BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 23: Flipping While Working a Job, Partnerships, and Military Investing with James Vermillion

Episode Date: June 20, 2013

One of the biggest issues that most investors face is the issue of investing while holding a full time job. In today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down with real estate investor James Vermillionto discuss how he has built his real estate flipping and buy-and-hold investing business while working full time in the US Military and with a non-real estate business. James shares his story, along with numerous tips for managing your time while working a job and dealing with partnerships to maximize your investing power. Read the transcript to episode 23 with James Vermillion here .In This Show, We Cover How James works a full time job while flipping houses Overcoming the “Education Only Phase” and buying his first property Investing while serving in the US Military How James succeeded without any expensive courses or mentors How to find free online college-level real estate education Transitioning from Flipping to Buy and Hold Finding financing for flipping through a local community bank Tips and tricks for finding deals still on the MLS How to make a partnership work great Tips for finding a free mentor Links from the Show James’ BP Blog Post on Free Education  BP Podcast 006: Investing While Holding a Full Time Job with Arthur Garcia The Ultimate Guide to Tenant Screening Links for Military Investors US Small Business Admin (Veterans Section): VA Veterans Business Portal: SCORE (offers some free and discounted resources for military): Books Mentioned in the Show Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs Tweetable Topics: “What works in one market won’t necessarily work in another market.” (Tweet This!) “A partnership will never be 50/50 all the time – and that’s okay.” (Tweet This!) “Don’t pick a strategy and build you life around it. Look at your life – and build a strategy that fits your needs.” (Tweet This!) Connect with James James’ BiggerPockets Profile James’ Company Website www.kandvinvesting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 23. 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 over height, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, everybody. This is Josh Dorkin, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-hosts. Brandon Turner who's making weird funny faces at me on the screen. What's what's what's that about Brandon? I was trying to throw you off. It didn't really work. Yeah, I'm a professional. Oh,

you're a professional, huh? And I am professional. I, I'm sure you are. Well, what's up, man? We got a, we get a cool show ahead. We do. We do. I'm a big fan of our guest today. He's been on the site for a while and I've, yeah, I, I'm excited. That's good. I love to see you get excited. He, when Brandon gets, he starts like shaking and vibrating. It's kind of funny. Maybe he sounds like a chihuahua. That's very possible. But yeah, today we got a cool show.

We've got James Vermillion. For those of you guys who don't know James, he's definitely been around for a while. James is almost one of the, another one of these homegrown BP success stories, as we'll probably hear about later on. And what we'll get into him really quickly. quickly, before we do a couple things, the BiggerPockets iPhone app did come out last week, and it's been downloaded tons of times already. If you haven't checked it out, please do. You can find that at BiggerPockets.com slash app or just go to iTunes and look up Bigger Pockets,

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better rank on iTunes, so just go to iTunes and make sure to leave us some feedback. Otherwise, we've got this thing that we do every show. It's called the Quick Tip. I went high there. Yeah, you did. Yeah, I didn't know you were a soprano, but I was. I was a tenor in high school choir. Were you really? Well, do I sound like a bass? No. I sound like a tenor. Yes.

You sound tender as well. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. Yes, yes. Well, for today's quick tip for those of you who are interested, today's quick tip is upload a photo.

We are talking about a photo on bigger pockets for your personal profile. These things help people trust you, helps you get more colleagues, helps you find more deals, preferably that photo should be your face putting up a photo of your face

will build trust I know some of us are not as good looking as Brandon but we still need to put our picture up yeah you know no one's perfect well you know so yeah listen and if you're uncomfortable putting a picture of your face up just grab a photo

of something that that kind of represents you your dog or your house you know we prefer you didn't we really do prefer you use your face because it does help you establish your credibility. But any photo is better than no photo. Anyway, that's today's semi-long and verbose quick tip. Cool.

Let's move on. Yeah, let's move on. Do it. So we're going to move on to James Vermillion. James is today's guest. James is one of two partners of K&V Investment Group LLC, which is a real estate investing company based down in Lexington, Kentucky. His firm incorporates various strategies, including distressed property rehabilitation,

excuse me, real estate sales and property management throughout the bluegrass region. He's also a licensed real estate agent and is a moderator on the Bigger Pockets forums. You ever head out on a trip, lock your door, and think, cool, my most valuable asset is now doing absolutely nothing. Because while you're off traveling, your home is just sitting there, Quiet, empty, not contributing, which feels like a missed opportunity, considering it has solid Wi-Fi and a very comfy bed. With Airbnb's co-host network, your place can earn money while you're away. You can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle guest messages, prep your space, and manage reservations so everything runs smoothly. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.

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Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com. com slash host. So let's bring him on. James, welcome to the show. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Brandon. Glad to be on with you guys today. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's jump in, dude. Let's get right to the very, very beginning. How on earth did you get started? I know you, you're a military guy. What kicked this thing off? Well, I got started, you know, pretty much like everybody. I inherited $10 million dollars and one of the last of properties. So just started scooping them up and here I am today.

No, I got started. That is awesome. The real way most people got started. I got started really just by talking to a friend of mine. And we were always scheming, how we, you know, what businesses we could form, what, you know, things were hot in the market, what the newest fad was, and sometimes how goofy some of those things were. But sometimes we'd always come back to real estate at the end of the day.

And I guess, you know, after a couple months of doing this, we finally just said, hey, you know, we talked about enough. Let's go ahead and see if we can't make something actually happen here. So that's kind of when we decided to take it seriously. Nice, nice. And I know you were your military guy. So was that while you were serving or was that previous or post? Yeah, it was actually right after I graduated college, I commissioned into the Air Force. And the person I'm speaking about is still my business partner today.

Ryan Kinnimer. Great. And I had actually gone on to active duty. He was finishing up his last year of school because he's one of those smart engineer types. So he was doing a victory lap or whatever. But during that was when we started having phone conversations about these business ideas. So it was while I was in that kind of the initial phase started and into actually

purchasing houses. Nice. Nice. And this Ryan Kinnimer, I mean, I didn't even know he existed. You tie him up and keep him away from bigger pockets or something. I mean, what's going on here? Well, you know, he knows about bigger pockets, plenty. Trust me.

But I don't know. He's too busy, you know, doing other things. I don't know. I'll get him on there eventually. Hey, we should have had him on the show. That would have been fun, actually. We could have made fun of him in person for not being on bigger pockets. Well, now he can listen to the show later and he'll feel silly.

Yeah, he will. All right, so I guess I'm curious, What kind of stuff do you do now? I mean, like, what was your first deal and how did that transition to what you do today? Basically, after we took some time to figure out exactly what we were doing, well, we still don't know exactly what we're doing. Once we thought we knew exactly what we were doing, we decided to go ahead and start flipping. So we purchased our first house. It was not the first house we tried to purchase, of course.

We did the dry runs, I don't know, maybe 50, 60 times leading up to that purchase. But we finally got one. It had foundation problems, you know, some basement water damage, that sort of thing. But, you know, the rest of the house was in relatively good shape, minus a lot of cosmetic stuff. So we bought the house. I think we paid about 87,000 for it. Renovation costs were right around 24,000. And then we spent it, you know, about 4,000 in holding.

So we were all in for right around 115,000. And it was only on the market when we finished, I think, for about 20-something days. and we sold it for 150,000 plus about $6,000 in seller concession. So I think we made a profit. The profit was about $28,000 on our first deal. So we were beyond thrilled with how that went down. Yeah, that's great. That's great.

Hey, you mentioned dry runs. Can you explain exactly what you guys were doing there? Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, when you're first looking for houses, you know, you're not going to, well, you know, maybe somebody's done it. But very few people start looking and get a house under contract. that's going to turn into a good flip, at least, right away. So we did, you know, we started out going to the courthouse auctions, and we put so much time and effort into analyzing these things,

coming up with what the rehab budget would be, what we could pay for it, what the, you know, ARV would be. So we put a lot of time into analyzing these things only to get to the courthouse and the bank buys it back for 20,000 beyond what we could have paid or whatever. And the same thing happened with online auction sites. The same thing happened with regular offers. So by doing that, I mean, at the time, it was awful. You're sitting here thinking, geez, we've wasted hours and hours and hours. But looking back on it, you're like, okay, well, you know, we got pretty proficient at doing a lot of these things. And that was critical to

being able to actually do it, you know, fairly well the first time it went down. Wow, that's great. Yeah, that's a fantastic way to train, man. That's a good idea. Hey, really quick, for those people listening, ARV is after repair value, and that's just the value of the property once it's been fixed up. So, all right, well, and let's, we're going to jump around a little bit here because there's a whole lot of stuff that I know,

Brendan and I want to talk to you about. Really quick, you are currently employed, correct? You've got a job, you're working a full-time job while you're doing your real estate. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Okay, and then also you did start while you, you were serving. So not only are you currently working while doing your real estate, but you

were actually overseas when you started all this. Yeah, that's right. When we started, when we were in the education phase, is kind of what I like to call it. I was actually in Guam with the Air Force. So I did a lot of that groundwork and a lot of that education and even got licensed by taking online courses at night after work. So. Nice. Is that when you found? bigger pockets. That is when I found bigger pockets. I was Googling something about flipping houses. I don't remember exactly what it was and I came across bigger pockets and I'm not normally a huge forum blog guy, but that was one of the few that I've looked at and said, man, this thing,

it's got everything I was looking for. And I've been there ever since. And I think you are one of our many, many, many BP success stories, which is why it's so much fun to talk. to you and have you on the site and everything. I mean, just it's, it's been, it's been awesome. I've watched you from deal one till, till what I think I saw the other day, you guys are on 10 or I don't know what you're on now, but it's fantastic. Yeah, we're on 10 and I told, I told you the other day, or I posted on it, it was scary to go back and look at some of my initial forum posts. Me too. I was reading them going, oh my gosh, I can't believe I asked that. I'm surprised to have any credibility around there.

But that's the beauty. I mean, it is. You know, we all, and forget bigger pockets, just in general, we all learn, right? Everybody starts with baby steps. And I think for anybody listening, it's important to know that, you know, you're the prime example of there are no stupid questions, right? I mean, you ask questions, you look back, you're like, man, I couldn't believe I didn't know that.

But we all, we've all experienced that. You're right. I mean, when you don't know something, you've got to ask it or figure it out. And not being afraid to do that was one of the things I think that really helped us. So you're right. There are no stupid questions. Hey, did you buy any, like, you know, courses. You said you did, you got licensed.

So you were, you know, a real estate agent, right? But did you do any other, I mean, like courses, guru programs, anything? Blue my life savings on a bunch of guru courses. No, I did not. I've not spent a dollar on any. kind of courses. Now, that's impossible. Hold on. You've done 10 deals and you, you week, because the only way to get training is to spend $25,000 or 50 and pay for expensive mentors, isn't it? Well, you know, that's what I heard, but that's not what I did. So I have not bought a course.

You know, obviously I've bought some books and stuff and I used a library a lot and I used a lot of free college courses online. I use bigger pockets. I mean, I don't understand why today you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars that you could be buying property with to buy a course. I think a lot of times it makes people feel better. It gives them some confidence, but I don't, it's not necessary if you're willing to put in some of the work yourself because you might not get it in a packaged, you know, a neat little package that's a guru course or whatever, but you can still get the exact same information and even better information sometimes for free.

Yeah. Hey, and you wrote a post and we'll dig it up and we'll link to it on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 23. You wrote a post on free college courses for real estate. It was like a whole list, which I remember was pretty cool. I think it was a blog post. But tell us about that because I think that some people might find. that really helpful. Well, you know, I didn't, I wasn't a business major or anything. I was a

political science guy and I kind of always looking back wished I would have done business and taken more business classes. But as I got around online, I found there's, you know, it's called Open Courseware. If you Google it, you'll find tons of options. I'm talking schools like Princeton and Stanford. I mean, incredible schools where you can get online, take classes, and a lot of times They're the same exact classes that an undergrad or even a graduate student would be paying who knows how much to sit in and listen to. And they're getting better every day too because when they started, it was a lot of paperwork type stuff. You know, it's just like the lecture notes. Nowadays, you can actually go and watch the video of the professor standing up in front of a class.

So, I mean, to me, why pay thousands of dollars when you can get a Princeton professor teaching you about finance for free? there you go. Yeah, that's great, great advice. And I know I've played around a little bit. I haven't fully gone through any, but I've definitely kind of snuck in on a couple of these courses. Some of them are fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. All right, well, why don't you walk us through? You talked about the first deal. Have all your deals been flips, or have you guys done any buy-and-holds? We flipped for about, well, I guess we've been doing this for about two and a half years now. The first two years, we fully fully, focused on flipping. And the primary reason for that was it fit what we needed. So at that time, we didn't have a lot of cash. So to generate more capital, we flipped. I mean, it makes sense. But over the last couple months, really, just the start of 2013, we've been kind of transitioning

into holding some of those as rental properties. That's cool. And I think that's a really good way to go. A lot of people, just this morning on the forums, I was talking to a guy who wanted to start flipping so he could save up money for the buy and hold. And I, and I, and I think, and I think that's a really good way to go. I think that's cool. I mean, it's a good way to do it. If you can flip and if you can follow the, I mean, if you can treat flipping like a business and do it correctly. I like to joke that a lot, I would say, I don't know if this is true or not, but I'd say at least half of the people who try to flip a house probably end up failing. So your chance of succeeding is probably like worse than Blackjack.

But you can, like, but there's a line where somebody learns and takes a time to actually learn how to flip a house correctly, you know, it goes exponentially higher. And then you can succeed just by following, you know, the. right way to do it. So, and again, that's just the value of being able to engage with people on sites like bigger pockets and stuff. So going back to that first, you know, those first flips, how were you financing them? Did you guys have all cash or were you doing? We actually got financing from a small community bank. And that financing, I mean, is fantastic for us because it includes rehab budgeting in there. So we can actually draw that money out like a construction draw as we go along throughout the the renovation you know timeline um so for us that was one of the

critical pieces to being able to to continue to flip houses because we would not have had that cash we would have had to do other things you know hard money lenders you know there's a lot of options out there but i think that one worked really well for us at the time and we're still we're still doing that you know right now that's awesome what kind of rates were you getting on those uh the rates were i think five and a half about. It's far better than hard money if you can get it. Exactly. And not the points as well. Yeah. How did you find that originally? Did you just call around to banks?

We went on a little journey. Sounds like a long story coming. It could be, but I'll try to keep it short. I mean, I kid you not, we went around. I was gone at the time. So the burden of this was on Ryan. He went around to every bank, probably in the of Lexington and some of the other smaller communities outside of it, basically telling them what we're trying to do. And at the time, I think we were both 22 or three, something like that, just out of college.

Neither one of us had a business degree. Neither one of us had any business experience. So as you can imagine, when you go to someone and say, hey, I'd like $100,000, I don't have any credibility at all. It's a little tough. So some of them laughed at us. Some of us politely. They laughed at him.

They didn't laugh at him. That's a good point. That worked out really well for me. You know, we'd be on the phone afterwards and he would be like, oh, it was awful. They were laughing at me. I was like, ha-ha. Were they really laughing at him, though? Oh, that's true.

One lender seriously did laugh at him. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Yeah. It was a little bit of a tough time because it's frustrating. And meanwhile, we're still. finding properties we think we would be able to flip and make a profit on. So you kind of feel like you're losing out and you're just not getting any ground. But if you do it enough and if you refine

how you approach the lenders, and I think that's the important part, your, you know, odds of success just go up. So how did you approach them? How did you guys end up refining that for anyone listening who's starting out? You know, what's what pitch worked and, you know, what's going to get you left out of the room? Yeah. Well, at first, I'll tell you, I can definitely tell you which one will get you laughed at. And that's going into the bank and saying, we'd like to flip houses. Can you give us a loan?

Because that's just not going to work. Exactly. Now, when you go in, you sit down and formalize things a little bit, maybe take a deal that you would, you know, it may have already passed up, but one that you looked at, you've already done all the analysis and you know it'll work. Or maybe one that's even out there now that you're still trying to get financed.

Take that to them. Show them the breakdown with the purchase price, all the cost, the soft costs, what the house is valued at when you're done. And you show that to them and say, look, here's why it would work. Here's what we're doing. And here's the preparation we've put into this. They're going to have a lot more faith that you're going to follow through and do things the right way. Well, I think the key thing there is the bank isn't lending on a house flip.

They're lending on a business. And you proved yourself that you were a business that could actually handle it. So I think that's awesome. I know we talked about that with Arthur back in podcast number six, and that was a really, really popular episode too, because he did almost the same story. He went around, he called, I think he said, dozens of different banks and community banks around and finally found one that was willing to work with them. And it was in a Walmart of all places.

It was in a Walmart. That's right, yeah. That was a good episode. That was awesome, yeah. Shoeless people. Anyway, people can go back and listen to that. How did you, so how did you find the deals? I know you talked about going to the auction, were your first deal is actually from auction?

Have you gotten any at auction? No, we've basically completely given up on that for several reasons. Number one, it's a little tougher to do the background work on those because a lot of time you can't get into the house. It's harder to come up with the renovation budget if you don't know what you're dealing with. So that was one big problem we weren't really comfortable with. Number two, there is a lot of competition, or at least around here, at the auction. And most of it's from the banks themselves, find the properties back. And we just got fed up with spending hours and hours and hours and then getting there

and zero chance. I mean, the banks are just snatching them up. And it was really frustrating. We said, you know what? This isn't working. It's taking up a lot of time and it's not worth our time to do this. So what can we do differently to get those deals? Gotcha.

Okay. So what was the new approach? What are you guys doing today to find your deals? Well, most of them have actually come off the M. And I know, you know, if you get on bigger pockets, a lot of people will say they're just not there or, you know, whatever. And that probably is true in a lot of markets. And I will say this, it's getting much more difficult. I'm spending probably five times as long per deal than I was, you know, a year ago. But they're still there. And there's some little tricks and tips that we use to try to find deals that maybe other people overlooked something or they may have passed up for. something they don't want to deal with and we can say okay there's an opportunity here let's go for it and see what we can do gotcha got sure yeah and that's great advice i mean you know what works in one market doesn't necessarily work in another market so you know if

the mLS doesn't work in in l.a you know it doesn't mean it's not going to work in dubuque if that's a real town um but uh i i i don't mean to pry into your uh into your ancient chinese secrets here, but, you know, do you mind sharing one or two of the little, little MLS scouring tips? No, I don't mind sharing them, but you'd have to buy my course with a small price of $10,000. No, it's nothing special, Josh. It's, you know, we look for houses that have foundation problems that people don't want to deal with, that your everyday flipper who just started, you know, says, okay, that's a little beyond our scope. We look for mold issues because we know we can remediate most.

mold issues, you know, at a certain cost. So we look for things that other people might pass up and also houses that maybe have been on the market and the seller passed up, you know, several deals, but now they're getting a little more desperate or, you know, price reduction. So there's certain key things that we'll look for that we think give us a little better shot than if we're just searching every house that comes on the MLS. Gotcha. Gotcha.

How about mistakes? Have you, you know, over these, over these 10 deals, you know, are there any mistakes that really stand out for you? There was a lot of mistakes. I'm trying to think which one stands out. I think the biggest one was probably when we first started. We didn't market the houses soon enough. And what I mean by that is, you know, we've spent two, three months renovating this house and we wouldn't have a for sale sign in the yard. We wouldn't have it listed anywhere. And I mean, looking back on that, it's like, man, you know, we were wasting time. We could have, we could have had it sold before we were even finished with it.

So I think that was a big one. We spent a lot of time that we didn't need to spend by not marketing right away. Yeah, and we've talked about that on a couple of the shows, I think, especially with a flip, getting the front dressed, doing the curb appeal stuff beforehand and get people excited about what you guys are doing. And you know, you can market and pre-sell. It's fabulous. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we did that, as a matter of fact. I think it was flip number four. We had the eventual buyers. We actually didn't get the contract before it was

finished, but I mean, this couple literally came back, you know, twice a week to check on the progress. So we knew right then we had a pretty solid lead if they're out there that often. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, going back a little bit to your partnership that you have going on here. Can we talk about that for a minute? Because that's something that I think is a huge, huge, huge important thing for new investors, especially. If you can't do it by yourself or you don't have the time or you're working a job, I think partners are awesome. So, I guess, why don't we just go into, I guess, some one of the benefits or the challenges to that?

Yeah, I wrote a blog post about this. And I think partnerships can get a little bit of a bad rap. And I kind of liken it to reviews on restaurants. A lot of times it's only the bad reviews that you hear about. And I think that's true for partnerships. There are partnerships all over the past. place that most people don't even know about that are highly successful and both people or however many people are completely satisfied with and are able to do things they can't do by themselves.

But you don't hear about those because why would they really talk about it? But you hear about all the ones that go sour. So, you know, there are a lot of things that partnerships can provide to both people or however many people are involved that really they just couldn't do as one person. And how do you guys split duties and stuff? I mean, is it everything 50-50 money and responsibilities, or do you differ that up a little bit? Well, that's one thing to understand. It'll never be 50-50 at any given point in time. And anyone who wants it to be that way, you're probably setting yourself up for a disaster of a partnership.

And here's why I say that, because every person has things going on in their life at any given moment, whether it's family issues, work issues, whatever. There's been times when Ryan has had to take the bulk because I was stationed overseas or I was in the middle of Air Force training and I couldn't do some of the things I was doing and I wasn't in the location at the time. And then there's times when we're here when he gets bogged down or has to travel with work.

So I have to pick up some of the things that he would normally do. So it's never going to be 50-50 all the time but the key is that it's 50-50 as far as kind of the overarching. You can't take a snapshot in time. You have to look at the overall thing. And if both people are 100% committed

to making it work, then you can overlook the times when it's, you know, a little unbalanced. That's great advice. It's like a marriage. I mean, that's the bottom line is you're going to have to concede. You're going to have to, you know, exert more than your share at that sometimes. But in the end, you know, you need to be willing to do that up front because if you're not, you know, it's not going to work. No, you're absolutely right.

It's not going to work. So in terms of benefits, then, I guess. The obvious one is going to be that when you were away, he could do a lot of the work and vice versa. Are there any other benefits that come to mind? Oh, yeah, there's a ton. The biggest one that we realized right away was access to borrowing power. Instead of one person, we now have two incomes that we can borrow against. So that was one of the key things to get started because we basically co-signed the loans as individuals.

The loans were to the LLC, but we had to basically sign and say, if something happens, we'll pick it up. So they were a lot more comfortable knowing, okay, there's two salaries here. They could easily cover this if it doesn't work out. I'll run through a couple real quickly and stop me if I get too long-winded here, but one big one is an extra set of eyes when you're analyzing something. You have two people agreeing on the budget, on the purchasing price, on that after repair value. odds that you're doing it correctly go up. Complementary qualities. I said Ryan's an engineer. I am not an engineer. I cannot picture walls coming down or walls going up or turning this into a

bathroom. I mean, it just doesn't work for me, but he can do that. And I provide some other things, some of the financial knowledge and savviness that he might not have on his own. So combined, we can do a lot of things. A couple others, and I'll just read these off real quick, that I pulled from the blog post I wrote. Division of tasks, obviously. You can do more with two people. Accountability, I think, is a big one. You might not want to get up and go look at that house.

But if someone's out in the driveway waiting to pick you up to go look at it, then you're probably going to get up. That's funny. Actually, one of my business partners woke me up at 530 this morning to go jogging. And like, because it, I mean, like, it's business, but it's also like we're friends. And so it's exactly, I would not have done it without him holding me accountable to go jogging. I thought you were going to say Josh woke you up. to record the podcast.

Well, he does that other weeks. Yeah. Are you complaining that you had to get up at 5.30 to jog? No, no, I'm just saying that is a good friendship or partnership. Like, it's a really... Dude, if somebody banged on my door at 5.30 in the morning, it's not happening. Exactly, James. But accountability is huge.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The two other ones are confidence. A lot of people just won't pull the trigger on their own. they're too scared. But if you got someone else saying, let's do this, man, we've done the groundwork. We know this is going to work out. I mean, you know, then you're going to say, well, okay, even if you're a little reluctant, it can get you in the door. And then the final one is you're splitting the risk. So the same way with the borrowing power, you're also splitting the risk as well. Great list, man. Yeah, that's fantastic. All right, now that we got the benefits, let's go to the challenges.

No, but seriously, I mean, so it really, there are a ton of reasons to do it. There are a lot of things to be wary of, of course, you know, some of which we've already talked about. But for you guys in particular, I don't know if you mind sharing, you know, any of the, beyond the, you know, hey, you know, he's got to go away or I'm footing the burden for the next two, three weeks. I mean, are there any other big challenges that you've experienced? Well, you know, there's there have been those times when I've said this is what we need to do.

I mean, whether it's a specific property or more of a strategy type discussion, there's been times when you're flat out not going to agree. But what you have to do is just talk it out. I mean, we've had conversations where, you know, we never got to throw in haymakers, but we may be came pretty close. I would have paid to watch that. Well, if we have another one come up, I'll set the webcam up and try to get it before. But no, I mean, those things happen. But at the end of the day, you both need to make the decision or however many partners are involved. And you need to stick with the decision and not blame somebody if the decision was maybe not the best one.

And that's what we've done. And usually at the end of the day, whoever was maybe against the decision at the beginning but ended up getting on board, usually says, hey, man, nice call. That worked out really well. I'm glad we just talked it out and came to that decision. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, I think a lot of newbies come on the site and they want to know their first step. And not that I think a partnership is the first step, but I think it is an important step, especially when somebody doesn't have money. I mean, I financed a number of deals that way as by finding a partner who had what I didn't have and I didn't have borrowing power at all.

And so I'd find a partner who could actually easily get a loan and we'd work together on a project. So there's a good tip for new people. So, yeah, why don't we move on a little bit to the military stuff and work in a full-time. job, those kind of things. But before I do, real quick, I just quick plug. You can get these show notes. You can read them at biggerpockets.com slash show 23. And I did that right, Josh. You did do it, right. I was, I was waiting for you to just say biggerpockets.com slash 23, which would have been wrong. Yeah, that would have been incorrect like last week. That's correct. Last week, you were incorrect. Correct. I was going to say, now you can't make fun of me, but you still did.

Maybe next week, Brandon. Maybe next week. I'll do it and I won't mention it. I'll give you a pass. All right. So yeah, let's talk about when you were in the military, you mentioned it earlier. Like, how do you do any investing when you're gone like that? There's a lot of people in the military that listen to this podcast. What's your advice for them? Yeah.

Well, number one, I want to say this. And this goes for military or people working any job. I feel very strongly that you need to put that as your priority. When I go to work every day, I don't. not want to be halfway there when I'm in the office. Someone's paying me to do a job and I want to make sure I do the job and I do it well. And I work my business around that. And it's an inconvenience to me sometimes. Yes, it certainly is. But I think that's important because you're selling yourself short and you're hurting somebody else's business if you're not doing that. And the same for the military.

You know, that job takes a lot of dedication and it takes a lot of sacrifice. So you need to put those things to the forefront or you need to try to go full time if you're not willing to do that. So I just want to get that out there. That's how I feel about that. I don't want people thinking, oh, he does it. He probably just goes to work and looks at houses online all day. And then, you know, no, are there some times when I might have a few seconds to write an email or make a phone call, of course.

But put your job or whatever you're doing, that should be number one as far as that goes. Great advice. Yeah, that's awesome. And you can batch things too. I mean, I know like a lot of times I'll take just like an hour, like break, like lunch break, and I'll just try to get everything I can real estate wise done in that time. And I think that's a good way to do it. I think I once heard that on another podcast. I'm who said that. Yeah, but yeah. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of lunch break warriors out there, I think, who do real estate investing. And that's a good time to do it. Yeah, cool. So I guess what else do you got for people working a full-time job since you work a full-time job? I guess what other tips can you give? Yeah, one of the big things is you just have to manage your time and you have to implement whatever systems you can to make time management easy and work for you. Now, there's no magic bullet for that

because everyone's lifestyle is a little bit different. Everyone has different priorities in their life, different family situations. And we're still working. I'm still working every day to try to systemize things as far as, you know, I do all the accounting and bookkeeping type stuff. So I'm trying to come up with every day ways where I can memorize transactions with our software so that I don't have to input them every month if they're the same every month.

You just need to come up with a way to where you can make things automate where you can. And that's what we're trying to do now. That'll help you as you try to scale because like right now we're going through a phase where we are looking to get a little more deals at a time and get going. So if you can scale up, that automation is going to be very important. Let me ask you about the automation because, you know, there are a number of companies and gurus and folks who have these automation tools that, you know, are a one-size fit all. We're going to do, we're going to run your whole business for you through this automation tool. You know, it seems to me that those tools are, you know, they may be helpful. but, you know, everybody kind of needs to develop their own systems.

So ultimately, in the end, you know, just buying a prepackaged system that somebody else created for themselves may not necessarily work for you or your business. What's your take on that? No, I agree with that 100%. And kind of the way it happened with us is you're not likely, I don't know what those packages are like. I've never seen or bought one. But what we've done is as we've grown and as we've, you know, continue to do deals, we've figured out. what things are taking the most time, you know, what things are able to be automized. And we do them ourselves because, you know, there's really no need to rely on someone else other

times, of course, for advice or whatever. But you know what is taking your time and you know what you don't like doing. And so you need to come up with the solution on how you can make that easier, make it less time consuming and free yourself up for those other things. Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah. And, you know, when new investors come and ask me, they're like, hey, should I buy this? should I buy this? I don't say no, don't buy that particular product because, you know, I don't

have the familiarity with it. However, I do say you shouldn't buy any product. You should hold off. You should figure out what works for you, what kind of investing you're going to do, and then figure, you know, you need to kind of learn along the way. You know, you can't skip the learning part and just plug into a prepackage program because you're going to miss out on everything that you absolutely have to know as you're moving forward with your business. Right. I mean, as the regular forum people know, I speak out pretty heavily kind of against gurus and courses. I think some people might be asking which one of the gurus beat him up and took his lunch money when he was a kid. But it's not, and like you said, it's not that I'm saying

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Hey, I'm thinking back on speaking of money here. You know, you talked about that first loan from the community bank. Did being a vet, well, you weren't a vet at the time, you're active duty, but, you know, did that help at all that you, that you were serving? I mean, was there any kind of like VA concession there or anything like that? And are there programs beyond just traditional VA loans that might work out for flippers or investors? Well, there's a lot of things I looked at, you know, there's even a lot of VA small business

loans that you can get if you're starting a business, whether it's real estate or something else, that's separate from a traditional VA house loan. So there are a lot of options. You can even get free counseling on real estate and on business, on accounting, on a lot of things if you just seek those resources out. But in our case, it didn't really help us so much because there were two of us. We were purchasing and stuff under a business entity. So I kind of lost some of the those resources I maybe could have used if it were just me and doing it that way. Gotcha. Gotcha.

And this will probably be my last question on the military stuff. So, you know, if I'm, you know, I'm listening to the show, I'm in Guam or, you know, Afghanistan. And by the way, we have guys who listen to the show everywhere we've got bases, which is totally awesome. And to everybody listening, thank you for what you guys are doing. But do you have, you know, I always send people to you. You're kind of our resident. you know, hey, you know, this is somebody from the military, go talk to James. James has been there, he's experienced it, he's done it. Do you have any, you know, kind of generalize

pieces of advice for those people, particularly those people who are currently active duty overseas? Yeah, well, number one is it can be done. I know a lot of people who did a lot more than I did with real estate while they were on active duty. I know a chief master sergeant who managed hundreds of properties while he was in the service, and he was a great, great service member. So he was not slacking to do that. So it can be done. One thing I do want to point out, and I do want to say thanks to all the service members, those on Bigger Pockets and those listening or veterans, because I've been there and

there is a lot of sacrifice, and it takes a certain type of person to do that. But one thing, you know, people talk about common advice is buy a property at every duty location and by the time you get out, you retire or whatever, you might have 15 houses. And I think generally that's well intended and good advice. That will work in a lot of cases. But I like to take that kind of the same idea and say, keep this in mind too. You don't have to buy them where you're at. If you see a market, like maybe you like the Dallas market right now and you think for the next 50 years is going to be a good place to be, you can buy three or four there, and there's a couple benefits to that. Number one, now you don't have 15 properties spread out

all over the country. You might have one or two key locations. Number two, you pick the market instead of the military picking it for you. And number three, you can really cut back on property management because you're going to be an absentee landlord probably either way because you're going to be moving around. So if you can cut down on some of those costs, that might also be a huge benefit down the road. That's great advice. So let's talk about property management a little bit. manage your own properties then or do you hire that out? I do. Like I said, we didn't buy any rentals until 2013. So in fact, one of them we've only had finished and leased out for about three months. So I don't have a ton of experience, but what I did do was take a lot of time

to figure out tenant screening, to figure out a lot of the things that people need to know to be an effective landlord. That's cool. Well, I have to plug this here because you brought it up. So I wrote a guide a while back called the Ultimate Guide to Tenants Screening. We'll link to it in the show notes. But that is by far one of our most popular posts on the site. Yeah. So if anybody wants to know exactly how to do that, you know, there's a good place to check out. And again, we'll have it in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 23.

Wait, you got it wrong. What was it? I did it right, show 23. Good. Okay, so cool. So you're just going to get into it, but you do. manage yourself then. We do. We do for now. Okay, cool. Any troubles with that so far?

Anything you've been learning? No, well, we've learned a ton. We've been fortunate so far. We've had a lot of applicants to choose from and a lot of good applicants to choose from. And one thing, you know, I thought was pretty interesting. Our first house that we finished,

our painter ended up leasing for his family. So I think when people that you're around know you're doing a great job and that you're going to take care of them and do as you're supposed to, you will find that people want to live in your properties. And I think, you know, he's someone, he's been in all of our properties. He's been painting for us for a while now.

And he was comfortable enough to rent, you know, rent that house out for his family. So I felt really good about that. And I think that kind of says a lot about how you can do things as a landlord to really influence who comes and stays in your properties. Yeah, that's awesome. So how did you decide from flipping, moving on to the rent-up? How did you decide that was the, you know, the first rental? How did you decide that was the one you were going to do?

Like, what made that a perfect rental? You know, that's a good question. It wasn't so much that property. It was more of the timing. We have generated enough capital to where we were able to do that. And I think I view real estate is often polarizing as far as you've got these groups of people who swear that their way of doing things is the best and the only way to do it. You know, you've got flippers versus buy and hold.

guys. You've got the group that says don't do any education. Just get started. Gung-ho, go in there and screw it up and you'll learn. And then you have people say, take 20 years and get four PhDs, and then you'll be ready. But usually I think the truth is somewhere in the middle or a mixture of things. And that's how I feel about different strategies. You know, they all have benefits. They all have, you know, negatives. So why not try to focus on how you can leverage the benefits of different things and work them together and move forward in a way that you're, you're reaping the benefits of different things. That's great, great advice, great advice.

Well, then it sounds like you are, you are self-financing your buying holds at this point, yeah? Well, same lender we're using far flips. We're actually getting commercial loans on for the rentals. And what we're going to do with those, those, we're going to basically try to pay those down pretty quickly with proceeds from our upcoming flips. So we did put more down than we do on flips. We have more equity built in. And why are you going to do that versus, you know, use the write-offs on the interest and everything else? Well, there's a couple reasons. I'm

fairly conservative by nature. And I want to strike a balance of being aggressive, but not getting caught with my pants down, so to speak, whenever the market changes. So that's kind of why we decided, you know, yes, we might not be able to roll our cash as quickly and do more projects and build it as quickly if we do this. But by taking a little hit now and taking this balanced approach, when the market changes, because it will. It's not if, it's when, we'll be in a better position and we won't be struggling to figure out how we're going to keep the thing going.

Great advice, man. Yeah, I love your balanced philosophy. I think, you know, and again, yeah, I know we talk about it and almost too much, but, you know, on, on, for those who don't know, the reason that Bigger Pockets was started and that I founded it was, you know, I needed this information to help myself with my own personal investing. And, and what, what I didn't like about what existed at the time was I felt like there wasn't a balance. And so what we really strive for is, you know, we want every opinion. I want the pros, the cons, we want the highs and the lows, we want to know everything, because the more that people can see, the more different approaches that you can learn from, you're going to get to make that decision.

So if I come in and I present, hey, James, I've got this opportunity, you give me one piece of advice and 10 other people give me 10 other opinions, I could then judge it for myself versus going to a single mentor whose advice might be fantastic and may be dead on, but at least it kind of opens the opportunity to getting other feedback. So anyway, you know, that's why I just, I love our community so much. It's amazing watching people just absorb these varying opinions and coming to their own conclusions. Yeah, definitely, absolutely. Yeah.

In terms of, you had talked about getting your license when you were overseas, have you used that? Are you using that to acquire and sell your properties on the flips? Or was it more as a tool to get access to MLS? Yeah, both Ryan and I are licensed. And the license, I think, has played a pretty important part in our business model. For one thing, we do use it to comp our own properties for the MLS access. And then we also do use it to buy and sell properties.

So we save a ton of money and commission on that. knows. But I think, and I kind of got this idea from Jay Scott. He's the one who kind of brought it to the forefront. It's the control aspect that I think I love the most. You don't have to have someone go with you every time you want to see a house. You don't have to rely on a realtor to go back and forth with negotiations. And I never really pieced that together until he said that in a forum post. But that's what it's all about for me. And that's what really kind of pushes us to keep doing that. And yes, I recommend it to people. There's a lot of different thoughts on there,

but I don't really see how it can hurt you too many ways. I can't find too many negatives. It's usually not overly expensive. You can inactivate it basically whenever you want. So I think it's a good starting point, and it can lead to some good opportunities. No, that's awesome. Yeah, I probably mentioned this before,

but I've taken the class now. I've paid for it twice, and I have not actually finished it yet. It's terrible. I did it like five years ago, and then I flipped a house. I was like, I don't need my license. I'm going to flip houses. And one of my biggest regrets. And then I just paid for it again last summer, and I never finished it because I started.

You should have your 5.30 a.m. running buddy, come over and bang on your door. It's like your ass over there. And go and study for my class. Yeah, I'll get it one of these days. But say you started pretty young. I mean, you said earlier, what, 22, 23, right out of college. What do you, what kind of advice do you have for, young folk.

You know, one thing you hear a lot about with young people is go find a mentor. Well, that doesn't really tell people anything. How do you find a mentor? Where are they? You know, if they're not in your family or you may not know them, that's kind of hard. You know, yeah, you can go to real estate, you know, association meetings, but it's hard to go up to someone and say, will you be my mentor? So I kind of think young people do that backwards.

I think if you get started and you're doing some things, you know, I wasn't looking. looking for a mentor, but I've got several guys who've been in the business for years and years now that I can call and get advice from. And it's not that I went up to them and asked them, is that they saw, hey, here's this young guy or these young guys out here making things happen. That's pretty impressive. You know, maybe we can do some things together or, you know, maybe you can help me with this and I'll help you with this. So I think that's where you're really going to find a valuable mentor. It's when someone else recognizes in you that you're trying to make things happen and see skill sets and certain personality traits where they go,

okay, this guy might be on to something. So sometimes you've got to do something first to get something in return, not look for something in return and promise I'll give you something later. That's awesome. That is cool. I've always been trying to say like put that into words what you just said because that's exactly my theory and I've never been able to say it as eloquently as you just said it. Well, I haven't either. Well, that was good. That was good. There you go. Beautiful. Beautiful. Hey James, what about, you know, we're starting to wrap up, but tips, any of your best tips for getting started beyond what you've already told us? I think, you know, one of the biggest things to get started is don't pick a strategy and try to build your situation around it. Look at your situation, how much cash do you have, who do you know, what skills do you already possess, who do you know that maybe would be interested in joining you, and then figure out.

and what your goals are, that's another big one. Where do you want to go? And then build a stretch, figure out which strategy fits your needs. Because you see a lot of people saying, I'm going to flip houses. Then they tell you their situation. And you go,

you probably shouldn't be doing that. There's doing something different. And then you can get there at another point in time, but it might not be the right time for you. So take those things into consideration and then figure out how you're going to get from A to B. Yeah, I mean,

that's good advice. It reminds me of there's somebody on, who I've seen on the site a couple years ago. And she had all the best intentions and wanted to be this real estate investor and finally decided, hey, I'm going to go out and get my license. And that was great. You know, she's got family to take care of and all this stuff. The problem was she doesn't have a car.

Right. Right. And so great, you want to be a real estate agent. You don't have a car. You're trying to use your real estate to help you get your car and kind of build everything up. But that's kind of backwards. You know, in order to be a real estate agent, unless you're in New York City or San Francisco, I mean, you need a vehicle. You've got to have one.

And so, you know, that didn't work. You know, there's no way to make that function. You know, you can't be an agent and say, hey, guys, can you give me a ride to the house that I'm going to show you? Yeah, that doesn't fly. Yeah, that's probably not going to go over too well. Yeah. So looking at your situation and being realistic about, you know, your financial. about your skill sets, I think is some of the best advice that we've heard so far.

Yeah. And I think that ties in, too, back with the very beginning of the show, you're talking about going full-time in that if you're full-time, like, you don't have to, I mean, we look at people on the site who are full-time flippers and you say, well, I want that life and you try to build your business around that. But if you're full-time and you like your job, like there's no reason to say you can't go slowly. I mean, I do only, you know, one deal at a time generally. And I think you're of the same way. And we can ramp up later. Yeah, well, I'm huge on that. I've actually kind of changed course a little bit on that.

I used to think, I'll do this for a couple years, build a solid base, and then I'll quit my job, and I'll be a full-time flipper, and I'll be making so much money. I won't know what to do with it. But now I've kind of changed in the fact that I see the benefits that having a job can provide. And one of the big ones is we can just roll our money. We're not relying on salaries. And you'd be surprised at how fast that money grows when you're, you know,

you're not feeding your family off of it and paying insurance and all those sorts of things. So to me, I'm kind of switched to the point where I'm going to work until one of two things happens. And that's where I just cannot continue to do both because I'm not going to do either one of them well. Or it's just so much more of a financial benefit for me to leave here. But I think a lot of times people underestimate that. So I want to be very smart about making that decision. Well, and the cool thing is that, you know, you like, Love your job, which is great. You got a cool job. You get to play with bourbon all day, don't you?

Play with it, drink it, ship it overseas. No, I do. I work for Blanton's bourbon. So I'm in the bourbon industry and being from Kentucky, that's a good industry to be in. It's a lot of fun. And surprisingly, I've learned some things that, you know, I can use even in real estate investing. So, you know, a lot of times you can kind of combine skill sets and you come out ahead by doing that. That's great. That's awesome. Yeah, I always recommend that people like do a job that you love. And if that's flipping, then flip.

But if not, if it's teaching high school math, then go teach high school math. Like, who cares to do something you love to do, but then invest on the side. So very cool. Well, should we transition to these ending the famous for your, good job. I was going to join you there, but I didn't want to mess up the flow. Oh, come on, man. Get in. Get in on the action. All right. So the first of the famous four is what do you, what do you think is your favorite real estate book, if any? I'm not a huge real estate book reader, to be honest with you. I like other mediums.

I like the forums and blogs and podcasts and just talking to people. But that's not to say I don't go and read real estate books. But my favorite, and I think the most useful, it's more of a guide, I guess, than a book, but I'll call it a book here, is the estimating rehab or renovation costs. I thought I had them nailed down. But after I flipped through that, I actually said, you know what? I know it's a different market, but I could probably do better on some of these things. So I actually used that and kind of compare it and contrasted it and said, and I found some savings based on that. So I'm more into that sort of a thing than reading some book that's going to get me pumped up and go out there and, you know, do things.

Sounds like you're pumped up already. I'm already pumped up. Yeah. And that book, the estimating book, that's a Bigger Pockets book, which is pretty cool. It's the book on estimating rehab cost by Jay Scott and that's available at biggerpockets.com slash flipping book along with the book on flipping houses also by Jay Scott. How about your favorite non-real estate business book or even one of the courses that you've kind of done online and any of those stand out? I like biographies a lot.

I'm kind of intrigued with different people and how what their situation was and how they were able to turn that situation into where they ended up. And one of my favorite biographies that's kind of business related is Titan, and that's about the life of Rockefeller. I can't even think of who the author is. but that's just a great book about one of the most famous business people of all time. There you go. There you go. That's great. What about hobbies? I know you're always over at the races, man. You a big horse guy. Well, you know, I love going to the track. That's a Kentucky pastime. And I'm probably going to get a lot of flack and a lot of private messages with some 1-800 help lines or something.

I like drinking bourbon and I like handling on horses. So I don't know. So, you know, maybe I'll get some help at some point. Those are two things, you know, we like to do. Me and my wife love to travel. We like to get out and about. I don't like sitting around too often. So we try to stay busy. And the horse track is one place you can find me in the spring and fall.

That's cool. I've never been. So someday. Well, cool. Final question for today is, what do you believe, James, what do you believe sets apart those who succeed in this business? especially maybe the flippers, but anybody really from those who don't. I found this, you know, I've listened to a lot of the podcast, actually I think all the podcasts,

and I found this to be the most difficult question to answer. And I think the reason is I can't think of one thing that does it. You know, there's, you see a lot of people that they're passionate about something. They're really passionate about something for a week until they're passionate, very passionate about something else. those type of people will not succeed in real estate period and you see a lot of them come and go you've got the other people who come

and expect success right away huge success whether they read a course saw something on TV so they come and they're hyped up ready to go and then maybe it's a little more difficult than they expected so they tap out and decide to move on to the next thing so I think it just takes

you know I use I talk about balance a lot but it takes a balanced person. Someone who's willing to work hard, put in the effort, someone who's able to overcome failures and, you know, kind of build on successes. So I don't know if that was really an answer, but that's great.

I think it's a good answer. I think the bottom line is having realistic expectations. You know, I think if you come in thinking, you know, if you come in with unrealistic expectations, you're going to get slaughtered or you're going to quit. and if you come in understanding that this is a business, it takes work, it takes time, and you're willing to put in the work in time, and you're going to be fine. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, that's great. Well, James, man, listen, the fantastic stuff, you know, it's funny. I look at you as one of our amazing success stories at Bigger Pockets. I'm, you know, I'm very proud of what you've accomplished and like to think that we've played some part in that success. And, you know, I can't wait to be hearing about deal 15 and 20 and 30 and so on. And I'm really, I'm really happy you came on the show too. I think a lot of folks, but, you know, I do say particularly military guys, but I think anybody who's listening. I mean, you're a young guy who's kind of.

you know, you've really crushed it, man, and you're doing it while you're working at a job that you love and, you know, you were learning while you were overseas. I mean, you know, you're one of those guys who makes me think, you know, about those people who complain about everything. You know, it's too hard. It's too difficult. That's nonsense. I mean, what you've done is really hard and, you know, you've done a great job at it. And I want to wish you all the success. Well, I really appreciate that. I mean, that means a lot. a lot to me, but, you know, bigger pockets did play a huge role. And I, you know, I don't want people to think I'm just shamelessly plugging bigger pockets because it's absolutely true. So many times

when I just had questions, and even when they're little questions, you know, to be able to go to one source and know the answer is either there or it'll be there as soon as you ask it, that saves a lot of time. There's a certain comfort level in knowing that, okay, as I come across these things, I know where I can find an answer. So it has, it has. has been a huge part of it. And you're right, it's not easy. But if you, if you love it, then it's a lot easier. So we really enjoy it. And, you know, we're glad we found some initial success. And we hope to keep it going. That's awesome. Awesome. Well, listen, man, thank you, thank you so much. And by the way, we are not paying you to say these things. And you are

not paying us for anything either. This is, this is straight up like, you know, you're, you're one of the guys around and we thought you'd have a lot of value to share. And I don't know, man, I listen to these things and every time, you know, there's something new that you pick up. And I think I picked up a couple things from you as well. So thank you for being on the show. Well, thanks so much for having me. It's been fun, guys.

Awesome. Thank you, James. All right, guys. And that was our show for today. I hope you enjoyed our talk with real estate investor James Vermillion as much as we did. I want to thank everybody who's gone to iTunes

and left us reviews and ratings. Once again, we couldn't be where we are today without all of you guys. If you haven't yet left us one, once again, please do take a moment to do that on your iTunes player. Otherwise, I do remember all the information talked about

on today's podcast can be found on the show notes at biggerpockets.com. slash show 23. And don't forget to make sure you're following us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash bigger pockets on Twitter at Twitter.com

slash bigger pockets. And, you know, everywhere else, we're on YouTube. Make sure you're subscribing. We're putting out lots of cool videos there. And of course, most importantly, you know, get on bigger pockets, join us,

participate, engage, connect, ask questions. You know, we're getting close to a thousand, a thousand new forum posts a day. We're getting close and it's amazing. It's amazing. So, you know, jump in, engage, connect,

and you'll see whether you're just learning or whether you're trying to do deals. It's a very valuable place to be a part of. So that's it. Thank you so much again. This is Joshua Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio.

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