BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 18: Flipping, Marketing, and Wholesaling with Danny Johnson

Episode Date: May 16, 2013

Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we sit down with fix and flipper Danny Johnson to talk about running a successful real estate investing business. Danny has been investing in real estate for the past decade and has hundreds of awesome, actionable tips that he shares with us in today’s show. From real estate marketing through websites and direct mail to tips for wholesalers and ideas for getting started while working a full time job, Danny’s knowledge is going to blow your mind. Whether you are an experienced house flipper, a wholesaler, or a new investor just getting ready to start investing, this show is going to give you a ton of ammunition to use in your business. In This Show, We Cover: Why a mentor isn’t as important for your success as you might think. How to hustle while holding a full time job. How to use “driving for dollars” to get started. The CRAZY first deal that got Danny into real estate. Bandit signs… a great marketing plan OR a criminal activity? How Danny manages 8-13 flips at a time. The “Top Secret” method that Danny uses to find deals. Postcards vs. yellow letters : which is better? The best criteria for compiling a great direct mail list. Tips for creating a lead generating website and online advertising. Books Mentioned in the Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Mastery by Robert Greene Flipping Houses Exposed by Danny Johnson Links from the Show Why Hiring a Mentor Might Not Be the Stupidest Thing You Could Do by Ben Leybovich Driving for Dollars Bible: Finding Distressed Properties and Marketing by Chris Feltus Driving for Dollars Bible 2: Tracking Down Owners & More Tips! by Chris Feltus Danny’s “We Buy Houses website” BP Podcast 016: Land Contracts, Creative Selling, and Finding Private Money with Clay Huber Hard Money Lender Directory Danny’s Blog Post: 9 Reasons Why You Couldn’t Sell Your Wholesale Deal Tweetable Topics You can’t just sit behind a computer and expect to succeed. You gotta get out there and do stuff. (Tweet This!) Always negotiate. (Tweet This!) When it’s a “real deal” you’ll know it’s a good deal. You don’t have to make it a deal. (Tweet This!) Focus on finding really great deals – you don’t need a whole lot of buyers (Tweet This!) Connect with Danny Danny’s BiggerPockets Profile Danny’s Blog FlippingJunkie.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 18. 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. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, everybody. This is Josh Dorkin, the host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-hosts Brandon Turner. What is happening, Miranda? Hey, Josh, not much has happened. And what's happening with you?

Oh, man, just, you know, rocking out another show. Show 18, very excited to be here. We've got an awesome, awesome guest with us, Mr. Danny Johnson. A little bit about Danny. Danny's actually, Danny's been around BP for a while and certainly around the house flipping scene. He runs a very popular blog, flippingjunky.com. And he's also one of our regular contributors on the Bigger Pockets blog with a weekly column. He's actually been investing since 2003 and has been full time since 06. And I believe he and his company flipped somewhere between 25 and 30 houses a year. He also wholesale does buy and hold. He's got a ton of insight that he can share to help us out. And so we're super excited. Before we get to Danny, though,

we've got something really important. We've got to do our quick tip. Nailed it. Here's today's quick tip. If you guys have any questions or comments for any of the guests here on the podcast, make sure to jump on the show notes and leave comments below the notes. All of our guests actually follow the show notes. So if you've got questions about something they talk about,

just jump in and leave a comment. Or even if you thought it was great and help you. helpful, you know, leave some feedback because these guys thrive from the feedback that they get. And, you know, it makes it worth the time that they spent to be on the show. So that's today's quick tip. Here's the thing about traveling. If you buy food at the airport, a burrito, salad, bag of peanuts, you start wondering if you should have opened a savings account for snacks. So wouldn't it be great if you could actually earn money while you're traveling?

Well, you can. Airbnb has something called the co-host network. While you're away, you can hire a vetted local. co-host with hosting experience to help take care of things. Communicating with guests, preparing your space, managing reservations, everything runs smoothly while you're off making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.

Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily.

They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr builder's risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com. slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor.

Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking.

You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications. It can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to change. check your phone between beach days.

That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taken care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And without further ado, Brandon. Let's do it. Let's do it.

We are going to bring out Danny Johnson. Danny, nice to have you here. Welcome to the show. Great. How are you, Josh? I am doing well. What about Brandon? I'm also doing well. Concerned about his well-being?

Of course, I was going to get to that. I was going to let you speak first, though. I do appreciate you guys having me on the show. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. We're glad to have you. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, why don't we just jump right into this? I just stole your line, Josh. You totally stole my line. Why don't we jump right into this, Brandon? Let's do it. So, Danny, you are a house flipper, obviously. You know, you're on a blog about it. I think you probably do a little bit more.

but we'll get into that. So why don't we just start the very, very beginning, a very good place to start. Get to the question, B. That's a reference from Sound of Music. Anyway, how did you get into flipping? See, I was a software engineer, a software developer, really.

I went to college and got a degree in computer science and was a software developer. Working in an office, I was a defense contractor, so it was like a top secret or secret kind of thing. thing where, you know, had, you know, in rooms without windows, things like that. But, you know, all the, like going into the office every day and sitting there and working and, and for a while, it was interesting and it was what I thought I wanted. But, you know, after a while, I got to

the point where I just couldn't, couldn't stand it anymore. I mean, just being there and having to do the same old thing over and over and no more being able to be creative or anything. You know, I was kind of basically doing the same sorts of programs. And it just seemed like everybody else there was pretty miserable for the most part. And it's like, why do people do this? You know, why am I doing this? But I didn't know what to do. I didn't know there were options.

Like, what else could I do? If I went to another job, would it be the same? And just, and while I was in college, my father actually started real estate investing. And so I got to see his progression from just getting started and, and really just taken off and just seeing his excitement and just the vitality. And, you know, every time I talked to him, it was something new. He had all these different stories and this and that's happening. It's like never before was it like that.

And so, you know, more and more, I just felt like, wow, I've got to do that. You know, that's what I've got to do. I want to be out there every day hustling and, you know, making it for myself. So I started studying and educating myself and an important. thing to tell people, too, is a lot of people might think, well, you know, your father was doing it, so, you know, he kind of mentored you. You had a mentor. But the thing was, he didn't take me by the hand and show me step by step what to do. I got educated and started doing my own thing. And whenever I had some questions about something specific, I could call and ask him and he would help me out with it. But he wanted me to do my own thing. And I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. But Actually, I just commented on somebody's blog last night on Ben Labovic's blog post. And I said that's what I think an ideal mentor is, somebody who fills in the gaps. They're not there necessarily to teach as much as they are to fill in the gaps and you need to learn yourself.

So that's exactly what I was thinking. Well, you've got to put in the work. Yes. Right, right. And I think a lot of the people that go into thinking, I'm not going to do anything until I find a mentor to hold my hand and show me exactly what to do. That's not going to work. You've got to get past that. You've got to move to where you're hustling.

you're doing it and you're making your way and you're taking and it doesn't mean go out and buy a house and then figure it out I mean you know baby steps you know go start looking at houses talking to realtors finding out what house there's a selling for you got to get out there in the street you can't just sit behind the computer and expect to go from you know the point of being not knowing anything to going out and buying your first flip that's awesome it's going to take getting out in the streets and doing stuff so so I educated myself and you know thankfully my wife was on board 100% and so she was okay with the afternoons and evenings and weekends doing things, you know, doing all the marketing that we were doing because we started with

marketing to motivated sellers, which I suggest for everybody, just because there is so much competition with a bank-owned foreclosures. So we started with that. We started with marketing motivated sellers and and I tell the story. I'm sure the people that subscribe to my blog have heard this one of several times, but when we got that first phone call from a motivated seller, I was so nervous. I threw the phone at my wife. And she had to take the call just because I couldn't bring the nerve, you know, to actually, you know, ask. I didn't, I just froze. I didn't know what to ask. I didn't know what was. Way to be brave, Danny. Right. I'm a fierce now, but, but after I saw her do it that I was able to do it the next time. Plus, I was just so embarrassed by it.

And now it's out there, so there's nothing to be embarrassed about. I'm sure everybody knows. Yeah, it's really my wife running everything. I'm just the face and the... Yeah, I just talk about what she does. No, but... So, I'm trying to remember where I was in the whole thing. So we started, you know, doing the motivated seller marketing. And even with that, you know, my father wasn't telling me market to these people or do... this. I just learned and grabbed a couple things, couple techniques, things like direct marketing, you know, sending letters, staffs the owners, driving for dollars, which I absolutely love. And that's a great way for people to start because they get to know their areas in the different

parts of town and you drive through them. And some of the areas, you might not even be aware are in your city and that investors are actively rehabbing it. And so if you don't know what driving for dollars is, it's where you go out and you look for vacant rundown houses in neighborhoods and get the address of the owners to those houses from usually the county appraisal district's website and

then mail to them, direct mail. So we did that. We got some success. We got a great deal that was a pretty crazy deal as it turns out, and I could go into that if you guys want me to.

That first deal. Yeah, we'll definitely get. Really quick, we actually just put out a couple articles on driving for dollars. I believe it was Chris Felthus, who had written them. And we'll link to those. They're really comprehensive. And anybody listening can check them out. We'll have them in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 18.

So, yeah, let's get to that first deal. So what was it? Well, you know, if you remember the numbers or anything, great. if not, you know, give us kind of the lowdown, the down and dirty. Okay, no, I absolutely remember the numbers because it was pretty simple in terms of numbers. But as far as the process of buying the house and to making money was pretty complicated. So what happened was we found this house that had been burned. There was some fire damage to the property.

Driving by, it was overgrown. There was a bunch of smoke on the outside broken out windows, and the roof was even, you know, had a hole in it from where the fire. it burned so hot it burned through the roof. So we sent a postcard to the owners of that house and they called us. And when I say us, you know, my wife and I, and we went over to the house and agreed to buy the house for $25,000. And the thing was they actually owed a little over 60, I think it was 65,000. So we had to do a short sale because we would have to get the bank to approve less than what was owed on the property. So we found a realtor that had done some short sales, and she was willing to work with us and submitted the package to the bank.

So the bank approved the short sale of $25,000 so we could pay off the loan for $25,000 when the loan amount, the balance was something like $65,000. And the sellers ended up having a problem with that. They wanted to know why the bank was willing to sell us, you know, to accept $25,000 from us when they wouldn't accept it from them. and I'm not sure why that didn't come up when we were signing the contract saying that we were going to be offering that much. But make a long story short, they ended up saying that they weren't going to go to closing and they weren't going to sell the house. And so we had done a lot of work to that point and were pretty frustrated. But the bank actually ended up coming back to us and saying, why don't you guys buy the note from us? Now, these people hadn't paid for over a year on this property.

It was so far behind and they said, why don't you buy the note from us? We want to sell it to you. For 25,000. Right, for 25,000. So, sure, okay, well, we did this work. Let's buy that note for 25,000. And the people weren't living in the house, obviously. I mean, it was burned.

They accepted the insurance money and somehow went and spent it on another property instead of doing the right thing and fixing it up. And I'm not sure what the difficulty was with the bank. but so we ended up buying this note and at that point I was finding out well now either they start paying or we foreclose and take the house because they haven't paid in a year and you know I was really not wanting to do that and you know as luck would have it an attorney ended up talking to the sellers okay and he was an investor and he wanted to actually buy the house so he had been talking with the seller and so you know the attorney had contacted us and

said, look, we know that you own this note now and was wondering if you would accept a short sale of 50,000. For this note that has a face value of 65,000. And the funny thing was, the bank actually, whenever we bought the note, they waited until we were closing on the note to tell us that we can't find the note, the actual note. We'll have to give you an affidavit that we had the note and that you're buying. So we're buying basically an affidavit, and it's like, wow, this could get hairy, you know. And so by him coming along and saying that he would be willing to buy, you know, to pay it off for 50, you know, was a godsend because then we were able to just, you know, sign a release and accept the 50,000. So we made, we bought the note for 25 and ended up selling it for 50 and making 25,000. So that was the first flip.

And I don't think we've had one as crazy since, you know. So this was a no repair needed flip. Very nice. Right. Very nice. No, that's an awesome deal. I don't think I've actually heard of something similar happening. I'm sure it does, but I don't think I've ever heard of the bank saying, here, you know, just take the note. Right, right. And that's one of those things. If we hadn't gotten out of our comfort zone and said, we're going to figure this out along the way. If we tried to plan out everything,

we would have never done that deal. I mean, we had to plan the next steps, but if we were to try to go from start to finish. We would never, ever come up with all the possibilities of something like that happening and being prepared for it. It's kind of one of those things where you adjust as you go. Yeah, that's great. So how about your first, we'll call it traditional flip, right? The first rehab and renovation. Fix and flip, renovation. Thank you for the correction, Bren. Okay, that one was the, it was a property that I put some, some bandit signs out and just a quick warning for people. Most places,

bandit signs are illegal, so you need to check with the local jurisdictions, authorities or whatever, to find out. And a lot of places you can buy permits to do those. But to check with those, they'll just go and put bandit signs out. I was not aware of those permits, by the way.

That's a great little tidbit, Danny. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, that's no problem. Here, yeah, here you can pay for permits per sign to put out. But let's see what, you know, the gentleman called, on my bandit sign and I went over to look at the house and it really didn't need a whole lot. It was a house that needed paint and carpet.

So we estimated 5,000 on the fix-up and we ended up buying it. I think it was for about 20,000. So we were into this property for 25,000 and we sold it with owner financing. Because at the time, a lot of people were owner financing and immediately selling the notes. So you could do a close where you would sell the house. and on the same day you sell the note as well and note buyers were paying you know 90% of note value 90 even in the mid 90s so you could get full profit out you know immediately that way and we actually you know did that deal that way interesting yeah i never really thought about that

strategy i don't know would that work as well today do you do any more of that seller financing selling the note today no no because people want them for they're not paying as much for the notes. I do know some people that are doing similar things, but they're not getting near as much for the notes. They're having to take a reduced price for them. Hey, Danny, what market was that in? We've got people from New York and

California listening hearing $20,000 and they're thinking Detroit. There I go beating up on Detroit again, man. You do like to beat up on Detroit. San Antonio, you said? No, it's San Antonio, and that's also in kind of the lower end area. I mean, that's not a typical, you know, residential, decent residential area. It was a, and that was the reason for doing the owner financing.

It wasn't an area where typically people would be able to get bank loans and, you know, buy the house retail, which is what we focus on now. You focus more on the retail side. Right. Well, we focus more. Yeah, we buy them and then sell them and people get FHA loans typically to buy the houses that we fix up now. Well, let's actually, yeah, let's actually talk more about, like, your kind of current business model than, like, how many, like, how many, flips do you usually do at a time? What do they look like? What are you paying for them? Stuff like that.

Okay, well, basically, we have slow times and busy times. I'm sure most investors experience that where you kind of get a flood of properties and then you kind of have a low where you're focusing on taking care of properties. At least we do. So when we get busy, we're typically handling anywhere from eight to 13, 14 properties at a time in the process of being purchased, fixed up and sold. and I guess that would average to about two or three a month. And then the price ranges, it really kind of varies because with my marketing to motivated sellers, I have a lot of people calling me, so I'm not targeting specific houses or even specific areas. So it changes, but typically I'm buying from between $30,000 to $60,000 and fixing up for anywhere from like $5,000 to $15,000.

and then we're selling for anywhere from 80 to 130. I typically shoot for 65% of the after-repaired value instead of the 70 that most people do. And it's great that you can actually make that happen. Yeah, I might pass up. I might miss a couple because of that. But also the other side of that coin, though, is if you don't ever shoot and ask for less,

you won't ever get your less. So that works out for me. So, you know, that brings up something interesting. I actually just read an article about the Shark Tank, I'm sure. A lot of people listening to the show watch us. It was kind of these rules for being successful there. And the number one rule was always negotiate. Always, always negotiate.

Don't just take the offer. Don't, you know, because out of excitement, all these guys, you know, jump on that first offer. And I think a lot of real estate investors do that as well. It's like they'll, you know, they'll get an offer. potentially they'll get a response to their offers and they're not going to counter. And it's like, well, you might as well take a chance. Right, right.

Yeah, it never hurts to ask because you'll never get it if you never ask. And I mean, that gets into the whole thing where I'm sure you've heard it before and I think I just wrote an article with that in there as far as being embarrassed by your offers. If you're not embarrassed by your offer, you're just offering too much. If you're happy with what you're offering

and thinking they're going to be gung-ho about it, you're just offering far too much. That's good. Can I go on top of that for a second? Sure. Because I saw a show on TV last night. I don't know what it was. It was one of these flipping shows.

The guy had put an offer on a house, and it was like he pulled the offer out of the air. This offer was like magical. He was like, oh, well, it seems like this might work, and he pulled it out. He didn't do the math. Maybe he did, but on the show he didn't. And, you know, I know a lot of people watching

that are like, oh, okay, well, I guess maybe I just go out and, you know, make some generic offer. You had talked about the 65% and 70% rules, but, you know, I want to press on how important it is to stick to your numbers, right? I mean, because if you're just pulling numbers out of the air, you're going to find yourself way deep upside down by the time you're flips over, aren't you? Oh, right, right. And I have people ask me all the time to analyze certain deals for them, and they say what's a good price to offer on this deal. And it just, it amazes me because I don't ever have the information I need to make that deal. And I'm not sure, it's just not coming across, maybe some people just don't understand enough to where they've got to get the after-repared value.

You have to figure out what that house is going to be worth once it's fixed up. If you don't have that number, you can't figure anything out. And then that leads to knowing your market, right? Right. Right. And then as far as wanting to offer too much for deals, this is a big thing with me. If you're tending to want to up what you calculate and offer more just to try to get it accepted, the problem lies and not getting enough leads. If you don't have enough leads coming in, you try to milk every single thing that comes across your desk that you become aware of and try to turn it into a deal. When it's a real deal, you're going to know it's a real deal. You won't have to make it a deal.

That's really, really good. I'm going to make that one of those tweetable topics. For those of you don't know, if you go to the BiggerPockets show notes, for this, it's BiggerPockets.com slash show 18. There's a little section there called tweetable topics, and it's stuff that you can, they're quotes from the show. You can actually put on Twitter or Facebook. So check out that, again, BiggerPockets.com slash show 18.

But I do want to transition into actually what you're talking about there, Danny, and that's marketing and getting leads. So that's a good transition point. So how are you finding deals today? Like what are you doing to get them? Okay, that's top secret. No, it's not. It's not.

And it's really, you know, I don't know, some people might, you know, want to hear the newest, hottest technique or something that nobody's ever heard of. But I'm a simple guy, and what has worked for people for decades still works. And I focus on finding motivated sellers instead of houses. So I try to find people that need to sell houses, who want to sell houses quickly and for cheap. And so to do that, I've got a house buying website that performs wonderfully, and I've spent a lot of time on ranking and Google. And so that generates a lot of leads for me.

And on top of that, I do mailings, and I'll do drive for dollars, where we talked about before, and I do letters and postcards. And I sort of prefer the postcards over the letters for those. And then absentee owner lists, and you can get a list of, absentee owners from list source.com and it's fairly inexpensive and you can specify, be sure that you specify equity percentages because they have a way to sort of a rough idea of how much equity the people that you're mailing to have in the house. So you don't want to be mailing to people that just purchased the house and don't have very much equity because your chances of buying it,

you know, for what you need to buy for, pretty slim. What equity percentage do you usually shoot for? I shoot for roughly, you know, it's really low. I mean, 50% or less, or equity, so it'd be more. So 50% are more equity? And are most people, do you think, are they like out-of-area landlords or are they homeowners who are just tired of owning it? Or what do you buying from? I think whenever I select out-of-state, there's not enough of them.

So I grab in more because I think that the people that are out-of-state and out-of-area are tend to be a little bit more motivated for obvious reasons. You know, they're not near the property. And so, so I will target those. And then what if I don't have enough come back, say the list is only 200. I mean, these mailings, you want lists of, you know, three, four, 500, even a thousand. You know, don't pull off 50 and mail to them and expect to land a deal. It's possible, but it's not likely.

What kind of conversion rates are you getting? Do you know, like, do you track that? Like, how many people are calling you? based on how many letters you send out and how many of those actually turn into deals. And the conversions, I mean, this is just a real rough idea because I don't have that in front of me, but it's basically, I'm looking at about 2% to 5%

depending on what I'm sending out. You know, obviously yellow letters get good response rates. And a lot of people talk about yellow letters, and I do like them, but I think you get higher response rates, but I'm not sure that the quality of the leads is as good. So you might get more calls. And, you know, some people talk about postcards, whatever, that generate a 20% response, like, you know, return or response rate a 20%.

And I was thinking, that's crazy. You know, how are you getting 20%, you know, or anything even close to that? And I got a hold of one of them finally. And I saw what the difference was. They had, you know, is where I call for a free recorded message and it had some kind of thing on there. And so people were calling to the free recorded message. and I'm sure you can maybe convert some more people, but I wouldn't call that the same sort of response.

You know, it's not the same quality. When you were sending them, were you doing them monthly, biweekly? What was your, I guess, mailing frequency? I would try to send to the same people on spacing about three to four weeks apart and then, you know, do postcard letter, postcard kind of thing. And honestly, I get busy with getting deals

and working on those that I'd never. really get past much more than three or four in the series. But my response rate does go up, surprisingly enough. As you get further out, as people get touched more by your message, you know, you get, you know, I've heard seven is a magic number. I've never actually made it out to seven before. Maybe I should try that. But it's produced enough results to get some deals,

and it becomes a little bit unnecessary at the time. No, that's great. I've read some stats from Sharon Bornholt on the blog. She's mentioned a couple of times about, yeah, like the response rate as you go up, the more letters you send gets like significantly higher. So I definitely, there's some data to back that up. Hey, Danny, how big is your team, right? Because you've got all these deals going on. Is it just you and your wife? Or do you guys have, obviously, I'm assuming you have contractors and other

folks, but as other other people involved? I wanted to laugh when you said team. Yeah, it's my wife and myself. And she, she these days, works about half a day a week. and that's doing books and things like that. So you have contractors that do all your work for you? I mean, you hire everything out. Yes, I'm not a handy hand. You're not doing eight houses at a time by yourself? No, no.

Yeah, it's contractors all the way. You know, I would never swing a hammer. For one, I probably smash all of my thumbs. I've got ten thumbs. We had a meeting the other day with a, some bigger pockets of members from the Seattle area. And somebody asked me that question, is it good for me to learn how to do all this contracting work? And I actually said, I think it's better not to know how to do the work.

Like, I think that was a hindrance for me. Like, it's always been a hindrance for me because I will fudge the numbers because I know that I can go do the work myself. It's like, oh, I can't get this deal close, you know, cheap enough. Well, that's all right. I can just go put my own carpet in. And every time I would do that when I was especially starting out, I was really bad at that. So. Right.

Absolutely. I mean, that's, you know, that's one of the, you know, that's one of the, those thing, people think that they can save money by doing that, but the opportunity cost lost is insane. I mean, you get your head, you know, you're concentrating on something, you know, that's just low paying and it's not, you know, worth your time really. So you figure out what your time is worth and you say, what can I hire somebody to do this for? And then, you know, most of the stuff that you do, you know, you should be hiring out. Now, do you, do you guys, do you have your real estate license or do you hire a real estate agent to do your sales for you? Now,

We're completely rogue. No, but no, no, we don't have our licenses. And we do, on the selling side, selling retail, we do have an awesome, a real estate agent that list the properties for us. Cool. That's great. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it brings me to the question that tends to come up a lot, which is, you know,

do you need your license or do you not? And then a lot of people, a lot of investors, you'll hear them say how, you know, they're not fond of realtors. And it's just, you need these guys. I mean, if you're not one yourself, you need a realtor. I mean, you keep FISBowing,

you know, flips and things like that. It's just not the optimum way to get the most benefit, you know? Right. And that gets, it's the same thing as doing the work on fixing up the houses yourself.

I mean, and that was, you know, because my wife was selling the properties when we were doing at FISBO for a long time and just the amount of time and frustration and energy spent on doing that, especially when everybody, it seems like every other person

will schedule to meet with the other property and then not show up, not call you or anything. And you just, you start to get so negative and just your energy is just wiped out from it. So, you know, I mean, we're very happy to spend the five to six percent. What about staging, do you guys stayed? Absolutely. That's something we started just a couple years ago and it's made all of the difference in the world. And my wife does that as well for us. She went out and did a bunch of shopping and got some things that we moved from house to house.

So we have about three sets, I think, of staging furniture. And it's made a huge difference. I mean, before we were having properties sit on the market. And I know the market's kind of heated up a little bit, especially here and selling, has, you know, things have been selling faster. But before we'd have properties sit on the market for, you know, 30, 60, 90 days even. and now I think the last probably eight, ten properties that we've all staged every one of those has gotten multiple offers within a day or two.

Wow. Let's actually talk about that a little bit about the changing market because I know a lot of investors are having difficulty, especially the hedge funds that are coming in. And I guess do you have any tips for people that are in those heated markets on still finding good deals? Is it just motivated sellers? Yeah, yeah, that's my answer. and yeah, the bank-owned properties, I've switched off from chasing those, I think, a year and a half, two years ago, because there's just so much competition. And if you're new, you know, there's people that have been in this business for years and years, and they go and they spend eight hours a day looking at 10, 12 of these properties and making offers on them.

And they might land one a week or something like that. And that's just too much work. I mean, and especially if you're new and you're doing this part-time, how do you expect to do that? And that's not to say that's everywhere, but, you know, if you're wanting to get started and want things to happen quickly and find good deals that a lot of people don't know about doing the marketing to motivated sellers is key. And if I can mention something about that, because I think some people have a hard time doing that because they feel like they're taking advantage of people that are in tough situations. And that's just not the case. It's just not the case. And I'm happy for people to believe that because it leaves less competition for me because I know it's not the case.

And I think most people assume they're going to be reaching out to people facing foreclosure that haven't been foreclosed on yet. And the vast majority of the leads we get, they're not even close to being foreclosed on. And a lot of them don't even owe anything on the property. And what it is is unearned equity, people inheriting properties for the most part. and no matter whatever situation comes up that makes them want to sell that inherited property, that tends to be the scenario that we get a lot

that we're the houses that we buy. Interesting. Interesting. Do you do, in your marketing, do you guys do yellow page ads or anything like that or had you ever? I was just curious. Yes, I didn't.

Yellow page ads for a long time and I always tried to get out of doing them because my cost per lead was much higher for the yellow pages. But every time I went to try to cancel it, the salesperson would talk me into getting more ads the same price. So I'd get more ads and paying the same amount, though. And it didn't seem to translate to more leads, but I'd always, you know, so I started collecting all these ads.

You know, I had like three or four ads in the yellow pages. But, you know, they were free or they convinced me they were. And I just took those out. I think it was last year. This last year, I took them out. because the cost per lead was so much higher and I wasn't getting that many calls from them. But to tell the truth, and I haven't said anything about this until now, I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should have them back in

because I wasn't tracking close enough or people weren't telling me when they would go to the website from the yellow pages. And so I have a lot of website leads that appear to be strictly from search that are not. that probably have come from yellow pages and I've noticed a dip, not a huge one, but a dip in my leads through my website and I'm thinking it's because of not being in the yellow pages. Well, speaking of your website,

do you have any tips for people, you know, setting one up or getting a lead generating website? Okay, the website, you know, you want one that will have a form on it that can, you know, send you the leads by email. And the great thing with websites is you can have the questions on your form do negotiating for you. And it's just amazing to me how well that works

because I'll have questions as far as what they're asking prices and then further down, I've got what's the lease you would take. Almost every single person will reduce that by $5,000 to $20,000. You know, it's just amazing to me. You're asking that, but then they put the lease and so they do their own negotiating. So you have a, like, you know, on my side, I've got a simple form on the front,

so they don't feel overwhelmed. it's just the basic information. When they submit that, it takes them to a longer form. So I don't need the longer form, so if they don't submit it, it's not a problem. But if they do answer those, it helps me do analysis of the property without having to ask them a million questions on the phone. But as far as any help or tips with the website, you know, I think the biggest thing is patience. You know, so many people, you know, if you build it, they will come thing. It's not true with websites.

You can't just have a website and expect people to come to it, so you've got to generate traffic. And if you want to rank in the search engines, it takes time. And I think so many people try a couple things to try to rank in the search engines, which is SEO. It's search engine optimization. But they'll try a couple things and then give up because they don't see any improvement over even two months. And if they had just stuck it out and gone four or five months, you know, they start to see the improvement. And that's, I don't want to be telling too many people about all this, my competition.

But seriously, I mean, that's really what it is. And don't be afraid of pay per click. Yeah, like Google AdWords and stuff. Right. Yeah, Google AdWords, Bing ads. You can set your budget, daily budget, to where it won't go over. So you can specify how much you want to spend. And the big benefit of that is having your ads for your website show up on the first

page if you bid the right amount for them. And then you can see, I think the biggest benefit is seeing what keywords people are really using to find you. That's what I'm curious about. What are people, I mean, they type in in how do I sell my house or what do people look for? That's top secret. No, I think it was surprising to me because I thought investors used the we buy houses and not homeowners, but there's been so much advertising done by different companies

and everybody putting up the signs everywhere that people actually search for we buy houses. Oh, interesting. So you're saying that the distressed homeowners who are looking to get rid of their property potentially are searching we buy houses instead of, I need to sell my damn house on Google. Well, probably the better quality lead is searching that. But the majority of people that I'm actually getting are searching for we buy houses. Interesting. They've seen the sign or somebody's told them there's people that buy houses and they say,

And they might not say we buy house. They might say buy houses and have some other form of it, but it comes in as representing something like we buy houses. And then, of course, I like selling my house fast and stuff like that. That's the other one I think is the key word. Yeah. What about Facebook? Do you use Facebook at all?

I have a fan page for that, but I don't use that much. I plan on using that a little more. That'll help your rankings a lot. if you can, you know, use a set up a Facebook fan page for your house buying and link it to your your house buying site. All right. And what about Facebook? Do you use that?

Facebook, I use set up a fan page to link to my house buying website and then have that updated. I've been too lazy to ever update the thing. But that could help you with your search engine optimization for your house buying website. And I'm not sure if you're maybe asking about whether I use that for marketing directly on Facebook for, leads, but no, I don't, and I probably should, but there's only so much I can do. I'm a big fan of, I don't do a lot of it, but I've done a little bit of Facebook ads for when I'm trying to sell a house. I really like doing that. It's put up a picture of the house or a picture of a local thing, like a local popular restaurant. And the last one I did, I said,

do you want to move away from Aberdeen? Because Aberdeen's a nearby town, and I said, do you want to move away from Aberdeen by this house in Montesano? And Monisano is like the nice town. So anyway, I'm a big fan of Facebook. I think there's a great idea. Yeah, so there we go. I have ideas too. Look at that, Josh. You guys are crazy.

Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr builder's risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income.

Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action. The footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now.

Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to be.

to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taken care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Tired of traditional lenders holding you back, host financial is here to change the game. They've ditched the DTI restrictions and they zero in on what really matters, your property's income potential. So no more chasing papers for tax returns or personal income statements. Think about it. A lender that values your property's worth over your paycheck, that's the host financial difference. Approved in 47 states, they are ready to help you make

your next big move. Curious if you qualify, just head over to hostfinancial.com and find out. Stop letting outdated lending practices hold you back. That's hostfinancial.com where your property's potential meets unlimited financing. New Year, clean slate, and maybe a vacancy that needs to get filled fast? That's where a veil comes in. With avail, rental listings can be published to 24 top rental sites with one click, completely free. That includes places renters are already searching, like Realtor.com, Apartments.com, Redfin, and more. No copying and pasting.

No juggling multiple platforms, just one listing that shows up everywhere. If getting rentals organized and filled fast is on the list this year, start with Avail. Sign up for free at Avail.co slash Bigger Pockets. That's A-V-A-I-L-C-O-Bigger Pockets. All right, well, let's switch gears a little bit. I know we're kind of getting ready to wrap up here, but I'm curious, what other kind of investing do you do?

Do you do GST flipping or do you got other avenues? No, I have rental properties that I didn't intend to have. Maybe a couple I did because they were long-term tenants and they weren't requiring any repairs. They've been there for 20 years and so I buy the house and start getting income. I mean, it was nice to do that, but we don't, I don't actively search for rental properties and I do it more for tax reasons, saving on taxes. and we also are our long-term sort of retirement sort of strategy so that we're not just always flipping houses and making chunks of money is is owner financing. So we'll owner finance sell the properties with owner financing and then, you know, that way we don't have to deal with the broken toilets, the clog toilets.

And, you know, we even had a tenant one time cost because the shelf in the closet fell. And, you know, it was just a matter picking up the board and putting it back up on the thing. But we don't get that. The people pay their property taxes that pay for their own insurance on the properties, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we talked about that a lot with Clay Huber on the 16th Bigger Pockets Podcasts podcast.

So definitely a cool strategy. It's something I want to get more into as well. So what about wholesaling? Wholesaling, yes, I do a lot of wholesaling, and I plan on doing a whole lot more of that. I really sort of want to switch gears into focusing more on that to free up my time a little bit more and not have to deal with contractors as much.

and then, you know, the other thing is the reason why I would want to do some more wholesaling is because a lot of people talk about the frustration of dealing with contractors and getting the house fixed up and things like that, but you don't hear many people talking about frustrations and hassles with selling houses. And we have people multiple offer situations within a couple of days, which is awesome, it's great. But then the banks have the problems within 90 days. You know, most of these are FHA, you know, loans. And so you have this 90-day flipping rule where the banks are not wanting, you know, they want you to jump through all these hoops and show them how much you paid for it, how much you did in the repairs and all of these things. And we've had, you know, problems with things taking so long that the buyers get really antsy and it just creates so many problems and it's really frustrating. And so to not have to deal with any of that or fixing up or, you know, and just

buying a house and wholesaling is awesome. And especially because it's not just a four or five thousand wholesale thing, you can get $10, $15, $20,000 wholesales, and I do it quite often and to be able to make as much as you would on a flip and all you have to do is assign a contract. I mean, which would you rather do? Yeah.

So what about, like, do you have any tips? If somebody wants to wholesale a deal to you, I mean, what kind of tip would you give them somebody who's just starting out with wholesaling? The tip would be to hustle and to find the deals that, other people don't know about. Obviously, I don't want to hear about listed properties and things like that.

I want to hear about a great deal that doesn't need a whole lot of repairs that I can get for dirt cheap, obviously. So, I mean, it's really just a matter of getting enough leads to get great deals to send to people. Because if you can focus on finding really, really great deals, which everybody just needs to do anyway, you don't need a whole lot of buyers. You don't need a thousand-person buyer list. You know, you have your handful of people that you're selling. everything too and that's what I do. I only have a small handful of people that that buy everything I have so I don't have to market and push this property very much

usually the first or second person wants it but it's because I'm leaving enough meat on the bone you know I'm leaving enough room and then for them to make a lot of money on the deal too so no that's great that's great I was going to ask you a question and it totally disappeared from it's gone well while you're thinking of While you're thinking of that, I think also with the wholesalers, you know, maybe possibly wanting to, you know, tips for them if they want to sell deals to successful investors, is, you know, don't immediately send things out on an email blast. I think a lot of the best buyers just ignore those because they know that they're up against

a bunch of people, mostly newbies and things like that. And if you can find the people that you think are your top prospects for buying your deals and give them 12 or 24 hours exclusive notice or right to buy the property, they're going to head out and go look at that thing right away because they know that you're giving them the first dibs on it. That's an awesome tip. I know a lot of businesses do that. The press does that.

I mean, it happens in a lot of industries, and I have not heard anyone specifically say that they do that. And again, I think that's fantastic. I think that would get me as a purchaser, quite excited. And that said, I did think of my question, which is you came into real estate investing from a career as an engineer. And so I don't quite know if you were, if you started the real estate while you were still working, or if you quit and went headlong into that. Maybe you could answer that first, and then I'll get to the follow up.

Okay, yeah, I wish I could say I did, but I did not. We were working. working part-time, I mean, as far as just like quitting the job and going into a head-first. So my wife and I were still working full-time jobs when we got into real estate investing. And it was something like about three years, two to three years we were still working full-time jobs while we were doing this and then transitioned. And I wish I could say, I just said, okay, I'm making so much money with that. I need to quit my job. I actually had to get laid off in order to push myself into time. Most people don't know that.

Nice. So you were working for multiple years while investing. My question was going to be on financing. And so it sounds like what you did was you used your job to finance all your deals, correct? No, I didn't use the job to finance the deals. We've always used other people's money and private lenders. And even in the beginning for the first for a while, we were actually even partnering with another. investor that was putting up the money and we were doing the work and splitting things.

So we were using his money. How did you end up with this guy as a new investor who had zero experience? Why would he want to work with you? Because we were hustling and had the deals. It's like showed that, hey, you know, I've got this great deal. I need someone to fund it. And, you know, we worked out the details and made that happen. Yeah, I think that's a huge.

huge, huge point there you made about. If you have the deal, like the money's going to find you. I hear investors say that a lot, but the hard part is finding the deal. The easy part is the money at that point. So if you're having trouble funding for your deal, it's probably not a deal. Right. And, you know, and the hard money, I mean, there's nothing, if the deal is a good enough deal and you're buying it for cheap enough, getting hard money for do the first couple deals, you know, if it's your way to get your foot in the door and to actually do some deals, it's not a bad idea. You know, and then you've got some experience even. So to convince some to lend you the money is so much easier because you can show them past experience.

Well, yeah, with hard money lenders, the other good thing about that is a lot of times they can keep you from doing bad deals. If they're not willing to lend on them a lot of times, they'll tell you this deal, it's too tight, and they're experienced. People usually really experience investors so they can keep you out of some trouble, too. No, that's awesome, Danny. I agree completely. I started out with hard money lenders, and it's not.

always the easiest way in the world to do it because they're kind of expensive. But, yeah, when you're starting out, if you've got to do it, you got to do it. So in a quick, shameless plug, actually, BiggerPockets has a hard money lender directory, and I think it's pretty great. So you can get it at biggerpockets.com slash hard money lenders and just click on your state and look for some guys in your area. So, well, cool. Let's move on to a article you wrote a few months ago, and it's actually one of my all-time favorite articles on the blog. I refer people to it all the time from the forums. It was called nine reasons

that you couldn't find a buyer for your wholesale deal. So I just wanted to run through those nine reasons real quick with you and see if you can kind of expand on it just a little bit. Sure. All right.

So reason number one that you can't find a buyer for your wholesale deal. It's priced, you price the deal too high. Right. And that's the main one. That's the usual culprit.

You know, if you price the deal too high because your numbers weren't right or you had to fudge the numbers to make it to where you could have a higher wholesale fee or, you know, any number of things. And it's typically back into what we talked about where you're just not getting enough leads to generate the deals that you need to get to be able to sell them easily. And so if you're having a lot of trouble selling them, usually it's because the deal is just priced too high. You know, you're seeing things wanting the numbers to come out a certain

way so that you could say that yes this is a deal I can do this and you end up you know looking at maybe the comps that the one comp that was you know ten thousand dollars higher than the other five and said you know this is what the value is going to be just because it was wishful thinking and you know and you just you hope that it will so that's what you assume and and you buy the deal for too much and then you can't sell it because you're pricing it too high Josh, you want to take number two? Yeah, sure. Didn't have enough buyers on your list, which we kind of covered, didn't we?

Well, sort of. I mean, if you don't have enough buyers, you can't get the deal in front of enough people. That could be, you know, one of the biggest reasons as well that you don't, can't find a buyer for the wholesale. You know, certain buyers like certain things. So you might have something that most people would turn their nose up to, you know, as far as the area or the level of repairs and things like that, but if you have enough buyers, you're more likely to have, obviously, someone that might be looking for that

specific thing. So it never hurts to go ahead and build a big buyers list. And that brings us to number three, you know, not having the right buyers on your list. Because like I said, you know, having that handful of buyers will buy most of your stuff. And so you really just want to find the ones that do buy the most houses pay cash. And the biggest thing for me is being able to make decisions quickly. Because what you want to do is give them that notice, you know, you've got 12 hours or whatever. And if they can tell you within an hour or so, that allows you if they don't want it, to move on to the next person and give them time.

So you want decision makers. You don't want someone that's going to wait three days and call and ask you some stupid questions about how old the roof is. and to find those people, the best way that I've found to find these right buyers is to find the ones that are actively buying the bank-owned properties. And so any realtor can do a search and find the bank-owned properties that were bought for cash over the last three to six or whatever months. And so from getting those addresses, you can look at the county records and look to see who bought those and send them a letter or find some way to get a whole of them

and say, would you like more deals like this? Do you want more houses at a deep discount? And then you've got the right buyers because they've already shown. They bought a property. You know, they've already pulled the trigger. They paid cash for it. They're going to be good buyers. Great tipping.

A lot of times those lists you get from the realtor too. If it's in a certain area and then you've got like, you know, a list of maybe 15 houses and three or four of those were bought from the same company or the same person, you know, that's who you really want to get a hold of, buying multiple properties. Yeah, definitely. Well, number four was you didn't approach your buyers correctly.

You want to expand on that one? That one, you know, is also, I think that gets into, you know, approaching them with the exclusive access to the deal, instead of shooting out an email that goes out to a thousand people and they know what's going out to a lot of people. So if you're not approaching the good buyers in a good way to let them know that they have dibs on it, and they should really go and look at this deal,

and then giving them the right information that they want, as far as what you figure it will resale for, your estimate for the repairs, and then a way to get into the property or a way to look at it if you have pictures or video or anything like that. Okay, good. Number five, didn't handle access to the property correctly.

Okay, with that one, you know, if somebody's living in the house, you know, you're going to have a hard time getting buyers through. And so if, you know, you've got to take a million pictures or take some video or have, you know, some way for your potential buyers to see everything that this house has. And then once somebody's willing to commit, you know, and you can allow maybe even a contingency. you know, for them in signing a contract to have access to it, and then you schedule to bring the person through. And so if you can, the best way is when, if the house is vacant, obviously it's a lot easier. If you're signing with a seller, a private owner,

because you did motivated seller marketing, and it's a private owner, and you're signing the contract, you know, what I like to do if it's vacant is just say, look, I've got this lockbox. Do you mind if I put the key in a lockbox and give you the code and put it on the front door. This way I can, while we're lining everything up to close,

I could start bringing my contractors by or associates and let them see the house to figure out, you know, the extent of the repairs and things like that. And most people are okay with that. You know, if they have valuables in the house, they might not be interested in doing that,

but it never hurts to ask. And most people will let you. Nice. And number six, demanded too much non-refundable earnest money. Right. That's, you know, people, you know, when you're requiring somebody to put up too much money for a deal, you know, especially, you know, I've heard of people saying, you know, they want $5,000 paid to them,

and I would never do that. You know, I would, you know, because if the deal falls apart for reasons beyond my control, I've got to deal with the hassle getting the money back from this guy. And you don't know if they're going to go in cash that and start. it's spending the money. You know, if there's some title issue or something like that. So it'd be a little bit more reasonable. You know, tell them, you know, make sure it's nonrefundable. And I typically just have them pay that to the title company. So the title company's handling it. And, you know, they're a little bit more comfortable doing that. The serious buyers won't have a problem with you

asking 2,000 or even 3,000 on a good deal, especially if you dealt with them before. Once you have your handful of buyers, I mean, it doesn't even matter anymore because you know that if they're agreeing to do the deal, they're going to close it. Good. All right, number seven, you didn't give yourself long enough. Right, and you always got to have, you know, if you plan on assigning a contract, you've got to try to get as much time as you can. And all the contracts that I've seen and I've used have always said closing is going to be on or before a certain closing date. And so get as much time as you possibly can and then shoot to find the buyer right away and close it as soon as you can.

within reason. Sometimes, you know, the sellers want some time to get things out. So, you know, but you've got to have built in a little bit more of a safety thing. If you're under the gun, if you tell somebody just because you're trying so hard to get a deal and you tell them we'll close it within four days and you don't have a buyer or even a likely buyer, you know, that's going to put you through way too much stress and, you know, make it very difficult for you to be able to get the deal done. which leads very well to number eight didn't market the property hard enough right and that's you know if you if you don't have a handful of buyers that are buying everything and then you've got to market the property you know just saying you know and this gets into a general thing for me with business and everything else in life and it's something my father's always talking to me about as far as we all have these kind of to-do lists and whether it's written or just in your head or whatever and the tendency a lot of times is to just go through and quickly do things to market off your list.

But the intention of what you were going to do was to do something right and you're not doing it right. You're just doing it and then right checking it off your list. So the tendency could be, you know, I know I need to market this. So I put a Craigslist ad out to sell this house and then you mark it off your list and go, you know, to a movie or something. You marketed it, but you didn't, you know, do the job right. You keep, you know, with something like this, you've got a house under contract, you've committed to buy from a seller.

You know, that's a pretty big deal. And that, you know, if that means staying up until midnight, you know, doing Craigslist ads and finding new buyers by calling their marketing and talk to them and all of this other stuff, you know, even putting together flyers, whatever you have to do, you just have to do it. That's great. And it gets easier because you do end up finding. the real buyers and then you just, like I do now, it's just basically call them and I don't really have to market the properties. Yeah. All right.

Last one. Number nine, didn't start pushing it immediately. Right. And that's sort of the same, you know, it's a little bit like the last one. But basically, if you get it under contract and say it Friday evening, you know, a lot of times people are, wow, you know, just thrilled. You know, I got this deal on a contract, you know, mixed with some nervousness and everything. but, you know, the tendency is to want to go and relax and say, well, just, you know, Monday or tomorrow, Saturday, I'll start marketing it.

You have to immediately start marketing that. As soon as you get home, you know, you have to start figuring out how to do it and getting it out there to get let people know about it. Don't wait. Because those couple days that you wait could be the difference in having it close on time and not and having it blow up in your face and having some sellers very angry with you. Yeah, definitely. Well, very cool. Well, that's awesome. I really wanted to just go over that because I thought all nine of those points were really, really, really important. Thanks, Brandon. Yeah, thank you.

All right, well, let's kind of get wrapping this thing up. I know you've got a Kindle book that I want to give you a minute to just tell people about because I read it and I think it's awesome. So I guess, yeah, take a minute and tell us about it. Sure. It's called Flipping Houses Exposed and it's on Amazon.com. It's 99 cents. I'm trying to get Amazon to make that free. We'll see how that goes.

Hopefully they will. But right now, 99 cents, it's practically free. But the book is basically following my business through for 34 weeks, everything I did to generate leads. During the 34 weeks, generated 495 leads, and the deals that we bought and even share sort of the scope of work for the properties. for the rehabs and then the selling and then the actual numbers from the deals, everything, including the holding cost and the closing cost and the rehab cost.

And it's basically just real world investing. I mean, it's not hyped up TV, dramatic, drama-sized or dramatized. I can't say that word. You would edit that maybe, but, you know, it just goes through everything and shows you what it's really like. And what I really like about how it came out is that even though we're experienced investors, for the first several months, there wasn't a deal. And I was cranking my marketing back up. And that's what happens when people start. You know, you start and the marketing has got to build on itself. And you start to get more and more leads. And then you finally get the

deal and then things start happening. And there in there, there's a week where there's two deals in one week and that's the way it naturally happens, you know, for people that getting started to realize that it's a numbers game. And if you just do enough and keep doing it and don't give up and get frustrated and stop, you know, it'll happen for you too. Yeah, well, definitely. Well, definitely we're going to put a link to that in the show notes as well that people can go and pick up that book. So, uh, very cool. Uh, well, before we wrap up, we got four questions, the famous four that we want to ask you. Famous four.

All right. So, all right. Number one, what is your favorite real estate book other than your own? Other than mine?

Honestly, I even asked my wife, I said, do I have a favorite real estate book? Because they asked these on a podcast about the books. And, you know,

honestly, I don't have one that comes to mind. You know, as far as, is general business and, you know, maybe somewhat related

to Rich Dad, poor, to real estate, maybe rich dad, poor dad. I got a lot of that book. It's a pretty easy read, but just the, you know, shifting your mindset and thinking like an investor, I think that's an awesome book. And then also, you know, as it relates, if I can make this kind of relate into real estate and getting into investing, I just got this book called Mastery, Mastery by Robert Green.

I've heard of that. And I just started reading. I'm through a couple chapters, but it's really an awesome book, and I see a lot of, you know, things that would help people getting started. And it basically talks about, you know, people doing what they're inclined to do. You know, you have inclinations to do certain things that just fit you. And when you do that, you put your heart and soul into it and you work real hard at it and you can, you know, make anything happen. And those are the people that really do well in life and are happy and all that kind of things. So, you know, that's just an awesome book.

And, you know, it talks about a lot of the masters, you know, Leonardo da Vinci and different people like that. And, you know, what they went through and what they did and how they found what they were inclined to do and then just put their heart and soul into it. And that's how they became who they were. So it's a powerful book. Nice. All right. So that's a good non-real estate book. What about hobbies?

I think I saw that you're, are you a pilot? Is that right? Right, and that's, yeah, flying my airplane is my favorite hobby. I don't have nearly as much time lately to do it anymore, but, you know, we're so San Antonio's not far from the beach, so in my plane I can get there in about 50 minutes. So this is your own plane? Right, yeah, so just hop down and, you know, not too long ago, I took my wife down there and we had lunch, had seafood on the coast, and then flew back. and you know it's just it's a very freeing thing too because separating yourself from the earth and being up there especially when I'm alone you know just great way to clear my mind and focus on flying but I love it and I recommend it for anybody that has any interest in doing it

that's awesome yeah I know Brian Burke talked about that in one of the early podcast too he was a pilot so very cool I hope to follow in those footsteps sometime so last last question what do you think sets apart the successful house flippers from those who just can't seem to get out the ground. To me, the difference, and this comes from reading, I've got a lot of interest also in sort of like World War II history and things, especially with regards to the, you know, flying and aviation. But, you know, being afraid, but doing it anyway. It's like everybody's afraid to get in the business and take these chances and take these risks.

And it's the people that do it anyway that just decide that I need to do this. and then they do it. And a lot of people screw up, and you most likely will, and hopefully it's not a big one. Just if you're taking small steps, it won't be a big screw up and progress and build on it.

But, you know, we're all afraid to do it, and I think the people that are successful are the ones that were afraid but did it anyway. And then taking baby steps and taking action instead of just perpetually learning

that a lot of us get stuck in. So, you know, it's not, like we talked about before at the beginning, I think it was not trying to learn every single step of the way and becoming an expert sitting in front of your computer, figure out the general overview and start learning the beginning parts and then turn off the computer, get outside, drive around, talk to people.

Yeah, that's awesome. Nice. Well, Danny, listen, man, this has been a really good show with a ton of actionable information. It's going to be hard to digest. I think people are going to have to listen twice. But definitely want to thank you for your time and for coming on. And we certainly appreciate it.

And, of course, our users can also, of course, find you on the Bigger Pocket Kids blog where you are currently posting weekly. So thanks again for being part of this show. We appreciate it. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, Brandon. All right. Thanks, Danny.

And that was our show with Danny Johnson. That was a great, great, great podcast. A ton of actionable. content and information. If you want to find Danny, you could find him on Bigger Pockets. He's got a profile. We'll link to it in the show notes. You can also find him on his blog at flippingjunkie.com. And, you know, he's definitely a good guy.

So if you've got questions, feel free to hit him up. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening. This is Show 18. We're rocking right along with the Bigger Pockets podcast. In fact, so far, we've had 220 ratings of the show. on iTunes, which is awesome. We're averaging actually very close to 10,000 listens per show now.

So, you know, we ask everybody, if you are a listener, please jump on iTunes and leave us a rating and also take a minute or two and leave us a review. This takes us a lot of time to put the show together, and, you know, the ratings are definitely appreciated.

So please do that. Otherwise, please check out our site BiggerPockets.com. If you are not already a member, it's BiggerPockets.com. It's an awesome community, a great place to network, find people, make friends, learn, you name it, do deals. So come on board and join us at BiggerPockets.com. And finally, if you are not presently following us on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, you can find us on all three at slash BiggerPockets. So that would be Facebook.com slash bigger pockets, YouTube.com slash bigger pockets, and Twitter.com slash bigger pockets.

Jump in and follow us. We share lots of cool stuff there and actually have some kind of exclusive conversations and questions and surveys and do all sorts of fun things over there. So definitely follow us. And that's about it. Thanks again for listening to the show. I'm Josh Dorkin, your host. Signing all. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hike, 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, an 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. 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. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results.

Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.