BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 224: Building a Process to Buy 17 Deals a Week with Chris Clothier

Episode Date: April 27, 2017

What does it take to buy 17 deals a week? What if we told you it was the exact same process needed to buy just one deal per year? That’s the topic on today’s show, where we sit down with Chris Clothier to talk about how his company is buying up to 17 deals a week following the same process any investor can to get their own deals. Chris also shares keen insight into building up a thriving business, hiring your first or next employee, why he decided to run a 100-mile ultra-marathon, and much more. Whether you are looking to buy one deal a year or one deal a day, this show will have a tremendous impact on your life!  In This Episode We Cover: A quick recap on who Chris is How he started a turnkey company that now boasts 1,800 clients Tips for building the infrastructure of a business Why you should hire people The details on his process for offering on deals How Chris finds deals Thoughts on buying houses through social media A step-by-step guide on how to actually find and close a deal His ultra-marathon story (and how this relates to real estate) And SO much more! Links from the Show Email [e-mail] BiggerPockets Forums Be an Author Ben Leybovich’s BP Profile Brian Burke’s BiggerPockets Profile Serge Shukhat’s BiggerPockets Profile Building a Scalable Real Estate Business and Tenant Management Tips with Chris Clothier (podcast) 5 Myths Holding Investors Back From Real Estate Greatness with Chris Clothier (podcast) Building Wealth and Passive Income with Rental Properties with Ben Leybovich, Brian Burke, and Serge Shukhat (podcast) Carleton Sheets Books Mentioned in this Show Set for Life by Scott Trench (email [e-mail]) Make It BIG! by Frank McKinney The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim Tweetable Topics: “I’m not a businessman; I’m a business man.” (Tweet This!) “There’s no better advice that I can give somebody than to be honest and upfront.” (Tweet This!) “Personal relationships are going to help you earn in your business.” (Tweet This!) “Any investor should be able to find a deal that makes sense in any city during any market, up or down.” (Tweet This!) “A good passive investments allows you to sleep well at night.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Chris Chris’ BiggerPockets Profile Chris’ Turnkey Company Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that. With their new Express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee so you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable.

That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. We all joke that rentals are passive, but if you're spending nights matching receipts or guessing what a property earned last month, that's not passive at all.

Baselaine fixes that part of landlording, the financial chaos. Their banking and AI bookkeeping system automatically tags every transaction, updates cash flow insights in real time, and builds the reports you need for tax season. You can even automate transfers and move money around without paying wire fees.

It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get a $100 bonus. Base lane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income. Legally, 100% IRS compliant.

That's instant cash flow improvement. Cost segregation guys is the number one firm nationwide, specializing in identifying these faster depreciating assets in your property. They've completed tens of thousands of. thousands of studies across all 50 states from remote cabins to apartment complexes. So if you own investment property, this is a no-brainer. So visit costsegregationguise.com slash BP for your free proposal and find out how much you could save this tax season. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 224.

On day one, we did one house. So we are no different than any listener right now that is doing their first one or is just completed their, you know, their first few deals and they're looking to scale and grow, we're no different than them. We were in the exact same boat, you know, 13, 14 years ago. But one of the things about us, 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. Host to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Brandon, where is you're like, you're supposed to jump up at when I say host? Oh, that's right. I totally forgot my jump.

Where you at, man? Where you at? I'm out in the water. I'm in my head. I'm, you know, surfing or something. You're doing something, man. I don't know. What's up, man?

How are you? I'm good. I'm really good. I'm, uh... This is my co-host, by the way, everybody. This is Brandon Turner. He's out in Hawaii. I don't know what he's doing out there, but...

I'm, I don't know what I'm doing out here. I'm escaping the rain. I see, like, Facebook messages of family and friends of mine at home. Just like, you know, I saw one this morning that just said, for the love of God, stop raining. I'm like, you know, this is not bad. No, it's not bad. And you make a habit of letting us all know how not bad it is on a daily basis.

Hey, Josh, Hawaii's pretty good, man. When are you going to Hawaii? Josh is pretty good. I got to keep up. And the Instagram picks up to make everyone, you know, like, oh, I got to go to Hawaii, you know. It's all, it's all. Are you now employed by the, uh, the Travel and Tourism Board of Hawaii? Is that what's going to?

I'll go talk to them. Maybe I'll do a, uh, I'll do a, uh, a Hawaii vacation podcast, you know, Josh Dorkin and Brett and Turner. It'll be great. Nice. Nice. Awesome, man. Awesome.

Hey, so, uh, vacation's going well. Yeah. You know, it's travel. It's travel. It's travel. Yeah. I call like half vacation, half travel. It's a, it's like the whole like, uh, you know,

I don't know, use your real estate to build up cash flow and other assets. You know, like, then do what you want with it. You know, like I'm a big fan of those as many pipelines as you can in life, whether it's the real estate, whether whatever, do fun stuff. Yeah, that's good. And you're also doing a great job of adding another pipeline. And that is a character in a new movie, Leatherface. Yes, leatherface.

It's the new movie coming out in 2014. No, my, yeah, I'm not burned. I'm just really getting tan. Oh, yeah. You know, but when you're, when you're this shade of pasty white. Pink and red is not quite what I would call Dan, but, you know, it's all good. It's all good. I got the Bucan eyes going too, so, you know, you have been wearing the shade.

Nicely done. Nicely done. Well, listen, man, we got, we got a great show today. We got another repeat guest back on the show. Yeah. Today is one of our actual, you know, it was one of my favorite people. I know one of your favorite people. Chris Clotheier, awesome guy, very, very smart businessman.

Oh, yeah. Businessman. as we will talk about in the show. It's my business, man. And, yeah, I mean, today's show is fantastic. I mean, Chris, I mean, we talk about, we started talking about, like, big picture business stuff, and then we drill down to the nitty-gritty of, like, I mean, this guy doing like 17 deals a week. Yeah, how do you grow there?

How do you get your first employee, your second employee? How do you scale? How do you make offers? I mean, I love this stuff we talked about today. I could have talked for four hours with Chris today. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, for me, the coolest part of the show was not that. Even though I love that, the coolest part was when we started talking about his ultramarathon stuff.

Oh, yeah. 100 miles. 100 miles. 100 miles. And it wasn't just like, hey, who's crazy enough to do 100 miles. We got into how an ultramarathon is very similar to doing your first real estate deal. And the analogies, it's amazing. I mean, you know, what we talked about, I think we'll really get a lot of people motivated, get a lot of people pumped.

So I'm super excited about today's show. There you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah. Well, before we do, why don't we get to today's quick tip? Hey, I got a quick tip. I know we had one plan, but I have another one just off top of my head. It's a real estate quick tip.

So this is like a simple small thing, but it just happened to me yesterday. And so I thought I'd share the quick tip. So I'm negotiating on a real estate deal right now. We had it actually negotiated down to the price we wanted. Everything was great. And then, well, I should say we had our number on what the repair was. We have the contractor come in. tell us the number that he said, and it was exactly the number we had decided on.

And so everything was right. We were going to sign the contract this morning with the person. And then by chance, the partner I'm working with on this deal happened to be talking to the contractor and realized the contractor only bid labor. For some reason, he just decided that his bid didn't include material. And we never specifically specified we want labor and material in this bid. So all of a lot through the bid off by, you know, 15 grand. Now the deal's dead.

So I should have from the beginning, we should have just, yeah, so quick tip, specify with your contractor when you get a bid you want labor and material don't assume that they know what you're thinking that is a fantastic tip really really really good tip yeah nicely done well our quick tip for the show is bigger pockets publishing is looking for more books so we ask that you submit your proposal outline and sample chapter to bigger pockets dot com slash author if you are interested in being an author for bigger pockets please do that and speaking of authors for bigger pockets. As we are sitting here recording this show, today, well, actually yesterday was the official launch of Scott Trench's book set for life, ranked as high as I think it was like

150 or something. Maybe it was 160 of like every book on Amazon. Last I checked, there was 175. It's crazy. It was so popular. It was sold out. Like, I mean, like they're shipping more right away, but they ran out of their stock. Amazon's entire massive stock. Yeah, temporarily out of stock. So, yeah, it's crazy. Awesome book. If you're interested in learning, Bore, check out the podcast with Scott Trench. We just did.

And of course, remember that there was a big bonus, like, launch. We're doing a big launch here the first couple weeks that book is out. And so if you guys end up buying the book of the first two weeks, make sure you guys email set for life at biggerpockets.com

and get a whole ton of bonuses that Scott put together. Yeah, and you can check out the book at biggerpockets.com slash set for life. So let's get into this thing, of course. If you have not yet rated, reviewed us on Apple, iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, any of the places that you're possibly listening to the show, please do that. That really helps us get the word out. And let's get to Chris.

So as we talked about, Chris has been doing this for a very long time. His company has now grown dramatically. They are now doing about 17 deals a week. I believe we had talked about $100 million in real estate. It's crazy. So let's listen. Let's hear what he has to say and take it from there. All right, Chris, welcome back to the show, man.

Wow, you're in the elite three interview club. How elite is that club? I'm not competitive or anything. I think there's like four of you maybe, three of you? Yeah, three or four. I mean, not many. So I wasn't the first. That's all right.

It's no big deal. It's all right. I'm good with that. The first was actually a tie between Ben Labovich and Brian Burr. and Serge Shukot. We interviewed all three of them, right? Didn't we do that all in one big show? I think we did.

Yeah. Well, all of them are way more entertaining than I am, so that's, I'm good with that. I'm good. Yeah. Well, good. So you may not be the first three, Peter, but we're excited to talk to you today. You know, I don't know, I've never actually probably told you this before, but you're one of the business minds that I look up to a lot, both in real estate and business.

So anytime I get a chance to pick your brain, I love to do it. So I'm excited about today's show when I heard you were coming back on. So it should be fun. I'm excited. I'm always excited to come on and talk to you guys. It's funny you compliment me that way. And of course, every time I see Josh, I'm always saying that this is, it's really cool how you and I used to talk. When was it, 2008, 2009, we would just kind of connect on business to see how each other we're doing. And here we are, however many eight, nine years later, I'm loving what I'm seeing you guys do. So I look up to you as much as you may look up to me to see what's happening out there. Wow, why don't we all get a room and, you know? Okay. That's just weird. That's just weird.

That's just weird. That's just weird. That's just weird. I want to start at the beginning. You know, obviously people, some people have heard your show before that we've done with you, but a lot of people haven't. They don't know who you are, what you do, or anything about that. Can you got to give us a quick recap of your real estate story, where you came from?

How did you get in the real estate? And how did you get to where you are today? And you have one minutes. And really quick. Chris was on show 26. So biggerpockets.com slash show 26 and show 122. biggerpockets.com slash show 122 previously. Man, that was a long time ago.

Yeah. All right. The funny thing about the way I got started in real estate and we'll keep everything very, very short, but I love telling people that it was complete accident. Most, or there's a lot of investors today that don't know who Carlton Sheets is because those commercials are long gone. He's no longer on the air anymore. But I actually was sitting in a hotel room, unable to sell my personal residence in Tennessee.

and I'm in, I've transferred to Dowell or to Denver and I ordered a late night TV, you know, Carlton Sheets program, how to invest in real estate. I think it was no money down or cheap creative, whatever. And I received it. It was funny. I found it recently. I only opened about a third of the material that he said to me, but it was the right third apparently because through reading his, you know, creative steps to get started in real estate,

I ended up doing my first real estate deal just a couple months later. It was a trade. I ended up trading my home, my personal residence, for a investment property down by a university. Somebody was ready to start a family and expand. I needed something less expensive there in Memphis to be able to enable me to buy a property in Colorado. And so that's what I did. I ended up trading homes with somebody. I took their small property by the university.

They took my big property and we were off and running. I was hooked. Nice. That's cool. That's how I got started. Since then, I own with my family, Memphis Invest. We are a turnkey provider out of Memphis, Dallas, and Houston. We've been doing this since 2003.

So this is our 14th year as a company. And we just went over 4,200 properties under management. And we never saw that coming. I don't think that we ever set out. There's no whiteboard. Like I have these whiteboards around. There's no whiteboard that says this is what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. We just, I guess, through perseverance, some good decisions.

You have to say some luck, because we made some good decisions at the right time and the way the industry was going. We've persevered. We've been doing this for 14 years. We have 1,800 clients and 4,100 properties or 4,200 properties under management. Do you manage for other people as well or only for the clients you sell properties to? Yeah, no, we stuck to only managing properties that we've renovated. Okay. So, yeah, even, even we've had some, we've had a number of clients that have sold their properties to other investors and then we've maintained the management for them, but we won't

take properties on that we didn't, you know, renovate in the first place. I did not know that. I didn't know that either. Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, that means just you're bigger than I thought you were. I mean, 4200 I was thinking must be with, you know. Don't, don't inflate his head anymore. I mean, that's, that's significant.

I mean, I managed 50 tenants and it drives me a little bit nuts. So, well, it's not only that, but like, I mean, you guys recently crossed 100 million, right? I mean, yes. The funny thing is I was telling some investors recently, and I do this a lot, that you want to tell people that you always make these decisions based on what's best for the client. And in reality, when you're, when you're a bigger company, if you're really thinking about strategy and what you're doing, you're always making decisions on what's best for you as a company. and then if you know what you're you know what value you provide or whatever then then that'll come when you ask about why we don't manage other people's properties for us we realized early on that if we didn't do the renovation you know move outs and renovation costs and you know fixups that kind of

stuff that can really that can take a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of resources you know you have to have a lot of people to manage that type of a business so we decided that we only wanted to manage things that we renovated in neighborhoods that we were comfortable. And so it really limited our ability to grow. But what paid off in the end, what we didn't realize is that we could manage more property with fewer people. We were way more efficient as a company. And it made it better.

So how many people are you guys today? We have 77 full-time people today and three offices. So that's the other thing. We began to position people in different parts of the country so that we, you know, again, be more efficient. That is pretty efficient. I mean, that's a, that's a pretty slim team, given that you guys buy, renovate, and manage. And you've got 1,800 clients and 4200 properties.

I mean, like, I would have expected you were at like 125, 150 by now. No, and only about 60% of those people work in the management company. The rest, and I would say it's, and I don't have the exact number for me, but I would say it's probably no more than 50 in the three cities. The rest all work in other departments around the company. So. Okay. And can I ask how do you structure 77 people?

I know this might not be super applicable for people listen to the show, but I'm just curious. I mean, do you have managers and then directors? And I mean, how does that structure? Yeah, we've, it's been a struggle for us. You know, we're a family-owned company. And so you've got my father, you've got my brother, myself, that for years, we actually each ran particular departments. I mean, we were the, not only were the owners, but we were, you know, knee-deep in

in the decision-making every single day. we've sent we brought in some really really key people that have helped us become comfortable giving up some things so today it's structured where you've got the three of us for lack for a better way to put it we kind of sit at the top and then we have a CFO that he doubles as our I mean he's he's head of all accounting he's head of HR he doubles as our HR guy we always don't to leave the room if we're going to if we're going to say anything that we don't want him to hear it's it's interesting we've got one guy that's really taken over the head leadership. And then we have a group of five that are executive committee. And each of them runs a different department. It's property management. It's property renovation. It's property acquisition. You know, they're all over, one of them is over customer service. And each of them has their department that they run and they each have a team anywhere from four to 20 people. And so it's, it's very departmentalized, you know, and you got a lot of everybody's kind of meeting with their own teams and it comes back to the top for us to review.

So, you know, you guys grew it. It's interesting. It's a very similar story, right? I mean, we're not quite as big as you guys are in terms of staff or anything. But, you know, it was the same thing. It was me. I did all. I ran all the departments.

Brandon came in, you know, hired a few other people. I was still kind of running them all. And then you get to a point where you can't do that anymore. And then what happens is you're not removed from the business. this per se, but you're removed from the details. And so I wanted to just ask you about that, you know, as one of the three that was kind of doing everything, making all the decisions. You know, what is that like now being in a place where you start to, you know, get removed a little bit? It's funny. It gets, I will say that anybody that really enjoys real estate and I've always said

I'm more of a businessman than I am a real estate guy, but I do love really. state. It got to the point where... By the way, I thought you were going to steal the JZ quote there. I'm not a businessman. I'm a businessman. Man. Anyway. Next time. I'm shocked that that came out of your mouth. I expected some quote from like Dali

pardon there, Brandon. Because I know a JZ quote. Come on. Yeah. I'm not sure what that's going. Hell, I don't even remember what I was saying? Oh, I'm not a business man. I'm business. man.

I got to the point where I was like, it's almost, it's not lonely. That's not the right way to put it. But I missed getting my hands dirty is a good way to put it. I missed being in the houses and being a part of the decision making. We, we actually, my younger brother and I both began to do our own higher end buying holds in a part of the town that was, you know, they don't, they're not as, it's not as practical to, to offer to. to out of state investors because of the price points. But for us, we were, you know, we just wanted to get our hands dirty again. And these actually were fixing flips that we chose to hold instead. But it was exciting. I found suddenly it was exciting to get back in a house

and talk about walls that we were going to take out and which, you know, materials were going to use to finish it out. What color schemes were we going to try? Because we had gotten removed from that. We were, as you said, Josh, we were much more into the, I mean, you know, like personnel decisions. And you're meeting with, you're meeting with team members about the details of what they do, which, you know, has nothing to do with real estate per se. You know, it's, it's numbers and it's, it's reporting. And all of it's important to some, to an investor, but it's, it's no longer practicing the art of real estate, the art of finding, fixing, so that said, I think people worry a lot to like in the beginning of real estate investing. Like

when I first got started, when, you know, you did, Josh did, I feel like we all focus a lot of the mechanics of real estate. You know, we read real estate books and we go to real estate seminars or whatever. Like, it's all real business or real estate. But real estate in itself, it's really just a business like any other. I mean, it's just the asset you're dealing with is real estate, but you're in a business. So, yeah, I'm a big believer in like, you know, like even if you're a one-man operation, start thinking in terms of this is a business and I deal with real estate. Well, it's funny that even with you guys, we say, we've been saying this for quite a long time. We've recognized it a long time ago that we're, we're.

in the customer service business. We just happen to do business in real estate. That happens to be the thing that we do. Like Bigger Pockets is not a, you know, per se, a real estate company. Right. You know, it's information company. And it's just interesting how when you, like you said, Brandon, when you think nothing about or all you think about is the, these details and these numbers, you can lose focus on how sometimes how they work together, how they interact, you know? Yeah. And it's, it's been an interesting ride to go from actually, every day we used to, you know, when we first started, our offices were my dad's truck. Nice.

We would get in his truck in the morning and we would drive around and look at houses. We would go buy renovations. We would go by houses we wanted to buy. We would go by houses that were already rented. I remember many times stopping and going and knocking on our residence doors if the yard wasn't cleaned up right or if we saw something that we didn't like, we would just go and knock on the door and let them know that we were the, you know, own the management company. We wanted to make sure that they knew they needed to clean something up or whatever.

And since then, we've gotten away from that. We try and it's funny. We try and take a day a month where we get out, no matter what city we're in, and we go and do nothing but look at houses. Because at some point, you grow to the size like you're saying, Josh, where you have people doing all that for you and you're staying with them. You're in the numbers, but you're, you know, you need to go out and take a look at it. And you still need to feel like you know what you're looking at.

Yeah. So we've been talking big picture here, right? I mean, we're, you know, and a lot of this for listeners who've never done a deal or have done one or two, you know, they're like probably tuning out by now. So like I'd like to bring it. Not that you're boring, Chris, because you're not. But how do, a little bit, but like how do we bring this whole thing back? For example, you know, somebody getting started who's just done their first deal or on, they're working on their second or third. How do you start to get those people? How do you start to build that infrastructure? from the very beginnings, hiring out those tasks that you're doing. What's, you know, where would somebody start? What would you recommend? Well, I always tell the exact same thing that on day one, we did one house. So we are no different than any listener right now that is doing their first one or is just completed their, you know, their first few deals and they're looking to scale and grow. We're no different than them.

We were in the exact same boat, you know, 13, 14 years ago. But one of the things about us, and it's a little, it's not unique to our family, but we, my dad kind of had this vision to be able to create something and said we will, we'll kind of adjust as we go. So this whole idea that you have to have a game plan and you have to know exactly what someone's going to do and you have to have their, you know, 40 hours outlined, we weren't that way. The very first person we hired was a friend of my father had an assistant who he could not keep busy. My father knew he needed help with mailing out mailers, answering calls, going out and checking on houses. He needed someone to begin to fill this role for him. And so he met this young lady for coffee, and he told her, he said, I don't know where this is going. I don't know exactly what you're going to be doing, but I have things that I need help with.

I want to hire you for 15 to 20 hours a week. We'll see what happens. We'll see where it goes. We'll see what comes next. if you have that openness and that idea that you're not going to freak out that you don't have exactly what the person's going to do from day one and you can't fill them up with 40 hours don't look at it as wasted dollars don't look at it as an expense that that is too much for you look at it as an investment that even a even a small investment in someone that's going to answer your phone for you or reply to emails for you or make filings and and call up your residents or call up your contractors just kind of begin to organize you. all that's an investment in you and getting your time back. And so everybody that you hire from that point on, no matter what they're going to be doing,

they're doing something for you. They're taking something off you to give you more time to do what you do best. That's really the way you have to look at every single person you hire. And they don't have to be full time either. I mean, you could hire somebody five hours a week. That's right. That's what he did. And it's so funny,

her name is Carol Hendricks and she still works with us today. She's in our customer service department. But it's really interesting the way she tells the story. She's like, he did not have specifics. He did not know exactly what we're going to be doing. He was managing 50 houses at the time. And he just wanted her to come in and help him take over some of the mailing and some of the answering the phone calls and some of just the stuff he didn't want to do. And so I don't want you to hear the fact that he had 100 house at the time because that's not necessarily the point either.

You don't have to have 100. And that doesn't need to be the point you decide to get help. you can get the help from day one. As long as you are focused on what you want to do best, it might be, you know, finding the houses. It might be running the renovation crews.

It might be negotiating deals. Whatever it is that you really, really enjoy, you just find somebody for a few hours to kind of learn the business with you and or from you and take a couple of tasks off your plate. You know, a year ago, a year ago I hired a little over a year ago.

I hired my assistant, like my first assistant, right? At the time, I advertised, I was looking for somebody at 15 to 20 hours a week. And then she came to me and she was perfect for the role, but she's like, no, I need a full-time job. I had to leave this full-time job. So I ended up hiring her full-time because I'm like, you know, it's going to be an investment in there.

And I mean, it's been a huge learning experience. But I mean, if you, I would speak to everybody out there. I mean, if you can do it, do it. Like, and again, even if you have to go part-time, I mean, just the fact that, like, she takes care of the process stuff has been the biggest impact for me. In other words, like, real estate is largely about processes, right? It's about analyzing deals and making offers and going to look at properties and things that I know I should do, but I don't always do because it's like, I got to go out and do that. But instead, I make her do it. And then she does the process stuff while I work on big picture.

It's been a monumental change in my business. I love that you just said that because even us as a company, we had a meeting this morning. And I was speaking to a gentleman by the name of Ryan in our company who heads all of our buying. And it was really funny that he used some words, he used verbies, whatever that he's trying to really, really focus in and just. buy very, very particular houses. And so in other words, he's trying to make eight offers to buy seven houses. And anybody that's been in real estate for a while knows that it doesn't happen. It doesn't work.

And but he's gotten, it's not that he's got, he has not gotten lazy at all. I don't mean like that, but he's gotten very comfortable with a high rate of success. And, but right now he's struggling to find the, the 16 or 17 houses a week that we want to buy as a company. So it was really interesting. I told him, talking about processes. and he's got team members. I told him that that's what they're for.

You know, we should be making, you know, 100 to 200 offers a week to go out to buy the deals we want. It's the same thing for anybody starting off. Bring somebody in to help you to make the 10 offers a week that you need to make in order to buy the house that you want. You know what I mean? It's take those little jobs that you don't want to do or not even that you don't want to do, but you want to focus elsewhere and let them do the process.

I love that you said that brand because that's exactly right. Thank you. Do you hear that, wait. Now I answer that. Maybe I should have done that. No, here's what I think. At the beginning of every bigger podcast, nobody cares what you think.

Listen, every podcast episode now, we have a little, we have a little segment, right? Like, we're like, the guest says something really powerful. Why are you talking? We're going to take that little clip right there, and we're going to put that at the beginning of this show.

That's not happening. Brandon, you're the smartest, best-looking guy I've ever known in my life. And I want to give you a hug. Is that what he said? Something like that. I need a scoreboard over here where I've got the compliments for Josh and the compliments for Brandon.

Makes time keeping a score. So keep it even, Keep even. All right. So I want to talk about this a little more. You can't compliment him. It's fine. His ego can't possibly get any bigger, Chris.

His head can't possibly get any bigger. It falls over sometimes. I'm thinking he might be in need of some love, you know, with having to work for you and the hard driver that you are. It's rough. Yeah. It's a rough life. I'm sitting here. Let's everybody pick on Josh now.

Yeah. Okay. So can we get back to this? I mean, like seriously. I want to talk about process because this is something I harp on all. the time. You talked about, yeah, first of all, can you explain why it might not be logical to say I'm going to make eight offers and get seven deals? Like, why is that maybe a new thing? That's a good question. That's a great question, actually. A couple of their brand.

Well, hang on. We mark that on the wall. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, that's a learned experience is what that is in that you may, you may, you may have success making eight offers and getting seven or eight houses and it does happen. But you'll learn over time that over 52 weeks in a year that that's not going to be the case, that there is competition. There are, you know, forces working outside of you that you're not aware of. There will be just the competitive nature of real estate in and of itself right now means that if you try and really focus in and just make that, and we'll dumb the numbers down. If you try to make that one offer to buy that one house, you give yourself the lowest odds of success.

But what happens is most, especially newer investors, they have a high level of fear that if I make 10 offers, what happens if I get four of them accepted? And I only want one. And it's not a scarcity mentality. It's just a lack of an abundance mentality, an idea that if you made 10 offers and you had four accepted and they all look like good deals,

but you can only buy one, you've got three other opportunities to turn that into an income. Now, it might be partnering. It might be wholesaling it. It might be just letting it go and calling the, you know, call another investor that can step in for you. You may not make any money on it,

but you can call that listing agent, let them know that, hey, I had to accept some other deals, but I've got a buyer here that's, you know, whatever, whatever ends up going on, all of them are opportunities for you to do really well, either increase your name,

increase your, you know, your reputation, or to increase your bottom line by buying the house. it's not a that's not a bad thing if you win four of the deals it's just more than likely an investor's got to make those 10 offers to get one not not 10 offers to get 10 that's the number i always say one out of 10 it was funny in high school like we're all said you know if you fail 90% of the time in high school like you're an idiot right i mean like you're you're failing and you're a miserable person if i can fail 90% of the time in real estate i'm a millionaire because all i know is that i have to make that many more offers to get the numbers that i want

it's a numbers game. And if you, the other thing, too, is that you tell investors, this is also good for new investors to hear. If you make eight offers and you get eight accepted, you probably. Offer too high. Yeah, you probably are in a bad position at that point. You probably have offered too much on those deals. And I don't know that I'd necessarily agree with you should be embarrassed by the offer you make, but you should have to calculate it and think about it and think about what it is, you know, what you're going to make on this particular deal, why you're making the offer. making. And if it's just like off the top of the head, like this is what I'm going to offer, you're probably not valuing your time and what you're going to get off this deal very much. Yeah, that makes sense. When I bought my first rental, I thought collecting rent would be the hard part. Nope.

The admin crushed me. Every night was receipts, tax forms and checking who was late on rent. I kept thinking, if this is one unit, how do people run 10? Base lane changed that. It's Bigger Pocket's official banking platform that handles expense tracking, financial reporting, rent collection, and even tenant screening all in one place. It's the system I wish I had from day one. Sign up today. At baselane.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100 bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured bank. Bank banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC.

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, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact,

so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, International Wires, card or check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets.

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking.

And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post. The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com

slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. If you think property management is expensive, try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early. That's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead. Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses. And that matters more than ever in this economy. That's why I like Mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things. things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score, and they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is

much cheaper than learning the hard way. So how are you guys actually finding deals now? I mean, you know, the market's tightening up. Oh, man. And a lot of the markets you're in. So, you know, 17 you said you guys are gunning for on a weekly basis. What do you need to do to get that many deals? and obviously those folks who are listening can extrapolate from that in their own market and things like that.

So how are you guys finding them? So number one is be impeccable with your word. I mean, we've never backed out of a contract. And so we still have an incredible high rate of success buying directly off the MLS. We still have a lot of real estate agents, listing agents, brokers that that will come to us to get our price on a property. doesn't, they won't necessarily come to us first and we won't be exclusive, but they will come to us and ask us for the price because they know that our contract is strong. And so we win a lot even when we're not the highest price because our contract is just stronger. So,

what do you mean by that? Contract is stronger. They're going to close, right? I mean, if you signed, they're going to close. Yeah. And we use fewer of the outs. You know, we don't put in the 10-day review clause and I want my money back clause and all those kind of things. We basically come in and say if I put an offer in, earnest money is rock solid. If I don't close, you can keep it. We don't ask for a lot of periods to go review houses unless it's a with a particular agent or a particular company that says, we want you to. It's okay. We'll give you a three days to review. Basically, as you just said, Josh, if we end up signing the bottom line, we close. And that's what makes our contract super strong, especially in this market, because you have a lot of,

you have a lot of corporate entities that are buying now. Hey, Chris, I want to interrupt really quick because. Yeah. And I definitely want to get back to the original question. My, you know, I worry that some of the advice you're giving may create some issues here and hear me out. So, you know, first we're saying your word is your bond. You guys are going to close on it. And then what we're talking about is telling potentially new people, hey, if they offer on 10 properties, you know, you may get four accepted.

now, and they're now in a position where they may not be able to actually accept those for offers. So how do we work through that? I know we already talked about some options for them, but is there not an ethical issue there or is there not some kind of dilemma that people should think about? Man, I love that you caught that and asked that question because I'll tell you that there's no better advice I can give somebody than to be honest and up front. And I'll use the word brave because I think, you know, it's not just in the real estate. There's a lack of bravery sometimes that if you find yourself in a situation where you cannot close on a deal,

the best way to handle it is with honesty, integrity, and very straightforwardness. You know, don't be around the bush. If you can't close on a deal, you go straight to the listing agent or the broker's firm or whoever it is. And you let them know that this is what's happened and why I cannot close. Too often it's, you know, radio silence from somebody that can't close on a deal. And they just say, I'm just going to walk away from my earnest money and forget about it. I didn't have to put much up. So that's just a learn lesson.

And mostly that's out of embarrassment. Whereas if someone will step forward and say, this is the dilemma I'm in, I cannot close at this time. Here's the way I'm trying to work through this. Can we work together? What can I do to assist you? Because everybody wants to get paid on the deal and you're holding someone else up and getting paid. I don't, I guess being an important. impeccable with your word and your word is your bond.

Josh is as good as if you can't close, but you've done everything you can, then what else can you do? You hold your head high and you say, I acted with without malice and I acted with, you know, integrity. Yeah. And it goes a long way. So when I say we've never backed out of a contract, that's not, I mean, again, we've had to back out of contracts before for different reasons. But we've also gone and always been very, very upfront and honest. and we have had situations where we've had people tell us that you can't back out of it. You know, you have to close the contract for one reason or another.

You have to do this and we've done it. We've closed that contract. And that's one of those where you just suck it up and you make it happen. For a new investor, again, that may be tougher to do. But you can't hang your head. You know, early on, we made decisions and back through the crisis, the crash, that if we signed the contract, we were going to close it. And we did.

very, very, very rare would we have to ever back out? And I can't, you know, again, like I said, I can't think of these scenarios, but I know that it's happened. Yeah. The reality is that we've always just been up front and honest and said, this is exactly where we stand. What can we do to work together?

And when you do that, you just, you build really, really good rapport. I think it's great advice. Great advice. Very, very, very good. And I expected that was what you were going to say, but I had to ask the question. Well, and also on the note, it's not like I don't think, I don't never, I know,

I don't advise and I don't think you guys would either. Like a newbie to go out and make 10 offers on a Thursday afternoon, right? Like I think in terms of over a month or two, you might make 10 offers. And so you'll know, it's not like you're going to get all four, even if you did get four to 10, you're not going to get them all in one afternoon accepted. Unless you overpay. Unless you offer that way too much. Well, the other thing too is that it's just so easy today to get a mentor and to have someone

to bounce good advice off of. If you're willing to take action, you can find someone who's willing to to assist you with advice. And so, you know, the other, the flip side of this is that any new investor coming into this, one of the very first things to do, especially, you know, you asked me earlier about hiring people or how you conduct your business or how you grow. I mean, there's just so many high quality resources. And yeah, I'm going to bounce back on to bigger pockets here for a second.

But there are, there are so many ways to be able to get the assistance that you need and get good sound advice that you need where, as you said, Brandon, I'm new to this. I should know better than to go out on the very first day and say, I am just going to, here we go. I'm letting them fly. Here go all the offers without really having that plan. You know, you sat down with someone. You've gotten good sound advice. They've helped you review and kind of narrow down your farm area that, you know, you know the offer you're going to make or why you're going to make them.

There's just, there's just too many good ways today to take care of yourself that you shouldn't, you should not find yourself in too many scary positions. Having deals accepted, if you've done your homework on the front end, should be a really, really good thing. Not something to be nervous about. That makes sense. So going back to the finding deals, you're getting a lot of luck on the MLS, you said, and then you were saying when Josh rudely cut you off. Hey, can you mark it on your board, please?

Oh, that's take one off. No, that's a bonus. We got, you were saying we got a lot of corporate buyers coming to the market. And, you know, what do you mean by that? And what are you guys doing about it? Well, the, you know, back 2012 probably was the time frame, 2013, and even through today, there was a lot of, they were, the word thrown around was hedge funds. Everyone was suddenly a hedge fund, but no matter how you look at it, there was a lot of entity buyers, a lot of, they weren't your typical, you know, traditional investor that we had known about before that time. And what we did to combat that, there was a lot of people that got very nervous.

A lot of companies shut down, a lot of individual investors got out of the game. their market because they saw it was heating up too much. There was too much competition. Prices were going through the roof. All we did was double down on a relationship. We basically went and met with all of the people, all the agents that we had bought houses from in the previous years, whether we had bought one or bought 50. And we just, we got their take on what was happening. We made sure they understood that we still wanted to buy. We wanted to be heavy players, but we weren't going to overpay. What transpired and came out of it was, and it still happens even to this day was a lot of offers are made and then they're renegotiated closer to closing.

And for some, it's been a good, it's been a good strategy. They've come in. They've said we've got, you know, a lot of money to throw around, millions. We will buy all these properties. We'll pay top dollar. But 72 to 96 hours before closing, they finally have a person that can take a look at it. And they'd come back and said, we, you know, our price was too high. We want to lower it down.

in the in the position they're holding is that I want to make sure that everybody knows this isn't everyone but this was something that we saw would happen and it did happen and so all we did was kind of sit back the way we always do and say when that happens if you want a solid price you know someone that's going to not renegotiate with you and just and just close the deal give us the call and we've that's what I meant earlier by the having the stronger contract it's why we we've and really is that even as an individual investor if you just build a these tight personal relationships and you build rapport, you can, you know, make it through any fluctuation in the market, any, any, you know, price spikes, anybody coming in and driving the prices up, you can survive and make it through because the personal relationship is going to, is still going to earn you business. That's what it did for us. So, but beyond, but beyond the, the on market stuff, are, you know, you, you guys going to auctions or you guys doing mailings. We just started, we just started ramping up our direct mail. Everybody always laughed at us because we were, we've never been a heavy direct mail kind of company. Well, you're in a market where a property on

market, you can actually kind of get deals. Well, for a while at least, right? Sure, sure. And we're also like we're in Dallas and Houston. So you're talking about two massive markets where there's just a lot of opportunity. But there still hasn't been enough for us to grow the way we want to grow. So we have started doing direct marketing, which has been, that's unique for us. We, we haven't used direct marketing in a very long time, direct mail. We've started to do a lot more online. It's amazing how you can buy houses through social media. So we are able to purchase houses. We've done a few through social media. How do you do that? What does that mean? Well, you're advertising as a buyer. So you select a very particular market that you want to advertise and add to in an area. So market meaning, the, the personality,

the avatar that you want to see your ad. And then you design an ad basically that, you know, for us, we're a family-owned business that buys properties in your area. You know, go here to see who we are, what we offer if you'd like somebody to take a look at purchasing your house. So we, you know, it's just your traditional ad. We take the same direct mail ad, but we put it online. And it's actually worked.

It's worked quite well. And so we buy houses, again, in Texas through that way. That's still not the main way. But then we do, we do some today through the, the auctions. which those are absolutely one of the most amazing ways to find really, really good deals. If you know what you're looking for, we recently bought, you know, because we're not scared of mold. We're not scared of fire damage. We're not scared of foundation issues.

And so if you're willing to go and you kind of know how to mitigate those things, you can pick up some really, really good deals that most investors, especially the entities, they want to stay away from because they want something that's much less hands-on. If you're willing to go and you know how to do the work, you can get some really good deals at the auction house. And you're talking about like the county auction, the government type of options that we're talking about? Well, I'm talking more of the, you know, they all have companies now that they've hired, some are national, some are local that they hired to actually auction their properties off for them. Okay. And so that's what I mean. So they might be county owned. They might be owned because of taxes or, as I said, it might be because something's happened to the property itself.

and so they're just selling it at auction, such as a fire damage or, you know, something along those lines. And they still, they bring an auction company in to actually conduct the auction. We will go to those and have been very successful. Okay. So, but we never had to do that before. You know, Josh, that's to your point. We used to simply have relationships with local real estate agents and off-MLS and we could buy everything we wanted. We just can't do that anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, and it's, that's something that listeners should pay attention to. I mean, you know, in order for you to continue thriving, your strategy has to shift, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it's, I'm still a big believer in it. And I say this all the time that an investor should be able to find a deal that makes sense.

Everybody's going to define that themselves. But they should be able to find a deal that makes sense in any city during any market up or down. It just takes, it takes persistence and patience. And you have to, you have to be willing to work a little bit. But, you know, the deals are still out there. And it's funny, we talk about it like it's a really big number, you know, trying to buy 15 to 17 a week. And it is. And I get the listeners, some listeners saying, you know, that's, you know, what they might try to do in a year. But when you really break it down in the big markets we're in, it's not a lot. It's just, it's still the same function of numbers. It's the same. You have to just extrapolate. How many offers do I have to make? How many phone calls do I have to make? How many lunches do we have to go on? How many, you know, interactions do you have to have to have in order to buy this number of properties each week? In other words, you're just, just work in that same process, whether you're trying to buy one deal a year or 50 deals a year or 100 deals a year. It's just a process. It's the same thing we were doing when we were trying to buy one

house. Well, can you can you give some actionable advice for people listening right now? I mean, like, what are some things they can do as part of their process right now? Like, you just mentioned a few things, but talk to the people that are listening right now that are maybe looking for that first deal or maybe their second deal and they're struggling to find stuff. What can they do? Well, if they're not, it's difficult to do this business and being an introvert. It's difficult if you have trouble talking to people or putting yourself out there because if you can't see it and if you don't believe it and if you don't already have the swagger and confidence of somebody that knows what they're looking for, I mean, it's going

to be hard to build personal relationships and have somebody trust you and believe you that you're a real buyer. That makes sense. You have to be able to sell yourself and believe in yourself. So if you really want to be a real estate, investor and part-time, full-time doesn't matter, but you want to make this happen and you want to be hands-on, you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You have to go to, whether it's real estate meetings, you know, different RIA clubs, whether it's going on like a platform, like a bigger

pockets and meeting other investors that are in your city near you and inviting them. Can we go have coffee together? Can I buy you lunch? Whatever. Can we sit down? You want to go to the, I always help able to find the three or four biggest realtors, those, especially those that are selling the most houses in the price point that investors are buying and pick number three or four and say, can I take you to lunch? Can I buy you coffee? I want to sit down. I want to, I want to tell you who I am, find out how we can do more business together and see if you will begin to make offers on my behalf to buy houses. The reason why you pick number three and four is because they're hungry. They want to get to be number one and two. And so you go and, and, and,

you just have to be willing to go and say the truth. You know, I'm not, I'm not the biggest guy out there. I haven't done 100 deals, but I have my act together. I have my financing together. I have my plan. I know what I want to do. Can you help me? This is still a absolute people business.

And the more people you know, the more willing you're able to get out there and meet people and tell them who you are, what you want to do, the more likely it is you're going to have success. That's great. So very good advice. It's time for it's time for it's time for the random five. All right, let's take a quick break here and jump into what we, a new segment of our show, which we call our random five. These are five random questions just to get to know you, Chris, a little bit better.

So is a new segment. It wasn't on last time you were on the show. So number one, do you like spicy food? No. Really? And you're in Dallas. I mean, you're in Dallas, but you work in Dallas and you don't like spicy food. What's wrong with you?

You know, I like spicy food, it's okay, but it's not my favorite. No, okay. He's weak. Next question. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Do you remember? I'm saying that to the guy who's running an ultramarathon. Yeah, yeah.

Well, do you remember Josh when we were sitting at that restaurant with you and all your friends, like, what, a year ago, something like that for your 40th birthday party? And you guys were all freaking out over the hot sauce and I like drank the stuff. That was hot. That I like, there's like spicy and then there's holy shit spicy. My mankind raised like 500 points that day because like Josh is and friends. were like crying. I'm like drinking the stuff. And yeah, it was great. Hey, I like flavor.

All right. Spicey and hot are different things. I like flavor spicy. Hot? No, not so much. All right. Next question. Would you rather be invisible or be able to read minds? Wow.

I was like all over the invisible part until you put the other side of it. I think invisible for sure. Invisible, I think would have better outcomes. A little more creepy. Slightly. Just slightly. All right. Would you rather water ski or snow ski?

Snow ski, for sure. Okay. Cool. So the next question is, what historical figure would you like to see in present day? I'm going to change that. This is an interview question I like to ask people, which is if you could experience the one day in the life of anybody living or dead,

who would it be and what day would it be? I think I would I would like to be Abraham Lincoln the day that they got the the votes through Congress to kind of to pass the end of slavery

I would like to be because that was from what we know about it was a incredibly moving day with lots of different meetings he had to go to and lots of trepidation in his mind I would love to be him on that particular day to see what that felt like and what was going you know what he was experiencing awesome awesome All right.

Ooh, I like this question. Last one. This is number five, right? Yeah. If you could take a year off, completely off work, zero work you could do that entire year. And I'm going to also say zero running, like, you know, marathon running. What would you do?

One year off. One year off of running and work. I would live on a boat and I would see the Adriatic Sea. I would go see the Croatian coast. in Greece, some of the, some of the places where modern civilization started. And I would go see parts of the world that are way, way, way more ancient and older than I am for sure that I can't see otherwise. Follow up to that. Would T. Payne be on the boat with you?

We haven't hung out in a while, but. Well, I want to follow up with that. Why have you not? Why do you not do that? We're getting deep here, but, you know. Well, the kids, why haven't I done it yet? You mean? Yeah, why haven't you yet?

Yeah, because of priorities with my children. And so we do a lot. And so I sacrifice, you make different sacrifices, different things, whatever. So one of the things I've sacrificed is that. But it doesn't mean I've sacrificed everything for the kids, but that's one thing that I sacrificed for them is to build to go and live on a boat for a little while, which I mean, I love the ocean. Yeah.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, that was the, that was our random five. Thanks, Chris. That was fairly random. That was good. Chris, so I want to shift a little bit. And, you know, we may bounce back, but there's something in your life that Brandon and I have both spoken about that's fascinating.

And I think it is relevant to everything that we're talking about here. And that's the ultramarathon. So you are currently training, as I understand, to run in an ultramarathon. So can you first explain what is an ultramarathon? Why on why in hell would anyone of sane and sound mine like yourself want to do such a thing? And then we got a whole lot of follow-ups that come. Well, I tell you that and I will keep it as brief my story as possible. That's impossible with you.

I know with me. but I am, so I turned 45 in like in just a couple of weeks. And then 10 days after I turn 45, I will run in the Keys 100 ultramarathon, which an actual ultramarathon is any distance of 50 kilometers or longer, which is roughly 31 miles. And I chose to do the 100 mile ultra marathon. 100 kilometer. No, I chose to do 100 mile. Okay.

So, which is about 160 kilometers, but it, for those of you that are that are listening in England, I just want to give them the proper metric. So I'm, I'm just, I realize that there are some things, and this is a, this is a physical challenge that I will not be able to do as I get older. And I was at the point where I've had a lot of, again, no matter how you define success, I've had success as a businessman. I've had success as a family man. I've had success as an entrepreneur. I wanted to try something different. Now, I was a excellent runner in my younger years. I've always been a runner through unfortunate circumstances. I did not run in college, but I should have. And I had the chance to do it. So this was something that it wasn't trying to recapture my glory days, but it was one of those things that I knew was inside me that I wanted to accomplish. and I wanted to see if I could push, and I didn't do it when I was younger. So I was like, I have to do it now or just give it up.

And to be very direct with you, it's funny that you ask about, it does have a lot to do with real estate. I learned so much so far training for this that directly correlates to how I've had success in everything, from real estate to business to everything. And I didn't realize it until I started taking time to document and write down what I was doing and what I was feeling and what I was going through. And I realized that it's a process. Brandon, to go back to your word. It is, it's no different. This is no different than anything else

that I've ever done to have success, the way I've gone about this particular race. And I haven't completed it yet. I haven't, you know, I haven't been successful yet. I've run 31 miles. So I've done the, I've done the 50 kilometer. I've done the ultra distance. And I know what to expect. And I've done, my training has been just insane to get ready for this, both mentally and physically. But I, I know that, guys, if I finish this race, I can't believe I just use the word if. When? When? Yeah, when I finish this race, exactly.

It is going to be, I want to go through the physical pain. I want to go through the, in pains the wrong way. I want to go through the challenge of this thing and to see if I can defeat my mind, to see if I can make my mind not, you know, kind of fight back against me, get it out of the way and actually go and finish this 100-mile race. It'll take me about 24 hours of running straight. But, wow. That's wild. So, you know, it's beyond the sheer insanity of it because, you know, you acknowledge, I'm sure that it's clearly insane.

But it sounds a lot like buying your first deal. It's, you know, there's a, I'm sure you'll readily admit you're scared to death of this thing. I'm sure you'll readily admit that you, you know, it would be so easy for you to find excuses why you shouldn't do it. reasons why you're not going to do it. And there's this fear, right? And that's what anybody who buys that first property really has to overcome, right? Is that fear of failure, that fear that they can't do it, the fear that they're not good enough, right? Yes, absolutely.

You know, it's, I broke this down, Josh, into, and I didn't realize I was doing this. You know, like I said, it was through going back and looking to realize what was happening. but I broke the race down into, for me, 10, 10 mile races. Yep. And I came up with a reason for each of those 10 miles. Now, for me, it's charity-based. But it's also like one of the reasons for one of the 10 miles. It's going to be my family.

One of them is going to be the team here at Memphis Invest. Then I've got different charities I'm running for. And I found myself creating something bigger than myself, bigger than just wanting to do this for me. then I mean, I fully committed to it. I decided that this wasn't a goal because goals are easy to give up, you know? This wasn't a, this wasn't like success steps because when you, when you miss one, what do you do? You just turn around and make a new one.

You know, when you don't hit a goal, you just say, okay, well, I didn't hit that goal. Let me just create a new goal. This had to be something that I was so passionately committed to that I wouldn't give it up. I wouldn't just say, oh, well, I didn't do 100 miles, but I did 57. You know, that's a lot. No, this had to be like so passionate that I was not going to be denied. Then I actually hired a coach for this. And I recognized that I needed to surround myself with really, really good, smart people.

And when I did, they gave me advice and set out my game plan. And I promptly went about not doing it, which is common. And I went about thinking that I could do some of my own research online. And I was doing some things on my own. I was reading different things. And I questioned a lot about what they were doing. I even, they gave me like very specific things to do. And I was like, I would send it back to them and say, well, I couldn't follow your plan, but here's what I did.

And they kept coming back to me saying, if you follow our steps, you will finish this race. If you don't, then I don't care if you finish. not because, you know, you hired me to coach you. I'm trying to do it. You're doing your own thing. And so it took me a while to get in line with them. But when I did, so when I, when I knew that this is what I, what I, what I most wanted, and when I put all my energy and my thoughts and my actions towards exactly what my coaches were telling me and I had the 10-step process. So basically chunking something big down, it became like, it became so simple. I was telling people that I ran I ran 30 miles last Saturday and I used to I remember I used to be like when I'd run

three I'd be like God is this almost over I mean I'm on two and a half miles and when is this going to end and I literally I was thinking that about this story I like the story keep going no keep going it's great it was it's basically it's just understanding that it's no different you you know you have something that you most want you're you're not willing to give it up you've got to create action steps and that you have to take in a reason, it's got to be bigger than just making money, it's got to be bigger than I just don't want to work my nine to five job anymore. That's not, that's not specific enough. There has to be something that you're actually doing this for. Surround yourself with good people. Follow their direction, follow their advice. That's

why you asked yourself to be surrounded by them in the first place. And then what you'll find is, in my case of 30 miles that I enjoyed running 30 miles. I no longer even thought about the three miles. I no longer thought about in this case with real estate, the number of offers I had to make or the fear of what happens that they get accepted or where am I going to find the money. I just thought about this is what I most want. And I surround myself with the right people. I'm going to make this happen. And so we'll see what happens on May 20th, how long it takes me.

But I am going to start at 630 in the morning. And I hope to not have to watch the sun rise the next day. I hope that I'm done inside of 24 hours, but we'll see. Wow. That's amazing. Amazing. And I really, really love how you said exactly what I was hoping you were going to say. Which is, I mean, you know, this is no different really than making that decision to go ahead and become a real estate investor, right?

You know, there's so many people, we all know this, right? I mean, I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it, and they never do it. It's the guy who decides I'm going to start a diet. It's the guy who starts, decides whatever, one of a million things that people always say that they're going to do. The difference between those people who say they're going to do it and those that do it is exactly what you said. You've got to find a reason why there's no other choice but to do that one thing. And there needs to be a plan. There needs to be that motivation.

And then you just do it. And that's the difference. I mean, we're on show 200 something here. Every single person that we've interviewed on this show over the years, that's what they've done. You know, anyone I know who's gone and started something and been successful with it, that's what they've done. So to everybody listening, you want to actually get started. Rewind it. Listen to Chris's long but completely motivating story about running.

And think about that in the context of real estate. And you got what you need. It's funny. I was asked by some people, why don't? Because I've never run a marathon. In fact, my first time to ever run a marathon distance was this past Saturday. when I went 31 miles, I went a little further. And I was asked by people, why not just go run a marathon?

And the honest answer is the same reason why it's the same excuse some people do with real estate. I've actually registered for five marathons. And five times I found an excuse not to do it. I paid money and entered the race. And five times I've gotten hurt or I couldn't find time to put in the training or I had to make a trip and go speak somewhere. Whatever it ends up being, it's always some excuse to not do it. And it was easy to give up. It was this goal that was easy to give up. I decided that I knew that I could do a marathon. A lot of people listen to this that having invested in real

estate can say, well, I know I can invest in real estate. I mean, how hard can that be? I mean, there's houses for sale everywhere. I can go and I can invest in real estate tomorrow, but they don't have a most want. I mean, they don't have something in them that says this is just, it's burning me up on the inside desire. And it might be. that they know that one house would be good, but it wouldn't make a huge difference. Whereas 10 houses will. So what do I do to get 10 long-term buying holes?

What do I do to do a flip that is, I mean, so audacious that I'm going to make, you know, as much money as I make at my job in a year. And that's the thing that should be, when somebody gets that and they pinpoint it and they say that's it and they latch on, they won't give up. It's one of those things where you can't just make an excuse and just walk away from it. It is this, I have to do this. And that's a unique difference between people that say they're going to do something and those that it becomes an obsession.

I love that. Very cool. Very cool. Well, I mean, I kind of want to talk like for the next hour on just that topic. And we got to get out of here. Running out of time for sure. So I want to ask you, before we get out of here, before we move to the fire round, famous four, all that good stuff. You've got, for those people who are not watching this on YouTube,

You can't see this if you're listening on, you know, on your iPhone or whatever. But behind Chris is a ton of whiteboard stuff. Like you've got whiteboards and post-it notes and like what are those things called? Gigantic post-it notes, like the four-foot ones. Anyway, can you explain like, you don't have to walk through your numbers, but I'm like, what is all that? Briefly. Yeah. Briefly.

What is all that? How do you keep track of your life like that? Or what is that? I just, so I have an assistant for the first time I've got a guy that works with me in our marketing department. And so this is this is like a publishing schedule of when we're going to publish content. This is all the training and conferences that we're going to for the year. Back behind me, yeah, that's for us to be able to keep track of our, you know, our top KPIs, the most important metrics that we track.

And we have all this in data. You know, we can see all this in a, you know, in a computer screen, but we just put it up in front of us. We've always found my dad's always taught us that you just take the most important things. You just put them in front of you all the time. And so that's where they are. Then over here, it's funny. That's actually where I'm keeping up with the book. I'm tracking all the stuff with this race.

So I've got everything up here that is kind of my notes. I'm documenting this thing in case I decide to write a book about running 100 miles, which is one of the goals that I have. So that's what all that is. It sounds really interesting. But we constantly keep stuff in front of us. That's the main thing. Keep your most important numbers in front of you all the time.

Don't just relegate them to some computer screen. Keep them in front of you. I love that. I love, love that. And I'm guilty of like, I wish if only I could see it constantly in front of me. And I think this show is my motivation to stop looking at a lot of this crap on the screen and literally have it up on boards everywhere. Because if you're constantly looking at it, you don't forget it.

You're constantly thinking about. So it's great. Yeah, that's right. And we have the team member who's responsible for it come in and update it. That's awesome. They are doing it. Yeah. So that, yeah, I actually, I bought a big four by eight white board.

just like you have there and I put it on my wall and I just never I just never used it hardly at all. So like I'm gonna, I'm recommitting to that right now. I'm gonna have Tracy who's my kind of assistant slash lead person. She's gonna come in there and update that thing every week with our numbers. I love it. My work is done here. Your work is done. All right. All right. So let's shift gears here and head over to our world famous fire. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's get to the fire round. These questions all come direct out of the Bigger Pockets forums. And we're going to fire them right at you, Chris.

Number one, we're a new LLC and just trying to find some insight on how to start building business credit. Any suggestions? Local banks, local farm credit bureaus, local credit unions. These are the places that are, they have, one, they've got more lending capacity. They have fewer of the big, you know, board members that have to get in and get things approve that they can they can lend money with with less approval they're looking to do business with local people if you have your act together if you can present them with a really good plan

don't walk in looking like uh well never mind you were going to go there weren't you you were going there absolutely please tell me you're going there i shaved i shaved you get it you get it you get it go in there and make you know care about how you look care about the appearance you make care about the information you give them and that's how you build your credit my job job is done here. Thank you, Chris. All right, next question. With property management companies, would I need a minimum amount of properties in my portfolio

to have a property manager cover my units? No. I think the question is, can I get a manager with just one rental? And the answer is yes. Yes. There you go. It is. That was always.

Okay, sorry, yes. That was very, yeah, very short. All right. Number three is actually a question that I have. I cannot wait to hear you answer this because this is something I deal with a lot. My tenant will not stop asking for improvements to their property. How do I politely or effectively tell them no? Right off the bat from the beginning, address them as a resident rather than a tenant.

So it's their property. If they have a minor improvement that they want to make to the property, they are free to make it with your approval. but this property that you take great care of and that you have provided for them as a benefit to them. So they should be proud and happy and thankful to have it. It is as it is. You take great care of it. You provide it, you know, clean, safe environment, but they are the resident. They reside in the property.

So if they have some minor things that they would like to do to improve their stay, by all means. All right. I like it. Right on, right on. All right. last question. What factor? I've got a list here. What factor determines a good long distance investment as somebody who provides such investments, obviously not giving you a door to pitch, but like, you know, for somebody who's just like, hey, you know, I think it's, I think it'd be cool

to looking outside my market. What would you tell someone? Yeah, I would tell you that it's, it's going to be different for every single person, but the result is the same. A good passive investment, whether it's next door or across the town, across the country, allows you to sleep well at night. You feel, I mean, you're confident, you've done your homework, you are relaxed and able to sleep well, that you've made a good decision. Everyone will come to that conclusion differently. So it's not just one thing. But because everyone is going to favor different things or have different, you know, challenges they want to overcome.

But it's whatever investment allows you to be calm and confident that you've made a good, smart decision. That's it. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, I like that a lot. Very cool. Awesome. Well, let's head over to the last segment of our show, which we lovingly refer to as our

Famous for. Famous Ford. Question number one, what is your favorite? And obviously, I know you're a reader. It's one thing I love about you is you read a lot of books. And so what is your current favorite real estate related book, not business, but real estate related book? It hasn't changed.

Nothing I've read has been able to change this. Make it Big by Frank McKinney. So last time you were on the show, you said that. I immediately bought it. It's been sitting on my like shelf of books I'm going to read next since last time you're on the show. It's been two years. So I, you know, Frank McKinney, again, I just said that's just one of those books that I've

try to replace it with other books. It's just the way it's written and the message it has, I go to it every single year. I don't know when that'll ever end. All right. So that's still it. I'm making a commitment right here, by the way. I'm going to read that book in the next month. I'm going to read it.

Yeah, please. Nice. Yeah, that's going to be like me in the four-hour work week. Yes. All right. Favorite business book, Chris. Currently. You know, it is business.

It's called Stealing Fire. Stealing Fire is, it is about business. So just read it. I'll leave it at that right there. It's not going to be like the rest of your business books. It's not like Blue Ocean or anything along those lines. It's not with that. But it's absolutely about how to get the most out of your brain,

how to get yourself in that state where you are just like so hyper creative and moving forward and how to get yourself to the point of being incredibly productive. Because you need more of that. All right. Next question. Number three, hobbies. What do you do for fun besides? Yeah. I mean, do I need to answer that right now?

Hey, well, this is what, what do you do for fun, not for pain? So, you know. And you have a new baby, by the way, right? Congrats. Well, she's not a bit, well, they're not a baby anymore. It's only three years old. But yeah, yeah. Since I spoke, I think.

I would say that, yeah, I've got five kids. There you go. That's what I do for fun is I have five kids from 15 down to three. So that's my fun. Yeah, you're always at games doing. doing fun stuff with them. It never ends. Absolutely. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Brandon.

All right. Last question for me. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or never get started? Well, you just said one thing that I think is key to the question, and that's the give up part. So many, many investors who failed, refused to give up and quit back from time. 2007 to 2010 are your most successful investors today. And so no matter what it is, whether it's real estate or anything else, when you give up or when you quit, there's a period at the end. That now you've now have been defined by whatever you did or did not do. When you don't give up, there's no period. It's just a comma. It's just the next piece of it. So I think the difference is

those that don't give up, they believe in whatever their dream is. They believe in their most want, they're willing to sacrifice and fight for it are the ones that ultimately end up defining themselves as successful. I love it. I love it. It's great. Well, Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. It's always great to get some wisdom from you and, you know, really, really happy to hear how well things are going for you and your business. Congrats on all the success.

And, you know, maybe we'll have you on for a fourth show in a couple of years. We'll see. We'll see where things go, right? just yeah if we could if we can work it out where I'm the first four visit person that would be phenomenal or you can cut that out you can cut that out you want to no we're both like you're both like yeah okay that's not I had Mindy like flailing at my window because I I got to bounce out of here in a second awesome Chris thank you so much and we will we'll be we'll see around man absolutely guys congratulations on everything thanks thank you thank you Chris we'll see you later

guys that was chris clothier once again wow brandon when are you going to run a hundred miles i know i'm i'm working on it right now you know i just ran you know i ran uh to the bathroom no nothing new there nothing new there no yeah i love the analogy the you know the work that he had to put into that the the mindset game behind running 100 miles is just as important as the process between doing it and the same thing's you for real estate right you can get the mechanics right everybody knows how to run. That's not the, that's not the challenge. I've seen you run. So I wouldn't say quite everybody. But yes, you're right. It's a six foot nine and, okay, six foot five, I can, I can run okay. Which you can. I can't give you a hard time. I've been on the treadmill next to you and like,

you know, your ostrich legs make it really hard for me to keep up. But what I look like, you remember that, you know, the video of the, the big foot, like siding out in the woods. Yeah, that's what I look like when I run, because my limbs are like nine feet long, you know? The good thing. I cover more distance. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Awesome.

And awesome. Yeah, great show guys. Definitely get out there, get motivated. Make moves. Big thanks to Chris, again, for coming back on the show and sharing his story. And, you know, I'm going to say one thing, Brandon. I'm slightly envious of you. Not for anything other than the fact that you are currently in Hawaii.

I mean, there's literally no personal traits. I don't know why you're not here with me. Nothing else, but the fact that you're in Hawaii makes me just slightly, slightly ambious. That's the only reason I come is just to make you jealous so that you would get out here and come surf with me. I heard you kite surf. Isn't that a thing? I win surf. I have not yet kite surf. I surf. And yeah, I would love it. I would love it. I am having surgery in a couple days. So, yeah, that's a lame excuse. Yeah, a little bit.

You know, some people want it, some people wish it would happen and others make it happen, Josh. That's right. That's Michael Jordan's quote right there. Wow. We all know which type you are. This coming from the 7 foot five guy who doesn't even know what a basketball looks like. Hey, I dunked a basketball. Do you know that?

I dunked them once in my whole life. Let me tell you about the best week of my life. Was there a trampoline involved? There was no. This was the best week of my life. I'm not in kidding. This was an amazing week. I had my wife, who was my girlfriend at that time.

I just asked her out like four days before that. I know. I know this story. I shaved my head into a mullet. That was classy and classic. You should do that again. And then the Fumanchu mustache, which we colored in with mascara. Then I dunked a basketball.

Then I had my first kiss. All in the same week. I never again dunked a basketball. Never again kissed my wife. Never again had a kiss. There was something magical about the mullet. I might bring it back at some point. You know, the mullet and the Fulmanchu.

Please, please don't. I might. Please don't. We'll see. All right, man. Well, listen, good show. Until next time, guys, this is show 224, the Bigger Pockets podcast. You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 24.

Big thanks again to Chris and Brandon, enjoy your vacation. Thank you. You too. This is Josh Dorkin. Sign it off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing,

Without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K.

copywriting is by Calico 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.w.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose.

And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast. Thank you.