BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 213: Investing in Real Estate without Being a Landlord with Noah Kagan

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

If there is one thing you can know for sure by listening to the BiggerPockets Podcast, it’s this: There are a LOT of ways to invest in real estate! That’s why we’re excited to bring you today��s interview with Noah Kagan, who invests in a different way than most of the guests we’ve had on the show. Noah currently runs several very successful internet businesses (SumoMe and AppSumo) and knew he didn’t want to be a landlord; Noah knows his best return is made in his business. Therefore, he devised his investing strategy around NOT being the landlord. Noah is a wealth of information and one of the most motivating humans we’ve ever met. So sit back and enjoy today’s episode with Noah! In This Episode We Cover: Who Noah Kagan is and how he got into real estate investing What keeps newbies from buying their first investment properties The ROI of other businesses as compared to real estate investing A discussion on the 1% rule Thoughts on whether a commercial property is a good first investment Why you should find experienced real estate investors in your area Tips for growing your capital How Noah finances his deals What you should know about asking other people for money or syndication Why you should stop apologizing for being successful How to grow your network When should you stop learning and start doing The importance of knowing where do you want to be in 5 years Why you should visualize the destination And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums SumoMe AppSumo BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Facebook Page RealtyShares PeerStreet Where’s my money? (Blog Post) Noah’s Spreadsheet BP Podcast 204: Flipping 30+ Deals by Age Twenty-Five with Chris Gill BiggerPockets Event Forums Chess Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Investing with Low or No Money Down by Brandon Turner The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur by James Randel Tweetable Topics: “It took me 10 years to actually be ready, not financially but mentally, to make that decision, to make that purchase.” (Tweet This!) “The best deals happen off-market.” (Tweet This!) “I think the trait of a successful person is resourcefulness.” (Tweet This!) “If you want to find someone else to help you, you have to help someone else.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Noah Noah’s BiggerPockets Profile Noah’s Website Noah Kagan’s Present Podcast Noah’s Keynote Speech at Fincon 2016 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 2.13. So number one, be curious, right? But number two, decide what you really want. If you're trying to make money, it doesn't just have to be property. I think property is an amazing thing. I love it. I think it's really cool. I think you can go use your toilets.

You can show it off. You can share with people. Like, I love that people come to town. Like my buddy Tynan's coming to town in two weeks. And he's like, yo, I can use your place. So I think you have to be clear on. You have to explore curiosity. And then you have to be clear on your wants.

So do I want to spend my time doing the real estate stuff? Now, no. 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 up, man? You know, I got to tell you, I'm going to cut the chit-chat. I'm excited to get to today's interview because today's interviewee is one of my favorite people on the planet. So I'm not going to say anything else. That's all I'm saying. Wow.

That's, uh, sell how quick I can be. That's, what I'm really doing is making sure you don't have a time to make fun of my beard. I almost just told the joke and I, I, I'm glad it didn't. It would be inappropriate. It's kind of a non-family-friendly show anyway. Yeah, this one?

No, it's, it's still family-friendly. But, you know. No, this is a great show. Noah is also, I think he's one of the brighter folks out there in the world. He's, I mean, he was the number 30 employee at Facebook. He was number four employee at Mint. He's got internet companies, app sumo. Sumo me. He's got a new podcast. Really one of the brighter marketing minds out there. And he's, he's now doing all sorts of real estate stuff for himself. So it's cool. It's great. And, you know, this show, I think what I liked the most about today's show was, A little lighter on the real estate, to be frank, but we did dive in a lot on mindset and philosophy. And I don't know, there's just something about that that I really enjoyed being able to really dig in on that. He's those people I always look to like get me like pumped up to go, you know, like get out there and take action. Like he's very like actionable. Like do this, do this, do this. Stop talking about it.

Do this. Go out there, do this. And that's how he approaches his real estate. That's how he approaches just life in general, his own, his businesses. and he really brings that out today on the show. I agree. Yeah, yeah, it's great. I mean, he's, I don't know.

I mean, he knows, like, his highest and best use of time. And he's not out there trying to, like, build this empire, this real estate empire, at least yet. But he still understands the power of real estate wealth building and really just talks about how I can build a portfolio without being that landlord, being hands on. So he's great. Love him. Great show. Before we get to him, why don't we get to today's quiz? Quick tip.

All right, today's quick tip is something that we talk about fairly often, but I like to invite people anyway. In case you don't know, we have a webinar that is different from the podcast. The webinar is a live kind of time where usually I will show up and just talk about a subject for an hour or so, and we do it almost every single Wednesday. So I want to invite you next Wednesday show up. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash webinar to sign up. You have to sign up and hold your spot for the next webinar.

So go to BiggerPockets.com slash webinar. Sign up and come hang out with me live talking about real estate. Wow, that sounds great. let me go hang out with the flea bag. You can hang out with me. It's a lot of fun. Don't worry, my beer doesn't get like, you know, through the camera. It stays on the side of the lens.

Okay. By the way, people, if you are not yet subscribing to Bigger Pockets channel on Facebook, you should. You're definitely missing out. We're starting to do weekly Facebook live videos, which are awesome. Brandon has been hosting most of them, but I think we'll be having other people do these as well. And they're awesome, really, really great videos, really helpful.

So definitely go to BiggerPockets. Facebook.com slash bigger pockets or biggerpockets.com slash Facebook should take you to the same place and subscribe today. That was kind of like a second quick tip. So we should have said quick tips. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties and maybe a few HOAs all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions,

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Again, today's show is really cool. We've got Noah Kagan, one of the brighter business minds out there. We dive in on things like taking action, getting mentors to help you out, setting goals, and the stuff that holds entrepreneurs back from ever achieving their goals. We really dig in on mindset and philosophy a lot today. Noah is funny as hell. We get to rip on brand in all sorts, which makes sense. is even more fun to do.

I think we made more fun of you today than him or me. I think you're confused, my friend. That does happen quite often. It does, you know. But yeah, anyway, so let's bring him on. All right, Noah, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here. It is great to be here.

The pre-show antics, I wish the audience could hear what you guys say ahead of the show. I don't think we could, I don't think we could, this would not be a family-friendly show. Rated X. I hope not X. For most, 35. I did see Noah's abs though before the show. I did too. They're impressive.

And a bruise where you're trying to shoot a gun. Yeah, it's not meant for me. Way, guys. Way to go. All right, let's get this thing on. By the way, Noah, Brandon and I have known Noah here for a couple of years now. And we're pumped to have you, man. We're excited that you're getting into this real estate game.

So can you tell us how and why? did you end up getting into the real estate investing game? The real estate investing game. Yeah. So I think I was raised by Jewish parents similar to you. Probably, I don't know if they're the same ones or not. But we're kind of conditioned to like, I worked at Intel out of college. I was supposed to get health insurance.

And like my parents who had traditional jobs are like, number one thing you've got to do is get a house. And that's how you're going to get rich. And then I, you know, I actually looked for a house after college for 10 years. I looked in California where I'm from in San Jose, California, where prices are pretty exorbitant then and now. And then I came to Austin, Texas, where I live, and I kept looking for 10 years. Finally, we were getting kicked out of our office space, and I was like, kind of got to get an office. So what happened was I went to this place for rent, and I just said, hey, well, you actually,

will you just sell me the place? And they said, no. You're hoping for a happy story. You're like, I was going to say yes, right? Wow, that was fun. Wow, great story. Not. But I basically went to this building, and I said, would you sell, there's units in it.

And I asked both the ones for rent if they would sell it. They said no. But literally the day I walked out of them, one of them, there was a. sign that before pre-MLS, they just put it outside saying this units for sale. And I called the place and I told them I'd buy it that day. And I just bought it all in cash. So that was the first time. And the thing I think is really interesting is that a lot of people are like, oh, you buy this and I've listened to your podcasts. But it took me 10 years to actually be ready, not financially, but mentally to actually make that decision to make that purchase. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. I mean,

why is it that a lot of people take 10 years, you know, to buy your first property? In fact, I ask this question a lot. Like, how long does it take to buy a rental property? I mean, in reality, it's like a week, right? I mean, if you have cash, especially, you can close a little. like three days. But why does it take people 10 years to actually pull the trigger on something? Yeah, I'm trying to think about what it took me so long for. So I have a spreadsheet and I have it for your audience. We can give it in the show notes so that they literally can copy the spreadsheet. And I kept running the numbers on like, what's my 20% and all these things. And I never saw the math that would work, number one, in terms of like, what's the ROI I'm going to be getting

from this money? And secondly, because I've started working and running internet companies, I'm like my time investment and the money, if I could put it into ads or hiring people, I would get a better return over the year. So I was like, well, where does it make sense for me to spend money on real estate until it was like, well, I need an office. I'm going to have to spend, I'm already spending $6,000 in rent. Why not I just pay it myself and I own the office building myself? Yeah. Got it. Makes sense. I know you've wanted to jump in, Josh, but I'm selfish. So I'm going to jump in. You mentioned this, I know, you mentioned this idea. Nothing's new here. Well, this question actually is for both Josh and Noah.

The selfishness might go away. No. You know, New Year's resolutions go away quickly. And so, too, you guys are so cute together, by the way. Thank you. My ego grows up the years. So, all right. So my question is, disgusting fish on her. That it does. So what is, like, you mentioned this interesting thing of you could get a higher ROI in your company, right? So you're a business owner. You've got, you know, tell us maybe in a quick second, like, what is your business? And then like that idea of I get a better return in business than I do on real estate, which is generally true for me as well. I could go out and make a better return on business. So why, why buy real estate if you can get a better return on

just hustling and doing business? Yeah, great question. So I was a couple of questions in there, but yeah, yeah, totally. I remember. So there's app sumo.com, which is a group on for geeks for so for a lot of listeners, if you're a small business owner, it's a free weekly deal site, so you can check it out by deals. And then we run summoMe.com, which are free marketing tools for online businesses. So what actually happened is after I bought that unit, which is interesting, the one that was for rent, he actually emailed me two weeks later and he's like, hey, do you want to buy it now? And so that was kind of an interesting approach. And one of the things I've learned from you guys and a lot of your guests is that I think that, not I think, the best deals

happen off market. That's just, that's just kind of a fact. If you're paying market, like on online advertising or in real estate, you're paying market price. The efficiency is already maximized. So it's now I'm actually approaching people who are renting places. I'm like, hey, do you want to just sell it? Like I actually hit up an office today to say, hey, would you be interested in selling it? So to your other question, like, where I think the best money is made is because like, so I bought this place and then I spent the next year literally like half the day at work looking at listings.

Then I was just like, well, what other places can I now buy? Now that I've like, I think what thinking of it in general, it's like discipline or it's like, paying rent, it's a muscle that you can train. So once you, I never rented for my first 10 years of living. I lived on couches and I actually lived in like my aunt's basement and I lived for, so when I actually spent my first thousand dollars on rent, I was like, I can't believe I'm spending a thousand dollars on rent. But what happens in general, it's like you practice and you develop a muscle, right? So a muscle for the gym or a muscle for spending money or a muscle for making money. And so once I started spending some money for real estate, it got me more comfortable with it.

So coming back to like that time, I was spending literally half the day. there would be a new listing. And I remember there was a yellow house literally six blocks down the street from here. And I ran there. I was one of the first ones there. And I look at the place and I'm like, I'm going to make an offer and I'm going to make an offer. And so I go back home and I put it in my spreadsheet. And I have the, I'll give you guys a link of the spreadsheet I use. And I'll tell you some of the metrics that matter to me. And I like looked at it. And I was like, all right, how much at the end of the the year can I really make money from this property? And it was $10,000 if profit, which I don't know if that's good or not. The way I always look at it is I want to make about 1% at least.

So if the place is like 100,000, I want to make $1,000 a month from it. That's just like my target. I know there's probably other people, but that's just what I use because it's simple. We call that the 1% rule. A lot of times people will look at that and say, does it meet the 1% rule? In other words, does you get the 1%? That is a thing that we talk a lot about here. Yep. Perfect. So I actually went and did that and I said, oh, it's $10,000. And then I was like literally, if we did one email blast on APSumo. So I've spent like half the day for the past year looking at these places to make $10,000. a year. And if I just sent one email with my company, I would make $10,000 to $20,000. Yeah. And so, and I think, Brandon, I mean, you were joking that, like, I actually looked at

my ROI on my time. I was like, well, what's my hourly if I make $10,000 divided by all these hours? It was literally like $8 to $10 an hour. And so what I've kind of come to the conclusion, and I can tell, I also have an Airbnb, like short term rental. And I can, I think my journey is interesting for other people out there, mostly around the fact of I've had to figure out, like, where's my best use of time and my skills? So I think if you have a more traditional job, like when I started off at Intel, real estate is that opportunity. But I think if you have the idea, if you have the ability to generate more money through your own business, for me, like real estate now is kind of a secondary thing that if I can conveniently find it, I'll do it. But I primarily

then now allocate my time around growing a business where I think the ROI for my time is a lot higher. I know it's interesting because this has been something that's that's troubled me for a long time. And I know Brandon and I have spent countless hours talking about it. You know, hey Josh, why aren't you out buying houses? You know, I get shit from, whoops, from some of our users. Dude, money mouth. Why aren't you buying more houses? You know, it happens.

And at the end of the day, it's the same thing. It's like the ROI, you know, the amount of time I'm going to go and spend on that, if I could apply it towards bigger pockets, it just makes more sense. So, you know, it comes to this thing, this level of scale. Like, hey, in order for it to become worthwhile, I need to look at something that's going to generate a lot more cash on a much higher level. large multi-families, things like that. I think a lot of people go through that. Obviously, I'd say the vast majority of our listeners don't necessarily aren't dealing with that situation,

but it certainly makes a lot of sense. So I appreciate you raising that. I did have a question. I want to jump back to that property. So that first property is, was that a, I mean it right now. It's this one. Okay. So that's a, that's a commercial property. It's a live work loft that we have. We literally, and then the next unit is the one that was for rent that I ended up buying a year later because I just kept in touch with the guy and he said it was okay. And we cut up, that's a secret door. I have two units here. So there's like 30 people. This is like the Tony Shea, the Zappos, like you just, you turn like a apartment into. I think that's actually a very interesting point to think about for a lot of the people there is that the opportunities to make money are not when you're just doing like when you're buying a house to be a rental income. The seller has already considered that. They've already been like, well, here's the rental income. Here's your cap rate. whatever that is, you know, 7% return or 6%.

But if you can turn into an Airbnb, now you can double the amount of money you make. So I have an Airbnb and I double the amount that I would make normally and I can share my numbers. I have no problem with that at all. And this, because it's now an office, I can actually rent it at a higher rate to myself. So it's good for the company because they have an office space that we don't have to worry about a shlomo being a bad landlord because it's me. And then I don't have to worry about getting kicked out at all. And then I get a nice income that's guaranteed from a tenant that I'm aware of.

So I think if you can look at properties and figure out, is there another playing field or another angle to look at them? That's where you're going to make a lot of money with them. I just made this point this morning. I was doing a Facebook live video. I do for bigger pockets now once a week. By the way, if you guys are not following bigger pockets on Facebook, go to facebook.com slash bigger pockets.

And once a week or so we do these live videos. Yeah. And so anyway, on this thing, I talked about a duplex that I recently bought. And when I bought it, it was an okay deal, but it wasn't amazing. But what made it amazing to me was the fact that I could split the water sewer garbage. Just by adding a new water line in, I can now make the tenant responsible for their own, water sewer garbage, which is like adding $2 to $300 a month extra in my pocket. So it takes it from an

average deal to an amazing deal just because nobody else thought of the idea of, well, why don't we just make the tenant pay for the water? You know, so just finding those little things can take a mediocre deal to a good one. You know what's interesting that you got me thinking about, and I actually pulled up some of my numbers, so I'm happy to share that with people about how my reports look like. So I have the office space and then I have the Airbnb. But one thing I started doing about two years ago when I was spending more time on real estate, because I think especially if you're online a lot and you have an internet business, which I literally sell fake things. Like I can, I sell. Stop. Stop saying that. Dude. It's a zero and a one. It's a binary digit that's like

moves really quickly and you can see it on the screen and somehow there's value to it, which is great. I mean, Facebook, it's a fake site. It's just a fake thing. It's zeros and ones. But I think what happens with internet people is that we like the idea of real estate because it's not virtual estate. And, you know, we have virtual domains and that actually domain of honing is another domain. Buying is an interesting way of doing real estate because there's no property tax and the maintenance costs is nine bucks a year. I got a buddy who flips websites the exact same way that I flip houses.

Well, think about it. Once you buy, you never have to water it. You don't have to kick out tenants and do a lot of things with it. But the other thing I was going to say is when I started this whole journey on real estate and this is what I would recommend for everyone out there, I looked up like who are the best realtors in town and I paid for their lunch. And normally it's the opposite way around. They're trying to get business.

But I went to them and said, if you get deals off market, if you get deals ahead of time and I just want to know what's going on in this market. And so now I'm friends with like the Den Group and like Scout Group and a few of these guys in Austin. So as things are happening, they're telling me about a heads up as well. I just learned a lot more about real estate. So go find someone who's already buying a lot of houses locally or just go to the realtors and be like, yo, who do you sell a lot to? And then you'll learn it'll be like the cheapest, not cheapest, but it'll be the best investment you'll have versus almost any other book. I think the problem is everyone buys a book or everyone listens to your podcast. And then

they try to do it and maybe doesn't work because everyone else already hears it. So you kind of got to go figure it out on the streets from like the people on the front. Look at you. Tough guy, man. Well, you, I'm a nerve in California. You mentioned in that, in that, I don't know, monologue there. You said they, diatribe. Monotry.

I don't know. They like Shakespeare style. Holy school. No, you mentioned, you mentioned, you know, talk to the realtor, but then you said, you said, ask the realtor, you know, who are they selling a lot of properties to? I love that tip right there. I mean, like, if you go talk to some of the good real estate agents in your area and just go say, hey, who are the big investors in this town?

They're going to know who the best investors are. They're also going to know the best contractors, the best lenders, whatever. It's funny, I didn't even think about this one. And I have a bunch of other tips I can suggest. There's a building I love. So it's a little bit further down the block. And I love the building. And I love the building.

And my friend was either working out of the building or something. And I'm like, who owns this building? And he's like, it's Greg Porter. And so I was like, can you introduce me to him? So Greg and I went out to lunch. And I was like, how did you, can you just tell me how you bought this building and like refurb did and all that stuff. Because I have no clue.

I'm a newbie that I can tell you about internet stuff all day. I just don't know much about commercial real estate. And Greg walked me through every single thing. And walked me through his numbers and I treat him to lunch because he's also looking for investors. And I was like, hey, if you ever get another deal, feel free to let me know. So as it happened, he bought a church. And I'm Jewish, but he bought a church, which is so cool.

In San Antonio, which is now a, it's called a Frank's hot dog. So they re-did it. And then they turned it into a bar and a hot dog restaurant. And so I put in $15,000. Only because, what's that? Only a Jew would invest in. a hot dog stand in the church. My God.

You're giving us all a bad name. It's not a happy story. Do you want to hear the end? Do you want a happy ending, Josh? You know, life is not full of happy ending. So let's hear the truth. Well, the truth on that is that I put it in the $15,000. And so far I've made back like $1,000.

But the way I made that decision is like, one, I was okay losing 15. Two, I did it more to learn. So I was like, how to, because he shows me all the financials of that deal. And then three, I got a relationship with him. So as he does things in the future, if it goes, good or bad, it gives me that access. And I think a lot of people don't look at investing with the partner or something like that as a way to connect with them and then learn for the future. They're like, let me just buy a $6 book because that'll be a better investment. Yeah. Yeah,

I tell people all the time, you know, I'd rather lose, you know, 50% of a great deal than 100% of no deal. So people like, they don't want to partner. They don't want to work with other people. They want to keep it all themselves and they go out and they never actually do anything. But yeah, just the experience. I mean, if I was brand new, I'd go do, I'd go do a deal with somebody and give them 100% of the profits just to be able to learn from them. Like you said, to see their numbers to see what they're doing. Because if I didn't know what I was doing, I mean, why not? Is that what everybody should do? Should they all give you 100% of their deal? They should. Everyone should give you a hundred percent of my deal. You're trying to,

people listening to the show. Is that what you're trying to, you're trying to manipulate the audience? That's all I do. It's time for a new co-host, folks. Hey, Noah Kagan, the Jewish bigger podcast show with knowing, gosh. I'm gone. Anyway, moving on. All right. No, but I love the point about, you know, taking that risk, because that risk, the Now, granted, if it was like 150, it's a different risk, right? I just thought it was an investment. It's not saying an investment.

I literally just thought of it. This is like learning. I'm literally like, I could put this in college. I could put this in like books or class. And I'm just doing it like directly with the guy who already knows how to do it. So let's see where else you've gone. All right. So we've got this property you're working out of.

You've got this Airbnb. What else do you have going on? And then, you know, I think I've got a whole slew of questions I want to ask you. Yeah, sure. So the Airbnb, I'll just give you guys some numbers. So in 2015. So what it was, and this is just a tip that I would say for myself, it's more so for you. I only buy places that I would live in.

I know some of you guys are slum lords, Josh, but. Wow. The reason, no, dude, come on. I'm teasing. The reason I do that is because, like, if worst case scenario, I would want to live in it. And I think if I like it, it's easy for me to be creative and figure something on the future, meaning if it doesn't work, I could always turn into like maybe co-working or I could figure a way to, like, make it a retreat center or something, as long as I've already liked

the place. So the Airbnb place, I literally walked by it. And I was like, if there's ever one for sale, I'll buy it. I just loved the building. And so literally one night it was for sale. I emailed the realtor and I was like, I'll just buy it side and the scene and a contingent on me walking through it. And I knew that a lot of it. I knew my friend was Airbnb in that building too.

So economically, if I just mortgaged it and then did a regular rental, like long-term rental, the rental rate to mortgage would about bit and outbreak even. But because I'm Airbnbing it, I make like 10 to 12% return. So I made last year in 2015, $51,8,000. And then the profit was around 15,000 after like property manager, mortgage, HOA property tax things like that. Plus I have to pay the city. What's that? Would you pay for it?

I paid $3.15. Okay. So that's one thing. The other two ones, I actually don't know if a lot of your audience is already doing. So I don't really want to spend as much time going out and hunting for deals. So if you have a day job, I think it's better for you because most people with day jobs are pretty bored. Right. After 5 o'clock, you don't have to worry about your job.

And you have your weekends available too. So you have more access to that. and that's a better way to grow your capital. But what I've been doing is I've been using RealtyShares.com, and mostly I've been using Peerstreet.com, P-E-R-Street.com. And basically, what you do is you don't own the property, but you get first lien on property. So it's like crowd-funded property.

Yeah. So I don't know if you guys are doing or recommending it a bunch. But Peer Street- Not yet, but. So Realty shares, I've already, I'll just tell you numbers. I put in $65,000 over the 18 months. Mostly some of any deals, some are debt deals. And basically it's crowd-funded financials. And so,

It's faster for these people to get money through this than to go to a bank. Like I have all my money with Chase and they still didn't want to give me a loan for one of my places. And I was like, dude, you know how much I have. And I could cover. The crazy part was I could cover the amount of the house in cash, but I wanted the mortgage and they still wouldn't do it. But with realty shares. You're a business owner. Yeah.

A business owner, I know, but we have a lot of, not bragging, but we have a lot of cash as a business and individually. But they, you know, that's one of the hard parts of business owners are definitely have it harder. I, in fact, have had a harder time getting a mortgage on a home than my employer. employees have had, which is just fascinating. I mean, it, it, that's just the way the world works, right? I mean, not, not, it is what it is. So, well, yeah, so for me, I've been using realty shares. Lately I've been using mostly Pierce Street. And the idea there is like for Pierce Street, you go on. It's like, someone like Josh, like, I need this money. I'm buying this property. You get first lien. So if the house ever, if they ever default, we get the house, the investors. And you could put it in as

as little as a thousand up to like, I think, $100,000. And generally the interest rates. So for me personally, I target trying to get $6,000. 10% back on my money. And I'm a very conservative investor. If you go to, if you search okaydorck.com, where's my money? I actually show people exactly what I do with my money. Like most of it's in cash, but I'll put up for real estate wise, I'll do peer street because it's like, I don't have to go and do all the investment and research. Someone already figured it out and I'll get a six to eight percent return on that cash. Yep. And I don't think that's a bad option for people, especially right now when they're looking around trying to figure, you can't find deals. They keep saying over and over,

they can't find deals. If they got money, why not at least stick it in something like that? Again, you know, do your due diligence, you know, look into the deal a little bit, make sure you're not just, you know, I don't know, throwing it away. But I think it's a good way to kind of, you know, figure out. Well, what they do, what these services do is they actually go vet the property for you, but I'd probably check on Google Maps to make sure the property exists, just a suggestion. And then, but they go and do, they like check the FICO score and you look at the background and blah, blah. So I've done that. And then I bought pre-build on one of the buildings. Like, I just thought the building was in a centralized location for Austin. And I was like, there's only one of those

locations in Austin. Like, it's next to a special place. So I bought that. ahead of time. And now what I'm looking for is a business retreat center as a ranch. Interesting. For like your own company to go out and like be able to use or any company. I'm getting a little sweaty. Anyone. So it's something that I would want to use for myself. A lot of the things that I want to do is like I want this for myself. And I think other people would want that too. And I think that's where you're going to have opportunity. And I think the problem sometimes is real estate is like I don't think a lot of people actually creating anything for the earth or anything for the world. It's just like, all right, how do I arbitrage

and make money? That's literally what it is. Like even the Airbnb thing, I feel a little bad about that. That's a whole other episode. Says the guy who's selling zeros and ones. It's the ones that help people, though. That's what's nice at real estate. It's real and it's ego. You can be like, toilet. You're doing great things.

I'm giving you a hard time. No, no. It's a fair question to ask, though. But yeah, I think that's why real estate is appealing. Besides that theoretically you make money passively, even though there is stuff to deal with. You guys know that. But the ranch thing is like, I think I would love to go to a ranch and just have like a hot tub.

I love hot tubbing. And if you think other companies like bigger pockets, if you guys were like, hey, we have a 30-person team, we need a retreat. You could have a lodge in Austin or nearby that you can come and hang out. And I think other businesses want that too. You should buy a ranch and they invite the entire bigger pockets team to come hot up. So we could see that those abs are not, in fact, painted on. It's just painted, dude. All right.

So we've got this. You're doing the crowdfunding financing. So Pier Street and Realty shares. And there's lots and lots of other platforms similar. Are you, on those really quick, are you actually seeing the 6 to 10% returns that you expect to be seeing or not? So, Pierce Street, I just started, so I haven't actually made interest on it. From realty shares, I've been doing it for 18 months. I put it up, let me log in my numbers right here.

I put in 65,000 so far. And in terms of the return so far, I made back 14,000. I made the money back, the principal of 65 and 14,000. So that's great. I made a 21% return. Oh, that's great. And then I didn't have to deal with any of the shit, right? I like stayed at home and just gave them the money.

I mean, I think what happens, this is one thing I would just want to remind myself and everyone who's listening. I think when times are good, everyone thinks they're great. Yeah. Right? When the market is good,

like when the stock market is good, I can't tell you how many people have been like, dude, I am a great stock picker. I know. I'm like, I bought Apple. I'm like,

oh, wow, how'd you think of that? Like, I just thought, you know, I just thought, you know,

I just talked about it's out. And I'm like, yeah, the market's good. But I personally have not experienced 2008 and 2000. But I think a lot of these investors need to be aware. Maybe my risk tolerance is lower. You have to be aware, like, if that happens, how are you prepared for it? You better be because I lost a lot of money.

And, you know, everybody's good at picking stocks when the market's going up, except Scott Trench, who works for us, who's buying ETFs of Zimbabwe. Is he really? Hey, I found a great deal. You should really buy this ETF of, you know, South Sudan. Is he really? Yeah. Is it a war zone?

maybe it's going to stop on the market, it's going to go flying. It's a good idea, Scott. You keep doing that, buddy. I like how Scott can't defend himself. He's probably in the room right now. Like, I hear them talking about me. Yeah, yeah. I think what's interesting with real estate you got me thinking about is just like the idea

with all the short-term rental stuff, I think more of our generation and the younger ones are like, why do I need to own and deal with all of it? Right. I want that flexibility of lifestyle, the flexibility of not having to deal with stuff. And I can have that like mobility around wherever I want to go versus the commitment of always having to pay rent and kind of be locked into a certain situation. I tell you, that's why I think, you know, when we get into the idea of house hacking, it makes a lot of sense, particularly for the millennials, because you go in, you buy it,

you know, say you're 24 and you're going to probably move in 18 months or whatever. You go, you buy a small multifamily duplex, triplex quad. You're in there. You have experienced landlording. And when the time comes that you get, you want to move and you're sick and tired, you rent out your unit, you go, you find another city and you're there. and now you have a rental property where you were. I mean, it makes sense.

Now, granted, you have to manage it, but it's a great way to build wealth. And I get, like, I think the beauty of real estate is that there are different personas. You are a persona that, you know, your time and energy goes into building businesses. You know, I don't know, maybe one day you'll say, you know what, I'm done building virtual businesses. I want to go full time into real estate, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. Real businesses. Yeah.

Real businesses. And more of this fake business stuff. Yeah. But, you know, real estate affords you an opportunity to build wealth in a more passive manner, crowdfunding, maybe some other ways, whereas somebody else who has time, who has energy, who has the passion to get in there and get dirty, can go ahead and do that. So, you know, that's what's so cool, despite what all the kind of get rich quick guru guys are telling people, there's only one way to do it.

No, actually, you know, you can customize your own path in real estate to meet. your needs to meet where you are in life, how much wealth you have, how much time commitment you want to put in, and the energy that you've got towards it. And I think that's what's so cool about it. That's why people love, love real estate. It's also real, man. It's really interesting to drive down the stream, but like, you see that? That's mine, right? And you can also use it for yourself if you ever have like, you know, a bad scenario happen. One thing that I would suggest, so the guy I met Greg for commercial and you could also do this residential. I'm sure you guys have already said it, but I thought this was something I never heard of before.

When he bought the building, like the San Antonio Church and some of these other buildings, he didn't put up any of his own money. I was like, dude, what are you talking about? He's like, oh, yeah, I basically structured the deal where because I'm dealing and I put together everything, I get a certain percent, but everyone who puts up the capital, like, you know the lazy bum, you get a different percent. And I thought, I don't, like, the details and stuff like that, we can go over later, but basically the idea, and I mean, you guys have heard these deals, but basically

because he's organizing the deal, so for people who are like, I've got no money, right? I think the trade of a successful person is resourcefulness. And so because Greg doesn't have as much money, he found people with money and put together the tenant and then the building and merge it all together and then took, I think 30 or 40% of the overall transaction. Yep. What's that? I was going to, sorry, I was going to just ask Brandon a really quick question to your point. Hey, Brandon. Yes, sir.

I think you wrote a book once, right? I did write a book on investing in real estate with no and low money down, which you can get at bigger pockets.com slash no money. But I did not put a chapter in there on syndication, which is that. what you're talking about basically is like, that's more, right, syndication. Though I didn't, is this a bonus chapter? I should make a bonus chapter of this.

I actually am going to do that now. Thank you for, no, I do like, I never thought of that. I didn't, I was like, what a creative idea. He didn't put it.

It wasn't, when you hear people like, don't use it in your money, but like, well, where does it come from? And he's like, oh, just have,

just go ask other people. Yeah, and you just said something there that I think is, that's the key to creative finance. I mean, hands on the key is resourcefulness. Like, the fact that if you want it, even if you are flat broke, if you've got no money, like if you really want it, I mean, I like to ask this question.

Like, Noah, let's just, and I'll ask you directly. I mean, let's just say that I offered to sell you a million dollar office building down the street, right? And for whatever reason, you have no money right now. It's all tied up or the IRS came and froze all your accounts. But I would sell you this million dollar property for a thousand bucks. Like, how would you come up with that $1,000? Right now you needed it today. How would you come up with it?

Oh, I would go to my network. Perfect, right? Well, and I would get on the phone. I think so many people do texting or Facebook. Like, let me get on the phone and start. I would call probably my friend Lloyd, my parents, my brother. Perfect. I figured it out.

But here's what people are going to say. I know the excuse people are going to say, I don't have rich friends like Noah. They always say that. And so what's the answer? Do you guys know what the end? Honestly, just a quick side thought. Nowhere's a one percent or. Well, I am up there.

Here's the thing. Josh, let me give you just a suggestion. And this is what I'm doing for the month of January 2017. No apologizing. We apologize for doing well. We're like, I did well, but, you know, I'm Jewish. It's so I don't have nothing. It's like, stop apologizing people.

just be okay that you've done well or you're trying to do something great. You're going to get more people to hate us than hate previously. No, no, I love the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, all of them. We love that. Good, good. Anyway, seriously, you're saying, you're saying, to get us back on track, you asked the question, you asked the question, what were we? What are we? What do you, what's the solution to that problem? The people that whine and say, I don't have, I don't have one percent friends. Like, no, it does. I'm not a billionaire. The solution is go make better friends. Seriously. And I, and I, know you're like, oh, what do you mean? Go surround yourselves and look, and here's the next thing.

I already know the excuses that people do because we've helped a lot of people with App Sumo and Sumo Me and our products. They're like, well, I'm in Iowa and I don't have people like that. So, okay, so there's a thing called the internet. It is cool. And so what I'd recommend is that in like the bigger pockets forum, there's a lot of people who are very successful you could connect with. There are online mastermind or meetup groups that you can connect with. There's a thing called airplanes, which I will say I've been in phantom. No, but so. me, I'm in Austin, and from a technology perspective, there's not a lot of people that I want to meet here. So I flew for one day to Chicago to meet people last week. The week before, for one day,

I flew to L.A. And yeah, it's $300, but it's an investment to connect with people that can then, I can borrow the $1,000 from, I can learn from, you know, grow from and so forth. That's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah, I mean, you know, the saying is you are the product of what the ex-people to surround yourself with or whatever it is. But it's absolutely true. I mean, I've learned this from personal experience. I mean, I remember. remember when the people I spent time with were out drinking and hanging out and partying. And I was like, oh, cool. Yeah, this is life. And then, you know, I realize, wait a second, if I hang out with people who are out there who are making things happen, business owners,

folks who are just motivated and looking to change the world, like that was going to allow me to grow with them. And I completely experienced that myself. And so, yeah, absolutely. We all know that, though, which is the interesting thing. Like everyone's listening, knows to buy property. That's why they listen to the podcast. They think they're going to get some magic secret. They're not. And they know to be around better people, but they don't. And I just kept wondering. It's hard. It's hard. Because, you know, if you think about it, you're so used to this lifestyle. You're so used to, you know, saying, hey, this is who I am. And it's all about your identity. Right. So once you go, you know, I've had over the past few years, you know, a few people that I love.

Like, I mean, these people, you know, my heart is with them. But their life, the stuff that they're doing, is just not in alignment with what I'm doing. And so I had to make difficult decisions and say, you know what, I'm no longer going to spend the time and energy that I've been spending with these people. I'm going to now focus on people who are doing the kinds of things that I want to be doing. And that was very difficult because, you know,

I only have so much time in my life. When I made that decision, for weeks I perseverated. I was like, oh, I'm such a bad person. What am I doing? You know, this is how we grow up, but still. And I realized it was the greatest decision. I've ever made in my life. You're getting out there and spending time with those people who are making a difference,

who have beliefs of where I want to be allowed me to grow. And so, you know, you've got to take those risks. I mean, you know, there's, we have these friendships that go on years or decades. And, you know, sometimes despite the challenge of it, we have to kind of let it go and move forward. Upgrade. It's scary. No, but I think it's upgrading, right?

So for me, it's like, all right, why don't I just, it's like go to the person who's already been to the promise land and they could show you how to get there. It makes life a lot easier. One of the thing that I've done, and I can recommend this for everyone out there is I basically made like a 30, 90, one year, five year, 10 year plan. And I know when people say that, some people ask me, where do you want to be in five years? Someone asked me this yesterday. I was like, I literally in five years, all I really want to be is alive. Like, that's what I'm hoping for, just to stay alive. Like, I don't want anyone shooting me in the face or like, I don't punching me in the butt.

But what I did, what I did, though, see, look, it's a family-friendly. show. But what I did, and this is actually what I did. I literally did this after I got cheated on. I was working at Intel. I hated my job. I had an extra girlfriend who I loved. I was crazy about. She cheated on me. And I was like, well, where do you want to be in 30 days? Where do you want to be in 90 days? Where do you want to be in the year? What do you be five years or 10 years? But here's the second part that's most important. And then write it out. Just be like, because if you don't know what the destination looks like, how the hell are you going to plan to get there? Yeah. You don't. It's like driving somewhere. You got to have your destination. Then you have your route. So a route.

Anyway, so write those out. Your 30, 90. one year, five, or 10 year, then put it on your mirror. So I have this. If you come over to my house like Josh or Brandon, if you guys come over, you'll see on my fridge, it's like, it's my like yearly plan of the things I'm trying to accomplish or not trying, the things I'm going to accomplish. And I think the more you kind of like have clarity on that and then put it out and see it and let it know, put on your phone, put on your desktop, the higher likelihood you

will be accomplishing those things. Can I, can I jump in on that on that? Yeah, a couple years ago. You want. Well, good. A couple years ago, you mentioned this idea of, I think it was with. App Sumo. I think it was, or Sumo, no, it was maybe it was Sumo Me, right? So you wanted like a billion people, right? Wasn't that your thing? Yeah. So I remember thinking at the time, like that was

cool that you had like one big goal for your company that everybody knew. And did you, you had like up on a on a screen or something like that like this number. Yeah. Right. Okay. Do you still recommend that, do you still recommend that idea of picking one big gigantic goal or are you kind of moving away from that idea? I'm wondering how you view that. It still works. You know what it is? I think, what I believe is that you know Josh you're what 25 I like it don't I you like you do look good actually look I look at right hey I believe by the time someone's like in their 30s give or take like the amount of change that they can do gets harder to do because you're getting more custom you're like ah Snapchat why do I need to show a dick pick you know I already like to see my own dick

I don't want to see a new dick right but I think we figured out so went the family show Oh, please. We'll put on like whatever, Selena Gomez. I don't know what kids listen to. One Direction. I've never even heard a song of theirs. But my point there is that people are kind of figured out how they're living and how they're going to live.

And so I think the key thing there, so for me, the way I organize is I have one goal and I plan my spreadsheet and my tactics around the one goal. And that's what's worked for me for the past, I don't know, 15 years and it's going to work for me 30 years. I think the key thing that people have to think about, though, is try that if you're doing what you're doing, are you getting what you want? So let's say I'm doing this one goal thing and I'm getting the things I want. Then I'm going to keep doing it.

But if I'm doing the things I want like the one goal and I'm not getting what I want, then you might need to change what you want. And I think Josh, you were saying that is really true. Like you have to read about who you are and who you want to be around. And that's where you might need to make a shift and change to try new things if you're not getting the life or the material or the friends or the relationship you want. I love it. I love it. So before we move to the fire around really, really quick, what's your plan?

You know, you've now realized that you don't love being the hands-on landlord guy. You are doing Airbnb, which is actually really hands-on, which is a little bit of opposite of... But you have a manager for that, right? I have a company manager. I literally just get the checks per... So Crystal's awesome, and I literally just get a check once a month in PayPal. And if there's ever like a purchase, she just buys it. I literally maybe like five minutes a month.

Okay. Awesome. I love it. So what's the plan going forward? More properties like that. You want to buy that wellness and a ranch and anything else? Or just, you know, is this a way to get rich or is this just another kind of kind of... of another way for you to have some kind of money just in case.

I would say two things. I would say number one, people need to explore their curiosity, right? So I listen to your show and then I'm like, oh, now I need to buy a bunch of properties and I'm going to make more than Chris guy you guys had recently. I'm going to have more properties than Chris. He's got 52. I'm going to India. I'm going to get 53.

And so I think you have to be curious about the things. So number one, be curious, right? But number two, decide what you really want. Right? If you're trying to make money, it doesn't just have to be property. I think property is an amazing thing. I love it. I think it's really cool.

I think you can go use your toilets. You can show it off. You can share with people. Like, I love that people come to town. Like my buddy Tynan's coming to town in two weeks and he's like, yo, I can use your place. So I think you have to be clear on, you have to explore curiosity and then you have to be clear on your wants. So do I want to spend my time doing the real estate stuff?

Now, no. But I know this is kind of an interesting one. I don't like where I live. So I live in a brand new condo that I bought, but it's small. And I know there's gratitude and stuff. I'm not apologizing. I just don't like living there. So the two things I want are the ranch.

And one thing I'm considering the ranch is maybe splitting it, syndicating it with a few people so we can share it, which I've done in Budapest. I own a condo in Budapest. We share it with 10 people. And then where I live, what's that? Wow.

If you guys ever go to Budapest, you have a condo you can use. Yes. I mean, I guess shegator. I couldn't pick it out. I don't know where it is. Hungarian for cheers,

but, you know, how do you say it? Egas Shegada. Egas sheggera. Yeah. That's cool. But yeah, those are my two kind of near-term things where it's like, one, look for the ranch

and then two, just get a place that has, I want floor-to-ceiling windows that just is like at least 1,000 square feet. And that's what I really want. And I think once you get the clarity of what you want, actually getting it is really easy. It's just being clear on what you want. Awesome. Cool. So those are kind of the two near real estate.

And I'm going to keep doing the Peer Street thing. Cool. Awesome. All right. I'm going to, before we're not quite done yet. We're going to shift gears over to another segment of the show. This section is called our Fire Row. It's time for the fire round.

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So what I did is you can do two separate things, but I basically went to my friend who I trust that bought places, and I'm like, who'd you use and who'd you like? And then I interview them. That's it. I just would use my own network. If you don't have anyone you like, generally, what you can do is go to the listings of houses that you like and then talk to those people. I think those are kind of the two that I would approach it as. That's what I've done to meet people. The other thing, can I give a third bonus one that's where? These are ones of what I've done. I don't know if there's other ones. I go to my current other providers. So my lawyer, I think my lawyer or my accountant, I was like, I know I like them. So they probably wouldn't

work with a crappy person. So my accountant, I said, who do you use for your real estate needs? And then they recommend someone. So go to someone you already that has that trusted resource. So don't call the billboard, the guy in the billboard, you know, like necessarily. or on the bench. I just think it's so weird. Yeah. You know, one thing that someone did, I thought, yeah. Anyways, yeah, the people that send the postcards, I'm like, what are you doing?

I know it works or something. It works. It works, but that's not, yeah, I want, I want a recommendation. If I'm going to work with somebody, I want a recommendation from my network. And I would, what I would recommend in general, too, is having, like, set questions that you can, like, objectively measure different people. So for me, I want someone a little bit more financial related. So I'm like, hey, can you show me spreadsheets that you've used to help people make

decisions on buying a house. Because I want to see if they actually are capable of doing that. This is what we do for interviewing people at Sumo. Like have a set scorecard of questions that you can then rate people and then you can make an objective decision about the people that you're hiring. That's great. Our next question, I'm a college student but want to start building wealth through real estate. How do I start? So I have a crazy idea, which I like. And then I have like more like normal, I guess boring ideas. So someone told me they're like, hey, you know how you want to get a bigger unit. What if you go to places that are for rent and tell them that you'll rent it or maybe you can utilize it? So as a college student, go to anything that's vacant on the market

right now and figure a creative way to use that space to either bring them traffic like potential buyers, like get paid for that, or you can utilize the space with like a party or like business meetups or a co-working space. If the property's been on the market for like over half a year, there's a good chance that it's not going to go right away. So there's probably something creative that they could do with that. The second thing I would do is I would personally reach out to whoever they can find locally that's already buying in selling real estate some realtor and then just go work for free. Because I think what happens with a lot of college kids, the problem with them is one, they don't take advantage of networking. Like if I was a college kid, if I went back to it or if I got

more hair and looked like a college kid again, I would, number one, not try to make money, right? I would actually, that's short-sighted. And I'm dealing with this, what I was telling you guys before. The short-sighted people, but as a college kid, your whole thing should be networking, building relationships and learning a ton so that in three years or in five years, you can then capitalize on it. It's the same with people that come to sumo. Like, come and like, am I good at marking yes? This is what I've done. Am I good at other things? No. So come and learn for me on that and then you can go out in two to five years and do really well with it once you've learned from that person. So I think that's almost just as more, if not more value than making money in the short term.

That makes sense. The only thing I would say is, you know, obviously if you're going to rent a place out, you know, you want to make sure that you're actually allowed to use it for the purposes that you're thinking of using it for less do you find yourself in trouble. But, you know, just saying, I think people that follow the rules don't get ahead. I think following the rules, you're not going to get ahead. So I'm not saying to go break a bunch of rules and then you're like, well, no, you can find them in Austin. He said to do this.

Hey. I'll give a bonus one because that might have been, I don't know that you're like, well, that's so another thing is suggesting that I did in my 20s that I think any young person or even in their 30s or 40s can do is I started meetups and doesn't have to be on meetup.com, but hosted dinner and invite these people together, right? that's a great way. So that was one thing that I did that worked really well. And one thing that I did recently, and this applies especially for young people, either volunteer or pay for expensive events. So I went to like a $200 like poker tournament and it was a charity one. And I was like,

oh my God, everyone here is really good. And I was like, oh yeah, because for 200 bucks, you're not going to get a bunch of like bozos or flusies. So and if you're a young person, like there was young people there, they were volunteering because why? They get to meet everyone. They get connected to everyone. But they didn't have to spend any of the money. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Sounds good. By the way, people can, if they are interested in hosting like a local meetup of real estate people, BiggerPockets has an event system. So if you go to BiggerPockets.com slash events, you can actually host a meetup in your area.

People will show up, you get to meet and you're the connector and you get known as the guy who's connecting people, which is valuable. Can I ask a quick side? I'm going to like call it a Kindle question. Do you guys think there's any more knowledge necessarily out there that a lot of these people that are listening don't know? Because like your forms, they could literally spend the next their lifetime listening to it. If they do that, then there's not.

I mean, you know, every question that's ever been asked has probably been asked. You just have to spend the time going through it and figuring it out. How much time you think it would take for someone? How much time should? This is the thing I think would help me. If you said, Noah, you need to spend 500 hours studying our forum or whatever it is and then you should go by a place. I don't know. For some reason, knowing what to expect makes it easier to make some of these decisions.

Like, what do you guys think? Yeah. There's a line. I mean, where is it? I don't necessarily know. I think that's going to differ for different people. like somebody like you, less risk averse who's going to go, you know, find an apartment and, you know, rent it out to Ringling Brothers is very different than a guy like Brandon. But yeah, I think it's going to depend. You want to at least get the fundamentals. Like the reason bigger pockets exist today is because I went and was like, oh, I got this. Yeah, this is easy. Let me just go buy some property and I'm going to make money. I'm going to be rich. So I bought some property, not studying the market, not understanding where I was buying, not understand. I knew how to. to evaluate it. That was kind of the easy part for me, the numbers, but all the other stuff,

managing people, managing managers, dealing with, you know, tenant issues, you name it, that stuff, I didn't put the time into. Had I done that, frankly, bigger pockets wouldn't exist today. So I had to screw up for BP to be here. But the beauty is, you know, now everybody who's listening and everybody's got this resource where they can go and figure this stuff out. So go into you're comfortable. I mean, and comfortable doesn't mean you know everything because you will never know everything until you, you jump in and do it. You got to at some point take that risk. And we repeat that on every single podcast. It's the paralysis by analysis, as we lovingly call it. You go and you're like, I don't know what to do. I just don't know what's going to happen.

I've been reading for three years. If you've been reading for three years, you need to either, you know, shit or get off the pot here. You know, do you guys actually, and I'm sure you've done this in previous shows, but I'd like to learn it. Like you guys can go back to your 18 year old self. I hate that question, but I'm curious, like, knowing everything you know now, like would you have bought a property sooner? Like, that's what I want to know is because I want to tell my cousin listened to it. Good question.

I don't think I would have bought it any sooner. I mean, I was 21 when I bought my first one or 20, 20, 20, 21 somewhere there. So I don't think I would have done sooner. What? I guess I'm just curious. Like, what would you have wanted to know that maybe you didn't know? Do my math better. I mean, that's the biggest thing.

I tell people all the time. Like, if you don't do your math, right? Like, it all comes down. Like, 90% comes down to the math. Real estate is awesome because you know ahead of time, I think, you know, ahead of time how your investment's going to do. Unlike you throw your money into like Apple stock, right? You actually have no idea if Apple's going to do better next year or worse. You have no idea.

I mean, you can hope and you can assume that you can look at on average Apple's gone up by this much, but we have no idea. With real estate, I'm like, hey, this is probably going to give me a 12% return on investment. Okay. And then I buy it and it might be a little better, might be a little worse, but at least I can gauge it. When in the beginning, I was like, oh, that's a pretty property. I'll buy it. I mean, that was my thing. And I'll say on the math, I mean, well, I did the math.

The math was completely in my favor on the properties I bought at first. And it was the other stuff that I didn't put the time into. And so, you know, you've got to know the math. But like if you don't know what you're doing, if you don't know how to manage, if you're buying in areas that you don't really know how to handle, if you don't know how to deal with tenants and vacancies and evictions, or, you know, hey, I don't want to. I want to find a property manager.

If you don't know how to vet a property manager, you better go and do it. So I would say, you know, I don't know, I would have gone back to my 18 year old self and bought, actually my 19 year old self and bought that four family building that I was living in in college and, you know, asked for some help from, from parents and things to do it because that would have been an amazing deal. But enough about me and Brandon. It's interesting. This show is all about you. We got two more fire around questions. So Brandon. All right. Next question. My real estate company, so it's like an investor, is currently renting an office building. Should I just buy an office? If so, should I focus on a

single unit or a commercial property with a lot of units. I thought this was very fitting for your kind of situation. Yeah. So I actually spent the past two years looking for our next office because we're at almost 40 people. So it's not feasible to work out of like almost 25, it's around 2,500 square foot two unit loft. Okay. Right. It's a little cramped, you could say. Yeah. And so I spent two years looking and then I think what people have to decide is like at what point is it worth it to try to make money on real estate or in your business. So we ended up committing to like a five year, $30,000 month lease. So that's a lot of money for people doing the math. And you have to kind of decide where you want to be spending your money. So that was number one where like ultimately like what I have liked to buy it and own it.

Yes. Like someone said a great quote to me. It's like the dentist doesn't get rich from being a dentist. They get rich from owning the building that their dentist practices in. And that's kind of stuck with me. And I like that quote. But at some point it's like, all right, well, I was like, this is hurting our company to keep me trying to have like make some little money versus if I can grow the company. I'll make the big money.

And I think people need to think about the micro versus the macro of where the big money is versus the micro money. I love that. And the second thing I would consider, secondly, is like now that we have this office space, I'm getting people saying like, hey, can we sub lease it from you? Can we be it? And I've kind of made the decision like, I don't want to be a landlord. I want to help run this company. Yep. And I want to do my podcast, which is Noah Kagan presents. I had to do a plug. Hey, check it out. No way can present. But no, I made a conscious and an intentional decision that like I don't want other people in our space. I don't want to be dealing with like, hey, this thing is broken for random people. And so I don't want to actively be a landlord right now. Maybe my parents who were. tired. My dad was an engineer. Mom's a nurse. They're not doing anything and they love real estate. My dad's very handy. And so they're like, all right, now they're going to go and buy real estate in New Mexico because they have time. And that's what they're intentionally wanting to do. Right now for me, best use of my time is podcast. Okay, and running snow group. All right. All right. That was bleeped out. Okay. So I'm new to real estate. Last question in the fire round. That was good. I like that. Yeah, you like that. That's how we control the way we control our guests.

All right. Last question of the fire round. I'm new to real estate. Have no money, no experience. How do I network with people more successful than me? So this is just the question that we've been kind of talking about. How do I find those people on network? Yeah. Because earlier you said, you know, go to your network and, you know, but what if they're not Noah Kagan? But if you don't have a lot. Yeah. You're like, you know, stupid 21 year old and you're like, you're not stupid, Brandon. Most of them. Like, I mean, let's make it as challenging it as possible. They're working. They're not, they're not in college. They're working at Best Buy. And they're in like Iowa. Okay. I'm not trying to hear in Iowa. You know what's funny? I always get this death threat.

It's like, oh, you talked about Iowa again. Shut up about Iowa. Josh gets it for Detroit. Yeah. He makes fun of Detroit. I'm not with Detroit people. Nothing wrong with the, don't go there.

Nothing wrong with Detroit. What? Detroit was the first place I've ever seen bulletproof glass at a subway sandwich. I was like, I was like, I just want a sandwich. They're like sliding the window. They're like, six, five,

a foot long. I was like, okay. That's a sandwich. That's funny. I was like, who's robbing subway? I'm in Best Buy. I mean, I'm just, I don't know. I'm thinking like, off the time I had we said a few things like host events, but you're

like, well, I don't know anyone to host an event. I think the first thing I would do is two things. One, I would just look at listings that are already online, like go to Redfin or Zillow or Trulia and then just hit up those realtors and pretend like you're going to buy it. Because those, for the most part, we'll show people around. Yeah. And then you can go meet with them and be like, hey, actually, I'm a kid. probably won't buy it. You could tell. But I just really love real estate and I want to learn more.

And those people will give you the time. I admit it's lying to that. No, no, you don't have to. I mean, you can go check out the property. They should show you the place. And maybe you can figure out a way to make money. Like you guys are really creative. You talked about Chris being creative. Or we did. So you don't. He's got a thing for this. Chris. I don't have to go like. Chris Gill is, you know, a couple shows ago. Anyway. But the point being is that like, like, go to them. And yes, Josh, I think that's a good point. Go to them and be like, hey, can you show me a place. Hey, I'm really interested in property. I can do free. work for you or I just want to learn how you do real estate. Let me take you out to Starbucks. And for the

most part, either do it in the morning, do it on Saturday or Sunday, something like that. I think that's a good opportunity. The second thing I would do is that even if you're at Best Buy and you are in some foreign country or you're in a small state, you probably know someone in your family or some friend of a friend or someone at church who's done well, right, in any capacity. And so what I would likely do is ask that person if they know anyone in real estate. And then from that person, I would ask anyone who knows in real estate. Because there is someone in your network. I think what most people neglect is that they're always looking for, and this is, they have, it's a novelty effect problem where they're always looking for new things versus like the existing people or existing

assets they have access to. So go on LinkedIn, go on your Facebook, go on Twitter and look to see like, who's a success, when you, here's a question just to do it. Who's the most successful person you know? Ask that person who they know in real estate that they could talk to about. And then that's how you're going to find the person that you can go learn from. Yeah, I always find people, people feed off enthusiasm too. If you're enthusiastic about real estate, like people will give you the time of day because you're enthusiastic about it because they're like, like, oh, I remember when I was that age and I was working at Best Buy and didn't know anybody. You know, like people, they respond to that. I feel like older people, especially non-celebrities.

Well, the problem that I've noticed is that a lot of the people, I think about the younger people, I have a few people I mentor because I want to have, I want to be mentored by older people, but I'm like, they're like, I'm busy and they're rich. And then younger people than me, I'm like, I'm busier and rich than you. So why would I help you? But I, and this is just a lesson. I'll tell you two things. But number one is that like, I think if you want to find someone else to help you, you have to go help someone else. That's just my philosophy. So I have a few people.

Put the energy out there. Yeah. What's that? Put the energy out there. Yeah. I mean, I think it's hypocritical for me to be like, I want you to be teaching me all this stuff. And it's like, well, are you teaching anyone anything? No. Okay. So I have two guys that I'm helping out now. And then I was thinking about, well, how did me get me to want me to help them? One, now I originally wanted to. But what one of them did is they put in the effort. I think that's a lot of the problems with people who want to network or meet people. They send an email and then they don't do anything else.

And they're like, well, they didn't respond. All right, I'm going to go back to my video games. Yep. I think what I've seen other people do, which is very impressive, like, there's this guy named Brandon who's here. He's like, hey, I notice you have a blog. Do you want to have any professional photos done because you're ugly? And let's take some better photos.

And I'll do it for free. I'm not asking for anything. I just want to meet you and do these photos for you. So my point there at a higher level is like, can you go help them? Don't be like, hey, can I help you with anything? That's a really hard question to do. Offer them something of value that based on what you can research about them. Like, hey, it seems like you're doing real estate listings, but your website's really ugly.

Or, hey, it doesn't seem like you post all your listings on Facebook and Twitter. Do you mind if I create social promotion for you or on Instagram? So go and propose something to them, do the free value. And then now with Brandon, like, now we're buddies and we're doing videos like every other week. And then I'm actually referring clients and starting to pay him money to do work with me. You know, you know Gary, you know Gary Van der Chuck? Yes. Or no, of Gary.

Anyway, his videographer, I knew him beforehand. And that's exactly how he got became his video guy, which started the Ask Gary show and all that stuff. But he just went over and said, hey, can I just film a video of you for one day? We'll put it on your Instagram. And he just volunteered his time for free. And then he got a full-time job out of it. And now he's like, you know, super successful. So same thing.

Well, I just don't think people are, we wrap it up. Yeah, so people aren't putting in the work. So put in the work. Like, get up at 5. I've been getting about 5 a.m. So challenge yourself to get up at 5 a.m. for a week. Yep.

I can't tell you how productive am. Five to 9 a.m. Is productivity time. Get up at 5 this week. And you will get a lot more stuff done than you can ever imagine. Miracle morning. Yeah, there you go. All right.

So moving over the last section of our show, which we lovingly refer to as our Famous Four. The Famous Four. These are the four questions we ask every guest, every single week. And we're going to throw them at you. Yeah, that's all right. There's a one show. Why don't we have them on the show?

All right. Famous Four question, number one. And I know you're not a hardcore real estate. I see you might not have a great answer to this first one, but that's okay. Number one, do you have a favorite real estate related book? We're going to ask business book next, but a real estate one. I'll pull it up. I've read one that I really enjoyed.

I'm going to look it up to remember the title. So let's go number two while I pull this up. Okay. All right. Number two is business book. Do you have a business book? You recommend? Actually, that's my question.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. Do you have a business book that you'd recommend? I would probably say Ultimate Sales Machine? That's, what's his name? I just read that. Shoot. I don't remember what's called.

But yeah, fantastic book. Think about it. Hold on. Hold on. What's his name? Okay, while you two are looking it up. I'm going to dance. Okay, good job.

Okay. By Chet Holmes. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Fantastic book. But anyway. Is it confessions of a real estate entrepreneur? Is that a book?

It might be. Anyways, I'm looking out the Kindle book that I bought. So keep going. I'll come back to this one. Okay. All right. Next question, hobbies besides building zeros and ones and buying property. What do you do for fun?

Lately, my hobbies have been chess. So I'm on chess.com. My username is O-K-D-D-R-K, okay-d-R-K. And then mountain biking. So those are my two, like, a few years ago was disc golf. But with weather being kind of fluctuating and things like that, I've just really enjoyed, like, the physical aspect of mountain biking and the mental aspect of chess. The one thing I will tell people as a very helpful suggestion is that if you're interested in anything or you want to get better than anything, go hire a coach right away. So, like, I have a coach for chess.

Like, my brother teaches me and I look at YouTube for mountain biking videos and, like, for Hebrew. That's one of the things I'm setting every week. I have a Hebrew coach. And I think as we get older, we stop having coaches. And you know, you can use services that are pretty affordable. You'd be surprised. Yeah. I had a personal trainer for that same reason. Exactly, man. Confessions of a real estate entrepreneur is the book that I read that I thought was pretty damn good. I really enjoyed Jim Rendell. Cool. Okay. And I was going to say, Noah does a post every year on his blog where he talks about what he's got planned for the year ahead. And it's fascinating and motivating to see the stuff that, you know, you aspire to do. And I love that. And Brandon and I talk a lot

about that is, you know, a lot about, this is me hugging you guys. We don't talk about you. That's idea of writing down what you want to accomplish. It makes a huge difference. All right, man. So let's get to the last question of the famous four, which is. All right. My last question of my famous four is this, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate and investors from all those people who talk about it, who want to invest, who think they're about investing, who say they're going to invest, never actually do it. Or maybe they do it and they fail. Like what separates the successful people from everyone else? I have a few. I mean, I'm thinking more in individual words. I don't know what the answers other people are, but I think the main thing

that's helped me succeed is persistence, right? I think no matter what, and this is true for bigger pockets. I'm sure you guys have, like, had been hacked or gone down for a day or like a promotion didn't work or someone quit. That's probably like last week for you guys. We run into a lot of drama. All those things. Yeah, that was all those things. All those things. That happens to us too. And so I think that the main thing is that if people have a vision of what they exactly want and they are convinced that they can accomplish it, if they persist, there's no reason that they won't be able to have it. I mean, obviously there's sub things like being creative and being resourceful. But I think if you can persist through a good time as well as persist through a bad time and have the vision and the conviction, you will get what you want. Perfect. All right, man. Before we let you go, this is where you get to plug. Although you've plugged already. So you're done.

Barely. I hardly plugged. That was a live on the show. That was like a hair transplant plug. Until next time. Do you need one? What? What just happened? Did I say that? I didn't hear it.

What? Okay. Is it, sorry. No, I love you. I know. He puts, he put his beanie on.

Yeah, a little self-conscious. I got the same thing, dude. It just comes with age. I don't. I can give you some of mine if you want. I got hair to spare. I was pointed out of my beard.

All right. People find you. How can they connect with you? Yes. So because you're listening to a podcast, go check out. Noah Kagan presents podcast or okay dork.com slash podcast to subscribe. If you are looking for any help with your small business online,

either app summa.com for deals on products for your business or sumomime.com, which are free marketing tools for your online business, I think bigger pockets. You guys are using it on your blog. I think we are actually still. I mean, I think what I've really enjoyed about your guys show and just like your guys' site and getting more into it is just more of like, I think real estate is interesting.

And it's nice to explore different topics and learn new things. I love it. Well, by the way, just real quick, the app sumo. I would recommend, I mean, Sumo Me is awesome. We do use it. Apsumo, though, I'd recommend everybody go sign up for that newsletter because you guys is copyrighting is the best copyrighting I've ever read. I mean, hands down.

So like, and it's all AIMAN. Good. I mean, it is a skill at you. At one point. It was Neville. It wasn't at the beginning. It was Neville in the beginning. And now Aiman and Olman run it and Chris help out.

And those guys literally, I mean, I think what most people don't think about is that we spend 48 hours to write one email. Oh, most people spend like, oh, yeah, oh, sudden links. I mean, it's 48 hours. It's multiple editors. And I think it's kind of coming back to this real estate thing. You literally will get out whatever you put in. You put in one hour of work.

You put in half an hour to bigger pockets for him. Like that's probably what you're going to get out of it. Yeah, I love that. Perfect. Noah, thank you for coming on the show, man. It's been great to have you. You.

I love you. I love you, your pockets listeners. I love you all out there. Yeah, buddy. All right, man. We'll see you around. All right.

All right, guys. That was Noah Kagan. Wow. Yeah. That was awesome. Yeah, he's such a fun guy. Like, every time I hear him. You know, I don't think I said this earlier, but so I was at FinCon, the financial bloggers conference I go to every year.

And last year he gave the keynote at the end, like the closing keynote. And it was hands down the best keynote speech I've ever heard my life. Is that the one where he threw $1,000 bills in the year? Yeah, he actually went on, well, he went on handed out like money to like a bunch of people. Like, he took his entire speaking fee and just handed out to people as part of his message. He didn't actually make any money doing the keynote. It was great. Like, he was just, he was so good.

Anyway, I'm going to actually put a link to that because it's actually on YouTube. I'll put a link to it on the show notes page, biggerpocket.com slash show 21, If you want to watch it, I just thought it was the best keynote I've ever heard. So that's why I was excited to get him here on the show. And I know you and you and Nob and buddies for a few years too. Yeah, I've known Noah for a while. He's he's a good guy. He's somebody who's out there who's making it happen.

And I don't know. We like those action takers, right? Yeah. And I like the fact that he, you know, like some people will probably listen to this show and go, hey, you know, he didn't give a whole lot of here's how to invest in real estate kind of thing. But I don't think that's what the show was necessarily about. Like, you know, he could tell you exactly how he did. And he did explain quite a bit.

But the show wasn't a step by. up on how to get started. It was a like get out there and stop making excuses for yourself and go do it. Yeah. If if there's a figure it out. Yeah, figure it out. There's this guy Derek Sivers who was on Tim Ferriss's podcast that said if more information was the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs. Well, Noah does have six pack abs. He does have six pack abs. I don't know he's a billionaire. He might have been a billionaire. Yeah. I think actually I read this article about Noah once. It was on like entrepreneur.com or something like that. And it was about how he had he stayed at Facebook because he was like the number 30 at Facebook. His shares would be to work.

worth like, it was like $100 million today or something like that. It was something crazy like that, but he left before he got, anyway, crazy article. But I'll see if I can find that too and post it in there. Nice. Nice. Awesome. Well, anyway, great show. A lot of fun. Really enjoyed it. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it too. Yeah, man. Good, good times. By the time this airs, you will have returned from your trip. So I hope it went well or goes well or whatever it is. Thank you. And otherwise, you know, thank you for listening, everybody. You're welcome, Josh. Do you actually listen to the show ever?

Do I? I mean, I know, like, people can barely put up with you. It's pretty rough. Barely take you. So I usually listen to our intro. I don't listen to it. I don't listen to it. You can't handle it in your own voice.

I know. No, it's not mine. It's yours. I mean, it's bad enough I have to talk to you, but to actually hear it repeated would just, I don't know. It's pretty rough. It's pretty rough, you know. No, I listen to, I listen to most of the nature of that shows. And then I'll like, you'll refresh myself.

on the ones that I want to hear more of. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, really at the end of the day, you do have a face made for radio. So it's all good. Wait a second. I think that's a good. No, that's not a good thing. That's not a good thing.

Took a while. But yeah. Yeah, whatever. All right. People are going to be like, man, Josh has been so mean to Brandon lately. And he just takes it. You know, I'm just trying to be the bigger man. You are the bigger man.

I am the bigger man. He definitely doesn't just take it. I get a lot of grief guys. trust me. It's pretty much never ending. So, all right, guys. Well, thank you so much for listening. Brandon, another great show. It was. Until next time, I'm Josh Storkin.

Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying Real Estate for Investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for Real Estate Investing Online.

Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoe content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only.

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