BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 174: Lessons Learned From 2,000+ Transactions Over 44 Years with Dave Short

Episode Date: May 12, 2016

Around BiggerPockets, we often encourage newer investors to sit down with an experienced real estate investor to “pick their brain” and soak up their wisdom. Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast, we want to do just that. Dave Short began investing in real estate nearly half a century ago and has an incredible level of insight into the ups and downs of building wealth through real estate. We cover everything from overcoming failure to flipping a hundred houses in four years and much more! In This Episode We Cover: How he got started in real estate from a factory job 44 years ago The grave need for property management and liquidating their business Thoughts on going through investing with over a million dollars in debt Tips for making partners instead of having bank relationships How help from the outside opened his eyes Why you should stay in the game despite failures The importance of working with the right people How many transactions he has done over his real estate career How he flips a house Who’s on his team How to hook a spouse on investing in real estate How he buys his deals How to get a good transaction as a wholesaler Making a deal by solving other people’s problems How to show yourself to be legit as a wholesaler Why you should find a veteran investor in your market What “pre-habbing” a house is And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Jobs Google Play Tim Ferris’ Podcast BP Podcast Show 91: Getting Started as a Real Estate Wholesaler with Ben Grise BiggerPockets Keyword Alerts BiggerPockets Meet BiggerPockets Analysis Tools BiggerPockets Forums Books Mentioned in this Show The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller Burst This! by Frank McKinney Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins Tweetable Topics: “The management is the key to success, and real estate is just the vehicle.” (Tweet This!) “In buying and selling real estate, every house has 2 to 4 solutions.” (Tweet This!) “The beauty in staying in the real estate business for 44 years is if you’re in a slump for 4 years, that’s only 10% of your career.” (Tweet This!) “If you can’t ask the right questions, then you’ll never get to the solution.” (Tweet This!) “I never look at them as competition. They’re people we work together with, and we can all make a living.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Dave Dave’s BiggerPockets Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 174. You know, the beauty of being in the real estate business 44 years, if you're in a slump for four years, that's only 10% of your career. 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. 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 here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's up, man? Hey, not much. How you doing? I'm doing good. Yeah, yeah. What's new in the Dorkin household?

Well, by the time this show airs, I probably will have returned from a little family vacation. That's true. I'm excited to get rid of you. Pretty excited. Yeah. I just found that out that you're going to be completely. off the grid for a week and I don't have to hear you for a whole like I celebrated a little bit

I'm not going to lie you're not a nice you know I know I celebrate because I'm glad for you I'm happy for you grief from people that I'm the bad guy that I'm the mean guy in the relationship here you know you're the abusive wife Brandon I'm the realized life I don't know anyway you're going on vacation that's exciting I'm excited for you I asked to come with but you said no I want to go riding your bag, but whatever. Yeah, that's not going to work down. Yeah, so pretty excited. And it'll be my first time doing a cruise,

which I'm both excited and petrified of. I don't like crowds. So I'm, you know, we'll see how that goes. You'll love it. You'll love it. I'm so jealous. I love cruises. No, that's cool.

That's cool. Yeah, so that's going on. Bigger Pockets, things are going well here. Families obviously good, but we're in the midst of hiring a bunch of folks. By the way, biggerpockets.com slash jobs. if you are looking for a job. We have a bunch of openings. Yeah, things are well, man.

We're, you know, it's just so much fun doing this. We impact so many people. And I don't know, I'm just, I'm loving it. Actually, a cool little thing. You're going to cry. You're going to score something a little bit. Stop. You know I cry.

I'm just not going to do it out. It's pretty cool today. If you are, I think we talked about this before, but Bigger Pockets is up on the Google Play store. So if you're an Android user, you can find the podcast now on Google Play. What's pretty awesome is if you go on there, we are right now the number one featured business show on the Google Play podcast store. Eat that, Tim Ferriss. Okay, I don't realize we had some kind of beef with Tim Ferriss.

Oh, I don't have a beef with them. I just, you know, competitive, you know, I want. Oh, okay. It's the first time of my life that I'm more popular than Tim Ferriss. Oh, you know, me and Timmy. We're buddies, you know. He read the four-hour work week. I wrote the book on rental property investing for two best books ever written.

That book took me a while to read. A long time ago. Anyway. Yeah, so that's cool. That's exciting. And, you know, it's just, it's so much fun to be a part of this and do this. So anyway, um, cool. Let's get to today's.

Yeah, what do we get to today's? Quick tip. Today's quick tip is actually related to books. Um, actually quick tip today's, it's like quick favor. If you guys can do me a favor, I'm actually hoping to get more of our books in libraries. And the reason why is because I learned from reading books and libraries. I mean, like, I read like 100 books in libraries when I said, started. We want to be able to repay that favor. So libraries don't just naturally carry books. You have to

ask for them. So we're asking every one of the listeners of the show, probably 100,000 people will hear this. Please just call up your local library and say, hey, do you have the book on rental property investing or the book on flipping houses by Jay Scott or the book or the book? And it just do us a big favor and hopefully help out thousands of more people who can read our content, even though they can't maybe buy the book. That's great. Yeah. I love it. Great tip. Great tip. Yeah, please do that. That would be awesome. Yeah. That's how libraries know what to order is by people asking.

So ask. All right. Let's get on with this thing. Yeah. I have an uncomfortable question for you. If your rent collection drop to 80% next month, how long would your cash flow hold up? What about 70% for the next three months?

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Well, today, you guys, we have a, I know I say this a lot. You guys are probably tired of hearing it. But do I ever disappoint? Come on. You never disappoint. All right. Today's show is is really cool. We've got a guy. He's, he's kind of a legend in his area. He's been, this guy has. been in the game for 44 years. Now, like, you know, that's somebody I want to listen to. That's somebody I want to learn from. You know, and what's exciting is he's had ups and he's had some serious downs. And, you know, he comes out of it loving real estate. Still kicking butt. He's done over 100 flips in the last three years. He's done over 2,000 transactions. Yeah. That's not like, he doesn't own 2,000 units. He's done over 2,000 transactions in real estate. That's impressive.

That's impressive. That's impressive. He's done. He's done, he's done, much everything. So we kind of cover everything today, which is cool. Yeah. We, you know, we, we, there's no super deep focus, but just talking to this guy, talking to this guy is kind of like sitting down with your local wise mentor and learning from him. And that's kind of the approach we took. So let's bring him on. This is Dave Short. Hey, Dave, welcome to the show. It's good to have you here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I get the feeling that you're kind of a legend in your part of the state. I had a couple people telling me that we should interview you. And I'm, I'm I'm kind of excited to learn from the legend here, Dave.

So why don't we start at the beginning of legendary Dave? How'd you get started? I left a factory job in 1973 and decided to sell real estate. Okay. So I started selling real estate and I sold, owned some real estate companies, always had my hands in investing because I don't think I ever really liked selling real estate, but I did it and I was pretty good at it. So I kept doing it.

And then we get more and more. And as we progressed into the 80s, we started buying single family homes and had a nice little lease option portfolio up to about 100 houses. Wow. And then my partner didn't want to do that anymore. He wanted to own a golf course. So we sold all of them, the 32, which I took the 32 and built it back up to another 100 and managed that lease option portfolio for 12, 13 years. Okay. that time. My wife was our property manager and she was very good at it. So I got to golf and she

managed properties and I filled real estate. That's awesome. That worked out. There's about 20 hours of content. You just crammed into that like 30 seconds. But that only gets us for like 1981. So what happened in the last three decades? Well, the last three decades, I was partner in real estate, a couple of real estate companies, and didn't like that. So I started getting an investment more and more. And after we built our inventory up and, you know, taking it jumping 20 years, because everything went great for 20 years, jumping into the 0405, the lease option principle or our own model didn't do very well. And we kind of grasp it early where it all of a sudden my wife came to me and says, you know, our cash flow typically been $10,000 to $12,000 a month.

And she says, you know, we're only making $5,000 this month. We got a couple properties back. We had to put them back in service, which cost $5,000 to $7,000 at a time. And she'd come back to me a couple months later and says, we're not making any money this month. And she'd come back to me a couple minutes later and says, we're going to lose about $10,000 this month. So all of a sudden, we had to make some changes. and decided to do that. And with our inventory, started to really push the liquidation of it.

I came home one evening from selling real estate, and my wife's kind of sitting there crying, and she says, I'm ready to go to work for McDonald's. I can't do this. So it's too stressful. And I said, okay, then we'll start the liquidation process. And we got them all liquidated, but about, you know, 40 of them. then we sold them to an operator who wanted to get into my business. And I was pretty straightforward with the guy and said, hey, you know, I'm experienced.

I'm really good at this. Why do you want to do this? I'm warning you. I'm telling you this is not. No, no, I can do this. So he bought the balance of our portfolio and my wife worked with his manager for a year and a half. And it didn't go well because they couldn't manage the property. You know, my philosophy has always been in our business is the management is the key to success in real estate.

The real estate is just the vehicle. You can manage the car. You can manage the real estate, but you've got to manage that end of it. And most of the people that are not successful on this side of the business, I think they just, they fail to manage the asset that they have. Yeah, yeah. And that was not a model that we liked at that point. So you guys sold that 40-unit portfolio. your wife was working there.

They couldn't manage it. What happened there? I mean, they just kind of... That portfolio just went away, and I actually helped some of the banks liquidate some of the properties for them and worked with them. And, you know, they were just in a mess

and couldn't solve the issue because their lack of management. We helped them all we could to get them to make it work, but they just couldn't make it work. And we were in really tough times at that point, and I told them they were over, overextending themselves. They were, you know, getting mortgages at 110% of value, 120. I said,

this model will not work. Don't do this. Right. So, but people have to live and learn sometimes. Yeah. I was one of those guys. Yeah. So, yeah, and we're glancing through a, you know, decades of a career here, but since we're kind of doing the glancing, we might as well finish. So you unload that portfolio, your wife gets out. Um, you now have a portfolio. You now have a portfolio. it sounds like of nothing, but you've liquidated. Is that correct? And then what did you do from there? Obviously, you're still in the games.

I was selling real estate. I really always thought I could outsell my mess. And the times got pretty tough where I really couldn't do that. So, you know, we basically hand to mouth for two or three years and just kept moving forward with that knowing that we could be successful in the, you know, in the long term. and now we were dealing with the short term. So, you know, we got, you know, we were living, you know, like a lot of people do hand to mouth off credit cards

and things that we shouldn't have been done. I knew better than to do, but we did it to survive. And so the house flipping business, the market starts to turn a little bit, and we were really good flippers. And we knew how to do that. We now didn't have the bank's backing that we had prior to. I mean, the bank was, I can't blame the bank for my failures in it, but they kept changing the terms on how we were successful with them.

So it made so much harder for us to do our flipping business. I mean, we hadn't, you know, we had had one of the banks here locally, and we hadn't missed a payment or done anything for 11 years. And they called $2 million due on us because they didn't want to beat that market anymore. So we had to. do what we took as part of the liquidation of the portfolio and some of that stuff to get out of it. So to a point, they took our livelihood away a little bit, but it's still on my wife and I. Well, push come to shove in 07, 08, we were, I hate to use it, it's a big number, like a million and a half bucks. And we thought our alternative was to file bankruptcy.

So you were a million in debt at that point? We were a million point five in debt. Wow. At that point. And we just thought our, you know, and there was some mortgages secured with that stuff. So it wasn't that, you know, it was a big number. So, you know, my wife and I did some big, big soul searching and we thought we could get in the flipping business. I knew the real estate business.

I was still making a modest living doing that. And I knew I could do better if I worked harder. You know, we made the decision. We wanted investors and to go into the flip. business and try to get that model. But our opinion was, hey, we can't default on investors and expect new people to loan this money. So we threw bankruptcy out the window as an alternative. So then we just started busting our butts.

We went to our debtors. We went to our banks, worked out modifications and these kind of things. They were pretty good working with us. And they basically, I kind of had to point out to them that they were now not my bank, but they were my partner. So let's work together and try to get this problem solved. And they were pretty good about that. What was all this?

I mean, you said some of the debt was mortgages, a lot of it was, I mean, were you just buying, did you just have lines of credit through the bank that you were doing properties with? Is that what the idea was? Yes, we had lines of credit. And we'd had some flips that didn't sell, that we had to rent. And we didn't have enough money to fix them up. So they weren't in the quality that we were used to renting. But they were rented.

and some cash flow. And I had several properties that we had mortgages on, but I had partners on. And if the bank took these properties back, then these partners lost their money or would potentially lose their money. And, you know, when we met with the banks and their attorneys, I said, that's not an alternative. Let's work this out. These guys are going to be made whole.

And you give me a couple years and I'll work this out and we will get everybody whole. Right. to the situation. And, you know, me, deeding in lieu was not an option. I just was not going to do that. I said, look, I'm clever enough. I can keep you guys off a long time, and I don't want to do that if I'm going to pay you back. And I am going to pay you back. So that was kind of the, you know, the premise. And they said, okay, we buy into that. And, you know, here's some things that we'll do. And we suggested some of the things that we can do and, and not default. I mean, one of the banks that was bizarre. They had me, you know, this pushes up to 2011, 2011, 2012. They had me four months

behind in my mortgage payment, and I had made every payment on time for four years. Nice. So, you know, I just said, okay, then he says, well, you need to get current with this. And I said, but the bank says, you're taking it all off my principal if I'm not current. So you tell me why I should get current with you because you're taking all my $4,000 a month payment off from the principal. Yep. So we ended up finally negotiating through that. And it was just, it was painstaking for us.

But, you know, things started to turn around. And I had a good friend of mine who come to me and said, Dave, you're the only guy I trust to flip houses. I just sold my business. Here's all the money you need to do what you need to do. Oh, wow. My got sent came. Wow. So before we get into that, I want to ask you a quick question.

And I have one when you're done. Okay. So do you have any words of wisdom for people that are in that same position that you were in back then that are really like right now, they're maybe underwater on, maybe not as bad as you, but they're just, they're lost. They're struggling. They're having, you know, the banks calling their mortgage due or they're trying to flip a house and it's not selling or, you know, they're just like scared. Do you have any advice for those people that are listening that are going through that? Absolutely. Because it's some of the things that I did when we were trying to.

put packages together with the bank or talking to individual investors. I would call friends and mentors and people that I trusted in the real estate industry, and I just bring three or four of them together and say, look, my mind's so clogged on what to do to hear because I'm frightened. I don't like this. I've never not paid my bills. I said, you need to help me get a solution. So I brought in clear heads. Yeah. To look at my problem and say, okay, well, why don't you try this? Why don't you try this?

Is the house up to snuff? Let's do this. So it was just a combination of bringing in different people to open up my eyes. Because I think every house, you know, buying and selling today, every house has two to four solutions. So it's just not one solution for every house. And every one of my, so it's kind of, it works. it brings people in, it lets them know your integrity and your credibility to make it right, whether it's them or somebody else. It's not getting paid today. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Yeah, and we talk about that a lot on the podcast, you know, going in with various exit strategies, not just having a singular mindset. I'm going to flip this house. Well, good, good for you. And what if it doesn't work out? Then what? And what if that doesn't work out? Then what? You know, having that plan ahead of time is going to save your skin when things don't work out because they're not always going to. I want to kind of follow up on Brandon's question and then I want to finish the story. It sounds like you're doing a whole heck of a lot of flipping now, but we'll get there really quickly. Why stay in the game? I mean, you're a million plus down. You know, you've just, you've had a headache after headache. You know, certainly things went well, but you had this,

you know, this time where you're living hand to mouth. I mean, just the business, it sounds like was pretty good for a while and then was just really not good at all. You know, why did you stay? Why didn't you move on and find another path, you know, to kind of surviving or, you know, living your life? Why stay in real estate? Well, I never did not love it. Okay.

And with the exception of two years or three years or four years, whatever the time is, is that it was always good to me. and I knew it would be good to me. And I had people hanging out that were what I classify as, you know, for lackful better, little old ladies or people's money that I have that entrusted me with it. And that money had to be, you know, had to be gotten back to them. So there was no, you know, from that standpoint, there was no exit strategy. And I knew, you know, good times would come back again. And it's like, you know, the beauty of being in the real estate business, 44 years,

if you're in a slump for four years, that's only 10% of your career. Yeah. So, you know, it's my son who works for me. He's like, said, man, is it ever going to get, he started in the worst time ever. Is it ever going to get good? Yeah. And I said, you know, it's only been bad 50% of the time you've been in. So it gets you a few more years.

And it's like anything else. He's killing it right now. Yeah. You take that long approach. That's right. It's, you know, I don't know what I would have done had I not been in real estate. And really, I'm pretty clever, and I was really good at it. Still am.

And I just, I can't wait to get up every day and go to work. That's great. That's cool. That's great. Well, let's kind of finish the story. You know, the flipping is getting interesting. It sounds like you've been really focused on that the past bunch of years. Bring us up to modern times.

Well, my real estate, I use this in a lot of classes I teach on flipping is why I'm not a real estate broker, is that I would rather have a dead rat in my mouth and put a buyer in my car and show houses. Wow. That's a colorful picture. That's awesome. Brandon, you're going to try out the dead rat thing? No, no, I agree with them.

I don't want to show houses either. No. So, you know, it was just one of the things that I, hell, I've lost. my train of thought here. Something about rats and you're being hungry. Well, you know, the flipping come back around for me. Yeah. And, you know, my friend come to me.

Unfortunately, my friend passed away before we really got to do some business. And another person come through with some of his money and he wanted to learn the real estate business. So he kind of put me back on the map again. Okay. And unfortunately, that partnership didn't work out. we were very successful in doing it. And so at that point in time, I knew I had the confidence,

and I had paid a high percentage of my investors back, and they actually have come back into the fold of my investors again. So if people don't, you know, if you treat them, talk to them, work it out with them, you know, they'll be back. I mean, they'll come back and do more business with you. There you go. I love that. So how many, you've been flipping for a while now,

How many flip deals have you done in the past bunch of years? In the past four years, three and a half years, we're on number 111. Wow. That's amazing. So you are seriously flipping now. Yeah, it's seriously flipping. I want to talk about how you do that many flips because that's overwhelming to me. There's a lot of stuff to talk about here.

I don't know. How do you dissect a 44-year career with, I mean, it's hundreds and hundreds. How many transactions do you think you've done in your entire career overall? I was trying to figure that. We think it's over 2,000. Wow. Holy smokes. And counting real estate transactions, because I average selling, in the heydays,

I was selling $22, $23 million of real estate a year in Indianapolis. So we were pretty big. And that's a lot for a market where the average house costs like $6, right? Pretty much. We've got a way up now to when I was doing it. It was, you know, in 115, 120 was my average sale price. Is that throughout the past X number of years? Yeah, pretty much.

I've never been in the high end. We have some big sales, but because of flipping and the houses that we deal with, we tend to be around 120. Okay. So I might start picking on Indianapolis, by the way. Detroit has faced my wrath for a while. I think it might be time to. You can't pick on us. We're pretty solid.

So let's get an idea real quick if your market looks like. What is a typical house that you flip? What's it typically cost you buy? What do you typically end up putting into it and what do you typically sell it for if you had to pick averages? Probably the last couple flips that we closed. One of them, we closed yesterday. We bought it for 75. Okay.

We put about 27 in it. Okay. And we sold it for 125 for stay on the market, two offers. Okay. So they're like just these base hit deals that... They're just basic, you know, bread and butter type flips. We're closing one Monday. same thing that we bought it for 130.

We put about 60 in that house and sold it for 230. Okay. What's your average rehab time on these flips? The cookie cutters, we try to be in and out in 120 days. We'll buy it, rehab it, put it on the market, sell it, and close it between 90 and 120 days. Nice, nice. So pretty quick. And what does your team look like?

I mean, for those people listening, you got him on camera. I was going to say, Dave is not the guy who's. I'm right. My wife is the CGO, which she calls herself, was a cheap gopher operator. Oh, nice. She's a gopher operator. I like that. And I have, you know, we have three, we have bits and pieces of three or four contractors.

We have one guy that effectively works for. us full time. But we, it's my wife and I basically, and we manage the, manage the transaction. Okay. You know, my wife's unbelievable. She's just can get so much done in a day for being, you know, I've got her really teched up. I've got her into the early 2000s, maybe on her. She's using Facebook. She's using MySpace to kind of find out her. She's using a yellow pad to fill out the sheet of investors to get them over. There's no spreadsheets.

So you're a little old school in how you do your business. We're unbelievably old school. But it's working. It works for us. We're both fairly organized. We get along great so we don't have the argument. She'll say, you know, she called me yesterday and was laughing. She said, I'm so excited.

And I said, what's that? Why are you so excited for it? She says, well, we've just done our 23rd flip this year, and you said we were only going to do 24, so we've only got one more to go. I'm sure she'll hold you to that. I'm sure she'll try to hold me to that. And there's no better way to keep a good relationship with your wife to have her live somewhere else and have her call you when she needs to talk to you. I mean, that's the best way to have a relationship. Yeah, she's pretty solid, so I don't think she.

I may have to buy a house every like. Like, I've got two houses bought now that she don't know about. Well, she's about to find out. I have to wait a week or so until we get a couple of these. We've got like four flips closing in the next seven days, and that's very stressful for her to get the inspections and all that stuff done. So I can't put anything new on her play. I'll just wait until she gets those done.

And then I say, I need to turn the power on these houses. You guys have a great relationship. We do. We really do. That's so cool. So can I jump in real quick? Okay, so some people that are listening to have spouses, you know, they're married or they have significant others that they're living with. And their significant other doesn't share the same dream.

You know, they don't have, like, I mean, because my wife loves a real estate thing. Your wife loves it. But what do you do if your spouse doesn't love it? Like, how can you convince them or at least encourage them to support you the way that your wife supports you? Do you have any tips there? Well, you know, I would, you know, you've got to make them a part of it. and unfortunately I've bought a lot of transactions from guys that their wives didn't get it or just had no interest in the real estate.

And I think it's very tough to do that, but you've got to let them somehow sharing the wealth of the success of what you're doing in the real estate business. And then they'll catch on. If they've got a $1,000 gift certificate to their favorite shopping place after you close a flip, then they're going to think, when's the next one closing? That's a great idea.

Yeah, that's kind of cool. So you've got to get them where they're vested in getting this, you know, getting your deal done and appreciate what you do to get there. You know, a lot of wise, you know, and the guys don't do it. I've told some of my people that are looking from me for mentorship, and I said, you know, ask her to help you decorate it. Is your house beautifully decorated? It's great.

I said, ask her to do that. She'll quickly get involved in your process with you. Yeah. We've got a, there's a listener out there. Her name is Heather Turner. It's the wife of Brandon. That is my wife. Yeah, I think she was telling me the other day.

Oh, you were talking to my wife. I was, and she was telling me about how she really wants Brandon to be hooking her up with that $1,000 Billingdale's gifts to her. I'm sure she does. I will have you know, just two weeks ago, she went to Hobby, Lobby to buy something. And so I handmade her a $500 gift certificate on the computer on Photoshop for Hobby Lobby, and I texted her a picture of it. And I said, you know, thanks for all your hard work on everything. Go buy a bunch of stuff. So she was very happy. That's cool. Look at me. I'm a good

husband. Yeah, you are. You are. You are. You are. You beg me because I know you guys are spending a lot of hours. That is true. Yeah, that is true. So you want to, I want to jump into how you find these deals. That's what I was going to go there first. Sorry. You know what, Dave, how are you finding these deals? Dang it. We buy probably 70% of our deals at our local sheriff's sale to courthouse. Really?

It's pretty amazing when people, I try to get my, I've got my own network out there. I have three or four really good wholesalers that I buy something from. And one of them, you know, did a Ben Grice, who did a bigger pockets with our guys. Yeah, he's been on the show. I bought Ben's first deal. Oh, that's cool. And I've bought probably six or seven from him, but him and a couple other guys that wholesale from me, I've kind of trained them that if they want me to go on their initial appointment with their wholesaler,

to look at the property, give them my opinion without obligation, and I will give them a buy number. So if they want to go back and negotiate with the person and say, look, you know, typically I'm 60 days on this option, but if we can get the deal together the day, we'll close in a week. And they can use my bid as their buy number. And, you know, I have no issue with what a wholesaler makes as long as I can make my numbers within the parameter. So we buy a lot from wholesalers. A century 21 firm that I work through is they know I'm a flipper. They know I don't argue with their fees.

And I probably get three or four transactions a year from other agents who don't want to deal with a crummy house. I went out on one today with one of our agents here, and I think I'll get it. It's an unbelievable deal. I'm very excited about it. I'm buying it for 140, and it's a 240 house with 40 or 50 grand. She said it's in an estate, and the people don't want to mess with it. They don't want to list it. The neighbors don't want a bad sale price coming through, and I said, hey, I'm your guy.

That's amazing. That's the value of those relationships and being a part of a network. I love that you had talked about that at the sheriff's sale and your network. I know Brendan and I have been feverishly writing questions as you've been talking here. I jumped on the part with the wholesalers because that's something that a lot of new investors go to and they think, hey, that's the best path to go. And it's so cool that you do what you do, which is you help out these young wholesalers, help them find their way.

They don't have to be young in age, but young at heart, I guess. what makes a good wholesaler? For the people listening who say, it'd be so cool if I could link up with a guy like David in my market and feed him great deals and not have to worry that I'm going to have somebody to buy them. How did these guys go about finding great deals? What should they be doing?

I think a good wholesaler is he has to hone his skills to be able to negotiate with a seller. He's been put in front of somebody. that wants to sell their house at a price. That seller probably doesn't know what that price is today. The wholesaler certainly doesn't know what the price is. So he needs to go in, make that seller feel warm and fuzzy trusting. For a wholesaler, in my mind, to get a good transaction,

he has to be light and the seller has to feel that he's honest with him. And you know what? you can be honest with these sellers and still get a great deal because they want to sell their house. It's not necessarily when it leaves win-win for a seller or buyer. It's time for the wholesaler to get out because somebody's probably trying to take advantage of somebody. Right. And these wholesalers, they don't negotiate almost in good faith. It's wholesaling, I don't think, is a cat and mouse game to be really successful. It's you need to go and set next to the person at the table versus across from the person.

Sure. If that makes sense. No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the interesting thing is that I think, you know, through the seminars and a lot of the other folks out there that are, you know, trying to tell wholesalers, you know, they, they, there is a lot of that, you know, you got to get your best dollar. You got to take, you know, and the people who are, who build sustainable wholesaling businesses, I believe, at least in my experience, talking to them,

they are never taking advantage of people. They are always working to find a solution to a problem that a seller has. And, you know, the seller would be, the seller would be putting a house on the market at retail if they were able to. There's a reason that these people are typically trying to unload these properties because there's an issue. There's something underlying happening, right? Absolutely.

And one of the best courses that I told you, it was probably 30 years ago I took this course. It was a negotiation and interviewing seller course. And it was amazing that the questions that a wholesaler doesn't ask a seller. And you have to know everything about them down to where, okay, when you get your money, what are you going to do with it? You don't know how, I mean, that's exceedingly important because you have for you to do a deal with them. you have to solve their problem. And you have to get to that problem. And if you can't ask the right questions,

then you'll never get to that problem and you'll never get a solution. Yeah. With that. Because when a wholesaler called, well, I've got this. He's saying, I said, well, you know, what's the O on it? Well, I'm not sure. You know, well, you know, what's, has he tried to market it before?

Well, I'm not sure. What's he done here? Well, I'm not sure. I said, you need to ask, you have to have answers to all of these questions before I can give you any sort of, you know, I bought a lot of, I bought a few wholesale deals where the seller financed me. And it's been, you know, it's like, okay, you know, what are you going to do with your money? Well, I just, you know, we don't know.

We're just going to put it in the bank. And I said, well, how would you like to get $10,000 more for your deal? Yeah. How can I do that? I said, well, why don't you sell me your deal at no money down? I'll give you a first mortgage for your money and I'll give you 20% of the profit when I sell the deal. Yeah. How much could be that?

I said, oh, I could be $7 or $8,000. He said, well, why wouldn't I do that? I said, I don't know. I wouldn't. So can I dive into that again? Because I can't, like, you basically are saying, like, the person who wanted to sell the house, you offered to basically joint venture with them. Yes.

Instead of just buying it from them and flipping it yourself, you offered to actually, so they, hold on. Now, do they have a mortgage in place and you're just doing a, like a rapper or they went to free and clear? Well, this house happened to be free and clear. Okay. So, and the question was, what are you going to do with the money when you get it? It was mom's house and said, well, wouldn't you like to see moms? And I met with them at their house, the house that I met with, they obviously did not need the money.

So it was like, okay, what are we going to do with this money? And I can use it better than you can use it. And I can get you some more return for your money. That guy is now one of my bigger investors. That's cool. Yeah, I'm negotiating a deal right now, like today, like they had been talking to my assistant. and they're like, we're like 72 and, or they're at 75. I'm at like 72 max and that's pushing it, you know,

after repair value of maybe like 120. Anyway, it's like this base hit that I don't really care too much because I'm not going to make a ton of money on it, so I don't really want to budge. Anyway, that might be a really good option that I might just take is off of the lady, look, you know, we can do your 75 that you want or, you know, maybe I can work that angle in there or why don't we do 72 and I'll give you part of the profits at the end, you know, because I'm factoring in the cost of hard money

to have to do it. I'm going to do 100% financing with hard money, which I'm paying four, five, six grand for that by the time it's done. So anyway, I really like that idea a lot. I think that definitely opens up some more options. So that's cool. Yeah. The idea of the creativity, you know, I think it goes back to what you said in the beginning is having multiple options on the exit. But yeah, this is an idea of multiple options on the entrance too. You know, can I get in at a price? Can I find a win-win that works for them that's, still gets me what I need and I still get the numbers that I'm trying to need, but also

finding a way to be creative to get them to where they want to go, which would work for Brandon in this case if they, of course, accepted something like that. I think it's awesome. And that's, I think those are the victories that you'll always remember and those are the victories that I think you build your career upon. And, you know, the wholesaler knows I'm going to give him all kinds of options and help him give the negatives that he needs to sell to his seller to get this transaction. You know, it's hard for me to deal with wholesalers. You know, first thing I'll ask them, I say, do you have this property under control

or are you the only one in here doing this transaction? Because I don't want to negotiate with the wrong guy. And that happens a lot, right? Wholesalers tend to, like, all feed off each other's deals and 20 guys are working the same deal. Indianapolis actually is pretty good. I don't have a lot of that, at least in the four or five wholesalers that I try to do business with. So we really don't have a lot of that. One of the things I want to touch you and real, she asked about deals and stuff, is that I'm very active in our local Cyria.

And I teach a class for them once a month, you know, attend their thing. But, you know, I get a lot of transactions from my group without asking for them. Yep. Because if they have, you know, so many newbies, if you have a deal, you can place it, make some money. You know, bring a guy in like me to help you work through that deal. You know, we're going to find our own deals. We don't need to steal yours. Yep.

And let us help you get your deal. And if you can't deal, I'll buy it from you. Yeah. And I've had a lot of newbies where I've said, okay, you've got a really good deal here. If you can't do it, let me know. And I'll write you a check for five grand for your deal and send it over to me. That's awesome. All right, rental property investors, listen up.

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How do I approach you and show you that I'm serious? Great question. How do I show you that I'm not just one of the hundred other guys that just is running out from this, you know, excited they listen to a Bigger Pockets podcast episode, now they're a wholesaler. How do I show you that I'm legit? Well, I'll ask you, I said, how are you, how do you think you'll get your leads? Here's what I think you should do to get leads. There's services out there that you can buy.

You can pinpoint zip codes and areas. Here's an area that I like to buy houses in. And I've actually joint ventured with wholesalers and say, look, if it's $400 a month to market these zip codes, I'll split it with you. I just want first crack. And that way, if you can sell a wholesale deal, you give me some of it to help cover my costs. but we'll get you out there. And, you know, I'm versed enough in the areas of Indianapolis that you give me an address. I'll tell you what it's worth.

Yeah, I love that. And so if I could just, like, talk directly to our listeners for a second, like, if you guys are out there listening to this show and you're like, how do I get started? Find Dave in your area. Like, this guy is going to help you get started because it benefits him just as much as it benefits you. You know, if you go to him, he's going to say, this is what I'm looking for in this area. here's how you find it.

Now go out and do the work and find it. You can be self-serving without being pushy. I mean, my Cyria group is, we had 32 people at my, it's called dinner and deals with Dave, and I spend an hour and a half going over my flips, showing before, after pictures, showing profit, acquisition, and I lay my heart out on my deals because these guys are not competition. their adversary, you know, they might be adversaries, but I've got four guys that are doing a better job in my area flipping than I am. Two of them worked with me for two or three years, and they took it to the next level. But guess what? If I have to have a flip tomorrow,

I'll call my other advocate. I said, you got anything going on that you can't use? Let me buy it from you. And I get a deal from him that way. Yeah. From other guys that, you know, and I'll do the same. to them. I've got two that I would sell out right now because I probably can't get to for a couple weeks because we're and we'll talk about a little bit if you have time about my new, another strategy that we've developed once I've finished reading a book that is really pretty awesome book that's really helped change me. Sure.

But it's kind of where we're trying to head our new, you know, a different angle in our flip business. Yeah. Just to kind of jump on again what Brandon had brought up, there are legends, or Dave's in every market. There are folks who've been around the block a few times. And a lot of the newbies will come in and say, I don't know how to get started. I'm frustrated.

And they, you know, unfortunately, you know, more people probably quit the business than last in the real estate investing game. But I think you increase your odds of success by connecting and networking and linking up with guys like you. And, you know, not, you know, anyone in your market who's kind of active and successful. And, you know, I do think it makes a lot of sense to try and add value and bring value to particularly the folks who've been around a little bit longer because they've got historical knowledge. They know the market. But yeah, so if you're a new investor, you definitely, I hope you walk away from this show with one thing and one thing, at least one tip, which is

next time you go to your local networking meeting, you know, go to stuff. step up to that guy that's the guy in the corner that everybody kind of, you know, bows down to and say, hi, introduce yourself, you know. You know, if I'm there, I'm going to share. Yep. I'm not going to, I'm not, I go to a lot of, you know, off the wall type meetings. You just don't know where your next, next transaction or opportunities coming from. So you need to get out there and share.

And our group is growing. our Cyria is really getting much stronger in our area. So last year, our meetings had 10 or 12 people. Now they've got 32, 33 people. So there's a lot of interest out there. And we're approachable. Yeah, I love that. There are groups in every area.

And if there aren't, you know, you guys can use our site, you know, jump on bigger pockets, create a thread, local networking, you know, who wants to get together in, you know, Dubuque or wherever the heck you are and Podunk Washington. Somebody actually just did that and they said, hey, who wants to get together in Olympia, Washington? 30 minutes from me. I'm like, sure, and there's like 15 people signed up already. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, so use our tools, use bigger pockets.

If there isn't something already, if you are part of groups and you want to get more folks out, you know, use us for that too. I mean, that's the networking, that in person, you know, pressing flesh is so, so important. Your site's great, your tools with the flipping and the wholesaling pricing out. I play with them a lot. Typically, after I have a successful flip, I put the numbers in and put it in our file, so we have it. It's like, hey, that's pretty cool.

That's cool. Well, thanks. People can check that out at biggerpox.com slash analysis, just FYI. Maybe we'll get your wife off the yellow pad. No, I have to take the yellow pad and put it to the same. just a minute. I said, look, this is where we want to get to. There you go. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Hey, Dave, I know we've got, man, we can probably talk to you for hours and hours and hours. And I think we're probably getting to wrapping up a little bit here. But I just wanted to

ask you, you've done a lot. I mean, you've done 2,000 transactions. You've been around 44 years. You've got to have a good story or two. I mean, there's, you know, what's your favorite, what's your favorite deal or favorite store or most interesting thing that you like to share with people oh man you know we've been into some pretty rough houses and uh one of the houses that i had went when i used to sell kind of how i got interesting i used to sell all a family maize aureos and in i was one that you know so we were going in houses and all kind of stuff and you know we'd do whatever it took to get in you know get in a house it was vacant so you know i'm crowing in a house and I flipped down and there's a dead animal right there.

I'm thinking, oh my God, what have I done? I'm thinking, you know, I jumped up there and ran out. Almost had a heart attack. I'm thinking, okay, okay, this is, you know, I'm not sure I want to list Fannie Mae's houses at all cost here. So we've had some stuff like that. We've had. Hold on.

What kind of animal was it? You can't just like flesh over. It was a snake. Oh, okay. It was a snake. So, and I'm not a fan on snakes. No, me neither. You know, my brother-in-law had one where he flipped a very similar story, and it was a big snake.

So it's a wonder he didn't have a heart attack. I'm doing that. But, you know, we've had some flips that we went into and just have been so gross that it's just amazing how a house had just said. And the one that was actually the one I bought from Ben, it was just so bad. And it's the one I didn't tell my wife about. It was kind of a great story. My wife and I talked about it. I said, it's pretty rough.

I think I'm going to pass on it. Man, it sounds like a good idea. So 30 days later, Ben called me and said, hey, we can close. So I'm thinking, who? Okay. So I said, okay, I'll close Friday. This is Wednesday. So we closed.

And the next Monday I told my wife, because you need to turn the power on his house. I said, didn't we decide not to buy that house? And I said, you know, I think we did. But I called you and you didn't answer. so I just assumed it was okay. So we end up. That's the same approach I take with my wife. Well, you know, but anyway, I got in the house.

I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, she's right. This house was so eaten up with termites. I knew I had termites, but not to the extent that I had. I literally had to rebuild 25% of the house. Wow. So it wouldn't fall down. But I did when I call one of my strategies in flipping is prehab. So I go in and do all the,

hard stuff and make it ready for a rehabber. Oh, okay. So I went in and I framed it, took the termite damage. I think I paid Ben $38,000 for the house. And I put $25,000 in prehab, cleaned up the yard, replaced some windows, and then I put it on the market and had multiple offers at $90,000. Wow. So prehabing, I like it.

Yeah, yeah. I want to dig in on this. I was about to move on, but this is really interesting. Are you, so you're, you sold that for 90K to a rehab, right? You did the dirty work rehab, and they come in, they do the easy stuff. Cosmetic, yeah. Cosmetic. What, what did that person end up buying it for and what they end up selling it for?

I don't know if you know. That person bought it for me for 90. He put about 60 in it, and he sold it for right at 200. So you've created a new middleman category that didn't exist before. Before it was the wholesaler, now we're going to start a whole new trend here on Bigger Pockets. Oh, I love, I do pre-I'm getting ready to do another one. We did one. Actually, I bought that deal from Ben too in one of the stronger areas.

And I really hadn't done any massive rehabs and didn't want to because of time, just to control the deal. So I bought this house. I had two dumpsters in the inside of it, cleaned it out. Well, I went in and I put all new windows in it. I took all the bathrooms, all the kitchens out, brought my drywaller in and made it white wash inside. And I put new hardy plank siding on the house and I just painted the front of it, a color that I liked, but not that a wholesaler, whoever flips it, to pick their own color. It's a sure, right? I had the, yeah, pretty much.

It was a pretty bright green. I was really bold with it. And it looked gorgeous, by the way. And so then I just put it on the market. I paid 38. I put 22 in there. When I put it on the market at 95 and sold it for 92. Wow.

And the guy I sold it to put 60 in and sold it for 240. I love this. I love this. Where does this work, though? Like, I mean, is this, it's, it's, I've never heard of it, Brandon. I mean, we've been doing this for a long time. never interviewed anybody. Had you heard of anyone doing this kind of middle man pre-pre-hab thing? No. So I'm curious, like, what's the limit? What is the extent of work that you do when you're doing this prehabing?

Wouldn't it not just be easier to finish the job and sell the finished product? Why exactly what are you doing? I'm all about, one of my big things is I'm all about return for my investors. I either use private money, which is better than hard money, but costly money. And I also use JV money, which they're partners with me. Well, my average JV deal, my returns from my investors are in the low to high 20s, is kind of what they're doing on the annualized basis. So churn and burn makes that happen. fairly easy where I can get returns in the 40, 50, 60 percent if we get a deal done in 30 days.

Well, what I'm trying to do is I don't have, we're putting these guys in place, by the way, but what I don't have is the skill set of my contractors to go in there and do the job that needs to be done on what's in the marketplace. The finishing job is what you're talking about. The finishing job. I mean, putting new plumbing in, moving walls, putting high-end kitchens in. I put kitchens in, but not necessarily. high ends, plumbing, and, you know, just even like our rehab deals, we put granite everywhere,

we put stainless everywhere, we, you know, we really make them nice. So the, we're taking, we didn't have the skill set, so the prehab is, is a way to go. We're venturing into a couple of the hot areas in our area now is Bates Hendricks and Fountain Square. So we're kind of going in there. I'm not sold on the areas yet, but the comps are so damn good. I've got to take a look at it. Yeah. And we bought one at sheriff's sale. That's a great house. You know, we think we stole it.

We paid like 26 for it. We think it's maybe high in at 160 based on some of the comps that we're seeing. But I think I can do the prehab on that, make the outside so cutesy that that yepy that wants to buy that house will come in and think, oh, I can get this done for 50 grand. Well, they probably can. I don't want to do it. I don't want to make their choices. So I'm going to put Hardy on the outside. of the house, put new windows in.

That house will be so damn cute and it'll be at 99. When they're looking at everything at 170, they're going to take my house and I'm going to have 50 in it and they're going to take it from me for 99 and think they absolutely stole it. Yep. So you win, because then they win too because now they get a house that they want. And I always, you know, I understand what investor wants to do and I know what investor needs to make and I'm going to leave him enough room to do it if he does his job properly.

Yeah, right. You know, so I'm okay with that because I can, I'm very fortunate. I can, I'm a good deal finder. I can find it. Dave, it sounds like at the end of the day, one of the keys to success here is not being too greedy. I would agree. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to inch out every end of my, you know, of the profit. It's like, you know, we're doing a big rehab right now.

And we just don't need to let the guys, whoever works with me, as part of my team, they're going to make money. You know, they're going to make money. I'm going to pay them properly because then they'll be loyal. You know, if I have a problem from a house in the middle of the night at 2 o'clock, there's four contractors I can call. They'll get up and go do it. Yeah.

You know, because they know that I'll stand behind them on a job. If they get in the middle of something and they've made a mistake, I'm not stupid enough to know they didn't make a mistake, you know, that I'm going to help them out. You know, I don't want them to work for free, me. If I'm not working for free, they're not going to work for free. Yeah, I think that generosity just kind of mindset of like, I want my whole team to succeed here. I want my whole team to succeed here. I think that's just, that's really good. But before we move on to the fire round,

I have one last question. Just because you mentioned it. You mentioned a book you read and now that's changing the direction of your business. What was that about? Gary Keller's book. The one thing? The one thing. The one thing. Yeah, I love that book. It's so focused in other areas of of my life and it's it's helped me to we're changing our whole focus on our rehabbing we're going to do the churn and burns like we're doing but we're also going into what I call remodel versus rehab we think the profit there is three to five times greater going to a remodel versus a rehab what's a difference what do you mean a rehab is paint carpet new kitchen new granite countertops it's a house that I can put together in 30 days and have on the market and have it sold and done in 90 days.

We're like one of them, we're going into a Meridian Kessler house for Beltwork Tarkington, which is a high-end, very hot area. You know, we paid 200 from that house, and we're putting 110 in it, but we're altering floor plans, making drastic plumbing changes, making it a complete, making it a new house, but we think the value that house is going to be $5.50 when we're done. Wow. So it's, and it's going to take us the same time as four or five flips, but the X factor is it might be the profit of 10 flips.

Wow, yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's the base Hendricks, the Fountain Square, kind of brings that in there if we can itch into it and always feel comfortable in getting him done. So I get bored with the house after about six months. It's got to be out of my portfolio.

Yeah, me too. Me too. Makes sense. Makes sense. All right, let's get to the fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, today's fire round. Questions come direct out of the BiggerPockets forums,

which, of course, our listeners can get to by going to BiggerPockets.com forward slash forums, which, of course, you guys should be engaging in there all the time. There's a lot of smart, wicked smart people in there. Dave's on there. Dave's people like Dave, yeah, people like Dave. Yeah, that's awesome. So, number one, Dave, we're going to throw these at you,

fire them at you. Number one, I have a house that I want to sell, but it has zero. curb appeal. Should I fix it up to sell it for top dollar now, like fix it all up, or should I just sell it at a lower price and move on? This is from a flipper. I think you sell it at the higher price. If you can recover $3 or $4 for every dollar you put in doing the outside of it, then you do the outside of it and move on. Okay. And get top dollar. If it's just an ugly house and it's always going to be an ugly house, cut your losses and move on. All right. Right on. What typical

profit splits for rehab JVs are you looking for? So if you're going to do a JV on a rehab, what kind of splits are you traditionally doing with partners? My JVs are typically 50-50 on my turn-and-burn type houses where we get in and out in 30 days. But they put up everything. For instance, I think the acquisition and the rehab is 100, they put up 100. One of the things I do, I never go back to my investor for more money. So if it goes out to 105, I just fund it until we get it sold and I get my money back then. So the investor knows that he's only in the deal in the transaction for 100,000. Typically, I'm 50-50 after all expenses and recouping of all that.

So it turns out to be pretty fair for my investors. And they tend to return every time. Yeah, very cool. Number three, how can I find a local mentor? to help me learn how to invest in my area. How do I find a guy like Dave Shorton? Through the Cyrias in Indianapolis, there's two or three of them that you can go to

and all kinds of meetup that you can go to. I think what guys need to do when they're hunting a mentor, which is very, because it becomes a time crunch on myself, is that we're willing to share. So the seriousness that you're in this transaction or in this, you know, wanting a business change is very important to you're better off going. going to the meetings, I can stay after my meetings an hour, two hours if I need to, to talk

with people and answer any other questions. Sometimes it becomes a lot harder for me to meet them for lunch or meet them for coffee or that kind of thing. So I think somebody looking for mentor, respect that mentor's time on what you're doing. And that's really hard because it's really hard for me. It's hard for me to say no because I really like helping these guys and girls to get out and learn our business. It's an awesome business.

And you know what? They're never competition. I never look at them as competition. You know, they're people we work together with. And we all can make a living. Yeah, I love that. That's great. That's great. All right, last question. I think I know the answer to this already.

But how do you keep track of your repairs and budgets during a flip? The question is, do you use a spreadsheet? I believe the answer to that is no. So I'm wondering, how are you tracking the number? We're going to one of these days. One of these days. You're using the yellow pad for that too?

We basically, I take a picture on my iPad. When I pay a bill, send it to her. She writes all the checks. 90% of the checks. She'll meet the contractors and pay them and keep the records. We do most of our buying at lows under pro services and some of the others. And, you know, we actually charge everything on American Express to keep a record of everything that goes through lows.

You know, there's a twofold there. gosh, I got 400,000 a reward point. So I'm going to take a nice location next year. But it helps us keep track of that. But we actually do a pretty good job. And I call my wife a day before the house is going to close. She'll have everything we got in that house on my desk in a couple hours. I love it.

And it just shows that so many people get caught up in like, oh, what tools do I have to use? And what do, do, do you know. Oh, I get that. And I said, you know. Start with the basics. You'll find a deal. Part of my Cyria group here is like, you know, I want you guys here. I love you being here. But here's the deal. Here's the rule. I want you to do a deal in a year. You know, don't be here if you're not going to do a deal. We're here to do deals. I read in a business book recently. I wish I remember what book it was, but they talked about Stephen King's pen.

And he said, they call this concept, or Stephen King's pencil. And what the quote comes from or this line of Stephen King pencils, every time Stephen King speaks out like a conference or whatever, inevitably somebody in the audience will ask, asking all these questions, what pencil do you use? Like that makes a difference in his writing, right? So like, like, you know, people think like, oh, if I use this spreadsheet or this thing or like, this is going to make me successful, this one tool that this experience person used. And the bottom line is you just get out there and do it. Like you go out and do that deal.

So, all right. Love that. All right. Let's move on to the world famous. All right. These questions are asked every week of every guest. So Dave, we're going to throw them at you. Number one, what is your favorite real estate book? I mean, I'm going to call Gary Keller's real estate book, the one thing. He's obviously been involved with Keller Williams. I've read all of the millionaire. I've read all of his book. So that's, right now, that's my favorite book. I'm, I love that book. And there's a couple of, there's an obscure, not obscure, he's around.

It's a Frank McKinney Jr. He's wrote a couple books called Burst This, and he's a flipper in California, or in Florida. And he's got three or four books out the tap, and he started flipping $70,000 houses with nothing in Florida. And his last house, he became a builder, builder of spec houses. and his last spec house was $50 million. Whoa. Wow. Pretty cool.

Pretty cool story. Yeah. That's wild. Cool. That's wild. So the next question is usually a favorite business book. Got any business books outside of the one thing? I'm a big Tony Robbins.

Unlimited Power and Waken the Giant. Those books have been instrumental. And, you know, it teaches you how to communicate with people at a different, at their level. Yeah. I just watched Tony Robbins' TED Talk the other day while I was working out and I was like super motivated to work out. Oh, this guy. Who's taller? You or him, Brandon.

I think he's 6'5. I think he might be 6'6. He might be an age taller. 6.7. Is he really 6'7? Oh, so he's tallered me by a couple. I should wrestle. I will wrestle Tony Robbins any day.

You get him on the show, Josh. Me and Tony are going to do a wrestle. All right. All right. Dave, what do you do for fun outside of real estate? I'm a poker player. Oh. I like to golf and my grandkids.

Those three things take up my time. I love all of them. Cool. Sounds good. All right, my last question. Dave, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those others who give up, they fail, or they just never get started? I thought about this a lot.

I mean, the cliche is, I mean, the honesty and have an integrity in the way you do your business. if you come across and you're all about making that person you're trying to do business with warm and fuzzy. And that's, you know, developing trust. And it's like, it's amazing. And it's something that I'll just kind of tell you. It's like I've been on bigger pockets and I've done some post. And I've had some guys call me because of my post and say, hey, how much money do you need to do deals. I'm willing to do this. I'm ready to send some, send some money because of the way I've answered other posts and in recommending people and being straightforward with, with a newbie on how they, I mean, you know, guys know me, I don't really pull any punches. It is what it is.

And I'm just saying, okay, I don't, I don't want your money. I said, I'll send you my paperwork. If you like it, then we'll talk further, but I just don't take your money. And you should never give your money to anybody. Yeah. But it's a pretty trusting, you know, the people on your side are very trusting, and they're just a sponge for information. And, you know, I enjoy giving it. It's fun trying to see, you know, I love one of the newbies in our office that want to do something, do something and do it right and make it whether it's the first sale or something else. We're, you know, we're all over helping them.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. And just to point out real quick, that is one of the benefits of, you know, posting on bigger. pockets. If you are an experienced guy like Dave, listen to the show, you know, just offering advice and stuff. You just build that networking. You can help people out. And who knows, maybe they'll end up becoming investors for you someday in the future as a byproduct. Yeah. And to add, you know, to the newbies, I mean, you know, a lot of people join our platform and, you know, they'll create an account. And they'll never do anything.

You know, you might as well be a fly on the wall at a local networking meeting. You know, you're not there. You're not present. You're not communicating. You're not talking. nobody sees you. So in order to be seen, in order to build a network, in order to start fostering relationships with folks, you've got to step up and actually do something. And so I can't encourage that enough. Go ahead, create an account, sign up,

find local guys in your area on the site. It's free. Just start networking, talking to them. Ask them what they got going on. Newbies don't understand, and they need to understand this, that they bring benefit. Yep.

Yeah. They bring benefits. I might know what it is in two weeks. You know, I might know, you know, it's something by you know that I know. I mean, it's like they bring benefits. So it's not, they're not a pest. Yep. You know, they bring benefit.

That's great. Well, if you are somebody who has not yet done so, go to www. www.biggerpockets.com, create your free account. Get in there, start networking, start connecting on the forums and make that happen. Okay, Dave, before I let you go, what's the best way for people to reach out? and connect with you. Probably interact through me through the Bigger Pockets forums. I'm very good about being on it and answering any colleague requests or emails that I might

get through that. Perfect. And of course, on the show notes page at the bottom of BiggerPockets.com slash show 174, people can ask kind of questions there about today's show and they can comment and hopefully Dave you'll jump in there as well. And we'll have links to David's profile in there. Cool. Perfect.

All right, Dave. Well, thanks so much for a coming. on board we really do appreciate it i'm sure we could sit here for hours and hours with as much as you've done and we we just really appreciate you giving us a little bit of your time to to chat with everybody okay i enjoyed it all right dave see you around thanks thank you bye all right guys that was dave shorts that was it's close to dave tall look at josh funny guy wow you're good no that was a that was a great show uh like it you said at the beginning of the show it was it was It's like sitting down with, you know, just your local mentor, like this local wise investor who's been doing this forever and just picking their brain.

And I love those conversations. I just love them because you learn and you grow as a person because of them. It was awesome. It felt that way when we were talking to him. And I love that he was so encouraging of the listeners to go and do that themselves as well to him and obviously to other folks in the local area of our listeners. And just to reiterate the point we made earlier, like, again, there are guys like Dave in every. every single area. A lot of them are on bigger pockets.

You can interact there. A lot of them at local real estate clubs. A lot of them are just out there doing business in your area. So go and find them and be respectful for their time. But go out and introduce yourself, see if you can add value to them, learn from them, help them out. And yeah, I just think that's such valuable, valuable advice. Yeah.

Yeah. If there's one takeaway from the show to you, the listener, and that's it. If you're not doing that, if you haven't ever started, never done a deal, or even if you're, you know, just having done your first deal or so, you know, do that. That, you know, is an action, actionable step that you can take right now today. Find that person. Find them. You know, if there's not a meeting for three, four weeks, we'll jump on BiggerPockets. Seek out local, active real estate investors in your area. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash meet, and you can find those people. Find them. Go out there today and say hi to somebody, you know, introduce

yourself. Well, tell them who you are and ask them a question about what they're doing. I mean, that's, that's a relationship. That's how things happen. That's how you start to make moves. That's how you learn the business. And, you know, there's no excuse for failure if you're doing that. And so make sure you go out and do that. Yeah. Solid advice. Josh Dorcas. I love it. Well, you know, once in a while, I get it right. Yeah, once in a while. All right. Cool. Everything else good, man? Oh, you know what's good. What's good? Silicon Valley. That's what's good. Oh, I haven't started watching the new season yet.

Oh, man. It's so good. I did watch the first episode of Game of Thrones yesterday. Of course you did. Of course you did. Yeah, I, you know, I haven't gotten into it yet. One of these days, I'm going to just sit down and do it. It'll suck the next six months of your life away.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. It's been afraid of. Cool. A lot of tears will be shed. Yeah, I hear they kill pretty much everybody off. You know, not really. They just kill off. I won't go there.

All right. Cool, man. Well, good times, good stuff. Again, big, big thanks to Dave. Thank you for listening. Please jump on iTunes, on Stitcher, on Google Play, wherever it is that you absorb and listen to the show and leave us a rating and review. Those things do definitely help us. And call your local library. Do that, yeah, and check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 174. With that, I'm Josh Dorkin. Sign it off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.

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