BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 166: How Modeling Greatness Can Get You To 100+ Deals with Matt Aitchison

Episode Date: March 17, 2016

One of the best ways to achieve incredible results in your life is to model others who have succeeded before. At least- that’s how our guest today was able to do over 100 deals- all before his 28th birthday! Today Matt Aitchison shares his story of overcoming a rough past and how he used real estate to define an incredible future. This powerful show is slammed packed with actionable tips and tactics that YOU can use, right now, in your business to increase your net worth through real estate investing! This show is bound to go down in the books as one of the greatest shows in BiggerPockets history! In This Episode We Cover: How Matt learned to invest as a child! Matt’s first deal – that made him $100,000 Teaching your kids about real estate investing Building a sizable real estate team How Matt “models” others to achieve success How to attract a mentor The importance of “showing up“ What makes a good wholesaler? The creative strategy Matt uses to buy properties for $0 out of pocket! How to vet a borrower if you are the lender How Matt handle the phone leads in his business Hiring an intern to replace your day-to-day tasks The actual response and conversion rates Matt gets from direct mail And SO much more! Links from the Show New PRO Feature: Keep Track of Colleagues Through Lists! (forum post) BiggerPockets Pro BiggerPockets Calculators BRRRR Strategy Grays Harbor HomeBuyers GoBundance Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor by Amanda Han and Matt MacFarland Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Brandon Turner’s The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down The ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Tweetable Topics: “If you’re not keeping score you’re just practicing.” (Tweet This!) “Life rewards the people who show up everyday.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Matt Matt’s BiggerPockets Profile Matt’s Facebook Profile Matt’s Company Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 166. The opportunity is out there for everybody. So whether you're 50 years old or 15 years old, get in that environment, get in that space. 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. fit it from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. Host to the Bigger Pockets podcast, fresh from my sunny vacation in Hawaii. And I'm excited to bring my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, man? How's work been?

Well, I've been traveling the world and sunning and snorkeling. Yeah, you've been doing all sorts of fun stuff. Yeah, I even jumped out of an airplane. Oh, wait, that's right. That was me. Oh, that's right. You were in Denver in like the cold and stuff, you know.

It's been like 60, 70, 75 and sunny on like, you know, podunk Washington. Yeah. So you were in. I was in Hawaii. Hawaii. Wow. And I jumped out of an airplane like you saw. I called you snorkeling.

I actually called Josh on Skype while I was snorkeling. So here's a story, folks. I'm literally sitting here at work, you know, doing what it is I do to help serve you, the listeners of the podcast, you, the audience of bigger pockets and working with my peers. And I get a Skype call. And I answer the Skype call. And I think we have a picture and we'll probably go share the picture. It's on my face. Yeah, you can throw it. You can throw it on the show on page. Yeah, yeah. And it's Brandon. And it's Brandon wearing a snorkeling mask with no shirt on, which, by the way, is not a sexy thing. Watch it out. Watch it out. Really care to see. But he's like,

Hey, Josh, what's up, man? I'm in Hawaii. Check out the sharks by my feet. And he dips his phone under and spins it around. And you could see all these sharks. swimming around him. They're fish. They're fish, Josh. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks for making me feel good about myself.

No problem. That was awesome. You know, I invited you with and you were like, no, I hate Hawaii and I hate vacation. And I was like, okay. Well, welcome. So welcome back. This is our first show in weeks and it's, well, first show that we're recording in weeks. Yeah.

Yeah, it's good to have you back, man. Thanks. It's good to be back. And by the way, you did jump out of an airplane with a kid on the way, mind you. You know, I, I'm like an old. Jewish mother. Yeah. Like, Randy, what are you doing?

He puts on Facebook. Like, I'm about to jump out of a plane. Everybody pray for me. And Ben Labovich and I jump on his Facebook wall and just start yelling at him. What on earth are you doing? I survived. You should have done that before your wife got pregnant. Yep, yep.

Well, I figured now if I did die, she could carry on, you know, she wouldn't be a lot. Oh, get all that life insurance money. Exactly. She'd be loaded and it would be great. So cool. Well, was it was fun. It was exhilarating. Yeah.

I think everyone should jump out of a plane and most of them should have parachutes. Yeah. All right. So yeah, anyway, this is a, today's show is fantastic. It's one of the longest shows we've done, but trust me, you guys, listen to the end. I mean, everything from starting out when you're, I mean, struggling, he had a rough start, getting your first deal. But his talk about funnels and, like, him knowing his numbers will change your business forever, I guarantee it. And if it doesn't, I will, I don't know.

ideas that we probably haven't talked about before. I mean, there's a whole load of new things in the show. And he's only 27. I mean, this guy is a rock star. You guys are going to love it. And let me just add to it. I mean, he's a guy who came in and, you know, we talk about it in the beginning. We talk about it at the end.

You know, he did not start things off well for himself. You know, high school, college, you know, made some serious mistakes and completely turned his life around. And, you know, so if you're somebody who's like, you know, things aren't going great for me. I don't know how I'm going to do it. This is a show that will absolutely get you motivated. If you're a newbie, this will get you motivated. If you've been doing this for a while and you're like, oh, how do I take my business to the next level? This will get you going. And if you've been doing it forever and you're, you know, you're like, oh, I'm cruising

along. This will give you some tips that you probably didn't think about. So this show is unbelievable. But before we get to it, let's let's kind of take care of some business. First off, quick. That's kind of a quick tip. This is a not so quick. Really quickly, let's start with podcast. We just took our podcast and launched it as a video podcast. So, you know, the podcast is already on YouTube,

but some people want to consume podcasts on iTunes as a video podcast. So if you do, go on iTunes, go to the video podcast and look for bigger pockets. We're top ranked in business and investing. But check it out. to it. If you are not a video podcast listener, still go check it out. Leave us a rating and review over there. That will help us get more visibility over there on the video podcast section of iTunes. Obviously, if you're a listener of the regular podcast, which you are because you can hear me, jump on iTunes and leave us a rating and review. That would be awesome

as well. You know, about that? If people have like Apple TV, you know, sitting at home, they can actually watch Josh and Brandon on their big, like, 75 inch TV in their living room while they're eating I got to start putting some makeup on. Yep, I know. So I can look like you. Yeah, that's not going to happen. No, we can just get this pretty face just by. You know, they do have monster makeup.

That might help. That could help you. All right, next point of the quick tips today. We recently launched a book on taxes called the Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor. A reminder, you guys have less than a month until tax time is over. So make sure you guys are doing your taxes. And if you want to get some good strategies, before that, pick up a copy at Bigger Pockets.com slash taxbook.

Awesome. And the final, final, quick tip. This is actually our pro tip. This is an everybody tip. But here's a cool little feature that we just built. There are lots of our power users who have just an enormous amount of connections on bigger pockets. We've been getting requests. And actually, they started back. I will give credit where credit is due.

Will Bernard, one of our power users of many, many, many, many years. Will asked years ago for us to give them, give you guys. the ability to sort users by lists and will it only took us you know half a decade or so to but you can now do that. Why would you do that Josh? Well because if you've got a ton of connections and you don't necessarily have any easy way to kind of organize them. So let's say I'm Brandon and I'm in Podunk, Washington and I want to create a list of other investors in Podunk Washington. I want to create a list of private money lenders. I want to create a list of buyers. I want to create all sorts of lists so I could segment all the people that I know

into different lists and then when I'm trying to go and figure out, you know what, I've got this deal, who are the people that I want to market it to or, you know, I'm looking for cash, who should I hit up? It just makes it easier to find the folks that you're looking to find. I love it. It's built in, go on the site. I will actually link in the show notes to a little post that walks you through it. And that is the not so quick, quick tip. And you do need to be a pro, by the way, to use the list feature to find out more about going pro, check out biggerpockets.com slash pro.

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Let's get the show on the road. Is that the phrase? I was going to say, let's get the show on the boat. Let's get this show on the boat. Get off your Hawaii mindset. Come on. All right. All right. Today's guest is Matt Atchison. You know, we probably should ask how to say his last name. Yeah, I think that's right. Atchison. Matt, Matt, Matt, Mattie, Matthew, Matt Atchison. Matt is a real estate investor in Northern California. who, as Brent has been in the game for about five years now. And in that five years, he has built an incredible, incredible business to be admired doing tons of flips. He's got an investing business. He's got a real estate business, an agent business. And he has a construction business. And we're going to learn all about it. Why would somebody want to have all the three businesses, how he's parlaying them, how he built them, and a whole lot more. So listen up. There's a ton of info to come and bust out a notebook as you will probably need it today. Yep.

So let's bring them on. All right, Matt, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here. It's a pleasure to be here, guys. Awesome. We should have fun today. I think we're going to talk a lot about real estate. I think that's usually what we talk about.

Does that sound good? Yes, that would be our normal topic of choice, I think, for all of us. All right, good deal. We could talk about some else. Over there with his things collapsing. Yes. Okay, we got this. All right, well, let's talk about real estate then.

Maybe before we do, let's talk about before real estate. Let's talk about your story. happened before real estate? When did you get into this game? What were you doing before it? And how did you kind of get into your first deal? Yeah. So I'll kind of rewind a little bit. I really started getting dragged to real estate investing conferences with my mom when I was like 12, 13, 14, back when the 30, 40,000 dollar of pop coaching programs were out there. And they were, you know, kind of that taboo of become rich overnight and this and that. And so at a young age, I was pretty much exposed. And to that entrepreneurial environment and I had kind of that bug planted in me at an early age

and decided, hey, that sounds pretty rad. I think, you know, I could do that eventually. My mom was the one who paid for the coaching courses and then she would, you know, go back to her day job like most people do. I mean, they go to those things, get extremely inspired, want to do what those people up there are doing, yet they're not really willing to do. Or saying that they do, by the way. Yeah, exactly. And so one of the things that I was blessed with, was the opportunity to at least have access to that knowledge. So she had all that stuff. She put it on her bookshelf, and I was going in there reading it.

And I was experiencing some troublesome times in my life where, and this is all part of my story, I openly share it. It's what I speak on sometimes. And I was expelled from my high school. So I didn't. Did we vet this guy, by the way? Yeah. Just be careful.

What the hell now? There's some stuff going on that. So I was expelled from my high school. and was basically going to a continuation high school. At the time was a 4.0 student making some poor choices, though, hanging with the wrong environment, tribe, group of people. And I ended up getting through that, and I had a real estate investor say, look, man, you're charismatic.

You have some of the intangibles, but you need to get yourself around a good peer group and expose yourself to some of the skills and knowledge that you need in order to become successful. And real estate was that thing that I just always kept going back to. And so it went through, got somehow worked my way into UC Santa Barbara, had all that previous stuff expunged off my record. And I ended up making the exact same identical mistake that got me expelled from my high school. And I got arrested and was facing a felony injury.

And a lot of that was, that was basically what I like to call my O moment where I was evaluating who I was going to be, what I was going to do, what kind of legacy I was going to leave behind, how the heck I was even going to pay for my bills. and debt and all that kind of stuff. And that one phone call that I made was to my dad, and he basically said, hey, you know, I know you're a great human being. I know what you want to do, but your video is not matching your audio. And you need to make some choices in your life

and think about where you want to go, but just know your past doesn't have to equal your future. And so I did some very intense life auditing, and a lot of that came back to my environment, some of the influences I was spending time with, and I immediately got a job the next day working for an investment company that was doing real estate investments and retirement investing. So I started getting geared towards this idea of numbers and buy low, sell high and, you know,

all these terms that you hear, but starting to get some tangible experience with it. And so I worked there for three years, got mentored by a very smart gentleman, and decided that I wanted to graduate, move back to my hometown, and start my real estate investment. company and my traditional real estate team. And so I started those both simultaneously. And my very first deal, I ended up getting through kind of a bird dogging network. I bought it for $75,000, put 20 into it and sold it for $200. And at the time, I had no idea what that actually meant or how great that was. And that kind of put me, I don't want to say on the map, but it put me out there in the investing networks with people that were players. And so I got my start really

wholesaling and finding deals for other people. And I just happened to land a great one for myself and never looked back from there. Wow. That's a pretty good way to start the $105,000 profit deal. That's what I'm told. So yeah. That's all right. That's all right. So I, you know, it's fascinating fascinating start and I think I'm not alone in saying I'm happy you made a life-altering decision after facing whatever it is you're facing that felony charge for and I don't really care to know but no that's that's awesome I want to circle back to the period of time when your mom was dragging you to these conferences I'm just curious you know if we've got lots of folks here who have kids, you know, I wonder, certainly that influenced you. So, you know, would you recommend,

you know, I don't know if you have kids or not irrelevant, but, you know, would you recommend parents take their kids to their local investor club meetings to, you know, to things like that? Do you think that they absorb that knowledge by going there? Or was it just because your mom was also doing other stuff in real estate where you absorbed it? No, absolutely. Well, so my mom's not in real estate whatsoever has never bought and flipped a house on her life. So she never did anything. Okay. I never did anything. And I truly feel extremely blessed that I was exposed to that a young age. And if I had a nickel for as many times as I heard someone say, man, if I would have done that when I was your age, I'd have a nickel. No, I'm just kidding. But I'd have a lot of money. But there's so many people

I feel extremely grateful now. I didn't know what I didn't know back then, but being exposed to that as a young teen and starting to get this money mindset and how to build wealth through real estate. Now knowing what I do know, man, I mean, if I have a 16-month-old daughter and I'm already excited for taking her to my projects and getting her in this kind of entrepreneurial environment where there's opportunity to be had and for her to see. what that's like. The opportunity is out there for everybody. So whether you're 50 years old or 15 years old, get in that environment, get in that space and let people start dripping and really sharing that information with you because for me, it shortened up the learning curve significantly to where I do feel because I started at such a young age, I am where I'm at 27 now. Awesome. Awesome. I had another question. You talked about your traditional real estate team. I'm assuming

you mean you have a license and this is your realtor business, yeah? Yeah, so I haven't operated as a quote-unquote realtor for over two years now. I have a team of six agents. My business partner, Rachel, runs our traditional real estate team, so she's kind of the rainmaker face of our real estate company on the traditional side. And then I have my investment company, which is a completely separate entity and employees and organization that operates, kind of simultaneously working together with the two. So we buy through the real estate team. We

relist through the real estate team. We refer over a lot of leads that necessarily don't work for a cash offer to the real estate team. So generating revenue, I call it my ecosystem. They all work together within this ecosystem. And I had a construction company as well. So trying to find ways to generate profits and revenue within this ecosystem. It's kind of like the Warren Buffett model, right? is you get the main funnel, and then once you get them in the funnel, there's six other revenue opportunities to generate off of that model. So that's kind of what I'm building, and my long-term vision is for this, but the real estate team has kind of been our foundational piece for servicing all those leads at a high level.

I know Brandon's got a bunch of stuff that he wants to dig into. I don't know why we listen to him, but whatever. but you know I'm blessed to have this guy who talks next to me and you know it is just yeah I was being sarcastic I was being sarcastic

I was going to say before the show you guys were ready to freaking jump through the video screen and kill each other so all in love all in love it's all part of the show man it's all part of the show I mean we've talked to a bunch of people who've kind of tried to do the vertical integration

they've got the realtor business they've got the investment business you've taken it one further, added this construction business. It sounds like you're the type of guy who's going to go in just add every little layer and really build this completely vertically integrated entity that covers all aspects of the buying, selling, renovation, you know, staging, you'll have a staging business next. I mean, so on and so forth. And obviously we'll kind of get back to how you got to where you are today.

but how has how does that help you? You know, obviously you make money, but, you know, how does everything kind of flow into each other? Does that make it a lot more complicated? Is it harder? Is it easier? Just kind of fill me in on there. Yeah, it's a great question.

And it's definitely easier. And I feel it allows me to operate at a much higher integrity level because I'm never just laying one option out on the table. It's always, here's how we can help you with the landscape that we've created. here's option A, B, C, and you can have conversations with people based on what their needs are, their motivation is to help them achieve that goal. So if that's taking a cash offer with my investment company and we flip their house, then great. That's what we're going to do. If that cash offer doesn't work for you, no problem. I need to get you in contact. I take it you're going to be interviewing other

realtors to help you net highest and best dollar for this house, which for your situation and circumstance sounds like the best thing for you and your family. I want to introduce you to Rachel and feel free to interview as many people as you want because Rachel is very confident in our approach and how we do things. But then I get her in touch with start having the conversation and bring them through the realtor door.

Or if it's, hey, you want to remodel your house yourself, I can help you consult on this. We can get you into this price range and help you market your house for highest and best dollar with these comps. This is the construction side of what you're going to need to do from it. So it's either cash as is,

investment company. It's we help you do the construction and consult with you, construction company. And the third is if that doesn't work for you, we always try and end it up at the traditional real estate side. So it really gives us, it gives us more options and it gives people, instead of feeling like they're being steered in one direction, which some investors can say, hey, here's my cash offer, take it or leave it. You got 48 hours to accept it, whatever it may be. It's, hey, let me give you an A, B, and C, you compare apples to apples to apples, and figure out what makes the most. sense for you. And if that's something that includes one of my companies, then we are going to provide you with the Ritz Carlton of real estate service. That's awesome. That's awesome. So how,

how, uh, you're 27, how long have you been doing this? Well, you said you were in college. So you're probably 28 years. Yeah, 22. I graduated when I was, uh, 22. Um, and so I've been doing this since basically 2012, 2012. So five years and five years, you've gone from nothing to wherever you are today. Let's talk about that really quickly. So you've got all these businesses that are all kind of serving the same funnel, the same purpose. How much business are you doing between the different, like your investment business, your agent business and construction? Yeah, our traditional real estate team, we do just shy of 40 million a year. We're looking to pump that up over 50, 55 this year, right around 125 transactions a year.

And then our investment company, anywhere from 20 to 35 flips a year, depending on where the market's at. And those are flips. I also do buy and hold. I have 11 rentals, so it's not like it's a massive portfolio, but I'm continuing to look for passive income opportunities to, you know, growing my portfolio with, you know, with that in mind. And then construction-wise, you know, through our flip company,

we did, you know, basically 1.4, 1.5 in construction volume at a 20% profit margin. You can do the numbers there. So that's why we started saying, okay, well, we're referring out a lot of business. Let's jump into that as well. And so one of the things I think a lot of people, and this was something I did myself, was, you know, how do I get there? How do I do what that guy's doing? That's the question. Yeah. Right. And I'm definitely, I'll be the first to say I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm not the fastest, smartest, strongest. but I'm really good at modeling people and I'm really good at modeling people who are doing things at a very high level. I'm a big believer and don't reinvent the wheel.

And I'm also not scared of failing. So along this journey I've had, I like to call them majestic failures. Other people will call it crashing and burning, whatever you want it to be. But for me, it's extremely important to continue to try and to innovate and to learn. So for me, I look at failures,

just feedback, and it gives me that opportunity to pivot. pivot really fast. So I've had a lot of great mentors in these spaces where my real estate investing business, I modeled it after my mentor who was flipping 200 houses a year. My traditional real estate team, I modeled it after people doing a million in GCI in the real estate team. So it's one of those things where I just found people doing it at a high level. And I really inserted myself into their life. And I did that by being a value. And I worked for free for these people. I did it for education. Let's talk about that because, yeah,

I mean, that's a topic that I'm a, I mean, both of us are big believers in that if you want to, you know, if you want to be like someone. You can don't speak for me, dude. But you think you know me? I'm going to speak for you right now. You've said this stuff before. All right. So this idea that like, if you want to become like somebody, go and provide value. I love that you said the value.

Like, can you expand on that a little bit? And like, what does that mean for somebody who's listening to this show right now who is maybe looking to get started in real estate? They want to be like you or they want to be like me or Josh. And like, how do they go from that to that? What does that look like? Like Mike. Yeah, be like Mike. For me, what I did was, at first I navigated the landscape and did my research on who are the players.

You know, who do? I want to be like, if someone's flipping 200 houses a year, but they have no integrity and don't do it ethically, I don't want to model after them. I'm not just after it for the money. This is a long-term game for me. So it's always been the crock pot mentality versus the microwave mentality of like that quick fix or scenario that will get me. what I needed. So I found someone, fortunately, who was flipping over 200 houses a year with a hedge fund, and I said, well, how can I get into her world? Well, I can help them make money. That's always a good thing for a hedge fund. So I started wholesaling them deals. And I also offered to do running. I offered to help evaluate the deals, you know, and underwrite them. So basically things where

where's the gap or where's the void that I could help make their system or their life easier? And that's what I did. So, for example, I just hired on a new intern and this guy has been falling up with me for a year and a half and saying, hey, I just want to learn from you. How can I help? I'll work for free. And eventually we went through an interview process and I brought them on. So for me, it was kind of cool to see it come full circle because that's what I've always done for other people. and I think that's what people who truly have the right mindset of growth and learning in the space that you necessarily aren't the expert in is how can I go?

I mean, if you're going to go pay a college $40,000 to get a piece of paper, why would you not go work for somebody else for free and get that same education but have an opportunity to make some money in the process? So true. Really quickly. So what you're what you're finding, and I'm being very pointed in asking this because one of the most asked questions on bigger. pockets is, well, how do I, you know, how do I get somebody to let me learn from them? How do I get them? You know, it sounds like what you're saying is you've got to be proactive. You've got to take the initiative. You've got to find a way, find an angle, hustle and stay on top of it and just push, push, push. If you're going to be sedentary, you're going to fail, at least I would think you

are. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. I mean, you just summed it up in those, you know, three, four sentences is in order to be a value, you have to be present. You got to show up and you got to be relevant. Two, you got to be innovative. You know, someone who you usually get a no for the first five or six times and it's that seventh or eighth time where you're like, okay, all right, this guy's kept showing up. You know what? I'm ready now. Here you go. So being relevant and showing up is important. And I also think making sure that you know what you're talking about. It's one of those things where you don't have to know everything, but you have to be willing to have one, a baseline knowledge, educate yourself, read books, learn what you guys are doing on bigger pockets is you guys are equipping everybody to have the knowledge they need. And sometimes once you have that knowledge, now it's taking it that step further is let's step up to the plate. Let's get in the game, right? Like put me in the game, coach, I'm ready. And you don't have to know everything, but you at least got to step up to the plate and find a way to add value. to these people in order to get in their world because they're not going to pour into you

if they don't see those qualities or that attitude or mindset in you. Because it doesn't necessarily require the actual skill set. The skills can be taught. It's those other intangible things that I think are important for finding a mentor. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that's so true. Well, cool. Can I ask where are you located, where are you invested in just we have a frame?

Yeah, so I'm in Northern California. I mean, I've invested all the way in San Jose and the crazy Bay Area. market to Red Bluff. I mean, as far north in California as you can go. But my main hub is a tri-county area around Sacramento, California. Okay. Okay. Cool. So let's go back a little bit and talk about going from that. I mean, you started wholesaling deals for this hedge fund. So you're finding good deals. Then you, I mean, now today you've got this big team. Can you kind of walk us just briefly through that story? How did you get from, you know, just doing a few deals wholesaling to actually having a big team? Yeah. So I was sleeping on my dad's couch.

between my bedroom and the couch after I moved back from college. And I was obsessively focusing on how to become a better real estate investor and to learn more. And after I found my first deal, I had a little bit of cash inflow. I was in debt, so I had to pay off a lot of debt. And then I had a little bit of money left over. And you know, you hear that cliched statement of, you find the deal and the money will follow. And I believe that to be true in many scenarios, not in all, but I had that mentality of,

I kind of didn't know what I didn't know at the time. And I said, I'm just going to go find and hunt down and bird dog and doork as many deals as I possibly can. And I have a somewhat of a biased approach to wholesalers. In our market, there's a lot of wholesalers that I don't feel like, one, know how to underwrite a good deal to operate with the necessary integrity. for giving wholesalers a good name, but the good wholesalers that are out there do a great job and they make a lot of money at it. So that's what I wanted to do. And I started modeling after being

a good wholesaler, a guy in our market. And I just started doing that. And then I started generating some more cash flow, cash flow. And then I saw how much money I was making all these hedge funds. And I was like, dude, I got to figure out how to do this for myself. And so basically my limiting belief was, well, I don't have the money for it. And after being in the game long enough to where I had some experience, I started building up the network and the resources and the people, the money opportunities started coming up a little bit more. So I started flipping houses. And I did eight my first year. I did 20 the next year, 35 the next year. This year I'm hoping to do, you know, my goal is 50. Our market's tightening up a little bit. So it's getting a little bit harder to find

those deals. So we'll shift a little bit and see what we got to do. That's pretty serious, man. That's awesome. That's awesome. So just so I'm correct, geographically, you are in the state of Jefferson, correct? Yeah. You know, depending on where you're at, you go 10 minutes north, and there's a lot of people that would say, yes, you are in the state of Jefferson. For those people who are liberal. who are unaware, there is a secession movement and has been for a long time in parts of Northern California for a long time. And they are, they've created the state of Jefferson. If you actually go through, there are signs in parts of the state of Jefferson, which is Northern California. Fascinating, fascinating part of the country. Anyway, that is an aside. You talked about the wholesalers and you talked

about, you know, most, you know, a lot don't have the integrity and a lot just can't cut it for certain reasons. I just wanted to ask for those people listening, a lot of people think about getting into wholesaling. And I like to preach on this. I get preach on a few things, being, you know, somebody with integrity is obviously essential. So what makes a good wholesaler versus the folks who are douchy, or, you know, if that's a good way to separate the two? That's a great way to say. A lot of wholesalers out there are, in my opinion, they give that used car salesman name to wholesalers, and they do it for a couple of reasons. One, they're not underwriting the deals the way the deal should be underwritten. They are always stretching. And I get it, right? There's like that fine line of, I got to make a little bit of money in this process, and it just being a crappy deal and you're just trying to sell someone to use bag of goods. And that's what I see a lot of wholesalers doing. And they take it. advantage of because I mean you look at the landscape five 10 years ago for flipping it's completely

different like everybody is now like yeah I'm a flipper oh okay cool how many do you do oh I did one oh great okay so you know everybody considers himself an investor in a flipper now which I love that it's great but they those are the people that also get taken advantage of by the slimy wholesalers that are not underwriting the deals correctly they have crappy comps they didn't really you know get a good scope of work and have a good contractor bid on it. So they're leaving it up to you to do all the due diligence, whereas the great wholesalers, they provide over an awesome package. And you usually see the great wholesalers is they're not wholesaling to 50, 60, 100, 200 people on their list.

They have five people that they go to that they know one of those people is going to be consistent and performing and is going to know that what they bring to them is a good deal. And so when I think of great wholesalers is they have their network, but they have their network, but they have their starting five that they always go to. And that's what I did. I had my starting five that I always ran deals by. And I never ever had to go outside into that buyers list because my starting five knew what I was putting in front of them was a good deal. And one of them always bought that opportunity. Yep. That's awesome. And that's why we built, you know, we built the Bigger Pockets Calculator suite for this kind of reason alone is, you know, we want people. We, we, we recognize.

that there are people that aren't going to give you the good numbers and aren't going to necessarily help you. And so it is important for the new flippers, you know, the guys who haven't done a million deals to really understand it. And so, you know, we've got a wholesale in Calca, flipping cal, a buying whole calic. I think it's BiggerPockts.com slash Calc where you can go in there and evaluate, run the numbers. And if there's numbers missing, you know, from what we ask you to put in, you know something's missing. Go ahead and hit them back and find out what's missing and why. And then you can find out, hey, or is this guy trying to pull the wool over my eyes or what?

But that's just... One kind of cool thing. Well, one thing about the calculator that very few people know about. We have the flipping one and we have the rental one, which we use all the time. I use them all the time on webinars and I'm always showing people how to use them. But the wholesaling one, which is not... It's not the most popular one because there's not a lot of wholesalers compared to rental people. But in that calculator, there's actually the option to be able to choose either to

you're going to sell it to a flipper or you're going to sell it to a landlord. So the idea is you go in there. and if you want to sell to a guy who you know is going to flip, you can create a report just for that guy, which is kind of a cool thing. So if people have not checked it out, make sure you guys check it out today. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, I love, by having those tools, right, you're just positioning yourself as a more credible resource. And that's going to get you closer to those top five people that are going to be your, you know, your raving fans. And trust me, I mean, in any market, I'm sure you guys know, you know who the players are in your market. You know who kind of the blacklisters are,

or the shady people, you know, who the amazing ones are. So it's like, I want to be aligned with the best of the best and birds of a feather flock together. That's like one of my sayings. It's just like whether it's masterminding, if you want to be a great husband, and go hang out with five other great husbands. If you want to be a great dad, you know, same kind of thing in real estate. It's if you want to be aligned with the best and you've got to find the best and

add value to the best, and eventually you're going to become one of their, in their peer group. And so I find that that's how I kind of worked my way up was I started as wholesaling. and then a lot of the people I was selling to, I started becoming peer-to-peer with them. And some of my mentors I've surpassed. And at the same time, I still go to them for information. I still do business with them. So there's a way to get from the bottom to the top always, but there's also a strategy to it.

And just like you're baking a cake, you don't go into baking a cake blindly. You have the recipe. You know what ingredients you need. And then there's a little bit of magic in the fingertips of you adding your own flavor to that process. but at the end of the day, there's a formula and follow the formula, don't stray from it, and learn from the people who have done it before you because success leaves clues. That model is there for a reason, and that's kind of what I attribute a lot of my success to is I'm not the smartest, I am just a good modeler.

By the way, really quick, the, you know, talking about like, you know, you try to be this ethical guy and all this stuff, and I love that. But, you know, if those are you listening, you're like, yeah, maybe I am kind of a little, Maybe I'm that guy that's not doing the greatest job. Like, you know, that's okay, you know. Oh, yeah. But recognize it. And if you recognize it, I will tell you that we have, this is our 166 interview for the podcast.

I've spoken to hundreds and hundreds and that, probably thousands and thousands of investors over the years. And the ones who make it, the ones who survive, the ones who have a long-term winning strategy are 100% the ethical ones. The ones who are shady, they are run out of the industry because they screw somebody over. They do something bad and they do not survive. You know, once in a blue, somebody's going to make it, you know, but they're going to just keep burning bridges until there's nothing left. You've got to run this business correctly. You have to because word spreads like wildfire if you're screwing people over are just doing

bad deals or offering bad deals. So be self-evaluative. If you're the guy who's like, oh, yeah, you know, I keep kind of, you know, getting these less than good deals and I'm trying to burn new investors with them. Well, don't do that. Get better deals. And if it takes a little bit longer, let it take a little bit longer. But, you know, if you want to play the game, play it right and play for, play the long game. Yeah, and investing in seasons too. You know, I think of it as there's some seasons where I'm way slower than I'd like to be, but that doesn't mean I stray away from my criteria just to start making money or to pull the wool

over someone's eyes. You know, if you operate within your foundational and moral integrity, opportunity will present itself. And the great people always know how to capitalize on it. But don't start straying from your criteria to make a buck. Yeah, awesome. I love it. Love it. Well, let's talk about what are you doing today?

I mean, you mentioned earlier you've done like your goal is 50 flips. I mean, are you doing wholesale sales at all flips, buying a little rental? How's that all work breakdown? Yeah, right now it's no more wholesaling. It's been all flipping just to continue to generate more cash because I do think, and this is me getting on my soapbox for a second is I think the market's going to shift in 12 to 24 months. I think we have a great window right now. So I'm putting the pedal to the metal and trying to generate as much cash as possible.

And then, you know, I want some liquidity. So when the market shifts and we go back to a distress market, I'm doing some different things with a website and a couple other, you know, technology plays that will hopefully position me to be one of those players for generating distress leads so I can capitalize on some of those opportunities. But anything that cash flows, I'm always taking a look at because cash flow is king and passive income at the end of the day is the real secret of the rich. And I want to continue to generate those opportunities. But flipping is one of my main focuses right now. And that's kind of where I play in my passion zone.

Okay. Well, I want to dive into that a little bit then because some guy made a comment the other day to me there said, yeah, you know, the last few episodes of the podcast have been great for motivation. But I want to get some more concrete things. So I want to dive in right now and ask you some concrete things. Do it. Some real detail. So first of all, what are you doing right now? What's working for you to find deals?

Like what's the secret to your deal finding? Yeah. So my bread and butter has always been my direct meal. So I send out about 4,000 pieces a month. I'd see my conversion is about 3 to 4%, which is on average, pretty good, a little bit above average. That's your call, like the people who call you back 3% to 4%. Correct. Okay.

Yep. Yep. And then, you know, I'm basically closing anywhere from three to four deals right now a month. And bread and butter has been the direct mail campaign. Okay. Diversity a little bit. Obviously, having my real estate team, being in real estate networks, investment association networks, I've slowly positioned myself to being a more credible buyer. So people are bringing me deals. I have bird doggers bringing me deals. and what I'm shifting to because of the landscape and where I think things are going over the next 10, 20 years is I'm really looking to position myself heavily in the online space. So we have a website right now that is just kind of our beta very basic landing page, which is My Fast Cash Sale.com. Anybody can check that out and just kind of see it's a basic We Buy-Ebly House's type model for generating distress listings. But we're doing pay-per-click, and we're also using some Facebook. Facebook, some periscoping. Some of the, we're doing a lot of testing in the different online mediums that people are now engaging with to find their resource for making a decision in home selling.

So we still know that, you know, 80% of people who have used 80 plus percent of people who have bought or sold a house have done through by referral. But we're starting to see an increase in this online space. And it's still a very, very new space where they don't have a ton of. of data on it. And I think we will see a major shift and disruption in that process with real estate agents and how real estate investors become kind of more of an alternative source for people to get their needs met in a shorter period of time without less gatekeeping and a much simpler process. Okay. And do you, I like that a lot, by the way. The technology, like being able to look ahead and see where things are going, where the market's going, where buyers are going, where

sellers are going, I think it's just super, super valuable. So on the direct mailmark, direct mail market, though, do you have a favorite list that you're sending to? Are you absentee owners? Do you have some other secret thing that you like to use? Yeah, you know, I don't have a big, you know, silver bullet for that. For me, I'm sure, I don't know if people have heard of Rebo Gateway or a couple of these, there's title companies that have all these different things that help you really niche down on what your criteria search is and who you want to market. So for me, absolutely, just standard lists always going out to absentee owners. I mean, there's always turnover for people not wanting to be a landlord anymore. One of their tenants tore up their property.

They don't have the cash for it. That's just a constant, consistent lead source. Attorneys and business, the business has been a good one. So we utilize our traditional real estate company to say, hey, you know, we want to help you grow your business. What does your ideal client look like? Probate attorneys, divorced attorneys, estate planning attorneys. Those are the ones that I've found, have, I buy maybe five to seven a year from attorneys and I'd like to vamp that up. And the nice thing, if anybody does have a retail side of their business or if you don't, that's fine too, is getting in contact with those attorneys and say, hey, let me help you build your business. What does your ideal client look like? Because in my line of business,

I meet a lot of people that want to have the conversation of estate planning or they might be gone through a divorce and they don't know how to settle this situation or, you know, whatever this situation may call for, but once we ask them how we can add value to their business, their last response is, well, what do you do? How can I help you? And I always say, well, at the end of the day, I mean, I know not every situation is going to meet this standard, and I buy houses for cash, no realtor commissions, no closing costs, no repairs, and we close on their time frame. So I know every once in a while I'm sure you run into a situation that meets that criteria. All I'm asking is that I have an opportunity to check it out, see if I can get an

offer that would meet their needs. Is that something that would work for you or your clients? And all the time they say, yeah, absolutely. It's never, it's never that shut the door on you. That was a very salesy pitch, by the way. I got to tell you. You know, like, I just wanted to hang up on you. In person, it's much more authentic, I would say. I'm just kind of kidding. Yeah, it's fantastic. And now it's very good. It's not salesy. It's just, you know, it's point, blank and I can't imagine somebody to be like, you scumbag, go away. I mean, it's like, yeah, okay, sure. Adding value.

I mean, just asking what's your ideal client look like? How can I help you? Here's what I do. And then I was in the conversation of, hey, do you have two or three other friends that are attorneys that this might be of value to them in their business? And that's how we keep the chain of business to business going. So my business partner, Rachel, is great at that on the retail side. And we've incorporated it in on the investment side.

So that's been a good one. and I'm always looking for people that have owned before 1995 or newer for the most part on a lot of my direct meal campaigns. I want older houses that are going to have deferred maintenance or I want people that have high equity or I want people that have lived in the house for 15 or 20 plus more years. Well, 95 was 20 years ago. That's kind of a frightening fact, by the way. Was it built in 95 or you're saying they owned it in 95 or newer? built 95 or prior wow okay cool um and that's just because again they're they're not the old probably knob and tube you're not dealing with weird like you know i don't know aluminum wire you got nothing weird to deal with right well no i mean i've bought houses where literally we've found 15 dead cats in it and a raccoon and that was brandon's old house I was wondering why I said Mr. Turner

sitting in the fireplace. But hey, whatever. There you go. That's funny. My cats are all living. Well, okay, I had one. I had one no longer living, but he's buried in the yard with a nice little plaque in front of him.

Oh, you're that guy. I'm that guy. You bury your animal in the yard. Oh, my gosh. In the yard, totally. I go visit it every couple days and, you know, I bring flowers every day. I cry. We have a moment.

Actually, move from that house, like right after the cat died. And now I'm like, he's just over there with some other people. I feel so lonely. You didn't dig it up and move it? No, I didn't dig it up and move it. So this poor person owns the house with the gravestone in the backyard with that's kind of funny because I just bought a flip about two months ago. And the woman who was the tenant living there, she goes, we didn't know this, but we were

going to plant flowers in our bed over here. And her six-year-old son and her were planting flowers. The previous owner buried. their four dogs in that planter bed and they dug up as they're trying to plant flowers four dead dogs and i just thought that was it was too funny not to share i buried mine in the woods all right i had some woods at the house we went out in the woods and did it yeah this was like track home small townhouse oh wow that's lovely right in the backyard wow okay well good i like i like that idea i mean i would like what's one thing in the future i would love to do is more newer houses but like

I just put an offer on one last week. That was 2006, which I'm really hoping I get. But every house in my area is like 1912, 1900. Yeah. And we have a lot of that too. So that's why I'm doing 95 or back because I love getting the houses that are 95 to 2010 or 15 because it's just an easy cosmetic in and out. You know kind of what you're getting yourself into. Whereas prior, there is definitely more opportunity for things to go wrong. And there's more opportunity to create margin for you as an investor because, you know, like in our investment company and construction company, a lot of the repair estimates that we get, we're doing for almost, you know, half or a third of what some of these contractors. So we use that as, you know, leverage based on the fact that we can keep it in-house. But, yeah, I mean, there's a lot more to deal with on those older homes, but that's where I find a lot of the opportunity is as well.

Sure. Right on. And what is the typical price range you're dealing with on a flip like this? What do you buy it for where you sell for? Yeah, in my market, I'm right around, let's say, an average of 200, anywhere from 20 to 40 into it. We're probably exiting 325 to 345. Okay.

Now, if you're doing multiple of these deals every month, obviously that's a lot. I mean, that's a lot of money every month. I'm assuming you're not funding this out of just your checking account, right? You're probably doing funding of some kind? I have private lenders, so cool story, actually. for anybody that doesn't think they can find money through direct mail, I actually sent a direct mailer to a gentleman who, at the time I didn't know how many rentals he had, but I ended up meeting with him to go give him a cash offer on his rental. The house was immaculate and beautiful, pride of

ownership. These people take great care of their houses. And I walk in, he's kind of a old school guy in his mid-60s, very blunt, candid, straight to the point, which I, respect and appreciate that. And I walk in there and he goes, so how much are you going to pay me for it? And he kind of knew like the whole like you're not going to give me the cash offer I want. So anyways, we ended up building rapport through that process. And long story short, I ended up selling on our retail side, him and his wife's, we're about halfway through the rental portfolio, but we've sold about 14 of their rentals. And I started with $100,000 with them on private lending and I'm up to about a little over two million with them right now.

So they're one of my main private lenders that fund a lot of my deals. But it was really cool to go into the situation of, he said he couldn't wait to get out of there as fast as he possibly could. And then we ended up having great conversation, turned them into, hey, you know, if you ever want to invest in one of these deals, I have great opportunities, here's the benefit to you guys and go into the private lending kind of pitch. And it ended up being a win-win and they decided to liquidate all that to fund my deals. I love that.

I love that. That's absolutely awesome. The private lending pitch. I think most people don't think about that. They're just thinking, you know, I'm going to focus on one thing. It looks like you're hitting it like we talked about in the beginning, like every opportunity here, right? So when are you offering that private lending pitch to whom? And, you know, what is it?

How do you do it in a way that's not shady or, you know, mom? Yeah, how do you do in a way that's not shady? Yeah, you know, I go back to being one confident in your services and what you're doing is a true value in believing in that. And I call it the opportunity conscious where we have a part of our brain that's called the reticular activating system. And it's called your RAS. And it's, you know, like when you, I'm sure, Brandon, when you found out your wife was pregnant, and then all of a sudden you feel like everybody's having babies. and you're like, she's pregnant and they're having a baby. And, you know, same thing.

You buy a Prius and all of a sudden you see a billboard for a Prius. It's just your mind is more open to kind of honing in on these opportunities when they're there. They're always there, but our brain is more turned on to them. So for me, my opportunity conscious is I'm constantly asking myself every single day of one of my, you know, my daily affirmations is I am a money magnet and I offer value to those around me. And so as cheesy as that sounds, I'm telling myself subconscious. every day that there's opportunity for money to come my way and for me to offer value to other people. So anytime I have a deal, you know, a lot of my deals now I'm not putting any money into them. So I have a first and then I have someone coming in with a second and I'm offering, you know,

people opportunity to generate way more money than you guys know than you can get in any money market account with less risk, you know, something tangible tied to it, tax benefits. I mean, there's so many different things that you could go into by knowing your pitch. You can help alleviate any of their objections, for one. And two, you're giving them a real opportunity to generate wealth without having to do any of the work. It's purely passive. And so when you paint that picture of, I can make you X amount of money. And all you got to do is sit back and relax.

Mind you, yes, you're trusting me. Yes, you're trusting in the service that I'm providing. And there's these safety nets in place to protect your money. If I decide to run off to Mexico tomorrow, you have recourse to that. Here's how we can protect your money. But here's how let's grow your wealth together. let's all make this a win-win. And it's providing those opportunities and having those conversations

and being more open to finding those conversations and having them has provided me with, I think I have two main private lenders and about 10 secondary lenders that fund majority of my deals to where probably one in six deals I bring money into the table on the second. That's fantastic. I love it. I want to actually go a little deeper on that if we could. You mentioned just for people who don't understand how first and second mortgages work. What do you mean by, you know, when you get somebody to do the

first and somebody else in the second so you don't have to bring any money? That sounds pretty good to most people not bringing money, but can you dive into that a little bit? Yeah, you know, you always see these advertising of be a real estate investor with zero money down, you know, and it's, and I was like, what the heck? Like, no, I don't know how to do that. What are you talking about? And I'm like, oh, shoot, I'm actually doing this. And, you know, I'm like surprising myself over here. And it's one of those things where just like you go to a bank, I'm going to, let's just use you, Brandon, for example. I'm going to Brandon and saying, hey, I have this deal, here's how we underwrote it, here's how much money I need. And we have obviously

agreed upon terms, but I'm basically getting 90% loan to value on the purchase price at 10% and two points on the back end. So those are the terms between you and myself, Mr. Bank. Then for the second opportunity, that 10% that I either need to come up with as my down payment, or I can just create a second loan for it, and I'm going to offer Josh that opportunity to generate 10%, I'm sorry, 12%, 15. Whatever, you missed her negotiator over here, right? So it's one of those things where I will go and use my first lender. I will position my second and marry those, you know, those monies together to fund the entire deal, and my first lender is providing 100% of my construction.

that allows me to come to the table with basically no money and give opportunity to both my lenders. One, they're secured by the property. And two, I'm always making sure it's one thing if I'm going to lose my own money. It's a whole other thing that I do not take lightly to lose somebody else's money. So when I evaluate these deals, if it's ever anything where I'm like, you know, even though I have this 15% margin buffer and if the market shifts 6%, and for some reason, you know, my staging gets stolen and there's, there's another 2% and something else, whatever it is. If it's something where I feel it's a little bit risky, I'm putting my own money into the deal. If it's a home run, I am offering that up to as many people as possible because that's how

you build your alliance. That's how you build your network. You give people the opportunity to make money. And now I don't really have to go raise money. I have more people saying, when's the next one? When can I invest with you? Or, hey, my mom's got $100K and her IRA. Can we invest in the next deal?

So that's how you bring value, you bring opportunity to people, and you do it the right way. that's when the opportunities start to pile up and compound. Yeah, I love that. I pretty much everything you just said there, people should hit rewind and listen to the last 30 seconds over again. Yeah, I love that. Didn't you write the book on that? I wrote the book on investing with no and low money down.

I did. However, I did not talk about that idea of using a first and then having somebody else come and use a second. So someday I'll have to write a version two of the book on investing in real estate with no and no money down. And we'll put that one in there. I also didn't talk a lot about the Burr strategy, which I talk a lot about nowadays on BP,

which is also another clever way to do it without a lot of money. I want to go a little more. By the way, biggerpockets.com slash no money. Slash no money if you want to buy that book. Checking out the book. Yeah. And actually, if I could say,

if you have read the book, if you've enjoyed it, could you do me a favor and leave me an Amazon review? Go on Amazon, leave a review there if you bought the book and enjoyed it. Or even if you didn't enjoy it, leave me a review. I want to know. I know you want to go on, but I have a really important question. No.

Tough tutsis. Matt, I know of where Brandon's going and we are starting to run out of time, but I have a pretty important question, I think, here. If I'm a private money lender, I've got some cash and I'm like, all right, you know, this guy Matt comes up to me and he's selling me this opportunity, right? Presumably you've built an ethical business and, you know, you're somebody that can be trusted, but there are people that cannot. And so as a person who potentially is being approached by these folks, you know, we've got lots of, lots of listeners here who want to do private money that want to lend their own cash out. How do I know that you're not shady? How do I vet you? But yeah, you know, what can I do to make sure you don't screw me run off to Mexico? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, first in foremost, that's why I interrupted you. Yeah, that is a good one. You know, and this is the conversation that I'm usually having with. Well, I don't have it as much anymore because I've just built up such a deep credibility with my lenders and my contacts. But at the end of the day, I mean, their money is secured by the property, first and foremost. So if I decide to run off to Mexico, you're foreclosing on me. You're getting a heavily discounted asset that I just bought to go make a lot of money. And now that's yours.

So just be aware that you're in the game to lend money. You're also in the game potentially to own real property should I decide to defy. fault. Now, first and foremost, for me, my reputation means a lot to me, and I plan to be around a very long time. However, life shows up and certain things could happen, and you just never know what could possibly go wrong. So when I'm underwriting these deals, I'm underwriting them with a 15% buffer for margin that I plan to take. Now, you're lending 90% of the as is value, not the repaired value. And you also have another additional 10% safety net. on top of my 15% margin.

So we're looking at if the market shifts 25% in the next three to four months, then your money is still safe and that's when we'll start dipping into that. I've never, ever been in part. So I go back to my experience and share. And at the same time, I also have a credibility packet. So I have case studies of actual deals before and after pictures so they can see what kind of quality product. I have me speaking at Investment Association.

and so basically I'm positioned myself as a credible authority in the space that I have a track record. And if you don't, that's okay too. You can still provide enough knowledge and objection handlers in a packet to tell about your company. What's your, I call it my MVBP, was what are my missions, what are my vision, what is my values, what are my beliefs and what are my perspectives of my company? And I can tell you just by reading someone's MVP, you can get to know a lot about them and what their goals are, and if those are in alignment with you or not, first and foremost, before you even have the next question or think about it, I call it the opportunity matrix,

right? Like, before I ever, and if you're a private lender and you're looking at someone to invest money with, on the opportunity matrix, there's two things that you need to think about, is the person and the deal. So first and foremost, or the company, right? The person or the company, you're going to vet that person and that company thoroughly before you even start looking at the deal. If that person checks out, boom, you're on to the next step, and then you're looking at the deal. But it's like if Warren Buffett came to you guys with an opportunity, would you even question looking at the deal? Yeah. No, because you vetted the fact that this.

No, Warren, I'm waiting, buddy. I'm waiting. Right? So it's like you immediately, this guy's got credibility. You know you're onto reviewing. Yes, see? Thank you. You're on to the next part of reviewing the opportunity.

Whereas if it's some Joe Schmoe off the street, you're going to vet that person a little bit more closely before you even think about looking at the opportunity. So making sure that if you are a private lender, think of two things. The person or the company and the deal. Make sure they have credibility. Make sure they have testimonials. Go through an interview process. You were interviewing someone, just like you would do with your financial planner. Do it with the person that you're investing your money on.

This is a big decision. And you've got to make sure that you have the necessary safety nets in place to protect your money. I love it. Quick, quick question on that. The only thing I've remaining to ask about making sure somebody's not shady or not, are you going through and doing a background check on them? If everything else doesn't feel comfortable, I mean, is that acceptable practice? I would say anything is acceptable, right?

This is one of those opportunities where you go to Yelp, right? And you look at your financial planner, and if something doesn't feel right, then you might do some further investigating. but my feeling is don't listen to your gut, obey your gut. There's a lot of those feelings where you're like, that feels a little weird, but I'm going to still test it out anyways. If you ever, especially when it comes to large amounts of money like that,

have concerns and don't feel that this person is answering or meeting your needs, then you should probably move on to the next one. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And that applies from all sides, by the way. We oftentimes get people who say, yeah, you know, this guy I met, whether it be through our site or, you know, in person and they've got a deal or they've got financing or they've got this. And I don't know.

I'm just not sure. I say 100% of the time, I say, if you're not sure, move on. Don't ever, ever try to jump through hoops to get into bed with somebody that you're not sure about. Move on. Find somebody that you are sure about because your gut is usually a great direct. of what's right and what's wrong. Listen, sometimes your gut may be wrong, but you just saved your own backside potentially if they were not an okay person to get into bed with. And so I literally, I cannot press upon this enough. And I know, Brandon, you'll probably agree with me on this

completely. If something just doesn't feel right, move on. Move on. Move on. Don't force something. Opportunity is always there, right? It will always be there. People will always need your money. So if someone hasn't answered all of your questions and one of the things that I always ask when I leave one of those meetings is, is there any question that you have that I haven't answered yet that would make you feel a little bit more

better, feel better about this process? I like that. And if they're like, you know what? No, you were great. Or if like, you know what? And then you just continue on in that process and help alleviate their concerns. But if you're a private lender, don't force a square peg into a round hole. If it's the right fit, you'll know. And if you're an investor, don't get into bed with any lenders that are, again, feel shady or anything like that. Because there's a lot of those guys out there and you've got to watch your back.

Yep. Yep. Right on. All right. So I'm going to move. I'm going to shift gears over to a new part of the show. A new segment we call Brandon's selfish questions because he has some questions for you, Matt. So, number one, we'll get a jingle right there.

This is not a new part of the show, by the way. We've been doing this for 166 episodes. And, yeah. So I'm going to throw it. questions that you could that are that are completely related to me and probably about three quarters of our audience who are trying to build up a larger real estate business right so like i'm going to take a nap yeah go ahead josh all right we got this now we can talk about him so did i tell you how short josh is oh oh you're back oh wow okay so here's my question i want to just throw a bunch of like really

quick questions at you first of all who answers phone in your company when the marketing comes in with all leads yeah who's answering i answer the i answer the i answer the leads. I'm still answering leads. Okay. So you answer the phone leads and then you, do you filter them through like a paperwork? Do you have a computer program you use? What do you do from there? Yep. Yeah. So we have an initial intake sheet. That gets all the basic stuff. It gets over to my assistant, gets put into our database. Okay. And then follow up calls, evaluations, appointments that is our next step. So my thing is, I am confident in how I script with people. And I'm also confident in getting a better idea of how I can find what their motivation is to help them meet their needs and get that appointment.

Getting face-to-face for me is always the most important thing because I enjoy building rapport with people and I feel that's the best way of closing the deal. Perfect. Great. Okay. So you get this call that comes in. You start kind of running the numbers, I'm assuming you kind of decide if it's even worth investigating, right?

How do you do that in a quick way? I'm not saying you don't go look at every deal you get a call on. No, not at all. So immediately, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of property radar. I use property radar just to get my basic metrics on the property. And then, I mean, I've done enough deals now where once I ask the questions of, really, I want to know about the condition of the home and any of the big ticket item repairs that they think might need to be done based on bedroom, bathroom, and square footage,

I pretty much know on a high end what my rehab budget's going to be unless there's something major that I'm not taking into account. So I can back end into my deal actually while I'm on the phone with them. at least in a range. And one of the questions that I'm always asking is, how much would you like to sell your property for? Or do you have an idea? And if they're telling me 400,000 and I'm back ending into 250K, then I immediately know I'm probably not going to be, one, having the conversation of getting them a cash offer. It's going to be more retail. And two, I'm going to try and set an appointment for it to be a retail appointment instead of a fast cash sale appointment.

Okay, so the guy tells you, you're thinking, let's say, 250, he says, I don't know, I don't know, what do you think? Maybe 300, maybe 250. You're sure like you're in ballpark already. So then you set up at a time to go look at it. Who goes looks at at you? Myself, contractor, intern. Okay. We get out there.

I want to expedite this process as much as possible. So I want to pack it in, get as much information as we possibly can to give at least a solid underwritten value in what we could offer on the property. If they decide to accept it, then we'll go further with. due diligence inspections immediately. But for me, it's myself, intern, contractor. Why is you make... Yeah, why the intern? Because I'm looking for my replacement.

And I want to empower someone else to learn this process like I did. So I want to get them out in the field. I mean, the only way to truly do a lot of this stuff is you can read about it in books. You can read about it on Bigger Pockets all day long. You also have to go out and implement and use the knowledge that. you're getting. So that's one of the things I'm all about experiential transformations and by doing that on-site gives them that real experience of being able to mastermind and talk about how to improve systems and do all that kind of stuff. So being on-site is important for me.

All right, cool. So then you make an offer. Let's see you get to the property, you look at it, you're like, yeah, this is about what I thought. Do you make an offer there in person? Do you email it over later? Do you mail it to them, call them on the phone? How's that work? Yeah, you know, if I feel like I have heavy competition, I'll bring a contract with me. Okay. But at the end of the day, you know, I'm not a used car salesman. I don't like pressure tactics. It's just not my style.

For some people, it works. Like, hey, you sign this on the hood of the car and you get it done or you put a 24-hour cap on it. For me, it's just not how I operate. And I might be losing out on some deals that way. And I'm okay with that because that's just my style and the culture of the company that I'm trying to create. If the value's there, if it makes sense and they want to do business with us, I try and make up for, or ways of providing the entire experience as being a massive value, not just the offer itself, but the entire experience.

So I usually do it. We go back and we'll evaluate. We'll get them an offer, a breakdown, and do the phone consultation for discussing what the next steps would look like. Okay. I have two more quick questions. Next one is, do you have an estimate on, let's say you go out and look at 10 properties. Do you have an estimate in what percentage or 100 properties? What percentage are you getting under contract that you actually look at?

Yeah, I would say for our conversion, for about every 40 to 50 properties, I'm getting about two accepted. Okay. That you actually physically drive to. Yep. So you maybe one out of 20. Yeah, I'm big on protecting my time, right? You can, and that's where I talk to my agents a lot about this, when they're working with investors, you can spin your wheels all day long looking at deals. You have to get good at knowing what good deals.

deals are and where you're going to spend your time. So I'm heavy in doing due diligence up front and asking the right questions because if you don't ask the right questions and you get out there and then they tell you X, Y, and Z, you're like, oh, well, that just freaking blew the entire deal for me. I'm not going to waste my time anymore. Then you just wasted a bunch of time driving out there, gas. You could be doing that on higher income producing activities for generating other leads. So my conversion is a little bit higher because I'm vetting my deal is heavier. So 20 and 1, 20 to 25 and one is about my conversion. What I love about that is, and it's something I talk about all the time on BP.

I think of everything in terms of a funnel, right? So that's why we asked you several times in this discussion, you know, what kind of response rate did you get in the email, I mean, on the direct mail. And then out of that, you know, how many you make an appointment, how many of those get into contracts? Like, it really becomes very mathematical and that you can look at this funnel, and I love that. And he knows his business cold, which is key, right?

Well, that's the beauty of real estate. I had one mentor say, if you're not keeping score, you're just practicing. And I sure like that. No, I want to be a professional, not an amateur. So in order to find out where you're winning, where you're losing, where you need to revise, you need to keep track of your metrics and you need to know. Because if you want to scale up or you want to scale down, it's just a numbers game. And that's why I love real estate is let's remove the emotion from this. And let's play in the black and white and make decisions based on that. And at the end of the day, you can sleep knowing that you are making it off of factual decisions. of gut or emotion or, you know, some of the other things that stray us from making intelligent choices. Hey, so, so Brandon, I'm cutting off because you're going to go off on some tangent again. No, I was going to add to what he said. You're going to tell a story.

Nobody wants to hear your stories. Back when I was a boy growing up in Podunk, Washington. I'm still a boy. Come on. I'm still a boy. Yeah, you're definitely. Is that a boy? I was going to say, I actually try, I have a spreadsheet where I track number of phone calls or number of direct mail letters sent out.

number of phone calls that came in, number of appointments set, number of yeses we received, and the number of deals closed. Every week I track that. Yeah. And it's such a good way to see that five-part funnel and track every bit of it week after week and see where you want to improve. You can improve a little bit on each one. You can pick one to focus on a month or whatever. I love that. Yeah. And I'll let Josh continue on. I call that, Brandon, is that's your air game versus your ground game because a lot of investors get stuck in the ground game where you're in the trenches and you're just trying to run with the business instead of working on the business. So it's important to, by tracking your numbers, you can get in that air game a little bit more

and start moving the pieces and actually play the game of business versus just being in it all the time. Yeah. Continue. Oh, I've been blessed to answer. All right. So my final question in the, this is Brandon's World segment. I like that, Brandon's World.

Ooh, that's the new segment right there. Oh, for crying out loud. It's like Boy Meets World, but it's Brandon's world. It's the same damn thing. All right, so you talked about being able to vet the deals. I was just curious. You said you have your questions. I would love it if you can really quickly, if you're open to and know them or if you can pull them out somehow.

What are the questions? Yeah, there you are. Let's throw them out really, really fast. Just gunshots. Pop, pop, pop. Immediately, is there any particular, so I get their name information, I, you know, confirm bedroom, bathroom, bathroom, square footage, the basics, right? And then I'm immediately going to what's their motivation. I want to know what their motivation is right away. So is there any

particular reason you're looking to sell at this time? Oh, well, you know, I live out of state. And, you know, so they start sharing about why they're looking to. So that gives me immediately the opportunity to go, that's their motivation. If forever some reason we get off track, I'm going to go back to that motivation and help them realize why they're selling. Then I say, how quickly are you looking to sell? So how fast do I need to navigate this conversation? Do I have time? Do I need to move really fast?

That will help me understand a little bit, you know, where they're at with motivation as well. What are you looking to sell the property for? That's like one of the most important questions that people don't ask when they're vetting a conversation is they get so excited they got a deal or they got a phone call. And then you don't ask these questions and then you get out on signings like, yeah, I won $450,000. And you're like, whoa, this is worth $250, and as is. Like, what are you talking about? You know what I mean? So that's an important question. Is that price flexible? So seeing if they're in the mindset of are you willing to negotiate on that price or is that your end-all be-all? And then how did you establish that number? Oh, I've looked at Zillow or, you know, Redfin told me that it was worth $5 million. You know, that kind of thing. And then that gives me an opportunity to handle that objection, depending on where they got it. And then what are you going to do if this property does not sell. And then if they say, oh, you know what, I'm good. I'm just going to sit in the

property for another year. Okay, so they're not highly motivated like they really said they were. So those are kind of a quick snapshot immediately. And then I'll go into any repairs needed, talk about the big ticket items. But that's like, that's my big, my big thing that I focus on every conversation is motivation, motivation, motivation. I love that. I'm actually, I just type that in because I want to ask that question. I'm going to add, because I have an intake sheet too. I'm going to add that to it. What are you going to do if I don't buy this? If it doesn't sell. Or if it doesn't sell.

If it doesn't sell. I love that. Yeah, you weren't actually actively listening there. Close enough. All right. Yeah, I love that. Very cool. Very cool.

By the way, this is the first show that we've recorded in like three or four weeks. And so I'm kind of feisty. I love it. This is my kind of. This is a new thing. Josh being feisty is a new thing. What? Okay.

There's fun in trash talking. You know what I mean? Especially if it's with your brothers. I can tell you guys condition and serve it. There you go. There you go. I love it. All right.

I just go back to height and religion and I don't know. Everything like that. All right. My last question before we hit the fire round, and we won't call this part of the Brandon's world section. But I'm just curious, how many hours a week do you work? I want to start asking people that more often here on the podcast because I'd like to get an idea of that. I'll be the first to admit I'm a self-proclaimed addict with work. but it's in spurts.

So I sleep maybe five hours a night. And for me, because I have a couple different companies, I spend a lot of my time in real estate investing, but it's really important to me to empower my people too. So I spend a lot of my time during, like the mid-morning, working with people. The other stuff is on the business. So I'm working, honestly, I would say probably 60 hours a week,

maybe give or take. But when I work, when I work, I work really hard. When I play, I play really hard. So I drop off the face of the earth and you cannot contact me. There you go. Cool. I love it. All right.

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this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. All right. The fire round. These questions come direct out of the bigger pockets forums and we're going to fire them straight at you, Matt.

Are you ready for this? Let's do it. All right. Number one. Okay, good. Number one. How does one split the profit? with a partner? What's a reasonable amount to split if I'm going to do a flip and split it?

Yeah. So, I mean, for a lot of people, it depends on how much money you're bringing to the table and who's doing what. I think getting clarity on that partnership, I've been in a couple of different partnerships, and clarity is by far the most important thing. So I don't think there's a right or a wrong answer. If someone's funding the entire deal, I'll do a 50-50 partnership with them. If someone is, you know, doing project management on one of the deals that I've brought everything to the table to, I'll cut them off a small piece of the profits, 15 or 18 or 20 percent, whatever it may be. Okay, cool. Cool.

Next question. What are some creative ways to generate leads in a competitive market? I mean, say you're in a market where everybody else is, you know, hitting up the lawyers, everybody else is marketing to the absentee landlords and the tired landlords. You know, you got any magical tricks up your sleeve that you're going to reserve for when the stuff hits the fan and there's, you know, you're oversaturated. We've got too much competition up there in Jefferson. Jefferson, that's just a weird ring. Throw me off there. One of the things that I'm doing right now that we're looking into is Facebook is just taking over the world and it's becoming the Google of how people are searching

to get their information, their resources, their news. So one of the things that we're working on right now is some Facebook campaigns that will be educational tools for getting people into these funnels through either webinars, live or recorded, that will help drive them back to our website. But at the end of the day, it's value, value, value, and you get people into your funnel by adding value. And from us, that's whether it's probate attorneys or divorce attorneys or someone facing foreclosure or short sale. We're just using a different medium of getting in front of them now and getting them into the funnel.

I love that. I think content marketing, that's a term that is used a lot in the internet marketing world, but what it basically means is you just produce good value out there, good education, good material, where then people just start to recognize your company. So I do a terrible job of this right now, but I really want to do more of it. I would love to do a post called the Top 20 hiking trails in Grace Harbor, Washington, because then people all share that has nothing to do with real estate, but what does it gets my name, you know, Harbor House buyers out there in front of every single person in my area.

That's plugged at marketing. Thanks. You like that? I don't think I've actually brought that up. That's my new company right there, Habber House Buyers. I like it. I like it. Yeah, check it out.

All right. It's got a ring to it. All right. Next one, what is your least favorite investment strategy? That's a good question. I've never heard that one. Yeah, that you've done. Damn.

Mine won't. I'm going to go ahead and say this was not in the forums. This was directly asked to me today by my buddy, Jaronne. He said, Brandon, what's your least favorite investment strategy? edging, I thought, that's a fantastic question. You know, it is a fantastic question, and I don't know if I have one, to be honest, I think at the end of the day, whatever the scenario calls for, that's the beauty in real estate investing, right?

There is no one right answer. There's many different options, whether that's subject to or mortgage wraps, I mean, all kinds of different creative options. I mean, there's so many different things that you could go into. So I don't really have a least favor one because at the end of the day, they all provide a solution for someone, and there's opportunity for everybody to win. And that's what I see in a lot of, at least the stuff that I'm doing right now. And mine's, you know, with a lot of motivated home sellers. But investing strategies that I don't like, I don't have one that comes to mine.

Okay. What about you guys? What about you guys? I like everything. When he asked me that question, I sat there and thought, a minute. And I said, I think I would actually say a lease option, but not in terms of buying it with a lease option, but in terms of selling. And I said only because when I sell with a lease option, I get 100 phone calls from the lowest common denominator person. Even worse than tenants,

I mean, I get from the absolute worst people in my area, like the really like the unemployed people, like they all seem to be attracted to the rent to own. So that was my least favorite. It works okay. I just, I got a lot of phone calls I didn't like. Yeah. So that makes sense. Awesome. Okay. Last question, Josh. Oh, we're not on the famous four.

We're not. What's your problem? I'm not actively listening. I thought he's not acting. Signs on me and stuff. I was still my famous four. All right. Fire round question.

Last question. Should beginners look at turnkey properties for their first buy and hold property? No. Why not? Why? So this is, the question is, should be, beginners look to turnkey for their first property. Yep.

And my outlook has always been go do the, when everybody else is zigging, zag. So if everybody is, you know, beginners are always being told, just go do something that's easy right out of the gate, get your feet wet. Is that how we say it? That's sticking to it, all right? And my philosophy is go do what's hard and what most people don't want to do. you do that and you'll be able to handle anything under the sun moving forward. So my first rental has been, was probably one of the biggest nightmares and everything else now,

I know exactly what not to do. And all of these challenges that I faced, I'm much more equipped to handle those in a much more timely manner and avoid those situations on any of my future rental properties. That is. Fantastic. That's great. That's great. Thanks for actively listening.

You're welcome. All right, now, Josh, it is time for the world famous. Famous for... All right, these questions we ask every single guest, and so we're going to throw them at you right now. Number one, do you have, or what is, your favorite real estate book? Josh is holding up my book. Thanks, Josh. Does I know you like my book. What's your favorite real estate-related book? My favorite was the ABCs of Real Estate Investing.

Ken McElroy? Yeah, I mean, that was the very first book that I wrote. read that helped me just get a grasp on what the investing landscape looked like. And it was a really good foundational piece to start building up in different niche areas of investing. But it gave a great broad landscape, you know, picture of what to expect when you're jumping into that. I bought my apartment complex because of that book. I read that book the next day I got the apartment complex. I mean, I found the deal and, well, they found me. Yeah, that book was huge. So, cool. Josh.

Yeah, let me jump in here. Are you active listening? You know, I was just, you guys were having a moment. We're having a McElroy moment. I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, you guys had a moment. Okay, so my next question, business book. What is your favorite business book?

Or right now, what's got you excited? I got an extensive library. I would say my favorite one that's been in line with where I'm at right now in my life has been essentialism. And essentialism. Yeah. And essentialism has been great purely from the respect that as a serial entrepreneur, I have, you know, like many of us do adult ADHD and we want to do everything.

And it's really helped me hone in on what is my end goal and vision for why I'm doing what I'm doing and making sure that when I'm saying yes, I'm saying yes to the right things. And I'm also saying no to the right things to make more time for the right things in my life. and getting a little bit more comfortable with a graceful no and how to say no to people, how to remove myself from the emotion of some of these decisions. But it's allowed me to really gain more counterbalance in my life. I don't believe we're ever truly balanced, but it's helped me gain clarity on the important pillars of my life, which is my daughter, my wife to be, and empowering the people in my

organizations to have opportunity and growth and just having fun. And that's been a really big thing for me this last year was instead of trying to please everybody and do everything is go deep dive on a few things that I'm great at and then expand deep to deep dive. There we go. See, I set you up, man. I got the book called Deep Dive right on my desk here. I'm your Segway King over here. That was awesome. And essentialism by Greg McKeown. I have heard that mention a few times. I probably need to go pick up a coffee. Matt, have you read the one thing? I have a question. Yeah, so I know Jay Poppa's on, and Gary Keller's obviously been a mentor of mine as well.

Are you a Keller Williams agent? Yeah, so our team's at Keller. And very similar things. Yeah, that's why I ask. Those books align in a big way. And I love what Jay is doing. I got him coming on my podcast here in the next month. And I know you guys have had him as well, haven't you?

Yes, yeah. Yeah, we love Jay. He's awesome. So cool. Josh, next question. Oh, yeah, that's me. Active listener. Well, I'm just waiting for you to not hijack it again.

Can I say that you guys are honestly my favorite interview? I've been on a handful of podcasts, and you guys are just freaking awesome, man. I love what you guys are. I appreciate that. Thank you. It's Abbott and an idiot. Can I be Abbott? I don't know.

Figure it out. hobbies what do you do for fun matt and matt brand brand is not an idiot brandon is just like one of the greatest people on planet oh thank you is and he's amazing i love uh yeah i love what you guys are doing man and the the community that you guys have built is amazing um for for opportunities that i love doing outside of real estate is um i'm i love to travel i love mastermind so i'm part of a travel Mastermind group called GoBundance. And I've been in that from its... We've had a few GoBundance people on the show, I think.

I think so. How Al-Rod was. Yep, that's a good guy, and he's part of the group. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's some amazing guys from all different landscapes that really are just intentional and consciously moving towards becoming a better version of themselves every day. So it's not just wealth-based. It's all about being a better father and friends.

friend and leader, a business owner, having fun, having great health. So for me, I, those pillars really are how I kind of live my life and I like to do activities that are in alignment with that. So traveling, bucket list adventures, spending time with my family. I love hiking outdoors. And I just like connecting with really awesome people. So my podcast is about studying people that are operating at a high level in their life or business. And that's really where I enjoy spend a lot of my free time is learning. I'm a student of life. Awesome. Cool. Yes. Very good. Very good. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. My last question. Anyway, so yeah, I was. Don't hijack this. I got this. All right. My last question.

Matt, what do you think, what do you believe sets apart these successful real estate investors out there from from those who give up? They fail. They never get started. They're scared. They're fearful. They're crying. What separates the successful ones from everyone else? Yes, you said a key word in there is give up scarcity mindset. A lot of the things that keep people from moving forward. And I always say that really consistency is the key to success. Consistency and being willing to pivot, I think have been the two important things with what I've been doing is I continue to fail on a daily basis and I'm totally cool with that. It's just great feedback for me to figure out what my next steps are going to be. But I'm going to be consistent with my work ethic. I'm going to be consistent with my attitude. I'm going to be consistent with my values and my integrity. And so if you can find what that consistency formula is for your life, it allows you to show up in those spaces every single day at a really high level and life rewards people who show up every day. And so... That's a good quote right there. Yeah. So,

I mean, opportunity will continue to present itself if you show up, you know, and that's half the time. You hear about people saying, oh, I got lucky. No, it's just because you were there and you were. And you were plugging in and you were showing up and you were doing what it takes. So consistency, resilience, obviously having fixed skin. I mean, we all have that drunk monkey in our head where we have those days where like, you can't do it. You know, you're stupid or you don't have enough money or you're not going to find the deals, whatever, right? Drunk monkey. I love that. And I think that with the mindset, Brandon is my drunk monkey. And the resilience. I can just picture him like hanging out on your shoulder over here, you know?

Yeah, right? And so, I think resilience to the challenges that entrepreneurship have. If you're consistent, if you're resilient, you have the right mindset and attitude, you will be rewarded. Fantastic. I love it. I think it's great. So Matt, we say it a fair amount, but, you know, it's been a while. We've done a lot of shows. This, I believe, is show 166. Actually, this is show 166 of the BiggerPockets podcast. Check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 166. and Matt will be there to answer any questions for you. But, you know, this has probably been one of my favorite shows we've done in a very, very long time.

It's been awesome, very motivating, very concrete, lots of amazing details. So thank you so much. Before we let you go, I just want to say, like, I think what's the coolest for me is, you know, you started the podcast telling us kind of what an F up you were. I mean, you know, you were this guy who just going to... Oh, wait. You know, you got booted from high school, college, you know, all sorts of, you know, bad things that you were up to. And you're like, oh, you know, you got that kick in the ass that you needed and really got focused.

And, you know, you got a serious head on your shoulders. And, you know, it sounds like you're building an incredible business. So kudos to you for doing that. Kudos to you for the transformation. And, you know, for all the people who are like, oh, you know, I'm just to screw up. I can't get anything right. You know, dare I say, dare I say, look at the... Matt can do it, anyone can do it.

Hair club for men. I'm not just... You know, like, it's just takes that dedication to change. It takes that dedication to say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to stop screwing around, and I can make it happen. Would you agree that that's probably a fair assessment? I mean, you know, the quote of your past doesn't have to, equal your future or something that I live by.

You don't need to let that determine what your future looks like, first and foremost. And at the end of the day, you guys, me, millionaires, whoever it is, we're all human beings. Like, we're all ordinary people, but the difference between those living at a really high level and not is they've set themselves on an obsessive, passionate, courageous journey to live an extraordinary life. And so we all have that same opportunity. And I know what you guys are doing and how you're empowering your community is we all have those same resources and opportunities in front of us. It comes down to you within what's inside you. It's a choice that I made to be convicted to where I want to go.

And I have my weekdays. I have days where I cuss and get angry and mad. But at the end of the day, I know I'm going to show up better than I was the day before because I'm committed to that. Nice. And he drowns the monkey in his head. So, all right, last question. Where can people find out more about you? You know, my main connection point would probably be Facebook,

which is Facebook backslash Matia. And you can connect me on there. I'm on Instagram. But those would be the two best places to always reach out to me. And I love connecting with people all over the globe. Cool. And you have a podcast coming out. Are you coming out?

Yes. Yeah, we do have a podcast coming out. It's called The Millionaire Mentality. And it's basically debunking the idea that you have to be a net worth millionaire to live a millionaire lifestyle. And we can all live intentionally and aware in our life to design what that legendary life looks like for us. But at the end of the day, it's about becoming and embodying that mindset and those characteristics and traits in order to go out and achieve that life at a high level. That's awesome. Cool. Matt, thank you so much for coming on,

man. We really appreciate it. Appreciate it. It was a pleasure, man. You guys are awesome. Thank you. We'll see you around. Take care. All right, guys, that was Matt Atchison. amazing show. It was epic. That's definitely amongst our top five or ten shows of all time. Yeah, it was incredible. I love it. I love the shows that we just get really deep into like, how do you work your business? Why do you work your business? I mean, I love that stuff. It's great. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So yeah, if you guys did not get anything out of that show, congratulations. You're a mega millionaire and you probably don't need to listen again. No, I mean, it was awesome. And Matt did a great job. And we definitely appreciate his

time. So big thanks to Matt. Otherwise, yeah, man, welcome back. It's nice to have you, you know, back, back state side. Hey, Josh, I have a question for you. Yeah, what's up? Okay. If your life was a book. Oh, don't, you can't. What would the title of said book be? I got to get some bigger pockets. That's the title of your book. Okay. Probably is the title. You can't do that. I just did it. I took your question. that you wanted to ask. You can't do that. By the way,

I asked that, we asked that question to every interview, every interviewee who comes to try and get a job here. And I will tell you that that is a stunner. That question, like people stop in their tracks like, whoa. And then they're like stone-faced drool falling from their mouths. And then like three or four minutes,

they're like, oh, yeah, I should have been a butterfly or something else. I hope that they chose that book title. It's a good one. Speaking of Hiring, If you guys are interested in a job and you want to work for the greatest company on planet Earth, check out biggerpockets.com slash jobs. And you can see what's available right now. Yes, we are definitely hiring for lots of different positions.

And yeah, we'd love it. Cool. Submit an application. So that's it. That's it. You guys, thanks so much for listening as we talked about in the upfront. Check out the video podcast on iTunes. If you're listening to us on regular iTunes, please leave us a rating review.

If you're on Stitcher, leave us a rating review. you know, we definitely appreciate the feedback that definitely helps. If you are not already a member of our community, please jump and create an account on bigger pockets. There are thousands of conversations happening on the site every single day, which is incredible. I am absolutely humbled by the volume of activity happening on bigger pockets and the amount of business that's getting done. If you are not engaging, if you just went and set up a profile and disappeared, you are a thousand percent missing out. actually. I was going to study.

Oh, go ahead. Yeah, Dave, our growth manager, just did a study and found this, you know, extremely strong correlation between those people who are active, particularly on the forums, and those people who have a ton of profile views. And, you know, why does that matter? Well, profile views mean people are checking you out. They're interested in you, your business. And they want to find out more.

They want to connect with you. They want to potentially work with you. So if you want to build a business, if you want to build your brand in real estate, the formula is really easy. Get on bigger pockets. Get active, engage, connect, offer value. Don't just put out nonsense, but literally help your peers offer value. If you're a newbie, ask questions, help out where you can, welcome new members. Doing this is going to help you get more visibility on our platform.

and we're getting close to 500,000 members to interact with, and millions and millions of people coming through the site, there's no better place to get exposure for yourself than Bigger Pocket. So jump on. Cool. All right. Well, let's get out of here. Let's do this.

All right, guys, thank you for listening. I'm Josh Dorkin. Sign in all. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors' large, and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the

Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast 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.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own.

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