's a great place to meet them. So get on bigger pockets today. Create your free account and start making things happen, start asking the questions that you've got, start networking with other folks, and get it on. So that's it. Let's get out of here.
Starting point is 01:04:57 I'm Josh Dork, and 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 hype, 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 platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Starting point is 01:05:34 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.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.
Starting point is 01:05:59 You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.