BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 163: Making Your Real Estate Business Soar While Working a Full-Time Job with Bill Allen

Episode Date: February 25, 2016

Having a full-time job can make investing in real estate tough. However, with the right systems, people, and plan, your business can thrive no matter how few hours you have to dedicate towards it! In this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down with Bill Allen, a navy pilot who’s done just that in a very short time. We talk about hiring your first employee, finding good deals, using low down payment loans to fund your deals, and a lot more. If you are looking to make your real estate business launch into the stratosphere, don’t miss a moment of this show! In This Episode We Cover: What Bill does aside from being active duty in the U.S. Navy How he got into the real estate world The importance of being able to walk away from a house What you should know about the housing assistance program His $185k loss in an investment The difference between buying rentals and buying primary residences His first investment property What exactly a VA loan is How he uses VA loans creatively to finance his investing How to treat real estate as a business Mistakes on his first flip and what he could have done better How Bill got private money despite not having deals under his belt Tips for flipping while having a full time job How to structure your business to maximize the potential in your market Considerations while hiring your first employee The importance of setting task lists How to incentivize those you hire How many deals has Bill done Thoughts on diversifying your business Tips for creating a good website How to funnel your leads And SO much more! Links from the Show The BiggerPockets Team House Hacking 101 WordPress ThemeForest BP Podcast 144: Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone and Kicking Butt at Real Estate with Danny Johnson BP Podcast 113: Becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Investor Using The One Thing with Jay Papasan BP Podcast 077: Negotiating Your Way to 1000 Wholetail Real Estate Deals with Michael Quarles Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Investing with Low or No Money Down by Brandon Turner The Book on Flipping Houses by J. Scott The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Flipping Houses Exposed by Danny Johnson The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Tweetable Topics: “It’s not emotional. I buy it as an investment property.” (Tweet This!) “If they can do it, I can do it.” (Tweet This!) “Know what the value of something is before you pay for it.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Bill Bill’s BiggerPockets Profile Bill’s Personal Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 163. Took a step back in December and I wanted to restructure this business and really make it a business instead of a job, which is what it was. 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. home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. House to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, man? I am doing swell. How about you? I'm great. I'm great. And for anybody who's not watching this on

YouTube, Brandon looks like a seven-year-old child. Because I shave my, I don't know, lumber sexual beard. Now I just have like the five o'clock shadow going. Yeah. More like the 9 o'clock shadow. I've never seen you in the years that I've known you with as little facial hair. So it's a little jarring. I know. I look a little more like, you know, Justin Bieber, but that's okay.

I'll take it. Yeah, keep thinking it. Yeah. So it's what I was a girl say. They're all like, hey, there goes Justin Bieber. Now, life's good. That guy ate Justin Bieber, maybe. Maybe.

He's a small little guy. No, things are good. I got my assistant working new team member on. contractors coming on board at my kind of real estate business. It's been a really crazy week, which we talked about that today in the interview with Bill, and he's in a very similar spot to me. So I think people will love that. That's great. Yeah. How about you? Oh, okay. I was just in there. I was getting there. Yeah, I didn't know. I don't know. Now, things are good. Things are good. We've had a busy week. We actually brought two new people

on to bigger pockets, somebody to run our publishing arm and somebody to add to our growth team. Kim and Dave, they're going to be awesome. Kim and Dave are both awesome. They're not going to be. They are. Well, they are awesome. But they're going to do awesome things for BP. Yeah, it's exciting.

It's exciting. And we talk about hiring in the show and kind of scaling your business up. And it's been really fun to experience this within bigger pockets and really start to scale things and grow our team. And yeah, we have such an amazing team here at Bigger Pockets. And I don't think we ever really give them a great shout out here on the podcast. So I'm going to take two seconds and do that. And thanks to everybody at bigger pockets. There's a lot of moving parts to make sure that this thing comes together, this entire site. You know, the podcast couldn't happen without Hillary, who books and screens and all this stuff.

Dave, who edits. So yeah, thanks to everybody who's involved in the podcast, the site and everything else. We really do appreciate it. But let's get to today's show. We got a great show ahead. and before we go there, why don't we get to today's quick tip tip? I tried to harmonize with you there. We've got a harmony, yeah. Yeah, it's good. All right, you want to take it? No, it's all you.

Okay. All right, so today's quick tip is a motivational quick tip, and here's my motivation for you. I read this earlier today on something. I don't remember where, but it really like stung me right in the heart, and I was like, I got to talk about this. So here's my quick tip is if you are waiting to do something like you want to send out direct mail letters or you want to hire that assistant or you want to. want to, you know, whatever, make an offer, start analyzing deals, whatever it is. And you think

you have to be 100% good at it before you start doing that action. Forget about being 100% good. Just do it. You don't... That's easy for you. You're not 100% good at any. I am not 100% good, but that's why I get things done, right? So, no, but I was thinking about because, like, I've been thinking about, do I send out direct mail letters or postcards? I'm not sure which one. And I can go back and forth for months. But at the end of the day, and our guest today talks about this. At the end of the day, doing 80% or 70% of your task is better than doing 100% and not doing it at all. Right? Like people want to do it perfectly, but then you'll never do it. So get out there today. Do the one thing that you've been thinking about doing for a long time and

you've been planning and talking about it. But you wanted to get it perfect. Just do it. Today, make it your goal by the end of the day. Don't go to sleep until it's done. Wow. Motivation. Motivating. Like living in a van down by the river. Yeah, man. All right. Now, that was, that was good. And, you know, I don't mean what I said. You're pretty good at some stuff. Like, you know, maybe one or two. Jack of all trades. That's what I do.

Shopping at Starbucks. I am really good. I drink in a tall, extra hot, 180 degree peppermint hot chocolate with no mocha drizzle. When Starbucks is ready to sponsor the Bigger Pockets podcast to anybody who works at Starbucks marketing, we would gladly about you. I will talk about my drink every week. Yes, yes. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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Check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 163. All right, guys, so today's guest is William, Bill, Allen. we will call him Bill. And Bill is a full-time Navy pilot trainer, which is pretty awesome. And we get into his real estate, how we got into it, all sorts of VA-related topics. But everything is applicable to those who are not in the military as well. So definitely pay attention. It's, again, fascinating talking to folks who are not just looking at,

real estate as, hey, I want to buy a house or two. And, you know, I've got scraps of paper everywhere that are how I drive my business and grow my business. But, you know, somebody who's dedicating themselves to actually scaling and building their business, who's diversifying their business, who really looks at things in a pretty unique light. So pay attention, especially if you're new. There's so many little details that you can get out of this one. And for me, really, it's that I love how he gets into his diversification. Because if you get too niche and to focus, you leave a lot of money on the table. And we're going to talk about that. So, let's get into this thing. Bill Allen, welcome to the show. It's good to have you here.

Hey, thanks for having me, Josh. Yeah, not me, just Josh this time. You know, sometimes, he doesn't know who B.A. Barakas is, which is why, you know, I don't know. I know who B.A. Barrackas is. But you're talking to him. You are talking to him right now, man. I don't know what this is. You guys keep making fun of me before the show. Before we started recording, there's this big deal. I'm telling the audience this now. There's a big deal about me not knowing who B.A. Baracus is. And apparently that's a thing that I should know.

So enlighten me and most of our audience who probably doesn't know either, right? So Bill's Skype name revolves around B. Baracchus. And for those of you who don't know, I'm sorry. And for those of you who do, that was Mr. T on the A team. That was his character. He was B.A. Yeah. It was like, I mean, it was a big deal to people.

I thought his name was Mr. T. old. I thought his name was Mr. T. Like, then that wasn't his... Anyway. All right, Bill, listen, it is great to have you here. Thank you so much for taking the time out to come on the show. And why don't we just jump right in on this? You're taking the time out. So why don't you tell us what you're taking the time out from doing? Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then we'll get into your real estate.

Okay, sure. My name is Bill Allen. I live down in Penscola, Florida. I'm currently a flight instructor for the Navy. So I train new pilots come into the Navy. They come into the Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard. We train all different pilots, even some internationals, and they come down here and fly for the first time with us. So I'm an instructor in the T6. I'm active duty military in the U.S. Navy. So I've been doing that for 13 years now.

So a helicopter pilot in the fleet. And then went from there, was a flight instructor for a while, went to test pilot school in England, did some test pilot work in Pax River, Maryland. And now I'm down in Penscola. again as a flight instructor. That's awesome. Are you going to be an astronaut one day? I kind of gave that up when I decided to go to primary flight training after test school. Oh, that's too bad. But no, it was an option, but not something that I pursued.

Oh, right on, right on. Cool. Well, tell us about this real estate thing. How did you end up getting into the real estate game? Sure, sure. So I, after in the Navy, we move around. I've moved around 12 times in 14 years. So there's always some houses to buy or rent. So rented for a long time and kind of fell in. Everybody said buy a house, buy a house. So I bought a house in San Diego in 2006, and was upside down in that house about three years later when I left. I was going to say that that was a terrible time to buy a house in San Diego. Absolutely. I had a CEO when I was in college. He said, I buy a house at every duty station, I made tons of money. So I said, well, let's try that out. So bought at the peak of the market?

Let me ask you this. There are, I believe for some government jobs for security clearances and things like that, you're not allowed to walk away from a house. You can't have, you know, you just can't leave the house because it would screw up your record and it would ruin your clearances. Is that something that's the case in what you do or no? It's a possibility. Your credit definitely comes into play when you're getting security clearances. So it could be an issue if you have a foreclosure or something like that on the record. if it really destroys your credit. Basically, security clearances, they're looking to see, can somebody hold something against you to try to get you to give information that you shouldn't be giving? Exactly.

But the government did have a program that bailed me out of that house, actually, called the Housing Assistance Program. So I sold it for, I bought it for $385,000. It was a 700 square foot condo on the beach in San Diego. So then from there, I left. I was losing about $800 a month in rent. So negative cash flow. And my friend was a real estate agent.

He said, hey, I'll help you. Let's use this program. I didn't know much about it. And we ended up selling it for $200,000. So $185,000 loss. It was a, the housing assistance program bailed me out 90% of that loss. They also paid all the closing costs, all the real estate commissions. And in the end, if I sold it for $385,000, I probably would have broken about the same,

broken even had I kept it or sold it for $3.85. So they really bailed me out from that. Was that a military thing or was that a program that everyone could have done at the time? Yeah, it was a military program. So it run by the Army and different branches. There was a lot of timing, a lot of check blocks that you had to check five different blocks, get there at the right time, buy it the right time. I had a friend who bought a month later and he ended up, he still has the house because he couldn't use the program. Oh, interesting. Wow. So what did we learn from? that first. I mean, that wasn't bought as an investment property, correct? No, that was just me buying a condo to live in. I didn't know anything about real estate. So from there, I bought another house

and I was a little bit smarter at that time. So when I came here to Pensacola, I bought another house for me to live in that was going to be a rental. And from now on, I just buy houses like I know they're going to be rental properties because I know I can leave anywhere from six months to three years down the road. And I run the numbers as rentals. What does that mean? Just the the differential in the mindset between buying as rental and buying a primary? I run it. I look at what's the rent going to be. I run all the numbers. What are the taxes? What are the insurance? What's my whole, you know, everything, I basically plug it through my spreadsheet. It's not emotional. I buy it as an investment property. I don't buy it as a,

as I love the paint color. I love the flooring. I love everything about it. How will it rent? And what's the performance going to be down the road? Yeah, I think that's smart. I mean, I try to look that whenever I buy a new house, the same thing. I try to say, like, you know, if I have to move out of this. Because, you know, when you're buying a house, you do get emotional and you get attached. And like, oh, this is beautiful and I really want it. And, and, but the truth is, like, a year or two years later, maybe you're like, you know, there's this other house down there that looks even better. Or I get transferred or my job changes or, you know, whatever. And then you could be stuck if the market does change. I think that's very smart that you're, you know, looking at it as a rental. I think that's good. So cool. So let's talk about, so you went from buying your own houses to

eventually, you know, doing, I know you do flips now. You've done some other stuff. I want to get into all of that. So maybe we go first from, how did you first buy like a property that wasn't when you lived in? What was your first non-lived-in property? Sure. So when I went to Patuxan River, Maryland, southern Maryland, I looked at, we didn't think we're going to be there for very long. So we ended up renting a house at that time. So kind of outside the norm, I didn't know the area. I wanted to get to know it. I was in England moving to Maryland. I didn't have time. So, We ended up starting to rent a house and I looked and saw the rental prices versus the sale prices. And the rental rates were just so high.

So I just bought a pure rental property then. We were paying $1,800 a month and my rental property would pull in $2,300 a month. So right there, I had a $500 spread. If I wasn't living in the house, we lived in an area that didn't make a great rental, but we bought in an area that did. So what I did was I bought a short sale. I finished the basement myself in six weeks. So I was trying to add value to the house and got it rent it out immediately and was cash flowing nicely from that house. But use the conventional loan there, bought the house.

And from there, that's about the time I was starting to get smart in real estate. So that was about three years ago. Okay. Hey, why a conventional loan versus a VA loan? Well, at that time, I wasn't living in the property. So pure investment property, I couldn't buy it. with a VA loan. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, maybe we should talk about that real quick. For those people who are listening, who are part of the military, and maybe don't know a lot

about the VA loan. Can you talk about real quick? What is that? What are the benefits of a VA loan and how's that work and how do you get one? And the requirements? Yeah. Sure. So I would say talk to a mortgage broker, mortgage specialist for any of this stuff, but I'll give all the information that I know. So you have to live in the house as primary residence or have an intent to occupy the property. The lines there are it's really up to the borrower and the lender. So intent to occupy the property for at least a year. And then it's zero percent down financing, which is the attraction for the VA loan.

So the house I live in right now, I used a VA loan for. So I and the rate were fantastic. It's zero percent down. They basically paid me $1,000 to move into the house that I'm in right now. And I ran the numbers as a rental property. And they still work. and I'll still cash flow and meet my limits on this house if we do move. So getting back to the VA loan, zero percent down.

There's a funding fee that gets rolled in. So basically that's like their upfront insurance for the VA because the VA backs the policy. So that funding fee, it ranges. I think it's about 3%. And then it depends on your down payment. So I don't have all those numbers off the top of my head, but your down payment, if you go 5% or 10% down, that will drop that funding fee. The good part is the funding fee can be rolled into the loan, too.

So that's basically what I did, bought the house, rolled the funding fee into the loan. And I had a lender credit that they gave me and 3.25%. It was a no-brainer for me to finance this property. That's great. Yeah, that's awesome. It's one thing, you know, I talk a lot about, and we talk a lot about on the show, the idea of house hacking. And people often think of it in terms of you buy a duplex, triplex or fourplex.

But the other half of house hacking, which we don't talk as much about is exactly what you're doing in that you buy a property using a low down payment loan. Maybe an FHA if you're not military, which is three and a half percent down or a VA loan if you're military or if you're out in the middle of nor rural whatever, Washington, you can get a USDA loan, which is a zero down loan as well. Which is oddly enough, the USDA loan is is financed by the same department that certifies your ground beef, which is just weird to me, but they give mortgages. And anyway, yeah, you can get these zero down or three and a half percent down loans. You live in the property for a year, you move out, you don't have to get a new loan, you can turn it into a rental.

And it can be a fantastic way to get started and not have to do the duplex, triplex, four sex things. So I think that's awesome that you did that. And, you know, I'm assuming that's your plan with this property when you move out. It is. And if I can just add one more thing, a VA loan, you can buy a duplex, triplex or fourplex too. So that doesn't limit you to that. You can certainly house hack that way with a VA loan. I also have some friends now that just bought a house with me as the real estate agent. They're in a VA loan. They're moving for his wife's job just probably about 40 miles away. And they're using, she was active duty military too.

So they're using her VA loan for the second property. So now they, two VA loans and running out the other house. And the key is that primary residence? Exactly, yeah. I was going to say, you can only have one VA loan just like FHA, right? I mean, per person, correct? Or can you have multiple? Incorrect, yeah.

You can have multiple VA loans up to your top limit, which off the top of my head is somewhere just above 400,000. So if you bought a VAL loan at your location for $200,000, then you moved. You can use the rest of your entitlement for that second property and still keep your first VA loan. I had no idea about that. That's cool. And you can also transfer the VA loan to another member. So basically like a subject, not subject to, but basically like assigning the VA loan to another military member.

So if your VA loan was 2.5% and the guy coming in wants to assume your VA loan, that's possible to. too. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, so in Brandon's book, the book on, I don't know the title of this book, because it's really too long and complicated. The book in real estate with no and low money down. There you go. The second chapter, we definitely talk a lot about VA loans. But this is fascinating, and it's kind of cool that you can kind of tweak it and work within the confines of what that loan is, you know, potentially do a Burr strategy, potentially do a live-in flip strategy, lots of different things that you could kind of do. And then keep using, you know, the fantastic rates that you get from the VA loans to keep

building that portfolio. Definitely. Yeah. And again, like, this is not just, I know people are listening to that might not be in the military. Like every strategy we're talking about the VA loan, just replace in your head the word FHA. And then it's just three and a half percent down. The same kind of concept generally work.

However, the FHA only allows you one at a time. There's not like a limit like the VA has, which is a very cool feature of the VA. So that's neat. I like that, Bill. I'm learning stuff every day. Good, good. Yeah. All right.

So what happened? I mean, what next? How did you get into? Let's talk about maybe the flipping aspect. You're getting into more real estate as a business, not just doing this because you're buying properties. How did that transition happen? Absolutely.

That's kind of the mindset shift that I've had to make over the last two years and only recently have I done it. So two years ago, while I was still in Southern Maryland, after that purchase, a conventional loan, I was basically out of money. So I said, okay, I got to find a way in real estate, ideally, to make some money. And I found a great foreclosure that I said, I'll just give a shot, flipping the house. So I bought it on homesearch.com. And there was termites eating the hardwood floors when I walked in. There was a foot of water in the basement. It was listed on the MLS, so I got to see it. It wasn't just a blind auction. And I,

I basically just acted, you know, just jumped in and said, if they can do it, I can do it. So I spent a lot of time on that. So I was still active duty, full-time job. And it took me, I was checking on my contractor, you know, every couple days making sure. I was still doing some of the work myself too still. So, you know, weekends and after work, I was doing a lot of electrical in the basement and stuff like that that, that I knew how to do from finishing the basement in the other house. So I was basically working in the business that whole time. So did one.

It took about three months. We fixed it up, sold it. It was very successful. And I said, I can do this again. But from there, in the last two years, I've done one per year because I was so involved in these projects. It was a job. It wasn't a business. So let's talk about that.

I mean, this idea of you did a lot of the work yourself. you had a contractor, so he didn't do what I did. My first few flips, I mean, I did everything from top to bottom. But, you know, you still got involved. Do you recommend people doing that? I generally don't recommend people doing what I did. But, you know, do you recommend that? Was that a good idea to learn how it all works?

Or do you say, just treat it like a business 100% from the beginning and get out of it? I think it's really up to the individual. The problem that I have in recommending that is some people, they just need to know it. I'm an engineer. I'm analytical. I want to know what the value of something. is before I pay for it. That way I know what it's worth to me. So, like, I don't hang drywall. It's difficult. It's not something that I enjoy doing. It's, uh, it's an art. And there's people that

do it and they're fantastic at it. And there's things that I do like doing, um, but I want to know the value of what they're putting in. I also knew the quality of what was happening. So I could say, no one's going to do everything as good as you. That's the problem. So 80% of you is better than, you spending all your time on the job. And I know people who flip houses is a business and they don't know how to swing a hammer at all. And they're very successful. So I think it's really up to the individual. But for me, I wanted to see it. I wanted to do it before I was willing to hire it out and spend all my money on it. Right on, right on. Hey, so what were the numbers on that?

You said you did pretty well on that first flip. We did. Let's, I think we bought it for around 125,000 and we put about just over $60,000 to work into it. So it was almost a, you know, all new flooring paint. We had to do some work on all the mechanicals, new roof. And then we sold it for just over $260,000. Wow. So let's see, I was in at 125, $63,000. I had some, in Maryland, there's a lot of seller paid concessions and I paid both ends of the real estate commission. So we made about $43,000 on that one. That's fantastic. Not a bad first flip.

Yeah. It was. I made some, I made a lot, I made mistakes. I got the property a lot cheaper than I thought I was going to get it for, which was great. That really helped. And, but yeah, it's very successful. So moving from there, I was excited to do another one. So let's talk about some of those mistakes on your first flip.

I mean, if you, if you're okay with that. Like, what could you have done better on that first one? Well, I could have, I probably could have decreased the timeline a bit. I would have, you know, the holding costs were holding me up. I used some private money for about half of it and used my own money for some of it. And then inside of that, it was just, I was spending too much time on the project as opposed to just kind of overseeing it. I would have hired some more stuff out. The other thing was I missed a few things on the walkthrough inspection.

So I had a contractor's walk through with me before I purchased it, kind of get an idea of, a ballpark estimate. At the time, I knew some construction because I had done a lot of renovations to my own properties in the past. But I missed stuff like there was a, there was in the basement, it was missing a support wall for the whole house. So the middle of the basement, yeah, no support wall was filled. They had knocked it down and two contractors walked through with me and we didn't see it until the HVAC guys came in and called me that morning and said, hey we don't really want to work in here there's nothing supporting the upper floor's of the house wow so probably the biggest mistake but i mean it was it was a pretty easy fix

of about eight hundred dollars for you guys didn't knock that wall down did you or somebody no no it was knocked down before us um and uh yeah it's i mean there was a foot of water in the basement and i wasn't sure about walking through the water with the electrical was uh it was off but i was still a little bit scarce there were hanging wires in the basement. It was a disaster house when I bought it. Wow. Definitely something, if I could go back, that would be something. That's something I look for a lot more now.

Right on. Talk to me about the private money. You said, you financed it on your own a bit, and then you also went out and got some kind of private money. You don't have a history of doing real estate at this point. So how are you able to go and find the elusive private money? And the reason I ask is one of the most common questions I get via email, private message, you name it, is, hey, Josh, where do I go and get this private money? Should I sign up for one of these things that offers private money?

And we talk about it all the time and we say, hey, it's about your network, but I'm just curious. Yeah, so I'll tell you how I financed this. I told you I ran out of money. So you're probably like, how did you get money for this flip then? So I used a TSP loan, which is our military 401K. So I can take a loan off of my 401K up to half of what's in there or 50,000, whichever is less. And then I basically pay back interest to myself back to my 401k and it comes out of my paycheck every month. So another great thing that military members can use to finance rental properties, finance flips.

And the amortization of that is over five years max. You can also use that money to buy your house and the AMB goes a little. little bit further. So as put for the private money, I basically, I was lucky that I had some family that was interested in investing. I pitched them the property. And I got a, I got a sizable loan. I got $135,000 financed privately on that property at 6%. So very great terms. And it was a balloon payment at the end. So some of those family members still invests with me now in my business. And yeah, I had, I didn't have much experience, but I did have rental properties. and I did have the construction knowledge.

I also knew the values of the homes. So it was an educated purchase and a renovation. And a lot of times that's what you got to do when you're starting out. I mean, I used family money at the very beginning because that's all I had. I mean, I didn't have a long resume of here's all the properties I've done. I didn't have, you know, years of comments on bigger pockets that I could just talk with my friends on BP about it. Like I had to use what I had. And, you know, I had a little experience just like you did, right?

So I bought my first few properties. I lived in some. I did some house hacking, you know, I had a little bit. But yeah, I mean, the private money can be difficult for people when they're first starting out. I get the same emails Josh does. Like, how do I get this funding for this property? So, and then you just throw out something else out there. I'm not the expert at this at all.

But I do know that a self-directed 401K is very similar to what you were just talking about, where you can borrow from your self-directed 401K and then, you know, pay interest to yourself. And there's some cool stuff. I actually just set one up last year with a guy I met on Bigger Pockets. And so we worked together on it. And he set it all up for me. And I'm excited to be able to use that this year to be able to do some investing because there's some powerful, cool stuff that the rich people know and that the rest of the world

doesn't really know. And that you can find out by just searching the forums. I found it out just by searching the forums on bigger pockets. Well, and that's why we do the show. Yeah, we want to change the gap between the Uber rich and all the tips and techniques. And we want to give everybody the opportunity to learn how to build wealth. you know, if we can expand that knowledge base across the United States and, you know, beyond that, I think we're going to help improve, you know, folks in society as a whole.

So that's what we're doing. Good job, Josh. Yeah. Here we are. All right. So I'm curious about like, you know, you're flipping this house while having a full-time job. A lot of people that are listening to this show probably want to flip a house and a lot of them work a full-time job. Do you have any suggestions for them, tips?

I mean, feel free to just share anything you got about. about that process. Yeah, what I would say is use what you can in your full-time job. Come up with a plan of what you can do. So set aside, where is your time available? So when I know the available amount of time that I have, whether it's nights, weekends, maybe I have some time during lunch,

or maybe I have a flexible schedule, then I would set it up and see what can I get accomplished in that time. And is it realistic that I can get it done? So for me, as a pilot, I have somewhat of a flexible schedule, but it's usually pretty difficult. So sometimes if the weather's bad, I might be able to cut away for a couple hours and get something done. But there's that way to do it. And then there's bring on someone else. Just run the numbers that you're going to need some help in your business.

And that's where I'm at right now is I'm hiring people and I need to spend the time that I have. I just, I need to be very strict with my time. I need to get a lot accomplished in the little amount of time that I have. So right now I wake up very early. I spend a couple hours working. I go to work. I come home. I play with my son.

I put him to bed. And then I'm in my office for about two more hours. And I work a little bit on the weekends. But I'm really trying to scale that down to systematize my business and be able to let other people work for me. Talk about the hiring. So, you know, how do you transition? Have you actually hired the first folks to work for you? So I have.

I moved it back down here to Pensacola in April, and I did one more house myself here. I couldn't find a good contractor. I was getting horrible bids. It was a nightmare. I finally just said, look, I'm just going to do it myself. And I subbed it all out. I spent four months, like, just working. I was there every day.

On the way to work, on the way home from work, I would stop by. I was firing people, rehiring subs. And I was hitting a brick wall. And I said I had two options. I could either just take the amount of money that I had that I made and start lending it, or I could just go all in. And I decided to go all in in my business this year. I took a step back in December, looked at the big picture, and I just hired my first

time, first full-time employee this January. Who was that? And what was that like? I mean, a lot of people are thinking about this. Hey, I need to scale. I can't afford to hire somebody. I don't know how to hire somebody. I don't know what to do.

those are the questions that you hear constantly. And, you know, I remember very well when I was hiring. So what was that process like for you? How did you decide who to hire? How did you kind of get through it and pull the trigger? Absolutely. This was the hardest thing for me to do because I probably, from what I'm saying, you can tell I'm kind of a control freak and I need to do everything myself.

So giving up control to someone else was very difficult for me. So let's see. Who did I hire? So I took a step back in December and I wanted to restructure this business and really make it a business instead of a job, which is what it was. So I looked at my market, what was going on, the trouble I was having. And then I said, how can I structure my business to maximize the potential in my market? And I landed on marketing. I wanted to control the deal flow. So that's where my business is going this year is heavy marketing. So the first person that I wanted to hire was someone to answer my phones. So I needed a lead manager. So what I did was I, and I also wanted to take some of those admin and bookkeeping tasks off my plate to give her something to do, him or her something to do when the phone wasn't ringing. So what I did was I sat down and I said, what do I want someone to do and just came up with the task list? And I put it on Craigslist. And I put it on Craigslist around Christmas time,

which was fantastic because the people that were responding to me were people that were seriously interested in the job. And I could tell how interested they were because Christmas Eve, they're emailing me back and forth about their resume and answering my questions and everything. So that's who I decided to hire was a lead manager and I wanted some bookkeeping experience, quickbooks experience to kind of just take all that off my plate. And how I hired them was Craigslist. I got 50 applications in five days. I had to take the ad down, and everybody was really qualified. It was shocking in this area, how many people were looking for a job.

Yeah. So how did you decide on which of the 50 people? I mean, at this point, I'm assuming you didn't have any kind of screening criteria beyond your task list. How did you choose the person that you ended up going with or had the interview process go for you? Sure. So they, I asked for, I asked for, I asked for, resumes if you had them, if you didn't, just send me something. And I got a bunch of those, went through them. And I came up with just a draft email response to everyone. So I was just

cut and paste. I came up with the first person that emailed me. I just asked him a bunch of questions. And in that question, in those questions, I said, what do you want to make in this job? And that was probably the best question I could have asked anyone, because I didn't know how much I should be paying them. I've never hired anybody. And I also asked them that. they wanted to be full-time or part-time because I still didn't know what I needed. And I didn't know anything about hiring someone. So that was more workload for me to figure out what I had to do. So I asked all these questions.

They responded. And I saw that I had basically two pools of candidates. I had real estate agents and people that really knew real estate and wanted to be investors or maybe they knew something about investing. They could kind of tell that I was asking for somebody to answer the phones. And then I had these admin people who were good at bookkeeping, good at admin, probably good on the phone, but may not have had any upward trajectory in my business. So what I did was I narrowed it down to two people from each of those categories because I still wasn't sure if I wanted the real estate side and someone that could maybe be a good acquisitions manager down the road and new real estate or if I just wanted a bookkeeper who was just going to get paid by the hour for the next few years in my business. So then what I did was I had a phone interview with them because they're going to talk on the phone.

I want to talk to them on the phone and hear how they sound and how are they going to be with the other people. So I just scheduled four phone interviews with them. And then after that, I just picked one of each. And I had to meet me out at the renovation project that I have coming up. So at that time, I had a couple of properties under contract because I was really trying to blow up my business this year. So I met him out there with the contractor. and at different times, obviously, and just basically walked them around,

showed them what they'd be doing and talking to them and just try to see the feeling that I got from the two of them. And I ended up landing on a woman who I think is, she's doing a fantastic job right now, but she's great on the phone. She has a sales background, and she'll have no problem moving up to an acquisitions role. Was she on the real estate side,

kind of, or was she on more of the admin side? She had been a real estate agent for a very short, time. She was also prior military, and at the time, she was selling boats. So she was like a boat broker, basically. And she was doing all of her own marketing for getting leads. So she loved the fact that I'm paying for all the marketing. And the key to this job, I think, for me, was incentivizing her to align our interests. So when I sat down and said, how can I pay this person? And Josh, you asked about that, how much, how do you know how much to pay? I can't afford it. Well, I gave her a base salary. And then I incentivized her to do more, to go out and look for more properties, bring in her own properties,

and really sell over the phone. So she'd get a small piece of everything that we made. And I also gave her a little piece of the overall profits in the business at the end of the year. So a little bit of profit sharing to really want her to make the business more money. That's funny. I mean, like everything you're saying, I mean, everything pretty much you're saying is exactly what I've been doing the last month. Like I, you know, hired my first assistant, lead manager had two buckets just like that. And of real estate. I went with the admin side, more of the admin side doing bookkeeping, but with somebody that I believe I can train up to the real estate. In fact, at this very moment right now, she's in my living room listening to the Michael Coral's podcast number 77

on negotiating with sellers because in an hour from now, she's going to meet with her first seller. And so I was like, listen to this, sit down and listen to this. And then like, so I'm training here at the same time. It's fascinating to hear that you're doing like the exact same thing that I'm doing right now. It's very fun. Wow. You guys want to go and have some coffee in I don't hang out at Starbucks. You're missing out. You're missing out, Bill. What I can say is the main reason why I went with her in that sales background is I want to move out of acquisitions really fast. I just want to get myself out of there.

And the other thing that I love is I have her basically just every task that she does, write down what you're doing and be ready to train that next person that comes in. And I think she can really, if she just learns the basics of the business answering the phone, talking to sellers initially, she can ramp up really. fast acquisitions, bump me out, and then I can bring in someone else where we have all the documentation. She trains them up to answer the phones and we're rolling. Awesome. That's great. And I don't know if you feel comfortable with studies, you know, saying this, but do you mind explaining a little bit more what you mean by incentivizing them? Because I did the same thing. Sure. But how does that work? So really, the business, I had to take a, like I said, I stepped back in December to see what the

overall business model is going to be this year. And the way I see it is, like I said, controlling the deal flow, it's all about lead generation. So we generate the leads and then I can send them out in different channels to make money off of them. So I don't want to lose any lead. I paid a lot of money to get these leads and I want to maximize the profit out of each of these leads. So one way they can go is I'm a real estate agent. So I partner with another real estate agent where I send that lead if it's a retail lead and we're definitely not going to sell it or buy it. I should say assign it or buy it. We will send it to that real estate agent and I'll get a percentage of the commission when he lists it and sells it. So she gets a little piece of that.

So, you know, once the business gets the income, I can kick her a little bit of that. And then if we're going to wholesale it, depending on the price of the amount of profit that we get on that wholesale, she'll get another piece of that, which is just a set amount of money depending on the spread that we get on the wholesale fee. And then on the renovation projects, if I buy it, she'll get a different piece of the pie if I buy it. Just, again, flat fee. And the biggest thing for her was the profit sharing at the end. That was something her company wasn't giving her, and she loved that idea.

So I know that the more money that the business makes, the more money she'll make. And when she knows that and I know that, it's not all about just one z-to-z leads. She'll get a piece of that pie at the end of the year. And for me, when I went back to her and said another key to my email, and it and back and forth was how much money do you want to make this year, not just how much money do you want to make? So, and she gave me a number. I used that with the contractor that I brought on this year, too.

I said, how much money do you want to make from me this year? And my goal is to hit that or beat it. And I'm going to work hard to do that for you as long as you're working hard for me. I love that. I love everything. One thing I did as well, just, I mean, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't because I haven't tested it. But I told my lead contractor, I told my, the contractor I just hired our handyman.

I told this, you know, a new team member assistant. I told everyone that besides, you know, besides the fact that my assistant is on partially commission as well, just like there's incentive, I also told them any deal that you bring in from driving for dollars. If you're just driving around right down an address, put it into our podium where, you know, tracking leads to podium, put it in there. And if at the end of the day, we buy that property, I'm going to give you 500 bucks. I said that's my, my, again, contractor, everybody I know in the area.

I'm like, if you send me a lead driving for dollars, it's not already in my system. and we buy it 500 bucks additionally. So just one other way to get them looking as they're driving around just for vacant houses and things that look interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that because I failed to cover it. That's exactly what I do. I give her, if she brings in the lead, that gets doubled. I mean, that's her lead. She brings it in.

She writes down the address. She mails the letter and she's doing that now. She scrapes Craigslist for me. She calls people. And it's great training before our letters hit the mailboxes. She's on the phone with sellers, Craigslist, people, yard sales. estate sales, just calling people all the time. I just want her on the phone. And the more she does that and brings in her only, the more money she makes. Yeah. Awesome. I love it. I love it.

So how many deals have you done so far? So I've done two flips over the last two years. I've had, I have five rental properties right now. And I'm also in the process, I do some, I bought some land recently that I'm in the process of flipping. If we don't get a good contract on it, we might build on it and resell some spec houses. I've done some of my own lending out of my IRA and my personal money. I do some transactional funding and I shouldn't say hard money lending, but I do some high interest loans to local flippers that I know that are in my network. The way that I sold this to her and everybody that I talk to, it's basically a startup company. You know, I'm not out there doing 50 deals right now. I don't have a ton under my belt. I should say

I'm pretty new. I've been doing this for about two years, but I see, you know, I have big goals for this year in 2016. That sounds great. I love, I love how you, you haven't been doing this for 20, 30 years. You haven't been doing this for a decade or whatever,

yet you treat your business. Everything you're saying is like what the big guys are saying. You know, it's the guys I hear on the podcast here all the time. I mean, this is how they systematize their business and they hire. And I love that because I think that's what it takes to really stand out in a competitive market that we're in today. And he's diversified. Yep.

beautiful. I mean, it just means that any opportunity that comes up, you can do something with versus folks who are so narrowly focused. You know, if all I know how to do or all I'm willing to do is flip a house or buy and hold, you know, I'm going to throw a hell of a lot of leads out and not be able to capitalize upon those opportunities. If you diversify and say, hey, what's the landscape of real estate investing? What are the possibilities? You now go and you learn them, I can do transactional financing, hard money. I can do all these other things, and I don't have to be stuck in that one narrow niche. Absolutely. And that's how I've been my whole life. You know, financially driven in my mind. So I've always, you know, I was in stocks before this and the market

and always knew my asset allocation and diversification completely. And now, you know, even to that, I have five single family rental houses right now in eight neighborhoods. And I just, I just became a 20% partner in a trailer park, 76 unit trailer park. Interesting. Because talk about diversification, I want to know that if anything happens in my market where my single families go down, my trailer parks are getting full. So it's exactly how I handle the business and my personal holdings as well. That's great.

Yeah. That's great. Very cool. Awesome. Well, hey, before we shift over to the famous four and fire round and all that, I wanted to talk a little bit about your website. And the reason why is because I went to your website this morning, just when I was researching for what we want to talk about today. And your website is probably one of the most clean, simple, great, like, you know, lead generating website that I've seen.

And I really like it a lot. So first of all, good job on that. I'm wondering if you can like, yeah, can you tell us a little bit about it. I like the logo, by the way. Yeah, I love the logo. And people can check it out, blackjack, re.com. But, like, yeah, I mean, how did that all work? How did that, how did you get that website together?

So people that are listening, I might not have a website yet. how can they do the same? Sure. I did a bunch of research when I again did it myself. I was looking at hiring someone out to do the website. I was looking at some of the other options for lead generating websites. And what I saw was I just thought they were kind of clunky. There's a bunch of writing all over, which is probably great for SEO and things like that.

But I wanted something initially that wasn't going to generate leads. I just set it up right before I moved to Pensacola about a year ago. And what I wanted was just something to give me credibility. So I wanted something clean. I wanted something to look good. If I'm going to hand my business card to somebody, they're going to go to my website and they're going to see that I have a phone number on there, a mailing address, all these things that you're going to Google somebody or something before you do business with them.

So I had a friend who was a web. He's in that space. So basically I just asked him. I said, hey, what would you recommend for just a base? basic website and he showed me a couple options and I just went to WordPress and found what I liked that looked good that could be a lead generation type website and had the had the growth potential if I got any bigger and I just bought it. I downloaded it. He set it up on his server so I didn't have to do any of those kind of back-end technical things. But once he gave it to me in WordPress,

I just went in there and just made it look how I wanted it to look and just basically designed it myself. I just wanted something really clean that didn't look real clunky like pop-ups within, hey, we buy your house in five seconds, those kind of things that I see on all these lead generation websites. I don't know if my website is the best for lead generation, but I drive people there on my marketing. So they can fill that out, those forms, and they can look and see some questions and things like that. And I try to be really up front on the website and make make them feel comfortable like it's an actual business. So I just want to clarify for folks who are listening who don't know what WordPress is,

who don't understand it. WordPress is this content management system that has pretty much, it started as a blogging platform and now is pretty much the biggest backend for websites on the planet. I mean, WordPress is amazing. It's really easy to use. And so what Bill was talking about was he had WordPress installed. and he bought a template so you can get all these different templates designed. And there's libraries and libraries of templates that you can buy,

free or paid. And he just installed that and modify it. WordPress is really, really easy. Once it's installed, to play around with, to tweak, to modify, if you buy a good template, if you want to learn more, get on Google, look up how to create a WordPress website and you'll figure it out. But I just thought I'd share that with folks. Yeah, I used one from theme.

Forest. That was the area that I downloaded mine from. And if anybody wants to know what mine is at the end when I tell you how to contact me, feel free to ask me and I'll give you the name of the site. I don't have it with me. Awesome. Awesome. So really quickly,

really, really quickly, on the website. Not quick enough, Josh. Come on. Quicker. That's not going to make it any quicker. Websites. I've seen that preview for that new, was it Disney or Pixar movie or whatever it is with the sloth talking? It was just like, anyway, it's probably one of the funniest movie trailers I've ever seen.

Yeah, no, I haven't. I'll find it later. Sure. You get these leads. Now those leads are getting piped over to your admin assistant, your whatever you call them, and they're handling the whole process from there, correct? So she takes the lead now and she will, she'll follow up. She'll make the initial touch on that lead.

And then she'll try to qualify the lead. if she can't qualify it, the motivation, she'll send it to me. And then basically, I am currently the acquisitions manager. So I'm going out and looking at the properties. I'm doing the comps. I'm doing all that stuff right now. I'm not ready to bring on someone just because I don't have the volume going. Once I establish the volume, someone's coming in on there on a commission base only 1099 as soon as I can.

But right now, yeah, she's doing the initial qualification motivation level and then passing it on to me. basically taking it from there. Awesome. Cool. Do you anticipate them also helping to run the flip itself? Like, they'll be the ones showing up every day to the flip, making sure it's getting done. Are they going to be doing that as well or just leads right now? No, I don't even want to show up to the flip. So my, the other higher, the other big thing for me was to bring a, bring on a contractor this year that can handle that volume. Okay. He's basically, um, uh, the project manager for, for my properties. We're doing our first one right now. So I'm stopping by maybe twice a week just to check progress. But that was that was about a month long negotiation with that contractor on how we can work prices, what my expectations

are, what he can expect for me. That could be a whole other show altogether. That was a that was a great process. And I think I'm really excited to work with this guy. And he's he's at a I wanted somebody who's at a level like me. And he basically wants to make more money in his business, still a blue collar, swinging the hammer on some of the stuff. And I want to show him how to do the same thing with his business, take himself out. We get the work done cheaper.

If he does it faster and cheaper, he'll make more money in the end. So I'm trying to incentivize him too and get him on the same page with me. Yeah. That's great. I'm a huge believer in incentive. The more you can incentivize people to get everyone on the same page,

everyone working towards the same goal. You know, find out what incentive. as people and then and then make sure that they are getting that by aligning your goals with them. It's just, it's such a good, good tip in the strategy. Read that in a book some more. Oh, no, I just do that. It's my life, Josh.

Oh, yeah? That's how I roll. That's how I roll. All right. My last question before going to the fire round is your future plans in terms of military and at working a job. Do you, I mean, do you hope eventually the real estate will take over? You know, are you hoping your, you know, bosses don't listen to this and so you can't

tell us? You know, like, what's your long-term plan? How long are you going to work that job before leaving? Great question. And probably if you asked me a year ago, I would say never leaving. Do my 20 years, retire, get my pension. My first opportunity to jump out will be at about 14 to 15 years. So five or six more years to get a full pension. You know, we're talking about that now. I'm not going to commit to something right now, but I have the option to jump into the reserves here, possibly and keep flying. So that's the part of my job that I love and not have to move around all the time. And if you guys don't know, a pilot schedule is, I don't know my schedule for tomorrow until about three or four o'clock today. So I usually have an idea, but they just schedule me for different times. So if I want to schedule something ahead of time, it can sometimes be difficult

to see a couple days down the road. And it's been like that for 13 years. So it'll be kind of nice to be more flexible in my day-to-day life with my family and things like that. So I don't know. I have me on the show in another year or two, I'll tell you. Sounds good. And my last question is, can I go for a ride in a fighter jet? I've only been for one ride in a fighter jet. How good are you?

Can we get somebody else, Brandon? What are we doing? But yeah, I'm sure you can. Come on down here. Big names like Bigger Pockets owners get free rides in the Blue Angels all the time. Oh, good. Send the Blue Angels an email. They take people for rides.

You might be able to pull it. I would piss my pants like nothing else. And they'll catch it on video. Yeah, that's not happening. All right, awesome. Well, hey, let's shift gears here and move over to the fire round. It's time for the fire round. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town?

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asking these questions, and we're going to help them out a little bit. So number one, would you do a buy and hold as a rental property on the same exact street as your primary residence? In other words,

would you want to own a rental that is also your neighbor? I think it would depend on, well, I would say it depends on the class property, but I'm probably living in that class. So I own a rental house that's about,

I could probably throw a rock at it. It's not on the same street, but it's right around the corner. So it doesn't, I don't have a problem with it. I'm investing in pretty, you know, A type properties and great tenants. So I don't have a problem with it personally. I have heard some horror stories about it. But to be honest, when I moved down here to Pensacola, or before I did, I bought a rental property that I thought was going to be my primary residence when I moved here. And it was right across the street from one of my other rental. So, so I guess, yeah, Yes, I would do that. All right. There you go. All right, number two, and I think you kind of answered this, but we'll just throw it at you. What's the best, most efficient way to finance a buy and hold property without having a huge down payment? Definitely. If you don't have a lot of money, a VA loan, FHA loan, or Brandon even hit USDA, we have those in my area, too.

They're a little bit of a challenge to get financed. I've talked to my loan officer, my online lender, and she doesn't like them. but it's definitely an option. Yeah, I did, I've never done a USDA on my own, but I sold a property a couple years ago to a girl who did USDA, and it took four and a half months to close that loan. It was like, it was ridiculous. And I think there was something going on in the government at the time,

but anyway, it was weird. As a flipper, it's on the bottom of my list, what I will accept. But one thing I didn't touch on, and I was reading this on BP the other day. There's a guy who's using hard money to finance a purchase and then refinance out of it once he gets a fixed. up and tended it out. So as long as the numbers work, certainly an option. And if you have trouble getting financing because of no W-2 job or bad credit, that could be an option if you can find a

hard money lender that will lend. That's typically how I've done almost everything I've done is that I buy it with a hard money or private money. I fix it up and then I rent it out and then I refinance it. And then I do that again and again and again. I call that the Burr strategy by rehab rent refinance. works pretty good. I like it. You have to find a hard money lender that'll lend it 100%, which is difficult. If you don't have any history. Yep, very true. All right, number four.

Oh, yeah, three, number three, is it better? Is it better to invest in as many rental homes as possible as I make money for my job or use that money to pay down the loans from the property on the property before acquiring new properties? In other words, should I just keep collecting more, more and more and more with all the cash flow? Or should I just buy one paid off by another paid off? I'm a leverage guy. So I'll say leverage.

If you can leverage and really scale. When I had one or two rentals, I didn't really notice that cash flow. Now that I have five, every month I really see it. Like last month with basically my cash flow, I maxed out my wife's IRA for the year. So, I mean, that's really what I see, even just with five properties, I'm seeing. some real increase in in returns and cash flow. So I would leverage. Cool.

But I would also make sure that you have the equity and the property. So I buy a 70% of value. I repair it and fix it up and rent it out, then either refinance or figure out how to use that, have that equity already built into the house. So be careful about leveraging to the tilt. Yep, I like that. Great advice.

Last question. What tips would you give in new? newbie in regards to direct mailing? It depends if you have time or don't have time and your budget really. So if you're on a shoestring budget and you're talking about direct mail, I would either do it myself or I would hire out really cheap. So maybe a high school kid or a family member or friend of yours that just wants to make a couple bucks.

There's people that will stuff envelopes and do things really cheap. So I'd also do a little bit of research. get too wrapped up in what your copyright says and what the yellow letter is going to say. Just write something down. I mean, I sent four or five letters to some vacant lots down at Pensacola Beach when I was looking to build a vacation rental down there. I sent five letters and I got four calls. It was just a handwritten letter. Hey, I'm interested in your lots. Would you ever consider selling? And most of the people, I can't believe it. You know, it's almost an 80% return on my time. So just, you know, sit down, print them out,

send them out. Cool. Excellent. I love it. Sounds good. All right. Let's close this thing up with the world famous. Famous for.

All right. Question number one of the famous four, which we ask every guest. What is your favorite real estate book? Okay, so I read, I do read a lot of books, but I couldn't really pinpoint this. So I'm going to give two that I really like, if you guys don't mind. Go free. One is the book on flipping houses that you guys put out with Jay Scott. That really, I, I,

basically found bigger pockets and that's really what kind of shifted my mindset from the market to real estate and when I saw what I could do. I mean, the sky was the limit there and I loved that I could control my asset. So I used his book basically Reddit cover to cover and that's what I used on my first flip, really. I wish he put something in there on you need to have a wall in the basement. Maybe he does. I don't remember. But I also gave that book to my assistant when I hired her. That was like one of the that and some, some phone calls. That's what I used. That's a fantastic idea. I gave it to her and I said, you know,

it's got the whole background on wholesaling, money lending, that kind of stuff. And I said, when you get to the flipping side of things, you can stop if you want, but if you're excited about it, keep reading. So it really just gives a broad brush of real estate investing. The other one that I love that's free on Amazon, I think you guys had interviewed Danny Johnson before, but it's his

flipping house is exposed, I think, 34 weeks of a house flipper or something like that. It's a free book. I read it really fast. It's all about him just going through analyzing leads and marketing and stuff. It's really cool to just basically follow him along like a diary for 34 weeks. I also really enjoyed that book a lot. And yeah, we'll link to it in the show notes, both those books, of course, biggerpockets.com so I'm 163. So cool. All right. Next question. All right. Favorite business book or books? Okay, thanks. Yeah. So I read a lot of business books now, too. So, but I'll tell you, just it's more of a mindset book where I got started in investing in the stock market and really index funds was the Boglehead's guide to investing. So that shifted my mindset to, it's John Bogle. He started Vanguard. And I know we don't talk a lot about stocks other than take your money out of stocks, put in real estate or diversify yourself. But that shifted my mindset to stop paying fees and really realize where,

is my money and what is it doing. So I was paying management fees. I was paying high expense ratios and things. And that shifted my mindset to controlling my own money and know where it is and not just saying, oh, yeah, it's invested somewhere. But I really took ownership of that. And when I did, that kind of drove me to figure out how can I grow this income and this nest egg that I want? And then when I realized I want to access it before 60, that brought me to real estate. And real estate brought me here to bigger pockets. And then, so I attribute even finding real estate to that book. So, and now building my business because of that book. So that shifted my mindset.

And then the millionaire next door just continued to drive that mindset home for me of, yeah, that's like exactly me. You know, I'm paying for my cheap cars. I'm trying to live below my means. I save 60 to 70% of my income every month just by not spending. And I'm a complete saver my whole life. And, you know, maxing out all my 401k IRA. And then from there, I moved on to the one thing by Gary Keller.

And that really kind of just focused me on what I'm doing this year. And I'll read it again this year because there is that, you know, and the one thing for me this year is going to be people. So I really got to get people on my team. And I really got to incentivize them and treat them right to help build my business while I'm at work. Fantastic. I love that. Sounds great.

Yeah, we got copies of the one thing. Well, Josh did for everybody, all the team members of bigger pockets. I got one for my new assistant because I just, I want people to be. on that same, that mindset of that book. So, yeah, people definitely should take that out. And, of course, listen to the interview we did with Jay Papazan, the co-author of that book, which was, I'm not sure what episode that was, but it was, I don't know, in the teens, I think, maybe back there.

Anyway, fantastic. But he keeps getting people reach out to him because we promote the book all the time. Jay told me the other day, he was like, yeah, thanks so much, guys. Like, yeah, well, there's a reason we promote it. It's a great book. It's a great. It's great. You better be careful giving those books, certain books to your assistant there.

She might decide that one thing is to do it herself. I know, I know, you got to be careful. I was actually joking with somebody the other day about that. I was like, there's got to be like a line between encouraging your own team members to go be entrepreneurs, because you want them to be entrepreneurs and I want them to do the best they can. But like, I also don't want everyone to leave me immediately because I'm like inspiring this passion that they immediately leave. You know, so I don't know. I had that same problem.

And what I wanted to look for was someone who who wants to help me instead of be me. And that was the hardest thing. And I tried to pull that out of resumes and things. and when I talk to the people, you know, you don't want them to be the business owner, but maybe one day that's how it goes. Yeah, well, that's a screen I'm using now. I'm hiring assistants and assistant. And, yeah, I get people who are really entrepreneurial, and I'm like, yeah, that's not what I want.

I want the guy or gal who I want to be somebody's assistant. I want to be their right arm for the next 25 years. That's the person that's going to fit that particular job. And that's my little advice to you. I'm not, I haven't hired hundreds of people, but in the, you know, a few dozen that I've hired in the years, finding, finding that personality match is, I think, far more important than finding somebody who has the skill set. Because if you have somebody who has the wrong mentality, they're not going to last very long, doing whatever position you're hiring for.

You know, I know we're going long on this question, but I used a disc tag. Tony Robbins thing, where I basically compared them. It's one thing I didn't say about hiring my employee. I basically compared their results to mine to see, are we in a direct match and then bump heads, or are we total opposites? And I really wanted someone that was high on that IC and low on that drive, the D and the I.

Because where I'm really heavy, I wanted them to be really light. So we match. That's a great idea. Cool. All right. Next question. Yours, Josh. Hobbies.

Hobbies. Oh, I didn't do hobbies. I thought we did that. We kept going on. No. All right. Yeah, what do you, you know, what do you do for fun? Right now, I try to spend a lot of time with my family.

So my fun things that I do are flying, which is I also get paid for, which is great. And then we have an almost two-year-old at home and spend time with my wife and my son. We take him to the park and just, I just try to be with them as much as I can. I'm so busy right now that they're really going to, I told them in the beginning of this year, it's going to be tough. I'm going to spend a lot of time working on the business. But yeah, spent time with my family. That's number one.

Cool. All right. My final question. Number four of the famous four, what do you believe sets apart the successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think number one, it's mindset. For me, it was, I see everyone else doing it, and I know that I can do it. it. And if you just look at, if you look at the people that are out there doing this,

their real estate investors, even the, even the big guys, they're just normal people just like us. So if you get that mindset shift that you can do it, you'll have no problem. And I also think it's kind of, it's dedication. So persistent, consistent action. You got to get out there and do it. There's only so much you can learn at home. But just find something to do. go do it and surround yourself with people who are positive and also doing it. So for me, I don't want to be the guy in the room who knows the most. I want to be the guy in the room who knows the least. So if you're new, find someone who knows what they're doing and just figure out what you can do for them and get that mindset that you can do it.

It doesn't matter if you don't have money. You got something. You got some advantage. Take it and run with it. Fantastic. All right. Before we let you go, Bill, where can people find out more about you? You guys can find me on Bigger Pockets, William Allen.

And then also on my website, blackjackare.com. I just started writing a blog on there to really try to get friends and family excited about what I'm doing. It's basically just a diary. Occasionally I'll put in some things, you know, self-directed IRA notes or some different things that I'm doing and how they can get going. So that's blackjackR.E.com slash blog. Awesome. Cool. I was reading that earlier.

It's great. So, yeah. All right, Bill. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on. We definitely appreciate you sharing your story, your insights, and your wisdom. And we'll see around bigger pockets. Thanks again, Bill. Hey, thanks for having me, guys.

I had a great time. Sure. All right, guys, that was Bill Allen. Big thanks to Bill. Hopefully, he can take me up on the Blue Angel plane one of these days. That would be cool. That would be entertaining for everybody involved. That would be entertaining, especially all you're like throwing out,

and it's going inside the cockpit and everything. It's gross. Yeah. That was a great thing. show. I love, again, like I said in the opening, I love how he's really diversifying and building the scalable business. I think it's fantastic. Yeah, I agree. It's just fun to see people, you know, we've had guys on the show that have been doing this for a decade and they have hundreds of deals they're doing every year, but it's fun to see people who are not doing

hundreds, but that they're right where a lot of the listeners are. I mean, they're doing a few deals. They've done a few. They've done three, four, five, ten. And they're trying to figure out, how do we scale this? How do we go from a job to a business or a hobby? How do you? How to a business. And I think that was kind of a reoccurring theme throughout the whole show. Yep. I thought that was great. Awesome. All right. Well, listen, let's get out of here. Maybe one day you'll watch the A team and actually learn who B.A. was. B.A. Rabacca. What was it? B.A. Baracus. Which is ironic because B.A. would never get into an airplane. They always had to knock him out for him to get an airplane and Bill being a Navy pilot. I thought that that was funny.

I didn't know that. It's a great show. Watch the 18. I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. It's good. Yeah. All right, let's get out of here. Guys, thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already left us a rating or review, please jump on iTunes and do that. We do appreciate all those ratings and reviews, and they really do help us get more exposure.

Josh will personally come to your house and give you a back massage if you do. Do not promise like that, Brandon. How many times am I going to tell you? I had to do it once. I'm not going to do it again. It was weird. Yeah, that lady was not. Yeah, it was weird.

Hurry back. Oh, that was a lady. Yeah, not good. Otherwise, guys, folks like Bill and our other guests, they're hanging out in the Bigger Pockets forums. Get in there, create an account, get involved, become part of the community, not just our community, but the real estate community at large. These guys, yes, they're your competitors in many cases, but they're your collaborators

as well. So get in there, get active, ask questions, get involved, help people out, and be a part of bigger pockets. And that's all I got for you. I'm Josh Storkin. Sign it on. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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