BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 207: How to Achieve Greater Success by Doing Less with Devin Elder

Episode Date: December 29, 2016

Real estate investors wear a lot of hats, especially in the beginning: contractor, bookkeeper, receptionist, and more. But if you truly want to grow your business, you must do LESS. At least, that’s the message you’ll hear today on The BiggerPockets Podcast, where Josh and Brandon sit down with real estate investor Devin Elder about how he’s been able to scale his business by doing fewer and fewer tasks. You’ll learn how he went from a single family rental in 2012 to buying multiple properties each month. We cover the topic of BRRRR investing, fix and flipping, using private lenders, getting started with no money, and lots more. Stay tuned for this powerful episode! In This Episode We Cover: How Devin got started into real estate How he got a mentor to help him get his first deal What exactly equity capture is Why the BRRRR strategy is so nice Thoughts on his market, San Antonio Devin’s main focus as a real estate investor How his business works The importance of creating systems and not doing things you don’t enjoy Why you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel  How he decides if he flips, holds, or wholesales a property How he finds his deals How to figure out if someone is fudging the numbers The mechanics of his marketing The story of a deal that went wrong What makes him proud about how he does business The name that comes to mind if he heard the word “inspiration“ What the future looks like for Devin And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Podcast Buildium Investor Carrot Tim Ferriss’ Podcast Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Rental Property Investing  by Brandon Turner The Book on Flipping Houses by J. Scott Investing with No or Low Money Down by Brandon Turner The Book on Tax Strategies by Amanda Han 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance Tweetable Topics: “Rental income wasn’t making me wealthy, but it was paying my bills.” (Tweet This!) “It’s about creating systems, getting software, and not spending time on activities that you don’t enjoy.” (Tweet This!) “Nothing happens without some revenue.” (Tweet This!) “Use your hustle to create some kind of value and then from there take the next best step.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Devin Devin’s BiggerPockets Profile Devin’s Website Devin’s Company Website – We buy houses San Antonio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 207. What do I really want? If I could do anything in the world, what do I really want to do? And it always came back to, well, I want to build this business to a level that I couldn't even imagine two years ago. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. House to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, man? Happy soon to be New Year to you. Happy soon to be New Year. Do you notice the energy? We had a little bit better energy in today's show.

You know why? I don't know why. Because I'm standing up. Look at this. I ain't no like, yeah, every week I'm like sitting down on these things. I just noticed, you know, that disgusting beard of yours. No, no, no. You said it wrong.

It's amazing beard of mine, a sexy beard of mine. Something like that. You've got a wrong word. You've got a corn cob in there, dude. That's kind of disgusting. I'm saving it for later. Come on. That's lunch.

Anyway, happy holidays. Hopefully your Christmas went well. You know, it did. And it was a fantastic Christmas. and I got your gift. The $100,000 gift card was amazing. Okay, we're recording this before Christmas, but I'm expecting, I'm expecting a $100,000 gift card to Best Buy in my stocking.

Here's what you should do. You should stop right now. Hold your breath. Okay. And keep going. And we'll see what happens. All right. I'm going to do that.

We'll see. We'll see. All right. So, yeah, this is the last show of 2016, which is, you know, very sad. and, you know, we're going to do a lot of crying today, introspection. And no, we're not, we're not. But we could try to cry. I used to be pretty emo.

Yeah, black. I even dyed my hair black once, you know that? Like, jet black. I've seen the pictures. Yes, it's not embarrassing at all. It's a beautiful thing. Not as beautiful as the beard, but yeah. Should I dye my beard jet black?

That would be spectacular. Is that emo? Because then it's like lumber sexual and emo. So it'd be like lumber sex emo. I don't know. Is that a thing? We keep coining terms. We'll use that one.

All right. Well, so, hey, Scott, we got a great show today with the guy who's, I mean, this guy's a total go-getter who's gone and made it happen. And it's amazing. I mean, he wholesales. He flips. He's got a rental portfolio. He's doing private money lending.

He's doing private money. He's doing it all. And, you know, he's only been doing this for four or five years now. So it's really cool to watch his evolution and learn from him. So we'll get to that. Why don't we, uh, I was going to say, just a tease a little bit here. There's one thing he says later on in the show. You guys, we've got to make sure you listen for it. Listen for the section where he talks about how he says, I'm not good at anything. And that's what makes him successful. I love that segment. If there's one thing you guys, you guys listen to today, make sure you listen to that. How being not good at anything is what makes him successful. You're sure it wasn't you that brand. Yeah, it may have been me as well. But you know, you guys will see what he's talking about. You'll see. Yeah, it was great. It's great. I mean, he's got this philosophy and I love it. We'll get there. Anyway. Yeah, all right. Let's get to today's quick tip. All right, guys, today's quick tip.

Bigger pockets publishing. You guys know we have a publishing arm of bigger pockets. We put out books like the book on managing rental properties, the book on flipping housing, rental property investing, the tax book. No low money down. Don't forget about no and low money down. Lots of books, great books, book on estimating rehab costs. Our books, the bulk of our books are actually now available for purchase by your local bookstore, by your local bookseller. and buy library. So if you are looking to get your hands on our books and don't want to actually buy them, although we do encourage you to buy them, call up your local library and request the books. And it'd be great to obviously have our books in all the libraries around the country.

Yeah, if they don't have it, tell them to order it because they'll do that if people request it. They will. And obviously also, we would love you request it at your local bookstore because we'd love them to care it as well. You know one of my dreams in life? One of my dreams of life is to walk into a Barnes & Noble and see my book sitting there. And now supposedly it's, you know, it's in some Barnes and Noble. So I haven't found one yet, but I've only been to one Barnes & Noble. And that would be fun going to that store and actually buying a copy of your book from the store. It'd be kind of cool. I would. I'll buy it. If I see it, I'll buy it. And I know this quick tip is a total self-interest. Total self-interest.

But do me a favor. You didn't get me a Christmas present. None of you listeners. So go buy, go request my book from the library. Actually, like, the library thing is actually deeper than that, Right. So like when I got started, I had no money to read to buy real estate books. None. I went to my library and I rented a hundred books over the course of a summer, 100 books. And I read every single one of them. And that's why like I built my real estate business on that knowledge and through bigger pockets, you know, at the same time as when I discovered BP. But like I want to repay that in the floor. I want people to be able to, if they can't afford to buy that book to go get it from the library and change their life, the way that changed minds. Sure. For sure. Talk to your library. All right, moving on. So before we get to the actual show,

I did want to actually quickly invite everybody to a webinar that we're doing this week. And I know we do webinars every week, but this one's kind of special. It's going to be the first one of the new year. So it's happening this coming Wednesday. And we're going to be talking about 17 ways to make 2017 your best real estate investing year ever. Just going to talk about 17 different tip and start using immediately to make 2017 just really, really crush it. So yeah, sign up today at biggerpockets.com slash webinar. Sign up and I'll see you there. And if you're listening to the show weeks or months later, that link will take you to the current webinar that we're offering. and you can see what's available.

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Subscribe to us and let people know what you thought about the show. Let them know what you thought. Think about the Bigger Pockets podcast that helps us spread the word, helps us to find and make other real estate investors successful. So please do that. With that said, let's bring on a successful real estate investor. Today's guest, Devin Elder, Devin, as we talked about, this guy's actually a Texas native who couldn't cope with the constraints of the corporate world and found out through real estate,

he found a path. He found this path through real estate. He used to be a musician, did all sorts of cool stuff. and now he's blowing up. He's doing all sorts of great things. His company, D.J.E. Texas Management Group, LLC. He's creating jobs. He's rebuilding his community.

It's amazing. And he's a great guy with some amazing advice. So let's bring him in. All right, Devin, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you here. Thanks for having me, gentlemen. How's going? It is going well.

It's a pleasure to talk to you as it has ever guessed, you know. So today. So I'm not special. You're not special. You're not special. But, yeah. Gotcha. You are. It's good to know. Your mom told you that. I know. So, you know, just, just remember it. Just remember it. All right. So let's go, you know, as we always do, we like to start with that simple question. How did you get started with real estate? Yeah. Yeah, great question. So 2012, I bought a rental, bought my first rental property. I'm actually rehabbing it to flip right now all these years later. I did a bunch of rentals for the first year or so. And then I started getting into flips and some other things around that. But yeah, it all started with. with that one little rental. I really, really like that business model, the B-Tripple-R, the Burr business model.

Yeah. Still really love it and still do a lot of that. That's how I got started and I had done about 10 or 12 rentals before I started getting to flips. Okay. Nice. All right. So who are you? Like how did, you know, how'd you end up getting into real estate? What's your background? Tell us about that. Yeah. I'm going to condense 38 years here into 30 seconds, right? I think part of the why for me, behind. the real estate, you know, looking back on it. I was homeschooled until sixth grade. And then I went through high school and college. And then after college, I played in a band for a lot of years for

living. And I think being homeschooled for a period and then having a period of years as an adult where I didn't have a job or a boss or anything, I think that instilled in me this kind of hatred for anybody telling me what to do, right? So I've had corporate jobs, but, you know, I only lasted, I think, seven or eight years in the corporate world. So real estate, to me, it's just the vehicle, right? It just happens to be the thing that allows me to not have a job, right? And for me, that was kind of the primary thing to not have to work for somebody. Before real estate, I tried some affiliate marketing stuff online that didn't really work out for me. But I found real estate in 2012 and I said, okay, this is the thing. This is the vehicle.

And it could have been, you know, for me, it was just needing to not have to go to work for somebody, right? Long term. It could have been taco trucks if I could have made that work. But it happened to be real estate. That would have been awesomer. Yeah, totally would have been awesomer. Yeah. But here I am, stuck with real estate. So that's been the vehicle, and it's been amazing. Last four years, it's been totally amazing.

So tell us how that first deal kicked off, that first rental that you had picked up. You know, you're strumming your guitar. You're like, hey, I should own the building I'm in. That's right. Maybe. I don't know. Well, it was kind of cool. There was a mentor that I had that was going to walk me through getting a rental.

And I really like the numbers on the B, triple R strategy, right, the Burr strategy. So it was a junker. But the cool thing was it was about three streets down from my dad's house where my dad still lives. So I'd grown up in that neighborhood. And so to come back and I mean, buying my first round was like a huge deal for me, right? I thought it was a biggest deal in the world, right? I hadn't done any investments until then.

So buying that house, it was a real junker, but it was in the neighborhood I grew up in. For me, I was like, hey, that was a pat on my back. I'm coming back to the streets I grew up on and I'm buying a piece of it. right? In retrospect, it was actually a layup of a deal. At the time, it felt like this massive project, right? It was like a $10,000 rehab. And, you know, the house was totally a mess. And so we went in there and did like a rental grade rehab and we put a tenant in there. We refinanced it out. And then after I got to that refinance and I saw those rent checks coming in, I saw the cash flow. So I saw my equity capture. I thought, man, okay, this is a better financial vehicle than anything I've seen so far. I'm going to go do another one, right? So I I bought another one. And once I bought my second one, I was like, okay, I'm going to get to 10. And that's when things really started to, I think when I set my mind on getting 10 rentals, that's when things started to change.

I started to try to develop better systems to be able to handle 10 rentals and so on and so forth. And so, and then everything, like you guys know, once you get to the other side of something, you go, oh, okay, now it looks different. Now I have three rentals. Okay, I can get to 10. And then you get to 10 and go, okay, things look different. I have more capabilities, more, you know, partners, lenders, everything. and you just can grow it along the way.

So that was that first one. It worked out really well for me, and it allowed me to keep doing those rental models to kick it off. Hey, Devin, you use the term equity capture. Can you define that for those people who don't know what that means? Yeah, so let's say I bought it at 50,000. I put 10K of work, so I'm at 60. And then I've got another, let's just for easy math,

call it another 10K of like financing costs, holding costs, et cetera. So I'm at 50, 60, 70. Well, if the house appraises at 100, well, then there's $30,000 because everything I've got into it is up to $70, but the house appraised at $100. So there's $30,000 of equity. Now, that's not realized equity. It's still just kind of a number out there. But that's $30,000 more on my net worth, right?

So that's one of the things I really like about the rental model is you can start just scooping up equity on a lot of houses. And someday, that day being today in 2016, I'm starting to sell some of these things and harvest some of that equity. So that's one of those things I like about that Burr model that we talk. You know, we talk a lot about it here, and you mentioned earlier, and for those who don't know what it means, it just stands for you buy a property, you rehab it, you rent it out, then you refinance it. It gets your money back or get your private money lender, hard money, money back. And then you can repeat it and do it over and over if you want to add the fourth R in there.

And so like the Burr strategy is what a lot of us do. We just never had a name for it. But we buy these fixed-sharp rental properties. What I love about that strategy you just touched on is that you can start generating equity every single one that you do. I mean, if you do it right, you should be able to have. I mean, like, I don't like to have anything less than $30,000 or $40,000 of equity in a, in a house when I'm done burying it. And so you do 10 of those, and all of a sudden, you're up to, you know, a third of a million dollars in equity. And then it just hopefully grows from that point.

The other thing you mentioned is you wait for the time, like you no longer are subject to, like when you're flipping houses, which I know what you do and we'll talk about, but like when you're flipping houses, you're kind of subject to the market. Like the market crashes, you could be in some trouble. With Burr investing, you kind of just, like you buy it. And then if you hold it for five years because that's the ideal time, great. If you hold it for 10, great. Hold it for two, great.

You get to be the one in charge of kind of your destiny, so to speak. And a couple of just benefits there, the Burr stuff. Yep. So next question. Quick question for you. When you were in this band, were you famous? Wasn't famous. Damn.

You weren't like playing for like the killers or something like that? No, no. We would do some local shows and some regional stuff. but, you know, it was mostly for me it was, okay, so out of college, I was a bartender, and I bartending at this place, and I would see these bands playing, and I'm like, those guys have a way better job than I do bartending. I mean, it's money for nothing and all the rest of it, you know, right? Always sunny on the other side, right?

So I figured out a way to put a band together and start doing that instead of bartending, and really for me, it was like, if I don't have to have a job and I can just sing in a band, I mean, that was awesome for a little while. But no, didn't make it famous, had to figure out another track from my life. So here I am talking to you guys. Nice. So where? You're at an all-time low.

I am sorry. It just keeps getting worse from from rock star bartender to hang in with Josh and Brandon. This is depressing. Terrible. So where are you located at? I mean, you mentioned $100,000 houses. So I mean, you're not in San Francisco. Yeah, exactly.

And $100,000 is hard to come by these days. I'm in San Antonio, Texas. Okay. Which, first of all, I love. it, right? It's my backyard. I know this town very well, but we're seeing some appreciation, right? We're seeing a lot of people move to San Antonio. Texas has really solid economic fundamentals. And while we're seeing appreciation, we're not seeing like crazy 10% a month appreciation, right? Because nobody knows when that next market correction is coming, but things are pretty hot right now. So I feel like we're seeing realistic appreciation supported by job growth, et cetera, et cetera. We're not seeing houses where you buy them and three months later they've appreciated, you know, 50K or, you know, crazy stuff. So I'm hoping that, you know, San Antonio is just kind of slow and steady appreciation. Hopefully that just continues even, even through the next correction or the last correction in 2008.

I wasn't investing, but, you know, things just kind of were flat for a while. They didn't fall off the map like a lot of other markets is your long answer. That's your long answer. Okay. Short answer, San Antonio. All right. Nice. So can you give us like just a broad overview? You said you bought the rentals.

What does your business look like over the past now five years? I mean, you do rentals, you do flips. What kind of overall do you do? Yeah. So right now I've got a rental portfolio, single family and multifamily that I just own by myself, you know, using a hard money and then refinance out. So I've got loans with a bunch of different banks on those properties. Those provided me enough income to quit my day job, right?

Which was about a year and a half ago and feel like, okay, I've got my bills paid through my rental income. But then a couple of years ago, I did, well, my first flip didn't flip. I still actually own it. It's a rental. But my second flip, I made 40 grand on. And after that, I was like, okay, I know that was a, in this market for me, that's a good deal. But I thought, if I could just do a couple of those a year, maybe three of those a year, I'm already doing better than my corporate job.

And that's three in a year. And I've got this rental income that's kind of a bait, you know, call it like a base salary, right? Is the rental income wasn't making me wealthy, but it was paying all my bills. And so then I decided to focus more on doing more of those flips. And right now today, it's looking like two or three, well, probably two flip acquisitions a month, and then we'll wholesale some stuff and do some partner deals. Wow. So more than three a year.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, well, now I have like a totally different set of goals, right? I mean, every time you hit a goal, then you start looking at the next impossible goal. So it's like this never-ending treadmill, unfortunately, but it's a lot of fun. So it's all, it's self-imposed. Yeah, sorry. Yes.

No, please. You just keep talking. Okay, don't let the host interrupt you. Yeah. What do you guys know about interviewing, right? Right. What do you have? So, stop talking.

Stop talking. All right. So you're at this point, right? You're doing all this stuff. I'm a newbie. I've never done a deal before. I'm looking in and I see this guy, Devin, and I'm like, how the hell does he do that? How do you manage that?

You know, two flip acquisitions plus a bunch of wholesales, plus it sounds like you're probably acquiring some rentals, you're managing your rentals. What is what does the business look like? Is it just you? Do you have other team members? How did you get to where you are? Yeah, good question. For me, on my very first rental, I got some property management software, right?

The one I use is called buildium.com. There's plenty of others out there that I'm sure do the same thing, but that's the one I know. And right when I got started doing this, I decided, you know, I wanted to get to 10 rentals at some point. And I just knew that that was not going to be possible to do on spreadsheets or writing stuff down. Like, it had to be systematized. So kind of from the word go for me, I was thinking about 10 rentals. And so, you know, when you have a plumbing issue and you own one rental, and I have a lot of friends that own one or two rentals, dude, they're going out there on a Sunday. Like I'll see them at Home Depot.

What are you doing? Oh, going out to fix a faucet at one of my rentals. And I'm like, don't you make like 200 grand a year at your job? What are you doing? You know, but there's a lot. Can you repeat that? Can you repeat that? Because like I think a lot of people that are listening need to hear this.

They're doing this and they're making a lot of money, but they're dick and array away their time doing, you know, jobs that are not even close to what, you know, their quote salary is worth. Yeah, I think one of the concepts for me is I just look at dollar per hour, right? Whether that's my dollar per hour in the corporate world or the dollar per hour for anything I'm doing in my business and just try to spend all the time on the, you know, I mean, there's $10,000 an hour activities that real estate investors do, right? So I try and I'm not great at it, but my goal is to shift to those activities. So anyway, yeah, there's a lot of people that make good money and they get into rentals and they, my thing has always been the reason people hate rental real estate is because they're doing. $15 an hour tasks and they should not be doing that. If you're an investor, if you're treating it seriously, creating systems, getting software, not spending any time on activities that I don't enjoy, right? Feel free to have the tenant call the plumber and send me the bill, right? Now, that might

shave a little bit off the profitability of that one deal, but there's no way to get to 10 rentals if you're running around town and you don't have somebody to help you out with that. So that's been the key is, for me, is not doing anything, those low dollar per hour tasks. So right now, from in the company it's just me and a and a whole ton of contract labor I mean I've got a bench of GCs plumbers handi man the you know lenders private lenders the whole thing I did just hire somebody an office manager assistant just starting in January so super pumped about getting them ramped up to to grow the business more but it's just me and all my all my systems in the in the lab that I've put together that's awesome you know there's a book out there I read called 8020 sales and

marketing have you read that I think I haven't pretty much that book. Okay. But I'm very familiar with that concept. Okay. Yeah, yeah. 80, 20 says the market, but in there, he talks a lot about like, you know, the 80, 20, you know, the 80-20 rule, right? So 20% of what you do, or 80% of what you do gives you 20% of results. 20% gives you 80% of results. So basically, like, he equates that to the dollar per hour thing you were just saying. And in the same thing, like most of what you do is like dollar per hour work. I mean, checking your Facebook, email, stuff like that is like dollar to work. But there are a few tasks every day. You might spend a minute on it, but it's a, like you said, $10,000

dollar an hour task. So the more time you spend on those, you know, the, the tasks that are, yeah, $1, $10, $5, or even $20, $30, $300 an hour jobs, you're missing out on those other ones. I mean, yeah, it was a huge mistake in my life when I started investing is I do one flip a year because I was doing all the work. How many did I miss because of that? Yes. And, you know, that came to me about four years ago with bigger pockets, you know, which was when I hired Brandon. I think it's somewhere around your four year anniversary here. I was doing everything. I did. every job. I was the janitor, man. I cleaned the toilets, you name it. I did it all. And that did not allow me to focus on the business, the big picture, the strategic thinking, how do we grow this? How do we

build these things more systemically? And, you know, that had been holding me back for a very long time. And once I got it, once I was able to step out and realize, oh, okay, you need to actually focus on the business, not just do all the tasks. It was an epiphany. And so, you know, I implore our listeners who are out there trying to do this and trying to build portfolios, you know, to stop and think about that because it's so easy to get caught. It's so easy to get trapped in working in the business, like you said, whether it's the toilets, whether it's men in calls, whether it's, you know, whatever it is. The time you should be spending is on that strategic, you know, where am I going to go next?

How am I going to find them evaluating the deals, finding the resources, putting the team together, and letting other people do the work for you, right? 100%. Well, so here's a question on that point. Then I'll ask both you guys, but specifically Devin here, people who are just starting out and they're brand new. You know, in any business, really, this principle can apply is why are you spending the time doing the little stuff? But when you're brand new or you have absolutely no money, you know, all you have is your hustle. You know, like, for example, right, when you're just starting out, you got no money, you might have to go door to door or do your own driving for dollars. So how do you balance the idea for a newbie

listening? How do you balance the idea of hustle and, you know, having to replace your hustle for the lack of cash with the need for those larger ticket activities. How do you balance that? Good question. Thank you. Yeah. So nothing happens without some some revenue, right? I mean, you can't start with zero and overnight build something huge. I've thought about that question or a similar question a lot. And I think my my generic answer is, you know, you have to take the next best step in front of you. And for somebody with $50,000 invest, you know, that next best step looks different. for somebody was zero dollars, but a real hunger to make something happen, that next best step might be, let me call up somebody like Devin and just take them to lunch, right?

That's going to cost me $30, but I can start. That's the next best step. You know, what can I do to get a mentor? What can I do to maybe offer a real estate investor some value that I can just, you know, use my hustle to create some kind of value, start somewhere, whatever the next thing is. And then once you do that next thing, you know, then from there you take the next. best step. And, you know, maybe it takes a couple of years to ramp something up. But, you know, if you look at real estate investing in the context of a, let's say, college education,

nobody bats and I at spending 100 grand and four years of their life working really hard for something. If you put that same energy and time and money into real estate investing, I mean, I guarantee it's going to yield way more than a, than a college degree. And look, I have a four-year degree. It's fine. But short answer, I think you take the next best step that you can. And if that's using sweat equity and hustle, then that's fine. But I would caveat that was saying, you know, get around somebody that does know what they're doing. Don't go experiment on your own trying to reinvent the wheel when the guy that lives down the street from you might be a millionaire from real estate and you can learn some from. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I would say,

yeah, I didn't mean to have what I said be construed as everybody should not be hustling because obviously, you know, I'm the product of just that. I am the product of, but there's a time if you're going to grow, you know, look, if you're just trying to buy one or two properties and, you know, that's all you want, that's great. A, there's nothing wrong with that and be, go for it. But if you're going to go and own 10 rentals, like to Devin's point, you can't do all the little things. You know, if you're going to try and grow some kind of, quote, mini empire, whatever it is, right? Yeah, portfolio. You've got to step out of yourself. Brandon, I know, I mean, you came to that point.

And once you started to realize that and started to systematize what you were doing, it became much easier for you to scale what you're doing. So, yeah, I think the point is, you know, in the beginning, you're going to have to hustle. You want to hustle because you want to understand all the roles. You want to know what all the jobs are. You want to know what the contractors are doing, what the handymen are doing, how managers are managing.

You need to know and understand every part of that business. Once you've got that, get out. get out of your own way and let the professionals, let the guys do spend their time doing that, let the specialists step in and take over for you so that you can move on and spend your time doing those $50,000 an hour or whatever you want to call it jobs. That would be my answer. I would add one more thing to this kind of discussion is that like you don't have to necessarily also hire a full-time person or a property manager or whatever. Yeah, I mean, when I got to the point, I got tired of answering phone calls.

I was really tired of answering phone calls because I don't like talking to tenants. I just hate the phone anyway. Like, if you call me, I won't answer. I'll text you back. But like tenants, I don't know dealing with them. So I could have hired a full-time person or but hired a full-time property manager. Both those were expensive. So instead at the time, this was, I don't know, five years ago, four years ago, my mother-in-law was thinking, looking for some stuff to do.

She was raising a little puppy and wanted some stuff to do in dinner a day. He said, hey, you want to answer phones for us. We'll give you a few hundred bucks a month. You take care of the phone calls. Great. I mean, it was like this easy transition. She was great at it. I hated it.

and find little ways like that in your business too that you can systematize small things doesn't mean you have to hire a full team right away. Yeah, that's a great point. And I've done a lot of that where, man, I don't want to drive across town and put a lockbox on a property. Can I give some college kid $30 to go do it?

And they're happy to do it. And yeah, that's not a full-time person, but that just freed up two hours of my day. So I love it. Great point. Here's the truth about passive investing. If the strategy isn't right on day one, the returns won't save it.

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That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Cool. Nice. So you mentioned that earlier that you do flipping, you do holding, you do even some wholesaling stuff. How do you decide what you're going to do with the property?

A lead comes in, and we'll talk about how you get leads here in a little bit, but you leave comes in and what do you, how do you decide? Yeah, so I've got this spreadsheet that I built, right? It's a calculator. And I punch in a couple of numbers, purchase price rehab, ARV, after a paired value, and then things like taxes. And it kind of spits out a number for me. You know, you guys have great calculators on the site.

And I think you absolutely have to know your numbers, right? But I'll look at the numbers and say, okay, if I can flip this and make 20 or I can wholesale it for eight, you know, do I want that money next week or do I want it in? three months and usually it's I'll wait for it. I'll wait for more, but I'll just look at a case by case basis, you know, if it's a deal that I don't want to flip, because I do have a lot of crews now and I like to keep them busy. I have a lot of private lenders. I like to keep their money busy. So most of the time I'll take it down, but sometimes it's a situation where I don't want to. In the past, it was more of, okay, I've only got so many crews and so much money. So I've got a

wholesale this because I can't take it on. These days, it's pretty much like the deals that come, I can take them down and flip them. But occasionally we'll do the. the wholesale deal too. It's just case by case, pretty much. That's great. And I think a lot of it's a lot of it's the math, just kind of figure out what the numbers look like. You know, sometimes it works best as one, sometimes it works best as something else. Yep, that's right. Nice. So how are you getting those leads? How are you finding all the deals? A lot of wholesalers, right? Which is a mixed bag, as anybody knows, but I've got a couple of relationships with some really excellent, honest wholesalers, right,

that I can trust their numbers. And we've done a ton of deals. And then I do my own marketing, too, right and there's a variety of different marketing that I do and I have it go to a you know an answering service and then you know right now I'm going on those appointments right I'll go try to get that under that house under contract part of growing the business will be having the office manager run some of that eventually getting an acquisition rep hopefully next year but right now I'm doing that but I'm still buying a ton of stuff from wholesalers I love it right because they're the ones spending 10,000 a month on marketing they're the ones knocking on doors and going to you know kitchen table getting contract signed I don't

particularly like that work, but I'll do it right now because it's so, it's so lucrative, right? Yeah. So how do you find a good one? I mean, like you said, there's, there's a lot of crap ones out there, unfortunately. I mean, you know, I just went to XYZ seminar and I'm going to be a wholesaler and I don't know anything. And so how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? How do you find the good guys? That's a great question. I mean, I think it's just having just try to network a lot. I mean, look honestly probably 19 out of 20 wholesalers that I've met, I wouldn't buy a deal from. You're right. I mean, there's just so much junk.

And there's so many ways, as you guys know, to fudge the numbers. And we're in, I don't want to say San Antonio is a hot market because there's other markets. I don't know anything about that are way hotter. But for San Antonio, San Antonio is picked up. So the margins on the deals are starting to be squeezed. There's a lot of investors. There's just a ton of junk wholesale deals out there, probably like any market. But it's, I don't know, it's a numbers game, just trying to meet a lot of people,

trying to go through the motions. And then when I do meet somebody that's good, be just the most superstar buyer for them, right? Yeah. I mean, there's some guys I don't even negotiate with and I close always when I do what I say I'm going to do and I don't jerk them around. And I want to be the guy that gets the call, right? When that good wholesaler gets the deal that go, I could blast this out to my list or I know Devin's going to close it and not give me any trouble. let me just call him first. And I think I've gotten to develop that. You know, it's still a relationship like any, like any business, right? So try to have a couple of good relationships. And frankly, that's where, you know, 80% of the deals I get from wholesalers come from one or two people that have a solid relationship with. Yeah. Yeah. How do you know if somebody's fudging the numbers for the new guys out there who are like, you know, I'm going to do burr, I'm going to buy some rentals, whatever it is. I'm going to flip. I'd love to work with some wholesalers and get some great, you know, discount.

down of deals, let them spend their money. How do I know if they're fudging the numbers? How do you figure that out? That's great. And I would say for the newbie, you know, you want a realtor on your side, somebody that not only has MLS access, which is one thing, but understanding how to run comps. I mean, it can be like reading tea leaves, right? I mean, I still struggle with putting comps together. I think everybody does. You're never going to say this house is absolutely, you know, worth 150K. And even an appraisal, you know, are going to differ. So I would say on the, you got three numbers from a wholesale, right?

Purchase price, rehab, and after a paired value. Team up with a realtor that you can partner up with and that you trust to be able to run good comps for you, especially if you're new. Don't, don't try to figure that part out. And then on the rehab side, team up with a general contractor. You know, for me, I'm not good at anything in this business. I'm not a good designer. I'm not a good contractor.

I'm not a good anything. So I have to get people to do all of it. And I think that's part of the key. Because if I was any good at hanging drywall, I'd probably be trying to go do it on my projects. So I would say you have to team up with people. Short answer, you've got to team up with people to fill in those gaps, especially when you're new.

And you have to build that team. And I say it starts with a GC that can walk a house and go, yeah, 15K, give or take. And they'll know in a couple of minutes. And then team up with a realtor that can say, the ARVs 150 and they can know that within a couple of minutes too but definitely I would not recommend trying to figure that number out I mean I've got friends that are intelligent educated have money are some of them are realtors and they and they've lost tons of money on trying to

flip a house right because they they still didn't didn't have the right team members so I would say get to right team members hey really quickly I want to jump back to your marketing and then I know Brandon's got a couple questions here, and we'll close out the segment. What does your marketing look like? So you got the wholesalers. You're also acquiring deals with some marketing. You said you've got a voicemail service set up. Are you sending letters?

How are you getting the lists? Just really quickly run us through what that looks like, the mechanics of it. Yeah, it's really, boy, it's a lot of stuff, right? I don't think in the beginning when I started marketing, I was looking for like, what's the thing that's going to just make it rain deals? I haven't found it. It's mail. It's postcards.

It's Craigslist. It's talking to landlords. It's asking realtors for referrals. It's telling realtors you'll pay them 6% commission. It's networking with friends and family telling them, hey, I'll pay a $1,000 referral fee. If you find a house or there's a house on your street that's vacant, send me the address.

I'll see if I can track it down. So I get calls from friends. Hey, my buddy just inherited a house. Okay, I'll go look at it, you know. And then if I buy it, I'll give my buddy a thousand bucks. So referrals are huge paying for those referral fees. All those things are a million hooks in the water, right? And no one of them is like a sure deal for me.

I just try and put a lot of hooks out there. Same thing, you know, with a website. I've got a website of SEO, PPC. I mean, really pretty wide gamut on the marketing strategies. You're not doing a lot. Well, I will explain that if I get a deal and I don't have the ability to go get it out there, I'll partner up with a wholesaler. Hey, man, go get this thing under contract.

I'll give you half the assignment fee. or we can or I'll pay you. You know, I've got my answering service. I've got some automated systems that are running a lot of that. So, no, I'm busy for sure, but when it comes down to actually like running around and doing something,

it's probably a less pack schedule than you think. Can you explain real quick what you meant by SEO and PPC? Yeah, sure. So, you know, obviously everybody's on the web these days. I've got a website up. It's, you know, my, that I try to get motivated seller leads on. PPC just stands for pay-per-click marketing. It's why Google is as huge as they are.

If you Google anything, there's usually some ads at the top of Google. So I'll pay to have my ad up there. You know, if you're going to sell my house fast in San Antonio, somebody Googles that. They may see my ad and they may click on my website. I'll pay for that traffic. SEO stands for search engine optimization. And it just means creating a website and content that will eventually show up on that

first page of Google for whatever term somebody's punching in. So those are kind of the couple of ways to get in the end. It's just a way to get traffic to the to the website. Sure. And real quick, could you give like just one or two tidbits of advice for somebody who wants a better SEO website to get to rank better? What is it some easy things that they can do to make their site rank better? Okay, number one, hire somebody to do it for you, right? I mean, that's, that's kind of what I want you. Number two, you know, I'm a, I'm a client of investor carrot, love their product. And that's that's a much cheaper alternative than hiring somebody to build a website or whatever. So those are the two things I'd say. Okay, cool. That's great. All right. So a couple more

questions I had here, just some some random stuff. What like drives you in your business? You know, it's not something we ask usually, but like what motivates you to just keep going bigger and bigger and doing all this stuff? You know, at the foundation for me, and I think, you know, this is a little more personal, but I didn't, I grew up with not a lot of money or resources, right? So for me, I have three kids now. And I think in the back of my brain every day, it's saying, hey, man, I'm going to go out and push this thing as far as I can in the next couple of years, right? Because I want to, I want to create that legacy for my family. I think that is underlying everything that I do. If you really trace it back and peel the layers back far enough. But beyond that, you know,

when I quit my job, I had this big thing in my head about I'm going to be retired in my 30s, man. I'm going to play a lot of golf. I got income coming in. I'll do a couple of projects here for more money, but, man, I don't have to go to work. And that's what I did for about six months after quitting my job. Man, I played a lot of golf. I did whatever I wanted all day. And it took about six months and it got super, super boring and unfulfilling. And so I decided, what is that thing? What do I really want? If I could do anything in the world, what do I really want to do? And it always came back to, well, I want to build this business to a level that I couldn't even imagine two years ago. You know, and so that's really the, the thing.

thing, the choice I've made is to, is to just, man, just to go all in on this business. And I do it because it's super exciting. It's super fulfilling. In three years, that may change. But I mean, I'm really in love with building this business. And it's not necessarily the money. It's just how can I figure out systems. How can I figure out how to make it better? How can I figure out how to provide more value? Those things are just fun, man, you know? And that's that's kind of what gets me up every day to go do it. I have a blast doing it. And I think if that changes, at some point, then I'll just change my strategy, you know, maybe to a more passive strategy. But right now I'm having a blast.

That's awesome. Nice. So can you tell us about the time when maybe a deal went the wrong way? Yeah, for sure. So I bought this deal. I just sold it a few months ago. You know, the wholesaler numbers were way off. It was a bigger, higher-end deal than I was used to.

Had a pool. I just kind of broke a lot of my own rules, didn't have really good comps. Then I G-Ced it myself to try to save a little money. I'm a terrible G-C. So it was all these things that, all these things that came together and none of them really killed me, but you add them all up. And it was a deal that just, you know, it didn't make money. It was a ton of work.

It was a ton of stress. Did not go well. I certainly don't want to give anybody the impression that starting with nothing and ramping up a real estate business is easy. It's, it can be super difficult. But so, yeah, there's, I mean, there's deals I've had that didn't go great. But in my mind, it's always, it's tuition, right? I mean, if you lose money, that's paying tuition in this business. And my thing has always been that there's no substitute for experience.

And if I get a little experience, then that's great because I want to be that guy that one out of 10 or one out of 100 or whatever. I want to be that guy that perseveres and makes it through because the guys that do that are the guys that you see they're doing really, really well. So definitely had some bumps in the road, but I just decided to just keep on rolling through all of them. That's awesome. So what aspect of you're investing in your most?

out of if you're looking at your business what do you what would you brag about the most you say is great yeah that's that's crazy mean there's been houses that look really nice after we're done but i am most proud of providing an awesome awesome investment vehicle for my passive lenders these are mostly just individuals that are older higher net worth and i'm making killer returns for these guys and it gives me a ton of pride to be able to have them say devon we really like having our money invested with you. I'm almost like a little fund manager in that sense, right? And to be able to consistently provide awesome returns and never give them any worry makes me super, super proud. What kind of returns? 10 to 15% annual. There you go. Cool. Very good.

Very good. All right. Kind of my last question before we go to the fire round. I take this off of so I've been listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast recently and he asked this question, what comes to mind when you hear the word punchable? Like, or whose face comes to mind? Yeah, thanks. I'm tweaking this question. I'm going to make it more positive. You've got to shave that beer. I do got to shave the beer.

Then you might not want to punch me. I guess, all right. What is a positive twist on that question? What name comes to mind when you hear the word, when you hear the word, inspirational? What name comes to mind? Brandon Turner. Let's hope so. Is Josh Dorkan the answer?

I think somebody sent me some answers ahead of time. Thank you for coming on the show, man. It's been a blast. You know, inspirational, I'm going to say that was my brother, Jesse Elder. He was the guy for me growing up that was super success-minded, you know, got me reading stuff like Think and Grow Rich when I was in high school, which at the time I was like, this doesn't even make any sense. But I can see that it planted seeds in me that are a big deal years later.

At the time, it didn't make sense. So I would say my brother, Jesse Elder, super phenomenal, inspirational guy. Nice. That's awesome. Hey, real quick. Jesse's definitely inspirational, I can tell. Hey, there you go. On that note, I was going to share a very, very quick story.

So, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago, I took, I went to a music festival with some kids. And one of the kids there was a high schooler, and I recommended he read. That's not creepy at all. I recommend that he read. I'm a youth leader at a church. And so I recommend that he read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and the Four Hour Work Week. And so I haven't heard from this kid and like, yeah, like five, six years, something like that. Anyway, he hits me a message on a Facebook the other day and just says, hey, just want to let you know, like back then I read that book. Didn't really, you know, I was like, as doesn't apply to me. But later on, I read it again. And then I started reading more. And now he's like, he's like a senior in college as an entrepreneur major major. Listen to the Bigger Pockets podcast. So Evan, if you're listening, and is totally ready to jump into like entrepreneurship and real estate. And it's like at the time, I was kind of an offhanded comment. Like you should, you know, take your financial, you know, feature a little more seriously and read this. So again, kind of kind of. my encouragement people is when you're talking with younger people, encourage them to read those books and to

pay attention and listen to podcasts. And, you know, I might go in one year, year out the other, but you never know years down the road, what's going to, what seeds can be planted in there. So true. So wise, Brandon. I know. I'm a wise guy. It's what they all say. All right. So let's shift gears a little bit here. Before I go to the fire on, I do have one more question. What's the future look like for Devin? Like, where are you headed next? What's your investing business look like in the future? So my plan was, what? is and has been that the proceeds from the flipping, you know, I pay myself salary and the business has expenses, but everything extra goes into passive multifamily real estate, right? So I just want to ramp up this flip business as much as I can. I've got revenue number goals that I want to get to and take all that excess money and put it in other people's deals that are raising capital for apartments. And I've been doing that and I want to keep doing more of that because I almost feel like, you know, in the NFL, you have a shelf life, right? You're making great money, but you better figure out plan B for when the injury comes or whatever. I kind of feel like flipping is like that.

Like, I can, I'm 38. I can crank it for a couple of years, but I want to be in a position in a couple of years to not have to. So that's my goal is just more, you know, right now it's like a, it's like a 10% passive, maybe 20, it's maybe 80, 20% passive income, 80% active income. I want to flip the tables on that to where it's, you know, 80% passive income over the next, you know, couple of years. That's the game plan. Let me ask you one question on that. Where are you finding those individuals? I'm part of an investment group in Texas.

And, you know, there's a million people doing deals and a million people funding deals. And it's actually kind of comical how easy it is to put together money and to fund to fund deals. Right on. Cool, man. Cool. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there right now with money that are looking to put it to work. So he's got to get out there in network. So cool.

All right, well, let's head over to the world famous fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, this is the Bigger Pockets Fire Round. These questions come direct out of the Bigger Pockets forums, which I would encourage every listener to jump into on a regular basis at BiggerPockets.com forward slash forums. If you have questions or if you just want to jump in and help answer some questions, we'd appreciate it.

And I know there are thousands of people out there asking them that would appreciate it as well. So let's get to this thing. Number one, question for you. on the fire round for a newbie looking to flip older houses what's the first thing i should look out for when it comes to renovations okay my answer here is not necessarily anything in the house you should look out for the fact that you're a newbie and you should not try to do that by yourself find somebody that flips older houses and go hey man i will do everything on this deal i will

fund it i will run the rehab and i'll give you half of it you just need to ride shotgun with me and show me everything and given away that half will be the best money you ever spent i mean i do that for people now that want to learn how to flip, I say, sure, you know, I'll walk you through everything, make me a half partner on this deal. You're going to do everything, but you're going to avoid so many missteps. So the thing to watch out for on that flip is yourself as a newbie. Don't, please don't try to do it by, you know, trial and error. You will lose money. There you go. Great advice. Very, very good. All right. How important is it for investors to partner up with others on deals? Just kind of talked about that. Or is it easier to, well, uh, or

Is it, hello? Or is it just easier to do them on your own? Foo, got that out. Good job. I think it's both, right? It goes to that question of where are you in your career. Are you brand new? Because sometimes partnering is great, you know.

If you don't have funds or you're not able to, partner all day long, you know, do it. If what I like to do is borrow money at a set rate and then guarantee, you know, I'm guaranteeing that payment to my lender. They're not involved with. picking out the back splash or what I'm going to do with the renovation date they're making X amount of dollars and that's you know they're not involved in the process so I like to to do that but I also partner too if somebody's got a project and they're very capable rehabber but they don't have any money I'll fund that project and and they can run that so it's both I think if you have the

option to not partner that's better but again some people might not be in the financial position to do that great good number three I like this question a lot. Do all your rentals that you buy have something in common? Is there criteria you're looking for in a rental that you have to have? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's got a cash flow for 500 or 500 bucks a month. In my market, that means the after repaired value is anywhere from 120 to about $220,000, you know, give or take, but they're pretty much all in that, in that range. Okay. It's got to have cash flow. Cash flow. There you go. Another question on partnering. So when partnering with other investors, let's see if I could get this.

out without stumbling, right? Good luck. When partnering with other investors, is it possible for them to put 100% of the cost of the project up and me to just manage it with no money? Yes. All right. And I do that.

I mean, I'm the money guy for some deals if that person is a capable rehabber. Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Perfect. All right. Moving on to the last section of the show, which we call our Famous Four. All right, the Famous Four, these are the same four questions we ask every guest every week.

Number one. You do realize it's the famous five and has been for like a very long time. It's the famous four plus one additional one at Josh asked at the end. Bonus. I like it. But the little gimmick we have isn't like, famous four and one extra that Josh has at the end. That would be too weird. We keep it famous four.

It actually could be funnier. Especially if you have to hear you do that. Exactly. Exactly. All right, the famous four plus one that Josh asked at the end. What is your favorite real estate book? Millionaire real estate investor, Gary Keller. There's a million awesome books and I still devour podcasts like bigger pockets and others.

I love it. But that one is, for me, it was like this all-encompassing roadmap for what I wanted to do. You know, rich dad, poor dad. There's a million other books I love. But Gary Keller's millionaire real estate investor stands out for me. Awesome. What about favorite business book? So I'd have to say right now, it's kind of a business book, but the biography on Elon Musk by Ashley Vance,

crazy, awesome book. And, you know, if you think you're having problems in your business, you got to realize there's a guy building a rocket ship to Mars right now, right? And it, I mean, it just kind of puts things in perspective. That book was so inspirational. Also, I've got to throw a nod to a four-hour work week, right? I'm sure you guys have never heard that as an answer. But that was super inspirational for me a lot of years ago. So I'll throw two out there.

I'm going to throw a bonus answer in for you guys. Wow. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nicely done. Nicely done. All right.

You got three kids. Congrats. Welcome to the club. I also have three. Yeah. What do you do for fun? So I picked up golf when I quit my job because I knew I would have the tendency to just work all the time. So I put golf on the calendar.

every single week and I go play golf, right? I'm also a musician. I still have a bunch of guitars and I have a pretty nice setup in the garage. So I still play and I'll still go do, you know, gigs and stuff like that. And then I've got three young kids. So there's obviously birthday parties and a lot of running around and doing stuff with them that's a lot of fun. So I would say it's golf guitars and kiddos. Hey, what is the name of your band? I don't have a band right now. We, uh, you're doing gigs. You do it by yourself? Solo stuff. Yeah. I have a little looper pedal. I play acoustic. and sing and do the whole thing.

For all these San Antonio guests, let us know if you end up at a Devin Elder's show and let us know how it is. Bootleg that sucker. There you go. All right, cool. Number four, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Tenacity.

I mean, I think there's, I've been kicked in the teeth so many times in this business. I think any sane person would have dropped the idea, but I didn't drop the idea, right? just kept on. And so that's it. That's it. In a word, it's synacity. You know, when you get beat down, just take that as a little bit of tuition that you paid and make sure you keep on trucking. There you go. All right. Now that is the end of the famous four. And now Josh asks his final question. Here's the plus one for you, Devin. Hey, man, where can people find out more about you? How can they connect with you? I think devonelder.com is probably the catch-all. You know, I've got a lot of websites and presences out there.

But if you go to Devonelder.com, you'll get links to my other businesses and sites. If you want to reach out, that'd be the place to do it. D-E-V-I-N-E-L-D-E-R.com. Awesome. And you also have a profile in BP, Devin, of course. T-X. So look them up. We'll point to that in the show notes.

Devin, great show, man. Great show. Absolutely pleasure to have you on. Really do appreciate it. Keep doing the great things that you're doing. Good luck on your three. Awesome. Honor to talk to you guys.

Appreciate it, gentlemen. Hey, thank you. We'll see around. Thank you. All right, guys. That was Devin Elder. Big thanks to Devin. That was a good show, man.

Yeah, I mean, I really like him. And I like his kind of philosophy, the whole, you know, dollar per hour, figure out what's your highest and best use kind of thing. I think it's very smart. Made a big difference in my life this year. I hired my assistant and she's been doing a lot of that, the dollar per hour stuff or the $10 or $15 an hour stuff so I can work on the $1,000 an hour tasks. Yeah, that's great.

It's great. It's a great philosophy. I mean, that's how businesses are built. That's how businesses grow. Again, you can't do that in the very beginning. Most people can't do that in the very beginning, particularly because you want to learn all the different skills. But if you want to scale, you're definitely going to need to do that.

And so it's great. And yeah, I just, you know, overall, I like how he's going about things. He's being smart. He's being methodical. So it's great. Yeah. And again, I said this in the intro, but I'll say again now. I love his, I'm not good at anything.

So I just find other people to do those things that they're good. I'm not a good contractor. I'm not a good, you know, bookkeeper. Co-host. Yeah. I'm not a good ghost. I'll bring Dave in to handle this again. What?

What? Oh, did I say that? No, what? What are you talking about? All right. Hey, let's wrap this. We love Dave. Dave's great.

Mindy, Dave, I mean, you know. Dave were fantastic. Maybe you should go away for a while. You know what? Maybe I will, all right? No, why don't you, buddy boy? Like what? What?

I'm back. All right. That was fun. That was nice. It was a good break. Yeah, good. Yeah. Hey man. So, no, but seriously, this is the end of the year.

2016's been awesome. It's been great having you as my co-host for yet another year. And it's been a whole lot of fun. And I don't know, I love what we do. Bigger Pockets is amazing. And it's rare that people have an opportunity to do something that helps people on such a large scale to better their lives. And that's why I love what I do. And that's why I'm so thankful for what we've built. And so big thanks to everybody who's been a part of bigger pockets this year, you know, to you, Brandon. A lot of people, you know, don't really hear about the rest of the team here. But, you know, between our contractors and our staff, I mean, we're almost 30 people at bigger pockets. And a lot of people think it's just you and me.

And it's not. No, we sit around and just drink coffee all day while everyone else does the work. It's fantastic. Something like that. No, I mean, but these guys are great. I mean, you know, so I just want to thank everybody. I want to thank, you know, I want to thank our volunteers. I want to thank all the folks who write for us.

I want to thank all the partners who work with us. I want to thank, you know, my amazing life who supports me and your amazing wife who, you know, locks you in a cave. She lets me out sometimes. Yeah, I want to thank our devs. I want to thank our marketing team, our operations team. You know, I want to thank everybody. So a big thanks to everybody who's a part of BP. And big thanks to all of our listeners.

You guys really do help make this, the show that it is. thank you for all your feedback, our guests, of course, as well. And yeah, I'm just, I'm really thankful. So happy New Year, everybody. Thank you. And get out there and make 2017 another amazing year. And we'll see around. So with that, I'm Josh Dorkin, signing off.

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