BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 159: How to Build a Real Estate Business That Buys 60 Deals a Year with Nathan Brooks

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

Anyone can buy a house. However, it takes a special kind of business (and business owner) to buy dozens of deals every year. That’s the story on today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, when we sit down with Nathan Brooks to talk about how he went from casual investor to buying nearly sixty deals last year. You’ll learn the key hires that made this transition possible, the process for hiring the perfect team members to work your systems, Nathan’s story of bringing in a partner to help scale, and so much more. If you are looking to really expand your business through partners, employees, and processes, dive into this powerful episode! In This Episode We Cover: Nathan’s beard, the bear from The Revenant A recap of his last show The importance of sitting down with your mentor How to diversify your income streams Why he started his own property management company The companies he’s worked with before How to avoid working with the wrong company Nathan’s current number of employees How he builds systems within his business How to figure out what you’re good and bad at What you should know about partnerships and finding the right people to work with How Nathan’s hiring process works How to know who to hire first The time value of money How to relay a process to an assistant The importance of creating one-pager how tos What exactly lifestyle design means Whether it’s really possible to step away from work for six months How to figure out your freedom number One thing that made a huge impact on his business in the past few years Why he keeps on learning and learning And SO much more! Links from the Show $140,805.92 profit on our first flip…Thank you Bigger Pockets! [forum post] Evernote BP Podcast 087: How to Thrive After The Collapse of a Real Estate Empire with Nathan Brooks BP Podcast 146: Buying 100+ Units Through Word of Mouth Marketing with Enrique Jevons BP Podcast 151: Finding Your “Freedom Number” with Clayton Morris Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Investing with No and Low Money Down by Brandon Turner The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss 6 Months to 6 Figures by Peter Voogd No Hero by Mark Owen The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller Good to Great by Jim Collins Tweetable Topics: “Don’t focus on your weaknesses, focus on your strengths.” (Tweet This!) “There’s always a person who’ll appreciate whoever you are and ride the rollercoaster with you.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Nathan Nathan’s BiggerPockets Profile Nathan’s BiggerPockets Blogs list Nathan’s Company Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And so we've started creating this one-pagers just like he had suggested. And so it's just been a game changer. 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 on the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, Brandon? Not much. What's up, Josh?

Doing all right. Doing all right. Really, really excited about today's show. Are you? Why? You know, it's always fun to get into these programs, these shows where we kind of dig in deeper on topics that we've previously broached and taking it from different angles and things like that. And, you know, you get so many people who are like, well, I know everything there is to know about real estate. and and they just don't realize that there's just so many different angles and approaches that you can

take in doing what it is that you do and what it is that we do in the real estate world that, I don't know, it's just fascinating anyway. Today's show with Nathan is outstanding and getting into the topic of hiring and scaling and building your business and, you know, just, man, I don't know, I mean, we covered a whole lot of stuff, lifestyle businesses, lifestyle design. It's fantastic. So I'm just excited. I don't know.

Well, good for you. Am I allowed to be excited? I'll allow it this time. Okay, thank you, sir. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. You're a good boss.

Thank you. You're welcome. Some guy in the forums the other day, he wrote his first flip made $140,000 on it. Amazing success story. People can check that out in the forums. But in there, he said, I just want to thank. And he listed a whole bunch of people.

then he ended with, and I especially want to thank Brandon Turner as assistant, Josh Dorkin. Yeah. I love that. It's cool. I mean, you know, listen, you know, call me whatever you want to call me at the end of the day. As long as people are happy, I'm happy. I'm happy.

You're happy. We're all happy. I'm your assistant. Fine. I'm your assistant. All right. Well, assistant, I'm going to need some more Starbucks. So if you could take care of that right now.

All right. Kiss my. All right, going on with it. Let's get to today's quick tip. Okay, do it. Okay. Today's quick tip is... I like how I'm the assistant and you're doing the quick tip.

I know. Thank you. The quick tip is Evernote, actually. Is it a free program? There's a paid version as well, but it's a free program you can get on your computer, on your smartphone on a lot of different devices, and I use it all the time in my investing business. We have no affiliation with them.

We don't make any money by telling you this. I'm just telling you it's a cool program. And as an investor or a wann-be investor, you should be using it. It's really cool. And actually, as a bonus, the reason we decided to add this quick tip in is because after the show was all done that we recorded. today. We just got finished recording it. We had like a really good conversation afterwards with our guest and he mentioned Evernote. And so I sat there and I was like, wait, wait, wait,

I want to record this. So we recorded it and it was all about how he uses Evernote in his business. So at the end of the show, after the music plays, you can hear exactly how he does that kind of little bonus for everybody listening. There you go. There you go. Awesome. Hey guys, really, really, really quick. Thank you very much for listening to the show. Thank you for spreading the word of the show. We actually hit an all-time high in terms of our rankings recently. We were up to 115 last week of every single podcast on the planet. Right now, as I look, we're ranked at 121. But I mean, we're really close to top 100 of every single podcast on the planet. And we could not do it without you guys, without the listeners. So please, if you've just found

this show, jump in. Go on Stitcher, on iTunes, on however you're listening to the show, subscribe. Subscribe to the Bigger Pockets podcast. And if you like it, please do leave us a rating and review. It helps us get the word out, grow the show, and help educate more people about the world of real estate. So help us help you by doing that. And big thanks, guys. We really do appreciate it.

It is pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Otherwise, yeah, things are good. Well, let's get to this thing. Let's just kind of cut to the chase and bring them on. Today's guest is Nathan Brooks. and Nathan is a real estate investor in Kansas City. Previously, he's been on the show before.

And the last time it was on an episode called How to Thrive after the Collapse of a Real Estate Empire. And so today we kind of talk about where he's been since then and what's happened. And it's fascinating. He's really built a fantastic business. And let's get to him. All right, ladies and gentlemen,

let's bring him on the bearded man himself. Mr. Nathan Brooks. What's up, dude? What's happening? How are you guys doing today? Doing good. I just saw you in a movie last week, the Leonardo DiCaprio one, you know, the Revenant or whatever it's called. He was the bear, right? Yeah, you were the bear. For those people who can't see right now, we're recording us on Skype, but, you know, obviously the podcast is mostly audio only, but Nathan has a significantly longer beard than last time he was on the show. And it's a little barely, if that's that word. I like, we'll see, it started as the playoff beard. And, you know, this team, you know, from Kansas City, you know, called the Royals won the World Series. And then it kind of continued through that. Hey, can we get another guest on the show?

Josh is still a little sore from that. That was not a good World Series. You know, it was meant to be. You can't fight. You can't fight it. All right. So last time we had you on the show, for those people who haven't listened to that one, it was show number 87. BiggerPockets.com.

It was a terrible show, by the way. Terrible show. So we had that back in September of 2014. So this is over a year and a half, almost a year and a half ago. And the show title was called How to Thrive After the Collapse of a Real Estate Empire. And it was a really good show all about your story of your struggle as you built up a portfolio and then lost a lot of stuff and had a really like tough go at it. And you were rebuilding your portfolio. And very, very powerful people really, really responded to that a lot.

And so today we're talking about kind of the next phase in your life because the last year and a half has been, from what I've read, has been crazy for you. I mean, you've been writing on the Bigger Pockets blog and you guys have really exploded over the past year and a half. So that's what we're talking about today. Sound good? Do you want to give us a recap really quick of what we talked about last time, Nathan? I don't know if you remember your own life. Let's know who you are and what you do. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I live in the Kansas City Market and thanks again for having me on again, guys. and I'm excited to talk about what's going on. And so, you know, gone through, you know, gotten into real estate, went through the downturn of the economy and really tried to do well, but did a lot of things poorly and a lot of things just kind of not thought through. And we lost a number of properties and went through bankruptcy and had a miscarriage in the same week of just what was a horrible ending of a year. And so we had to look at ourselves and look back at what we did.

right and did wrong and how to regroup. And so is that the, is that a good way to? Sure. Yeah, fair enough. And anyone listening again, you can go and check out the last show at BiggerPockets.com slash show 87 and get all the details. But yeah, so things have changed dramatically since then. And maybe we can start with kind of where are you today?

You know, let's kind of fast forward to where you are today. And then we'll kind of work our way from where we'll, left off to where we are today. So tell us about kind of what you do right now. What does your business look like? Yeah. Well, we do a couple, we do a number of things. So we have an internal, you know, properties that we're still buying for ourselves. And we have a full property management with a, you know, property manager and leasing assistant. We have our own crew now. We have, you know, we probably ended the year doing about 60 or so deal. last year.

Wow. And what are those? Buyinghold rentals? I mean, flips wholesale. You know, I'd say, I'd say the majority of those were buying holds, probably, you know, 10 wholesale deals. And honestly, it might even be a little higher than 60. So we have a pretty sizable kind of marketing side of the thing as well now.

So we have a lot of wholesale deals that come through. Matter of fact, put a couple under contract today and a couple under contract the, you know, the beginning of the week. So we have quite quite a number of the wholesale deals coming through. and then it's awesome because it can feed for us. It can feed deals for other, you know, investors we know. And then we also have, you know, guys now from all over the country who come to us for properties.

And we have kind of a little, little different model on the turnkey take. So we still bring kind of the turnkey model, but we're able to actually deliver a little bit more equity in those properties for them too. And a little higher rent multipliers, which is pretty cool. Nice. Nice. So you do just a few things. I mean, like you do quite a bit in real estate. say it's not just, I'm just a wholesaler, I'm just a, you know, flipper just a buy and hold.

Why is that? Why do you diversify in a lot of different areas? You know, it's interesting. I've always been big on mentors and I, and I've thought about this a number of times at the beginning of the year. And I sat down with a gentleman back in the day. His name's Rob and he's in Florida. And he, he, I found him on Craigslist. I saw this incredible business that he had. I pestered him until I could take him to lunch. And through that, meeting and it really changed my life, kind of laid out the, here's buckets of income. Here's buckets of the streams and this one, you know, property management might be making this or you might have this challenge or change in this bucket or, you know, whatever. So if you can diversify that income

stream and you have, and you're doing it well, then you can really, you know, one month might be light on the wholesale deals, but you still have passive income on your rentals or whatever. Yeah, I love that. I love But we've kind of taken a similar model with bigger pockets as well. We don't want to be relying upon one way of generating income because if something goes wrong here, well, at least you make up for it somewhere else. Having a diversified business is a great idea. So you've got a PM company, this quasi-turn key thing that goes above and beyond. You've done 60 deals last year, 10 wholesale.

You know, that's a lot. That'll keep you busy. What don't we kind of go to the private, the property management company and kind of start there? Why did you decide you needed to start a property management company? Well, I think it's kind of the stepchild in the real estate world. And I think a lot of times property management companies get a bad rap. And a lot of times it's because they don't do a good job. And I had the first one, I fired them.

I had the second one, I fired them. And so, in a lot of it. I didn't want to be taking the phone calls for a broken toilet or whatever when you're trying to do all these other deals. That's crazy. I know people do it and that's great, but it wasn't where my game plan was. And so kind of in that same time frame, I finally found a person that was an awesome partner. And he and I kind of worked through systematically backing into it. So what do we charge?

What does it look like? How do we find the best talent in the best spot and produce a, a company that's that's really actually delivering what we want to deliver it for, for us, and therefore we can deliver that for our clients. Got it. Got it. So,

I mean, it kind of came out of the necessity you were working with these companies that kind of seemed like they weren't doing the job. And since you couldn't find one, you just started it. Is that kind of a fair assessment? That's exactly right. Yeah,

exactly right. Okay. Yeah. Which is what we tell for it all the time. Yeah, everyone tells me, We had a show with Enrique Jevins back a few months ago, and the whole show, he was just like, you need to start your own property management company, because that's what he did, and that's

what you've done. So, yeah, it's definitely on the horizon for me, I think. I think the question just becomes, are you willing to put the time into the systems to create that thing? And if you are, then you should. You know, if you're not, and you don't want to deal with that, then you shouldn't. And you should just keep shopping and finding the best, you know, one out there. So, so let's talk about first, the companies you worked with, Why did they suck so bad? You know, I think a lot of things come back to communication and comes back to what the expectation is and what the delivery of the expectation is. And so on just a number of things, whether it was taking care of in knowing what's going on in the properties or the quality of tenant that's getting put in there or, you know, routine checkups or.

or systems that were in place that were taking care of, you know, maintenance items or whatever that might be. And so for me, when I kept having to ask questions and then I would call somebody to, you know, go fix something or whatever. And so I'm thinking, well, I'm paying these guys to do all this stuff. And why, you know, I'm still having to have this, you know, vacuum of time put into it. And so I'd rather put that energy into my own guys doing an awesome job. creating another job out there in the world for a company that actually cares and wants to do something,

you know, really, really well. Awesome. So for the people listening, I mean, you know, I know I've been through this and, you know, was one of my nightmares. So any pearls of wisdom for folks who are trying to screen or trying to find somebody, how do you find the company that is good, you know, communication, does maintenance, looks. put some good tenants. I mean, how do I know that up front without going through and firing one after the next after the next? That's a great question. I think you have to kind of see what is the

value of that of that company and where they coming from. And one of the things that I love telling people was I fired the first one. I fired the second one. And so I fired myself trying to do it all and put in an awesome person in the right spot. And I think if you find one that's values lined up with yours and and with the quality of their work lines up with yours, then you've found the right fit. So somebody might just say, I don't really care that much about condition. I'm going to go in there and fix this, fix that, whatever, and you can find the cheapest guy. That might be your thing. You might be, you know, for us, we go in and we basically do a full rehab every time we buy another house. So whether you're one of the term key clients or you're one of the tenants that live in our

houses, the tenants know now when they actually go to one in our houses, what they look like, because they've seen enough of them now. We get repeat people where they miss the first one. They come back to the second one and the third one or whatever. And that happens all the time now just because they know we're just another level up. Right on. Yeah. Okay.

So, but part of this process is actually doing a pretty, a fairly in-depth interview, I'm guessing. I mean, you really want to, to find that information out, you can't just kind of like go through the phone book and, well, okay. I just staged myself again. You can't just go on the internet and look at a website and say, oh, this is the company I want to work with. I mean, how do I actually get all that information? Do I take tours of the properties that they manage? Do I mean, are there any kind of tips that you might have?

You know, I think you could tour properties if you wanted to do that. It depends on if you're going to fly out or not. That's a reasonable thing. I think you get on a call and go through the things that are really important to you. You want to know what they charge. You want to know how they manage. You want to know, how are you getting your money? How are you getting your, you know, how do the tenants come in?

What's the time frame for turning around stuff? How often are you in the property as a manager? How often are you in communication with the tenant? If you're in communication with the tenant, how do you know? Yeah. Keep going. Don't stop. No, seriously, man.

I mean, awesome. Keep, keep. I mean, what other points? Yeah. I think it's important to know what kind of system in place. So I can tell you, we had a gentleman bring a property on a few weeks ago who had a lovely lady managing it, but she literally would take the check and drive it to the bank and deposit it and drive another check over to him or whatever. And I'm like, dude, you know,

if you like cheap, keep staying with her, man. But if you like awesome, then come on over. And so if you want to see it online in the system and everything comes in and comes out and you don't have to do anything. What is that time value worth? What is all the information where you have it right there? And so we're constantly trying to make that system better and better and put the right people in those positions. So we actually hired a property manager who had had decades of experience who had a marketing degree in hotel marketing management. And we paid somebody that we really felt could be a leader in care.

own that, you know, the desire of what we wanted to be as a company. Yeah. And I think that's key right there. You know, you hired somebody who could take ownership of it, even, you know, not legally, but like in their mind, like they, this was their project. They could help run that division of your company and they had some kind of like incentive for doing it or, you know, they had a reason for excelling it. I think that's just key in any business you have. Exactly. And we wanted to like them, you know. So you really want, and I genuinely like all of our people. And I think that's just so important what the culture of that company is. And then the tenants understand what that culture of that company is. And you can actually explain,

like, we have really clean and safe and nice properties, you know, and that we have those expectations of the tenant. We have those expectations of the owner. And we want that. And we're not going to take your property if you don't want that. Yeah. Well, I think this would be a good time to maybe transition and talk a little bit about the idea of, you know, hiring people. Because obviously you've, when we talked to you last time, I don't think you had any employees. I think it was just you. And now, and you have several now, right?

How many, do you know how many you have by now? You know, I think it's, I think it's eight overall. Okay. We have a couple of virtual assistants who do various things. And let me back up and give credit where credit is due. So I brought on a business partner who actually came to me through bigger pockets and and just we had an incredible, so yeah, thank you guys. Awesome.

And so he called me, I think, on a, it was like a Tuesday or Wednesday and then flew out the following, like Wednesday or Thursday. So, you know, seven, eight days later. And we, uh, we just hit it off really, really well. And he really understands in this system building. And he's really good on, on understanding how to hire people. Because frankly, I hadn't done a very good job and I tried to do some of that. you know, and then that really put me in a position where I could go out and I really excel at putting deals together and negotiating and finding deals and working those kind of things and then just,

you know, putting it into the machine, which he really was helping create on that system side. You know, I see that a lot in real estate partnerships where one person is generally better at putting together a deal and finding the deal and negotiating like that, that side of things. and somebody else is much better at the systems and the business and running the internal stuff. I see that. And very few people are good at both. And so I'm a big believer in partnerships. I mean,

people know that in the book on investing with no and low money down. I talk a whole chapter in there about partnerships because I just, I'm a strong believer and then I use them all time. Is that what you saw in your, where can they find that book? Oh, they can find that book, the best real estate book ever written.

BiggerPockets.com slash no money. But so, like, is that how you found it in your own life as well, uh, that he was just better at the systems. you were better at that. Is that how that generally breaks down? Just glaringly obvious. Yeah. So just, you know, and not that I wasn't able to do those things,

but I didn't like doing them very well, very much, and I didn't do them nearly as well as he did. And so when you look at scaling from doing, you know, say five or ten deals in a year to doing five or ten deals in a month, you know, they're just, you have to be able to put those things in place in somebody who can actually recognize and help do that. Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. You know, I'm rereading right now. We'll re-listening to the four-hour work week, you know, the Tim Ferriss book. And it's been, you know, a number of years since I read it. So I'm listening to as I go to the gym or whatever, I'm out, you know, driving around.

And one thing he said in there just really stood out to me this time around was he said, you know, don't focus on your weaknesses, always trying to improve them. You know, focus on your strengths and improve them and have other people do things that you're not good at. And you know what I heard that, like, it really, like, hit me hard. Like, there's certain things that I'm always bad at it. I've said it before on the podcast here. Like, I'm bad at managing contractors. I'm just not good at it. I'm bad at confrontation.

I just, I just hate doing it. I hate that part of it. And so like, shut up. I know, yeah, I don't shut up.

So like I, should we keep going, hold on. Yeah, yeah, keep telling me on my negative. There's lots of things I'm not good at. So,

like, I'm working with a partner now who's good at managing contractors because I'm not going to, for years I tried to fix what I was bad at. I tried to get more, you know, assertive and tried to be better at yelling at a contractor. But then I just, I'm not that guy. I just can't do it. So yeah, I'm going to outsource that.

Well, so let me ask this question to both of you guys then. How do you self-evaluate to know what you're actually good at and what you're bad at? You know, I think for some people, as Nathan said, it's glaringly obvious. But for other people, I think there's a lot of people out there who have never taken the opportunity to look at themselves and say, hey, what is it that I'm good at? What is it that I'm bad at? What are my skills? And there's nothing wrong with that. but I think it's something we don't learn in school. It's not something that college teaches you or your parents don't necessarily show you.

This is something that, you know, I think as you grow, I think those people that are successful tend to be the ones who can look at themselves and those who, you know, sometimes get stuck oftentimes don't have the capacity to do it. So any tips that you guys have on doing that? I tell you what, I think one of the huge things for me and I'm a huge Timothy Farris fan too.

And I think when you put yourself in a position to learn, you're going to put yourself in a position to also learn about yourself. And if you're willing to be open with yourself about it in that kind of dialogue, whether it's literally a book to your brain and you're allowing those things to process. And so when you go back and look at it, so like, you know, what you said, don't focus on the weaknesses, do the things you're strong at. Well, if you're looking through the day and you say,

well, I did this and I did this and I did this and I have a pile of all of this over here, which I haven't done. That's a pretty clear indicator of what you did and didn't do. Yeah. And so, you know, I think if you're honest with yourself and you come back and actually, frankly, my partner and I have this exact conversation, I mean, literally, what do you see that I'm doing that's really going well? What do you see that I'm doing that's not? And in reverse, you know? And I think to piggyback on that, I think people are better at point in, like, sounds funny, but like people are better at pointing out your flaws than you are pointing out your flaws. So yeah, there's a book I read called, uh, was six months to six figure income. It's by

a guy named like Peter Vougal or Voug or something like that. Really good book. Definitely recommend it. But in this book, he talks about that kind of same concept of knowing what you're good at and not. And his suggestion, and I love this, is go an email like 10 of your closest friends and family and just say, hey, this is kind of an awkward email, but I need your help with something. I need you to be honest with me. You know, what do you see as my top three things I'm great at in life? And what do you see as my three things that I struggle with the most? and be totally honest, you can make it anonymous if you want to, you know, send it to this person and they'll send it to me. But I just need to know so I can, and I thought that was a fantastic suggestion.

It's a good idea. Yeah, just to know what you're, I mean, people would tell me, you're not assertive. I noticed that you never actually did it. I didn't get the email. No, I didn't. I wouldn't send it to you anyway. No, but I verbally asked a few people when I read that. I was like, I'm going to try that. So I like, I asked my brother and I asked my parents. I'm like, what do you guys see me doing? I didn't do the email, but I think it's a cool idea. Yeah.

Yeah. It's great. I think so too. And I think it's just helpful. It's a good reminder of what to work on. Here's a question for you. How do you decide if you want to, you should partner with someone or hire someone, right? Because sometimes, like I could have hired a project manager to manage my flips, but I decided to partner instead. Was that a good choice, bad choice? How do I know? man that's an awesome question and I think I think part of it is is experience in putting yourself in a position where you you know risk reward of you know what am I putting into this partnership and what's my expectations going in and really making sure that you're setting that versus you know if your goal is just to do X number of flips and you can hire this person to do that and you like being the only person and maybe you're really good at a systems and

and whatever, and you can hire somebody who's, you know, bringing in deals for you or a realtor or whatever that is. I think that's cool. I think for me, the thing that really gets me fired up is that on the awesome days, we're high-fiving and we're fired up. And on the crappy days, we're also, you know, fist bumping and saying, hey, man, we're stacking hands and we're going to work through this. And there's another person to appreciate wherever you are and ride the roller coaster a little bit with you, you know, on the other side of it. I love that. Right on, right on. All right on. So, so let's go back. So we talked about partnerships and we started talking about the actual employees. So I love your kind of thought about, you know, do you want to go ride that

roller coaster with a partner? And I love that concept. I think that's great. So the people that you do end up hiring. Now, I actually just hired my first full-time employee actually last week. Yeah, pretty exciting. And so, thanks. Yeah. Who is it? Who is it? What do they do? They're going to do- Well, I just started. I like to shine Brandon's shoes. I clean his cat later. Yeah, yeah. I sometimes come as geared for him.

And oftentimes, yeah, yeah, you know. All right, so this person is going to be admin assistant, first of all. That's what officially I advertised for. I bet I just put it on Facebook and it said, hey, I'm looking for this. I said, that person could be doing anything from answering phone calls from motivated sellers to inspecting properties, taking photos, to getting me Starbucks, to mowing my lawn. I was like, I don't know what you'll be doing, but you'll be doing everything that I do currently, that so, like, or most of what I do currently that I don't want to do anymore. And so I found a woman

who's, I think she's going to be fantastic at it. And I'm really excited to get her on board. He's got a 90-year-old woman mowing as long as the funniest thing. You've got to speak. Like, she literally auditioned with this video of her behind this mower. This is not true. This is not true at all. All right. It's so awesome. So, so let's talk about the hiring people. I mean, how do you know who to hire first? how did that process go for you? Well, I will tell you one of the things that my partner brings into the table is really a great skill in kind of talking through some of those questions. And I felt like I was good at understanding and looking at the relationship side of that.

But I really felt like he much more strongly brought that understanding of how to interview. And man, I tell you what, I think one of the. the most important things is, well, first of all, you have to know what the heck you're asking for. And I'm getting there. And then you have to understand your expectation of what they're going to do. And so I think that was really a learning process where we could come back and say, in the same case for us, we're like, well, okay, you're property manager, but you're also going to end up doing, you know, one, two, three, four, and five. And then we have to go back and say, okay, well, you know, did we end up actually? doing one, two, three, four, and five, obviously that's post-hiring process. But I think, you know,

do you get along with them? Do you like them? Do they actually have the skill set that you're looking for? And then you're trying to look for the puzzle pieces about where am I hearing their strengths? Where am I hearing their weaknesses? And this is something where I'm just really trying to bend more in tune with and more in tune with so that, you know, I might be disappointed that this little thing over here is not happening happening but I can I can look at it and say okay well you know what our our assistant over here could handle that task and then we could take that thing off this person's plate to do what they do really really well and so as a manager to me it's like first do you like the person are they bought into your idea and design of what your company does

and then you know how are you helping them exploit their their strengths and putting them in a position to succeed with that. Yeah, I like that. I like that. I want to take it back to one of Brandon's question, which I think kind of got gleaned over, not intentionally, unless it was, in which case, you know, you're not going to get away with avoiding this question, Mr. politician. The question is, how do you know who to hire first? Who to hire first? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that seems, that's, I think, one of the more complicated things. I know I struggled with it when I brought on Brandon as my first nondon

technical hire. I'm like, well, I could hire one of 30 people, 30 roles, why this role? And that was a real challenge. So, you know, for you, what was the mindset and who did you actually hire first? Well, I hired first property manager. And so she was somebody who, well, for me, I mean, it was some, it was a pain point. So trying to manage from a, you know, managerial standpoint on that, on the, you know, actual management side of the rentals themselves. versus doing deals opportunity. So I was doing X number of dollar an hour work here, not to say it's any less important because it's not,

but my time value was best served doing this, you know, finding deals, doing deals, running deals. So she was somebody who could come in and really to take the opportunity of that time, who did a much better job of it, you know and and handle more properties coming in which therefore generated more revenue which therefore you know gave us just that much more opportunity

which we then hired another a leasing assistant that helps her and so you know it was understanding what what can she do or he do that covers things that you a either don't want to do aren't doing or you know would be time about

you know serve doing other okay perfect I love that and and I've done the same thing it's it's been very organic. It's what's this pain point. Let's find somebody. They come in. They fill it. They're going to create other new pain points for themselves and for you.

And then you've got to kind of prioritize and juggle. It's actually funny because independent of one another, Brandon and Josh, at the same time, decided that we were both going to hire our own administrative assistance. Which you're still

looking. So if people are interested. I am still looking. I am. I am. But for the very reason of what you said, you know, time value of money, I stopped and I was looking at what I was doing. What was my job? You know, what had Josh's job of Bigger Pockets become? And I realized that I wasn't actually doing all the things that I need to be doing as the guy who runs this company. I was doing 80, 90 percent administrative work. I'm doing paperwork. I'm a paper pusher. And, you know, I'm not a good paper. Oh, yeah. It's terrible. I can't stand it. You know, there are people who love doing that stuff. And I'm trying to find that person to come in and take over that part of my life so I could kind of get back in there. And but yeah, so looking at, you know, where it is that you fail or what are you doing that? You probably shouldn't be doing. And then little by little, that'll change over time.

That's going to be dynamic. And at least that's how I've, you know, grown bigger pockets is find the holes and try and plug people in there. Well, I think to that end, one of the things, and maybe a great place to start for you is try even a virtual assistant. And we have a couple of them. And I tell you what, it's a great lesson in how to manage. It's a great lesson in where you're missing something. And I had a call, because I'm always trying to learn. I called and it's off bigger pockets and I can't remember his name. He's out of Chicago. He's got a huge management company. I'd love to plug his name right now, but I can't. member. Was that Mark, Mark Aynley? Or is that Wendell? I know they're both in Chicago. Bree.

She's in Chicago. It wasn't Brie. Just name dropper. Take it out of podcasts. You got some Chicago. Yeah. And they were wonderful. He was wonderful.

It took my time and took the phone call. And one of the awesome nuggets out of that conversation was that he does one pagers for all his stuff. And a one pager could be literally, Josh gets up in the morning. And the first thing I do is I check my, I check my email and I email these 10 people. Well, guess what? You just create a one pageer and do the work once.

And then you send that to your virtual assistant or sister or whatever and say, this is the process and go do it. And then you review it with them and you do it again. And then pretty soon you're recognizing the things that you actually had to do in the first time. And so we've started creating this one pagers just like he had suggested. And so it's just been a game changer because now I can send it to the virtual assistant. Here you go, man. here's what I need.

And here's the checkboxes. Here's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then go go do it. I love that. I mean, when I first started hiring, we hired a virtual assistant. It was kind of both worked for both me and Josh, did a lot of stuff. And his name's Dave. And Dave's actually the one editing this podcast because that's exactly what we did.

I was editing it over and over and over. And then one day we were like, why am I doing this? Like, I could just write up a, I use Google Docs. I wrote up a description of exactly how I edit the podcast. And I gave it to him. And he excels at it. I mean, he's like amazing. He takes over. He's been doing all our video. And he loves it. And he loves it. And he loves it. And

again, it was what I was not that good at. And I didn't really like doing it. He's great at. And again, I like that you said the one page. I've never heard it put like that. I was just think of it. Find a system, create the system and then have somebody run that system. But I like terminology of just a one page or how do you do it? And I mean, over like, I mean, over time, there's probably like a hundred things a person does all day, if not more that could be outsource. It's just, it's almost like, well, it would take me too long to explain it to somebody. So I'll just do it myself. But when it's five minutes a day, every day for, you know, 365 days a year, it's like, well, that would have been worth these 20 minutes to write up a document or record

a screenshot or whatever on how to do it. And if you take that to another end and say, well, you did a one page or today and a one page or tomorrow and, you know, we try to do one or two a week. Well, guess what? The thought of like creating an operational manual for your company is crazy, but the thought of doing one, you know, five or ten minute here and five or ten minute here, all of a sudden we have the start of what is really a great operational manual for your company. Yeah. So what I actually did is after we, you know, we interviewed this lady that we wanted to hire. And once I realized what she was good at, she actually was an administrative assistant for a, probably the largest contracting company in my town. So she's doing it for contractors already,

which is her strength, which, so then we sat down and me and my wife went to Starbucks together, pulled out a notebook, and we wrote down every single system that we have in our life that potentially she could take. And then we have a list. So every day we're doing exactly that. We're going to create one system a day and just sit down. It takes us an hour or two to write up an entire whatever. But over the course of the next two weeks, when she gets officially on board, we'll have a nice manual of everything she'll be doing. And then I can train her and she'll take over, you know, probably 70% of what I do in terms of my real estate business.

That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, we like to say it's the kind of, what if they get hit by a car manual to? It's, you know, if somebody that you hire, you know, God forbid something happens to them, at least now you have all the procedures written out so that someone. somebody else could kind of come in and much more easily take over. Absolutely. Well, and, you know, when we think about hiring like our property management manager, for instance,

you know, in the back of our minds, are, you know, is this person the one that can run the company as a whole? Or is this the person that can run the whatever? And how are you establishing the systems in place so that you know that that person could deliver and train, you know, the person that's going to come take that role? and they actually know what the heck they would be telling and that they do. 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.

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Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. So I want to shift a little bit. One of the things that we had kind of in our notes here was lifestyle design. Something that you're big into, supposedly. Rumor has it. what is lifestyle design and how does running the business the way you run it work within kind of creating this lifestyle design? Yeah.

So that this is something I am learning and actively making myself do a better job of. And so I'm not going to suggest that I'm awesome at it yet, but it's something that's a major driver, right? So, for instance, last year, we love Florida. I live in the middle of nowhere, you know, in the middle of the center of the country. There's no beach, no sand, no ocean, right? So we love going there. And so our goal is to be able to spend more time in longer chunks of time where we have a business running and operating.

I could work a few hours a day or whatever that might be and be able to function and do things actually enjoying that with the family. and one of the things that you know you work and work and work and are we working for money's sake and just to buy more stuff or buy more whatever and so when I when I started really looking at it looking at my time and these crazy days and appointments and whatever went to is this is this in fact the best use of my time one am I missing time with my kids and wife at home and my missing opportunities to just enjoy life a little bit more, even though I don't need to necessarily go get that, you know, tent deal for the month or whatever that might be. And so it was really just kind of a, you know, looking back at my own self and saying,

what's most important in how do I create, you know, those passive income lines and all this stuff we just talked about all feeds right back into that because if you build the systems to do it, you get the right people on board, then you are able to actually build a company and that's generating revenue and doing things that is helping you fulfill doing what you want to do as well.

Let me take that a second and kind of play with it a little bit. So now you've got a company, you've got eight people working for you. Maybe you'll have 10, maybe you'll have 50, maybe you'll have 500, or maybe you'll stay at 8. You're running this entity. Do you have any fears, concerns, worries about, hey, I'm going away for six months

and traveling with my family. I'm still working, but, you know, my employees are still stuck here on the ground. And, you know, what do I do? You know, how do I kind of deal with, you know, some of the stuff? Do you have any kind of, you know, fears about that? Well, first, although six months sounds lovely. I have not taken six months at this point. It's more in the, in the week or two category. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, that's a real question. That is the question. It's like, you know, at this point, I would not do that just because I don't think we're there. And I wouldn't want to, you know, you always want to put yourself and your people in a position to win, to succeed. And so building it around that and where the things are working, you know, we want to let them run with them because, you know, they don't want to be micromanaged. And I don't like my, you know, that's not my style anyway.

And so I think the bigger question is, is we do. it in little bites. I just listened to a book called No Hero and there's this awesome line in it that said slow is smooth, smooth as fast. And so we do it, you know, we do it slow, we do it right. We get more efficient and then we can run with it. And so that's to me where, you know, right now we're just learning how to continue doing that better, you know, faster and then, you know, obviously gives me more time to do what I want to do too. Right on, right on. Quick follow up with somebody who's looking at real estate investing and says, hey, I don't have a staff,

I don't have the capacity to do that. How do I build a lifestyle? How do I design this lifestyle around a real estate business that's just getting started? Or is it the more, at least as I would think, the more realistic, you're not going to have what you want as soon as you start. You've got to work to get there

and it takes time to kind of put it all together. Well, what's interesting to me is I now meet with people all the time who make these amazing incomes and work all these hours and have the big house and all this stuff. And to me, it's, you know, you have to actually flip it on its end first and say, what am I actually spending my dollars on? What am I actually spending my time on? And what do I really want if I could just do it? and then I think that a lot of times, and I know for myself, when I looked at it, it wasn't as much dollars as it was time. And so, you know, for that person, you might say, okay, well, you know, for the next two years, my goal is to buy X number of houses, you know, based on whatever your, you know, economic situation is or, you know, ability or whatever. And you say, okay, well, I'll hire that, you know, property management or whatever.

And maybe the first thing is you're going to cover your car payment. and then you're going to cover your house payment and then you're going to cover your whatever and then you cover your whole income and that's how I backed into it I said well how many deals do I need to do to equal this thing and then it doesn't become so complicated and you can get out of that analysis paralysis stuff

and just execute on doing what the actual plan is. Awesome. Yeah and we covered that in a lot of detail on Bigger Pockets show 151 with Clayton Morris finding your freedom number it's it's kind of backing up doing the math and figuring out how much money do you actually need how many deals do you need to get there and running with it so yeah that's awesome man i love it i love yeah i have a question for you uh before we get to like the fire around i kind of wrap i kind of

i kind of want to wrap up a lot of we've been talking about and scaling your business growing at which you've done significantly do you have a like one thing that you would attribute your growth over the last year or is there like a certain couple things that you can point out that just really impacted you and made the big difference well first of all um i'm not suggesting everybody should go out and quit their job or anything but uh i found myself working a full-time job and flipping like seven houses at once and and uh they were all for me but um that's that's that's that's a crazy thing at some point you're like okay well if you're going to do it just go do it already and i'm i'm very glad that i did that and so you know if you're going to do it be all in and

just do it and if you're going to be all in to buy two houses awesome if you're going to be all in to build a, you know, giant company or whatever, then just do it. But I think the second thing is just looking at the successes and being happy with it and in that moment, but also every single time you're learning and learning and learning and refining and learning. And so whether you've done one deal or a hundred deals or a thousand deals, I don't about you guys, and I'm sure you'd say the same thing, that I'm always learning. And it might be some little title company thing or it might be some little law question or might be a little thing, how we can get a tenant in two days faster or whatever. But I'm not afraid to say, oh, you know what? I think we could do that

better. Let's try this. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Absolutely. That's great. Well, hey, cool. Well, why don't we shift gears a little bit here and head over to the... It's time for the fire round. All right. The fire round questions come direct out of the bigger pockets. Forums, these are real-life questions that investors are asking, not just me and Josh's curiosity. Number one, when getting started in buy and hold investing, how many should I try to do in a year? That's a great question, since it just feeds right into what we just talked about. I think it's all about you have to understand what the risk is in the deals. You have to understand how much money you have to invest in them, and you have to understand

what's your willingness on leverage or, you know, are you buying all cash or whatever? And so if you can say I have X number of dollars and I can buy X number of deals, I don't think that I could just say, you know, you should buy two houses this year. You might have a million dollars sitting there and an amazing partner who you could partner with. And clearly the number would not be two. At the same time, you know, I meet people all the time like the local, you know, rea meeting or whatever who are literally sitting on this, you know, stockpile of cash. They've been saving forever and they still haven't pulled their trigger on their first deal.

And so, you know, I think that that comes with having somebody. whether you're paying for a coach or a mentor or, you know, just somebody that's in your local market that's actually doing what you want to do, you'd have to just, you need those relationships where they can say, this is a good deal, you know, go for it. And to build it, like we talked about, you know, backing into the dollars, backing into the number of deals, and then you have a real good sense of what you can do. Yeah, right on. I love that. Great. Great. All right, my question, what is the best or most efficient way to finance a buy and hold property without having a huge down payment.

And no, you cannot plug the greatest book ever written by Brandon Turner. The book uninvestment. Are you saying the greatest book ever written by me? Or the greatest book ever written, comma, written by Brandon Turner? I was just quoting... Because I think it's the greatest book ever written, period.

And it happens to be written by Brandon. I think your rental property book is better than the no money book. Okay, I do like the rental property book probably... Together combined. Okay, moving on. Nathan. I mean, if you just package your up and you put like the two greatest books ever? I mean, what is it? I mean, is it like, that's a better deal. It's a package ever. Yeah. I don't know why. Why don't we do that

actually, Josh? Why don't we like package them together? That's a great idea. Nathan, look at you. I love this idea. I'm making it happen. It's a good thing. We are in the process of hiring somebody to run our publishing business. So there you got. All right. And then I guess, you know, maybe we'll write another book and you can, you know, we can, you can give me some credit for coming up with a package idea. There you go. All right. So I'll have the question to do it. finding the down payment? Or financing about...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this is a question I run into every day. I'm sure, you know, everybody on there wants to know that. And so, yes, for the record, I have bought quite a number of houses with zero of my dollars in them. I have, you know, guys all the time that we are able to get equity in deals for them. So I think there's a couple of points here. You have to understand what your level of sophistication is to understand the deal. and you have to understand where your risk is in it

and you have to make sure that you know what the heck you're going to do with it once you buy it. And so to me, I, you know, and not to go against any book written or anything else, I really like, and I tell people all the time,

when I look back at the first couple of deals that I've done or whatever, I really like those people to have some dollars in their bank account. And that might be, generating some wholesale deals so you're still doing real estate stuff or you know going to partner on a flip and and I hear people whine all the time like well I didn't get 50% and I'm like well you know 20% of something is better than zero and especially when you you know you get somebody who can help walk you through whatever that thing is that you want to do if it's flipping or wholesaling or buying hold or whatever you should find somebody that does that really well and so I think it's

important to know how to structure those deals and you can and you build relationships over I'm like I have with private lenders and banks and all that kind of stuff where you can do that and you can find those big deals but you also have to understand how to get there first too. Yeah. I love that. And I think like I'm 100% in agreement. You know, a lot of people look at the idea of no money down or low money down is like I'm broke, therefore how do I invest? And I would say like low and no money down or creative investing has nothing to do with the amount of money in your pocket. It's about putting, you know, like just because you're, you know, like people that are multi-millionaires or billionaires are still doing deals with no money down because they can,

right? Like, it's not about the money, money, money you have money. And you should have money, because I would never want to tell anybody to go invest if you're flat broke. Go earn some money. Go hustle. Go whatever you got to do. Get that cash coming in. But then, but you don't need $100,000 or a million in the bank just to buy a rental property either. But you do have to have that. I like to describe it a lot of times. Kind of analogy I use as, imagine like a toolbox you have, right? So like in your toolbox, if you have one thing in there, you've got a hammer. you know, you can go and pound a hole in a wall and that's about it. You can maybe hit somebody in the head with it if they're breaking into your house.

But that's all you can accomplish, right? But you got a saw, you got nails. All of a sudden, you can do a few more things and then add in a drill in there, add in, you know, a carpet layer. And all of a sudden, like, the more tools you have in your toolbox, the greater projects you can take on. And so the more you know about creative financing, the more tools you have in your mental toolbox, the more projects you can take on.

Exactly. I mean, that's 100% right. And then when you look at it, you know, and then kind of back to, where we are, where we have some wholesale deals, and we have some, which, by the way, the first wholesale deal we did was 12.35 p.m. January 1st. So I was pretty fine about that.

Nice. We just started early. It was a good one. Yeah, it was a good one. And it sold in two hours via email, so that's awesome too. That's cool. At 235 a.m. PM, PM, sorry.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I think the email went out around 10 or 1030, and by 1230 it was a done deal. Fair enough. Yeah. So I think when you can look at those things, so let's say, you know, you're working your full-time job and you're saying, I want to get in real estate, I want to get in real estate, well, guess what? Where are your dollars going? Do you need that brand new Mercedes? Do you, you know, and maybe you're not at that place, but most of the people I end up talking to

are actually making, you know, a lot of times a six-figure salary and they put all this dollars and all this stuff. And I'm like, well, you know, my wife and I, we had to back down our budget. so we had to back down these things and quickly we could replace the money that we wanted for that thing with the rental house that we just put the dollars into that's now paying us every month to have it. So do you want it now or do you want it in six months that's, you know, in perpetuity or whatever? Yeah, I love it. Cool.

All right, moving on. Next one. Do you need an attorney to do your first deal? You know, I am a big fan of having your whole team. And so you might not need a specific attorney for whatever, but I strongly think that it's important to have, whether it's an appraiser or an attorney or it's a, you know, mentor understanding how to put the deal together or, you know, banker, property manager. I think it's just, it's just so vital to have your team in place or know somebody who knows the person. So if it's an attorney question or law question, you better be asking the attorney, you know? If it's a title question, ask the title company.

So cool. Awesome. All right, my last question. My market's pretty competitive and I keep missing deals. So how can I find a good deal in a hot market? I think a lot of people are experiencing that right now and we're experiencing that same thing now too. And I think there's a couple things. First of all, just because you want a deal doesn't mean you should go buy one.

It doesn't mean you should just go pay more money for something. it also means that it's an opportunity to be creative. And so, you know, maybe the thing I'm just desperately trying to do, there's a, you know, 100,000 people last night watch HETV and today that they're fired up and they want to go buy a flipper house, you know. Well, good for you. But that doesn't mean that I'm willing to pay what that person's willing to pay. And I would rather have the opportunity cost to make it in something else.

And so I think if they're missing deals, missing deals, missing deals, You know, first of all, look at what you're looking at, you know, double-check your numbers, have somebody look at, you know, are you being too conservative with your values? And then if not, maybe you say, well, I'm going to put these dollars to work in something else. And then I can, you know, bank some of that for when I can get a little bit better deal. Okay. Well, let me ask you a little more specific. You mentioned earlier you got two deals you just closed this morning. Do you mind me asking, how did you get those?

Like, what is your main technique today to get deals? Well, kind of going to that strengths and weaknesses. So we have kind of a marketing partner on the wholesale side. And so leads come in and they're kind of already vetted as it comes to me, which really uses my time well and uses that person's time well. And so we go out and I'll kind of look up, you know, I've done my homework in just a few minutes at this point and kind of understand what at least as much as you can,

what you're walking into. and so those leads just came in literally from marketing that we do and with our partners. Is that like direct mail or something? There's all kinds of different stuff. Yes. There's direct mail and signs. And I think there's some online marketing as well. And so and I think, you know, but I bought deals off off of Facebook posts.

You know, I bought deals off Craigslist ads. I bought deals off of, you know, people that just knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who is sitting in a living room talking about the last podcast that, you know, we did. And so I think it's, you have to not limit opportunity and also not be afraid of where the deals will come from. And then you also have to be able to execute when you get there too. That's the big one, right? If you can't do that, then you quickly develop a reputation and the deals dry up, don't they? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you so much for, for, you, Your answers, I think it's time to move on. What do you think, Brandon? It is time to move on to the world famous.

Famous for these questions, we ask every single guest out of 150-some shows now. So we're going to throw them at you. Number one, what is, and maybe this is different than before. Maybe it's the exact same. I don't remember what you said last time. But what is your favorite real estate book? Wait, aren't you, I mean, why do we even ask that question, Brandon? I mean, there's only one book that matters.

Wait, wait, wait. I thought there was the package of books. It's the package. The book on rental property, book on managing, and no and low money. Besides those, what are your favorite real estate books? You know, I loved reading the millionaire real estate investor. I just liked how the book was laid out. I liked how there was some step-by-step processes.

There's some real, like, kind of nuts and bold stuff, but there's also, like, understanding team and team structure. And just to piggyback on that. that too would just be like the Jim Collins. It's a non-real estate book, but Jim, Jim Collins, good to great and understanding what does that actually, what does that awesome team look like in whatever you're trying to achieve within that construct? Okay. Right on. Well, that kind of possibly answers my question, which is favorite business book. Favorite business book? Well, I am a huge fan of the four-hour work week. I don't know if you can

consider it a business book or not, but I do. I think so too. I think from a, from a design of understanding how you want to build your life and your time and those kind of things, it really made a huge impact for me, that's for sure. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. All right, what about hobbies? What do you do for fun these days? You know, I go to a beard growing competition. What's the, there's no competition, right? I mean, it's just like, it's there. I am thoroughly enjoying time with my kiddos. And so I love finding things to do that's just like really, really fun. And like a couple days ago, my daughter comes out and she looks out the front door.

She's two. And she very excitedly with that excited two-year-old face, is, Daddy, snow. You know, so I mean, come on, you've got to take time to play and do the fun things. So it's not necessarily a hobby, but I just love that time. And then I've been a professionally trained musician for a long time, so I'm still trying to find the balance and doing music things that really feed me as a person in my soul, but don't necessarily are creating my income anymore. Right on.

Yeah, I hear daddy snow and I take them and I chuck them into it. We spend an hour and a half in six-degree weather going down our yard and launching the as fast as I could on the sled. Nice. That sounds fun. Yeah, I don't actually do that. Daddy, snow, alright. You might do that.

I don't know. All right. Number, by the way, I don't know if you know that's Nathan. My wife is pregnant with our first child, so I'm excited. Little girl. I don't think I've announced it. It's a little girl. Oh, dude.

That's amazing. I'm excited. I'm excited for the snow trips. Yeah. I don't know yet. I had a bunch of boy names. Yeah, I had a boy names picked out. Now I got a girl to figure out.

Weird. All right. Joshola. Joshola. That's a good idea. All right. What do you believe? Bigger Pockettina. That's a middle name.

That's a much better middle name. All right. Question number four, the famous four. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think it just comes back time and time again to deciding what you want to do, executing what you want to do. looking at what you did and then refining and do it again. And I think there's no one little like this thing changes everything, but all those little things change everything.

And so to me, if you want to be a great real estate investor, then you have to just, you have to keep at it. And you can't be afraid to fail and you can't be afraid to screw something up and you have to come back and fix it and say, we're not going to do it that way again or whatever, and then do it again and do it and do it and do it over and again. Cool. Right on. That's great.

Love it. All right. Well, Nathan, it's been a pleasure before we let you go. Where can people find out more about you? Well, they can go to Bridge, B-R-I-D-G-E, and it's bridge equity, but there's only one E. I know it's kind of awkward to say. So Bridge Equity, B-R-I-D-G-E, Q-U-I-T-Y-Y.com, and they can find us there for property management and properties and whatever else.

And you also write on the Bigger Pockets blog and you got a profile and all that of their stuff, right? I sure do. Yep, exactly. Awesome. Awesome. Well, listen, man, it's been a pleasure. Hopefully next time we see you.

Your beard is down to the ground. And lots of luck to you. Thanks, guys. And I'm sure it will be. I see around. All right. Oh, man, that was awesome. Really, really good show.

Yeah. You know, every once in a while you eat that show. kind of happens every week. It hits you lately, right? It hits you right where you're at in your life. And for me, that was, I mean, today's was right on. I think for you too probably. Yeah.

Oh, do you want me to say something? I'm your assistant. I mean, I'm just waiting for you to give me orders. I was like, why are you not talking? What's wrong with this guy? Is my mute mic off again? I'm muted? I don't know.

Fine. All right, assistant, you can talk again. It's okay. You have my permission. Excellent. Yes, it was a great show. Nathan was an awesome guest and lots of, lots of good things to share. So get out there.

attention, try and do what we talked about. I think far too many people fail to plan, fail to add structure. It was really telling for me just hearing how Nathan plots everything down, really, really builds these systems for his business. I think if more nascent new investors would do that, they see dramatic improvement and growth in their businesses. So I definitely recommend you do that. Otherwise, that's all I got. Things are great here, bigger pockets and life is good. So keep listening, guys. Spread the word about the show. Spread the word about the site. I mean, what are we at now? 430, 440,000 members. I mean, it's crazy. It's bananas. The conversations on the forums are out of this world. We have, you know, on some days,

close to 3,000 posts on the forums alone. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it's depth. It's deep. It's, It really kind of gets into it. There's just so much vibrancy on this community. So if you're not participating, you're definitely missing out. Jump on, create an account and get active on bigger pockets. And otherwise, get out there and make it happen. Do you have anything that you want to say, sir? I'll end with this.

A reminder, after the music plays here in a second, there's a little bonus for everyone about how to use Evernote for your business. So stick around for a couple more minutes. Awesome. All right, guys. Storkin, sign on. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height,

you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. All right, guys, we're actually added this in because we're having this awesome conversation post podcast and we thought we'd want to fill it in. So the question was, how are you using Evernote? Nathan came out and was talking about how he loves it. And I'm like, you know, this thing is maddening to me. I've tried it a few times. I can't do it. I know Brandon tried it a few times, but he's on it. Nathan's on it. So Nathan was talking about how he was using it and we decided to go back and record

this again. So tell us, like, how are you using Evernote to kind of run your business? Okay. Well, I use it for really almost everything. I collect receipts and take pictures. I have documents. I have, but one of the things I use it all the time for is the wholesale side of the business. So I get out of my truck, I pull up to the house and I open Evernote.

I open up my wholesale notebook. And within Evernote, when you start a new note, it'll automatically assign an address to the note. So like if you're sitting in your own house, you're going to have a million unless you label it, you know, some different name. But so when you roll up to the house, you take a picture.

Now, a lot of times, you know, I might just, I'm going to just go ahead and not worry about that. Then sometimes it's right on the money. Sometimes it might be like a, you know, a number or two off. But now you have an actual reminder of which house that is. And then you can start taking pictures. So I will, I'll actually use that same Evernote link for a number of things. I can send it to my PM for a scope of work to be actually written out.

I can send it to my marketing partner, which, then sends a link to like, so let's say, for instance, that deal we're going to send out to the buyers list. So now they can actually take that same link. And I already wrote, you know, here's the scope of work or here's the general points. Here's our asking price. Here's the address, whatever. So that can do that. I can use it for a reminder. So for instance, I had a deal that actually came together for a client in closes this week or next week. And I went back and I had an Evernote file from like four months ago with all the scope of work and all the pictures and everything. So I could literally go back in, see the same deal, same thing. And actually, we got it for seven grand

less than what we would even offer before, because timing was right. And so we were able to really, you know, get them an awesome deal. And I didn't have to go back and look at all the, do the work again because I'd already did it. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. There's an awesome podcast out there. I think Timothy Ferris interviewed the dude who started that. And there's just a whole bunch of nuggets in that, in that podcast that kind of talk about the different ways that all these different people had used it. And so once I actually listened to that podcast, it really helped me kind of put the interfaces back together on it.

And then really, frankly, it's just a matter of just starting because it's kind of beastly to get in there in the first. But, you know, use little things that work. And then we just restructured it. And you can move stuff around in there as you do it. That's cool. Yeah, I use every note for real estate, for bigger pocket stuff for, I mean, every area in my life for like,

I even have an Evernote file called Gifts for my wife. And what I do is every time, like, during the year, I just happen to think of something like, or she mentions offhand, like, you know, I could use this. I'm like, I put my phone secretly. She doesn't know this. So hopefully she's not listening right now. And she'll like, I'll pull my phone. They don't, they don't listen to the show. They don't listen to the show. Yeah. My wife listened to the last, the Hal Elrod one that we just recorded. Oh, that she loved it. Yeah. But anyway, so I'm scrolling through and I'll type in, you know, like gifts and it comes up in my phone. I'll go into that note and I'll write down,

you know, whatever, back massager or whatever, you know, like that she mentioned at Costco she wanted. and that's been a marriage lifesaver right there. Oh, there you go. That's awesome. I'm telling you, Josh, you're going to get it. You're going to figure it out, man, because it's going to be a game changer, and then you're going to have a list for your wife, and then, I mean, all of a sudden, you're going to be, you know, unbelievable.

I love it. I love it. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for sharing. Yeah, thanks, guys. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform, our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday,

and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoe 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.w.w.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. for investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.