BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 232: The Four Lead Sources Nathan Brooks is Using to Flip 120 Houses a Year
Episode Date: June 22, 2017Why do some people struggle finding one single real estate deal, when others are finding dozens each month? What’s the secret to getting consistent leads? According to our guest today, it’s relati...onships—and specifically, there are four types of relationships that bring him over 100 deals a year. Today we’re excited to bring back Nathan Brooks as we dive deep into all four strategies he’s currently using to bring in incredible deals. And don’t miss the powerful discussion we had about leadership and the extreme ownership needed to take your business to the next level! This show is as funny as it is informative, so sit down and prepare for an amazing 90-minute episode! In This Episode We Cover: Nathan’s quick back story How he finds all his properties The importance of building relationships with the right people The exact phrase he says to agents How he uses the 80/20 principle in relationships The four lead sources Nathan uses Tips for dealing with wholesalers The property management software he use How to find and keep great contractors How to take responsibility for the leadership of your team And SO much more! Fire Round Forum Links Contractor Dilemma – Advice? 60k Prop or 100k Prop? Cash flow vs. Value Property Manager Vendors are expensive Failure to launch, no luck so far Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Podcast 087: How to Thrive After The Collapse of a Real Estate Empire with Nathan Brooks BiggerPockets Podcast 159: How to Build a Real Estate Business That Buys 60 Deals a Year with Nathan Brooks ifttt.com BiggerPockets Events Josh’s Instagram Profile Brandon’s Instagram Profile Appfolio Podio Jocko’s Instagram Profile Saturday Night Live video with Josh Books Mentioned in this Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki The ONE Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller Traction by Gino Wickman E-Myth by Michael Gerber Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller, Dave Jenks, and Jay Papasan The Book on Rental Properties by Brandon Turner Set for Life by Scott Trench Tweetable Topics: “It’s all about relationships.” (Tweet This!) “If you can’t afford the management, you probably can’t afford the house.” (Tweet This!) “You have to take responsibility for the leadership of your team.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Nathan Nathan’s BiggerPockets Profile Nathan’s Company Website Nathan’s Company Facebook Page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 232.
It's all about relationships.
So for us, I've continually worked on and our whole team works on establishing relationships with real estate agents, establishing relationships with other local real estate investors, establishing relationships with wholesalers in our market.
So there's a lot of different places you can get those properties.
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What's going on, everybody?
This is Josh Dorkin.
House of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-hosts, Mr. Brandon Turner.
What's up, man?
Dude, what's going on?
Dude, sweet.
Dude, sweet.
Sweet.
Sweet.
Sweet, dude.
Yes.
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm glad you've seen dude doors my car.
Oh, it was amazing.
Yeah, it's a great movie.
Best movie ever.
I don't know if I go that far, but let's calm down.
I definitely won't go that far.
All right.
No, I've been good.
I've been busy.
I've been doing a bunch of rehab.
A bunch of rehab.
Thanks to you.
You too.
You're a dad too.
So good job.
Are you a grandpa yet?
You're close.
Wow.
Really?
I will, I've never threatened violence, but if you ever suggest such a thing,
my children, I will find you.
Is that weird that someday you're going to be like a grandpa, your little sweet little
girls are going to be all like grown up and out of the house?
The other day, I've, really?
I know, I read this book.
I read this book and it was called like, you're a terrible person.
Listen, it was like, it was called like, your last time or something like that.
And it was all about like someday it'll be the last time you hold your little baby.
It'll be the last time they swing a baseball bat.
I seriously started like just crying reading this book.
Like my girl's a year old.
Anyway, I'm tearing up right now.
Yeah, my eight year old doesn't like let me read to her.
She doesn't sing, you know, there's all sorts of, you know, I want to do it on my own.
And all right, get lost dad.
Oh, come on.
Oh, it's so hard growing up.
Anyway, wow, we got really deep and sad here.
Yeah, we did.
This is a fantastic show.
Hold on.
Don't go anywhere.
Yeah, today's show is so good.
It's so good.
If you guys are struggling with finding deals today, listen to all, like, this is like,
an hour and a half long show, it's going to blow your mind. There's so much good stuff in here,
especially like the topic on leadership we get into later in the conversation. Unbelievable.
Nathan's just a really good guy. So we'll get to that in a minute. He's great. He's great.
And in the show, we'll kind of get into this. But Nathan's been on the show before.
Show 87 and 159. So if you haven't checked those out, go to BiggerPockets.com.com slash show
87, biggerpockets.com slash show 159 or however you consume it. Just look for those episodes before
you get into this one if you want to dig in. But before we get it,
into today's show. We've got today's quick tip. All right. So today's quick tip is something
that I actually just built or worked on yesterday for myself. So we all know driving for dollars
is a good way to find deals. Get your car, drive around. And well, maybe we don't,
we know all know that. But most people know that's a pretty good way to find vacant houses.
Drive around and you're like, hey, that house looks vacant. And then you write it down. You
go home and research it and contact the owner. The problem is, I feel like when I'm just
randomly driving around, I stumble across these houses and I'm like, oh, I should contact
the owner. But it's like, I don't have a paper.
and pen handy and like I'm not going to like do all this weird stuff and even like texting
and driving.
It's all gets weird, right?
So what I figured out yesterday is this.
There's a site called if this than that.
It's IFTTT.com.
And it's a, I mean, they have a paid version, but it's a free service that enables you to do
like, if something happens, do something else.
So here's what I did.
I set it up so that.
Get an email from Brandon, respond back.
Leave me the hell alone.
Yeah, you can do that.
Yeah, you could do whatever you want.
That's why I get those messages every day from you like 20 times.
All right.
So I set it up.
So if I text a certain phone number, it will add a line in a spreadsheet I have on Google Sheets.
So basically, now all I have to do is take my phone and say, hey, Siri, text driving for dollars, 55 Ridge Lane.
Dollar says 55 Ridge.
There.
And so then I send it and it goes off to my Google Sheet.
And I don't have to have any notes or anything.
And then later on I have like the spreadsheet in Google Sheets that will just keep track of it.
Anyway, that was a not so quick tip.
I love that.
I'm going to see how I could play with this than that using Siri to text.
That's very, very clever.
You should write that up.
I will make a blog post about that.
I'll put it out.
Good, good, good.
All right.
Hey, before we move on, guys, I do have two quick announcements that I'm required to provide to you.
You're required.
Your boss made you.
My boss may be doing it.
All right, guys, we here at bigger pockets are looking for two new employees for the company.
We're hiring.
So first is a UI engineer.
We used to call them front-end designers, front-end engineers.
We're looking for somebody to focus on the front-end development of bigger pockets,
someone who is able to combine art design with the art of programming.
You're perfect for this job if you have a strong passion for providing quality design
and experience for users.
As a front-end position of BP, a great opportunity.
You could come sit here in the office, work every day with all these amazing people.
experience and react is a plus.
And we are definitively looking for somebody in Denver, but if you're not in Denver and
you're fantastic, you should apply anyway.
And jobs at biggerpockets.com would be where you would send your cover letter and resume.
The next one is publishing coordinator.
So we're looking for somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit to oversee the growth and
operation of our publishing business.
If you love real estate and understand the elements that make up a good book, then this
position is for you. If you like to roll up your sleeves, hustle, expand the reach of bigger
pockets publishing. We'll simultaneously finding opportunities for new books. We're looking for you.
If you like to read, if you're awesome at writing, if you're awesome at books,
we're looking for somebody amazing to take over our publishing business and help lead it to
the next level. You read that wrong, by the way. You know, it does say,
food book. Yeah, it says elements that make up a food book, not a good book. So we are publishing
a new publisher, a new publisher, because clearly Brandon.
I did not write that.
I did not write that.
I think Mindy might have rushed it.
Anyway, job openings, guys, we're looking, we're hiring.
Go to biggerpockets.com slash jobs to find out more.
Go to jobs at biggerpockets.com as an email to apply.
Thank you very much.
All right.
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visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Let's get to today's show. Today's guest is
Nathan Brooks. You want to introduce them? Josh? I do. I think that would be great. Thank you for
allowing me to do that. Nathan Brooks. I allow him. I'm a gracious guy. It's not true what they say about
me. He is a fantastic guy. Nathan Brooks is a real estate investor out in the Kansas City market.
He's been in real estate for 10 years now. He started doing a few flips and a few rentals.
He crashed and burned with the downturn in the early 2000s. And then steadily, steadily started
to bring things back, you know, work through these difficulties and overcame them. And the
challenges to go and scale his business. Today he's doing, he says, 120 flips this year. He's got a
turnkey rental property company and those deals come from the flips that he does. And he's really,
really bright guy doing some awesome stuff. So let's bring him in. Nathan Brooks, why on earth are you
back here on the Bigger Pockets podcast? My lord, what are they doing? Josh, I don't know, man.
I mean, all of a sudden it's like, you know, once a year we have this date and it's, you know, Josh and Brandon and we're talking about beards and no beards. I don't know. It's great.
I'm super excited to have you, man. I'm super excited. I actually think your beard has gotten smaller every time we had you on.
Because I mean, the first time we had you on, it was like a foot long and then, you know, it was a couple inches now.
It's thicker, though. I mean, that thing is like literally, you couldn't find skin underneath it if you wanted to.
Yeah, it's just how it's made. You know, a little miracle grow here, a little miracle grow there. There you go. Problem solved.
I like it. I like it. Well, it's a little more manly than mine, you know, but, you know, that's all right. I'm not comparing. So let's talk about...
You're getting it. Thank you. Let's talk about what you've been up to. Actually, before we diggle what you've been up to, I mean, I'm assuming that half the show have not heard the other two episodes with you. So pause this. Go back and listen to two episodes with Nathan or just keep listening to listen after. But for those people, give us a quick recap. Who are you? How did you get into real estate? Kind of walk us through your journey in the next like half hour. I'm just kidding. Yeah, like two minutes ago.
And as we mentioned, it was show 87 and 159 of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
You can find it at biggerpockets.com slash show 87, biggerpockets.com show slash show 159 or just look for it on iTunes or anywhere else.
Thank you, Van der Waite.
All right.
Wow.
And thank you again for having me on.
And it's pretty cool to have this opportunity with you guys again.
There's only a few three peters.
I think we only have like two or three peters.
I believe Chris was number three and I believe I am number four.
Three, Peter.
All right.
You're not counting now.
You're all watching each other.
Yeah.
Nobody's paying attention at all.
Nobody's been a four Peter yet.
That's right.
So I started in real estate, you know, about 10 years ago.
And we we started acquiring properties both doing some flips and doing some rentals.
And over the course of a couple of years, we, we rode the, the crash down.
down and crashed and burned and basically lost everything in that in that time.
And we just had some decisions to make whether we wanted to get back after it or not.
And so, you know, my wife and I chose that we were going to get back into it.
And so slowly but surely we did one or two and then we added some more rentals.
And then we started doing some more flips and joint venture kind of stuff.
And so fast forward here to 2016.
we did roughly, I think, 64 properties last year, and this year we're on pace to, you know, flip well over 100.
This is 2017.
Correct.
Just making, just making sure.
All right.
So you've scaled the hell out of this thing.
I mean, this is everyone who wants to be a real estate magnate's dream, right?
Like, how do I go from buying that first one and getting through all the fear of doing that, overcoming that?
getting the next one, figuring out a strategy, and then growing.
And I think you mentioned earlier, you've now got 34, 33, 34, 35 employees.
You're about to flip 120 houses this year.
I mean, that's spectacular.
That's spectacular.
So we want to kind of dive in a little bit on a few things on, you know, how are you finding
all those deals?
We're going to talk about, like, you know, management of people, what we're
works, what doesn't work, just all the kind of mindset. So let's start at that finding deals.
You know, to flip 120 houses means you have to buy what is at a house every three days.
So you're buying and turning a house, give or take on average, every three days. That requires
ridiculous systems and we'll dive into that afterwards. But like, what are you looking for? How do you come
across all these properties. You know, so I think the first question is what is the end result? So if you can
start with the end result of what that property is going to do, then actually you should answer the
question I asked instead of asking you. This is my show, dude. What are you doing? Well, I think by
answering your question, I can ask a different question first, which is what am I trying to get
in order to answer what kind of property I'm trying to get. Beautiful. And so,
Which was a great question, okay?
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And I'm really proud of you for that great question.
So I think that you have to start with what that is.
So first of all, for us, you know, we on the flip side of our business, we flip to turnkey.
So we sell the turnkey properties and clients, you know, buy those and we put a tenant in them and then we manage for them.
So, okay, well, what constitutes a great, you know, rental property?
Can I build in the cost of what my repairs and my rehab and that kind of thing?
And the way that we rehab.
So it's one thing to do, you know, carpet and pain.
And it's another thing for us to do a full-scale rehab.
So I can't go in without having a good amount of margin in that to do my rehab.
And then secondly, MLS-wise.
So, you know, what is the value?
Can I typically run the higher end of the market ARV.
So I don't want to be kind of price lower.
end. I want to be priced higher end and we do our finishes and we do our, we're approaching
in that way where we're, we're going to maximize the amount of value that we can get out of
the property by setting the conditions such as, you know, better finishes and, you know, really
particular about the neighborhood.
Makes sense.
So did you answer my question?
Okay. So are you, do you mean specifically as we are looking at a deal?
Sure.
What? What? All right. No, seriously. Yeah. I'm sorry.
So I'm talking about like very specific.
And that's great.
And that's your position, right?
You guys are finding properties.
You're putting them at the top end of the spectrum.
Sounds like you're doing him and probably middle class, you know, white collar, give or take neighborhoods.
Is that about right?
Okay.
Yeah.
So to find 120 deals, you have to do something, right?
It's all about relationships.
It's all about relationships.
Talk about that. So for us, we, I've continually worked on and our whole team works on establishing
relationships with real estate agents, establishing relationships with other local real estate
investors, establishing relationships with wholesalers in our market, and then other, you know,
great internet marketing type people who produce those type of leads, but are not in the market.
So there's, there's a lot of different places you can get those properties. And then I think
the key for that has been we're speedy on that.
So if a wholesaler sends us a deal, we're able to actually look at it quickly.
We're able to make an offer quickly.
We're able to close quickly.
And so when we're looking, we haven't just looked in one area, whether that would be, you know,
direct seller marketing, which we're going to start, you know, working on as well.
But we have just taken the approach of saying, let's build the relationship.
They're going to bring us the deal.
We're going to look at it and then have the result.
Okay, that's awesome. And so what I'd like to do, you mentioned agents, investors, marketers, and wholesalers as kind of your four sources. What percentage of your deals are coming from relationships? Is it 100%?
It's, I don't know if it's 100%, but I mean, it's 95%.
All right. All right, cool. So what I want to do is just talk about each, right? So your agents, how are you working with agents? How are you finding good agents to work?
with and what is that relationship like? Because, you know, you talk to a lot of agents,
they're like, oh, I don't want to work with investors. Investors are a bunch of scumbags,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Then there's ones who are like, they get it, right?
They recognize that if they work with you, if they can source deals for you, they're going to get
a lot of business. You're going to, you don't have to keep shopping. I as an agent find Nathan
Brooks. I'm, I got somebody who I can give business from all day long, which, you're going to,
is beautiful, right? So how do you find that agent who can provide you with what it is that you're
looking for? Well, I think you have to be able to first speak the language and say, you know, if you're
that retail buyer's agent, driving people around, that's probably not the agent that you're
looking for. That's a very different job, very different opportunity versus somebody who we've
spent the time to say, hey, this is what I'm looking for on one deal. So I find a listing. It looks
interesting. It's in the ballpark of what I think I can do because the last thing you want to do
is call up somebody for the first time and say, hey, I know you're listed at, you know, $100,000,
but I'm going to write a $50,000 offer and, you know, go work both sides. And, oh, by the way,
you know, I'm the best thing ever. They're going to just think you're full of it and they're not
going to work with you. But for us, we say, hey, I tell you what, you've got listed at 100.
I think I can actually do, you know, $94,242.42. And that's my best offer.
And it's cash.
And, you know, and here's all the details of our offer.
And what questions do you have for me about my offer?
Does that make sense?
Do you understand why?
And then they can go to bat for their, to their seller and say, hey, this guy's a legit
investor in our market.
They do a lot of business.
And I talk to their, you know, title company.
They always close when they say they're going to close.
And so we build the relationship from the back end of it to say, you might have
have 100 investors in here and get all these offers, but that doesn't mean any of them can close.
Yeah.
So then they have confidence in us when we make that offer and be able to move it forward.
Yeah, I like that.
So what about somebody who's brand new?
You know, a lot of new investors worry about I can't find an agent because I don't have a track record.
I'm just going to look like I came out of some, you know, guru boot camp and I'm more excited and
I'm going to be gone next week.
How do I, as a new investor, how do I convince an agent to come work with me?
I think it's just starting with the one.
And again, we talked about it, and I didn't answer your question, so I apologize.
But, you know, you have to know what you're looking for first, right?
If you send it, if you have some agent, you know, you just keep looking at houses and you may or may not make offers,
but you're not really actually getting anything under contract, nobody's going to want to work with you.
Because they don't, nobody wants to work for free.
Yeah.
So if you know what you're looking for and you can say, this is the range or this is the neighborhood or this is what I want.
Or, you know, get a partner that's done it before and knows what areas and has some relationships.
So they can, they can, you know, you're not just trying to learn everything on your own.
In this day and age, bigger pockets and books and all kinds of stuff that you can get more than just that information.
You can have somebody who can actually introduce you and make relationships.
But, you know, I think it's part, part of that, part knowing what you want.
And then part just making sure that you actually tell them what you're doing.
Hey, my name's Nathan Brooks.
I'm a first-time real estate investor.
This is what my plan is.
This is the price range.
I'm not here to waste your time.
Here's my pre-approval.
I'm ready to go.
I love that.
I love having, yeah, a lot of agents get irritated because they don't want to go make
offers, work this big, huge process of this deal, and then at the end of the day,
not being able to close, right?
Like, that's the biggest irritation for an agent.
They put in 20 hours of work for nothing, right?
So you just got to convince them that you're ready to go.
And if you're not ready to go, go find a partner who is.
Like you said, I think that's fantastic advice.
Well, and the other thing on the whole.
wholesaler side, you know, I can't tell you the number of deals we've gotten where somebody
else wrote an offer that was, say, two to four thousand higher than ours. And then I got to call,
you know, four days before closing in there panicked because, you know, Joe Schmo, you know,
buyer backed out because they didn't have their, they didn't have it together. Yeah. Yep.
And so then we come back in and we're like, well, hey, I tell you what, it was, you know,
4,000 off and now it's, you know, 6,000 off or whatever it is. And, but we can close in three days,
sure, no problem.
You are mean.
Two grand.
I didn't ask for 10.
No, I like the advice you about being specific to me.
Imagine you're an agent or, you know, if I was an agent, somebody came to me and said,
Brandon, I want to invest in real estate.
I'm looking for any property if it makes a good deal.
I'd be like, good for you.
But if you're like, hey, Brandon, I'm looking for a two to four unit property under $150,000
and I got financing lined up for that.
What do you got?
All of a sudden, then I'm like, what do I have?
Let me do that search for you.
Like then I'm engaged in the conversation.
I'm like, they've done their homework.
They know what they're doing.
I think just doing your homework is like the best way to get an agent to, you know, to work with you.
Well, we not only did we do that, but we took it a step further for our business where we actually had the buyer info sheet for us for Bridge.
So it literally says, hi, my name's Nathan Brooks.
This is Bridge.
This is what we buy.
This is the area we buy.
We're cash.
Here's our proof of funds.
Go.
So there's not even a question.
and they're not wondering about what we'll buy either.
We already wrote it out.
So we gave them specific detail, price point, beds and bass, square footage, everything.
And all they have to do is fit it in that criteria.
This is amazing.
This is amazing.
So now I walk up to an agent or I find them on bigger pockets.
I find them somewhere else.
And they don't have to worry.
I mean, they may worry.
Look, hey, I've got $3,000 in the bank.
Oh, you're going to be worried.
Hey, I can get approval for, you know, 72,000.
but every property in the market is 100, even dilapidated, you know, there's going to be a problem.
So you've got to come in and actually make sure that you've got your stuff ready, your ducks in a row in order to actually do the deal.
But it's fantastic.
So any tips before we move on to investors, other investors, how to find these guys?
Like getting your ducks in a row being organized is a great way to lock them in.
but do you just like jump on BP, look for, you know, local agents and do that?
Do you ask other investors for referrals?
Do investors like to refer agents to other investors?
What advice do you have on that?
You know, I think for me personally, it's been all about making the direct relationship
because if I am reaching out to some way, and that could be on bigger pockets, that could be on Craigslist,
that could be on just searching your MLS.
but if you don't pick up the phone, which who does that anymore these days, right?
Yeah. So I will, even today, I'll pick up the phone and say, hey, this is Nathan Brooks.
And I'll send an email first. So here's my buying criteria. This is my name. This is what we do.
And then I'll make a phone call and I'll just let them know, hey, I'm Nathan, this property at 1, 2, 3 Main Street. I'm really interested in.
This is the ballpark of where my offer would be. Does that sound like it might work?
Not like, will you write up an offer for me? But do you think we can make that work?
And then by asking the question, do you think I make that work?
Then they have to say, they're trying to figure out automatically how do I make this work for you?
So you're suggesting, you're actually suggesting you go the next step because the average person would go find an agent and say, here's my criteria.
What you're saying is you're doing the work, you're digging around on whether it's Redfin or Zillow or Realtor to find a deal.
and you're doing the comps, you're doing the math on your own, you're then going to an agent saying,
this is a property I want. You don't have to take me to 38 properties. This is the property I want.
These are the numbers I'm thinking about, what do you think? And based on that reaction,
you can actually judge them, right? Because if they're like, oh, you're crazy investor, get out of here.
Or if they're like, oh, yeah, that's reasonable. That makes sense. Cool. Maybe now you have an opportunity to work with somebody who gets
it. Yes. And so you have the opportunity on the one deal, right? So you gave them the criteria that
you're looking for. And then can we write this up? And oh, by the way, hey, don't worry, take both
sides of this thing. So instead of 3%, 6%, and then we're able to say from here, you know,
do you work with investors? If not, okay, cool, well, these are some of the things I'm looking
for. Oh, where do you buy? Oh, cool. Well, here's my info sheet. Here's our proof of funds. And, you know,
anytime you run across something like this, put me first in your phone. You know, we'll have an
offer to you usually within the same day, a lot of times within a few hours. Yeah. So then, and then we
close, right? So if we put that deal together, but I think there's a few of the relationships and
everybody talks about the 80-20 principle, right? So 80-20 principle for whatever it is,
there's a few real-a-relationships that I have that continually produce the results. And so it's not to say
I won't call a new realtor, but then once you train those realtors on, this is what I'm looking
for, then they start sending you the deals that they see because they think that that might be a go fit
for you. That's awesome. That's very cool. Really, really, really, really good advice. All right. So,
next on the list were other investors. So you said you get deals from other investors. How are you doing that?
I love this. So I will, I try to build those really. It's awesome. This is great. Isn't this? This is a great
show. Like, what more do you want, man? You got Josh, the other guy, and Nathan Brooks.
It's amazing. I just love talking real estate. You know, don't worry. The beard's great too,
okay? The beard's great, too. It's just fun. It's a blessing to be able to talk about this
kind of stuff, you know? So I think when you start thinking about, well, like, let's say, for instance,
if Brandon was in my market, right? So, hey, Brandon, just so you know, we have the capacity
to buy two more deals this week.
If you have anything going on, just let me know.
Not like, can you get me some deals?
Then I sound like I'm either desperate or, you know, I'm not sure what I'm doing.
So we've started to talk about that with other investors and multiple guys who maybe just don't
have the capacity or because we've started to bring our construction in a house so I might
be able to actually buy it a little higher.
And I've even started training and asking the wholesalers.
that we work with to say, hey, if you can't make that work at the wholesale number, call me first.
Before you just pass up the deal, even if we can give you a thousand bucks or $2,000 for it,
and you just assign me the contract or we go direct to the seller or whatever that looks like,
we might still be able to make it work.
That's cool.
You know, last week I closed on a deal, and two weeks ago, I got the deal.
And the way I got it was calling up an investor I knew who was one of the larger flippers in my area.
and he's doing five flips right now at the same time, he said,
and one of them was a little bit more work than he wanted to do.
So I said, hey, I'm just looking for something.
I need a close on something the next week.
He said, sure, I got this one deal.
Go check it out.
I looked at it.
It was great.
Like, I got it from him.
Like, it wasn't a wholesaler.
I mean, he actually owned the house at that point.
He bought it with cash.
And it was just sitting there waiting to work on.
And it was in his pipeline.
He'll get to it later.
And so I helped him out.
He actually still made like, I think, 15 grand on the deal.
But he never did anything to it.
It was just sitting in his portfolio, you know?
So it was perfect.
We've done that probably.
I mean, I bet you once a week at least we've been doing that.
Just people who have them sit in their portfolio, like you said,
or they're just sitting in inventory and they don't have the capacity on the construction side.
So why not it be a win?
And they make a little money now.
And we have another deal to put in our pipeline.
And I love that.
I don't think I've ever heard anybody saying that here on the podcast before talking about
the strategy, but I think it's fantastic.
That's great.
Very great.
All right.
So that's, that's, that's,
how you do it. And the way you find those investors again, BP is obviously research. There's local real estate
groups and clubs. Hey, Josh, how would you find out about local events in your area? I don't even know.
Oh, oh, perhaps. BiggerPockets.com slash events. Oh, my gosh. Is that how we do it? That's how you do it.
Now, but Josh, there is no event in my area. What am I going to do? I just can't. I go watch some TV.
Yeah, you should. And, you know, sit back and then wonder for the rest of your life what my life would have been like had I.
Yep. That's what I'm going to do.
Is that, yeah. Okay. No, or you can say, you know what, I'm going to take action today.
I am going to create a group. I am going to become the hub of investors in my area.
I am going to now become a resource. And by the way, I don't actually need to know that much about real estate in order to do this.
And I could now become the hub. I can become the resource. I could bring people together.
And by doing that, people are going to look to me as a leader, even though I have very little experience.
experience. And now I could get access to other investors. And, and yeah, so start your own group.
If there is not one in your area, obviously. That was really good. That was really good.
That was really good. Have you been rehearsing that for a lot? He has. What? It's almost like he's
rehearsing that. Yeah. What? The elevator speech. That was really nice. But for those who don't know,
who haven't listened to the show. I just started doing this, by the way.
Josh used to be an actor, actually. He was in Hollywood and used to do the acting thing, you know.
weren't you on SNL once, right?
You were on Saturday.
Yeah, you were playing basketball with Jerry Seinfeld, wasn't that right?
We'll see if we could dig up that clip.
This is completely and utterly ridiculous this conversation.
And I refuse to partake in your smearing.
This is not smear.
This is a true thing.
I'm going to find the clip.
Fact finding mission.
Yeah, yes, this is true.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
All right.
So, but we're not talking about Josh today.
I know it's always about Josh every week, all about Josh was acting.
Let's talk about wholesalers.
All right.
We talked about general investors.
Wholesalers are obviously in the investing broad bucket there.
But what is different about finding deals from wholesalers?
What do you need to look out for when getting deals from wholesalers?
What do you need to do to get deals from wholesalers?
Well, I think it really comes back to a lot of the things.
we already talked about, which is build the relationship.
If you put something under contract, you have to close.
Well, you don't have to close, obviously, if there's something terrible going on in the deal,
you shouldn't do that.
But know how to do your homework.
Be speedy, be honest.
And so for us in our market with the wholesalers we work with, there's a handful of people
who bring deals on a regular basis that we built that relationship with.
And people on my staff, too, who help make their life easier.
So as opposed to, you know, asking everything of the wholesaler, we'll say, hey, cool, just send the contract over.
We'll handle it.
Oh, escrow, don't worry about it.
We already handled that with our coordinator on staff.
They'll take care of it.
And so where's the ad value where, again, I might pay a few thousand dollars less, but I bring a whole lot more value in the way that we're able to operate or the way that we're able to close the deal.
Got it.
All right.
So how do I know, you know, you're Nathan Brooks, right?
you're a legend in your own mind. You do 120 deals a year. How do you, as a new investor,
know, whether this wholesaler is trying to pull, you know, pull something on you. How do you,
how do you do that? How do you, you know, figure it out? Back to the first conversation,
which is, what, what, what's my end goal? What can I pay? What area do I buy in? So don't just go
try to buy any house. If you don't know the area and you're a first-time investor, you want to make
sure that you limit, absolutely mitigate as much risk as possible. So this is the area I buy in.
This is the price point I buy in. And maybe you actually have that realtor relationship who helps
you run comps. So I do my own comps. But if you're just starting out, you want to have,
you want to have the people who are kind of that backstop for you who are playing some defense
and also asking you those important questions. Like, do you really understand what you're getting
into, don't jump into a $100,000 flip on your first deal. That's nuts. You know, go, go hit a single,
find a deal that's as simple as possible that makes sense and you can make money and also understand
what is actually happening in that deal. And have a clear scope and have budget and a contractor
that you trust when you're going into it. So you mitigate as much of those risks before you close
on that deal versus, you know, once you're in the middle of it and trying to figure that out.
Yeah. And just for everybody listening, Nathan is in the Kansas City area. So when he says a $100,000 deal, that's nuts. For those of you on the coasts, you know, $100,000 deal sounds great. I would love to find one. In Casey, what's your average buy price and what's your average ARV?
We're somewhere in the AR, we're on the buy price, say, between 50 and 150. And on the sell side, we're between, say, you know, just under 100.
350, 400. Cool. So back to the wholesalers. That's great. I think all that is extremely helpful.
But I'm new and, you know, I found this wholesaler that brought me a, a quote, deal. And how do I know if it's actually his deal to give to me?
How do I know that he's not going to burn me and manipulate me? And I'm signing some contract that's, I don't know, that I, he doesn't even have a right to the property. How do I protect myself?
from shady wholesalers. And sadly, you know, we do our best to try and make sure that people
don't behave this way. Well, there's nothing we can actually physically do, but, you know, by
speaking out about it. But there are people who either don't know what they're doing that do
shady stuff or there's people who are shady that do it. And, you know, how do you protect yourself?
Well, I think knowing what these steps are once you're under contract and before. So if you get a
brand new deal and you're literally doing one of your first, you know, it's your first deal or your first
few deals. You look at the contract and actually read it and maybe you even send it to an attorney
if you don't know what's going on in that contract. And then also the question to ask is,
do you close on this property? Are you or are you assigning me the contract? And so if they're
signing a contract and understand, hey, does the seller understand, you might not be closing on this.
and was it clear in that language?
And then, you know, as you're doing your homework on the property,
make sure that once you, if you put that contract,
if you put that property under contract,
that, you know, if a shady wholesaler is like,
hey, go ahead and just give me the earnest money.
No, it needs to go to a title company
or needs to go to an attorney who's the closing agent
and make sure, you know, that third party,
you know, firewall, if you will, is in place.
And then also make sure that you're not doing anything else
in that contract that contractually makes you obligated to do anything if the title doesn't come back
clean. So there's non, nonrefundable deposits and stuff like that that, you know, we had a deal
come back that we were under contract for 52,000 that had 176,000 in liens after the, yeah. So, you know,
of course, we're not closing on that. But we were in escrow. And it clearly said in the contract that,
you know, we would get our money back if they couldn't clear it at that sales price. So just make sure
you've, you know, you know what you're doing.
You sign a contract that makes sense and it's legal in that you have those, you know,
third parties, whether it's the, you know, title and otherwise that will help you.
Great advice.
Hey, how do you, how do you think the wholesalers are getting the deals that are there?
I mean, what are they doing?
Direct mail marketing or?
Yeah, I think there's, there's a number of ways wholesalers can do that.
So there's, uh, you can literally do the door knocking old school and put hangers on the doors and
knock and, you know, just keep coming back. You can find houses that just look dilapidated and
track them down on your county. So that's kind of like the cheapest way. You can find out the
address and find out the owner and send mail and then request forwarding on your, on your mail.
And then you can always do paper click and there's Google ads and those kind of things that
send people through filters and funnels of, you know, getting their information. And then you can
call them back. And then there's obviously the old school way of just sending direct mail
and then picking a certain list that you're going to choose and creating those campaigns.
Wow. That's great. Sound like you know what you're talking about. I try to learn every day.
Good. I love it. I love it. All right. So marketers, you know, you talked about these other folks
that you get opportunities from. Who are these people? How do you find them? What are they doing? What's
the story about these quote marketers?
We have a number of relationships, but I would say this is kind of the furthest from the
norm of other guys who have a bigger operation that have a much larger, you know, they might
be sending 30, 40, 50, 100,000 pieces of mail a month and have large scale marketing campaigns.
And so they produce leads and they're basically handing them off as a partner relationship.
And then they have a piece of the action in, so to speak, in a wholesale,
kind of fee. So you really have to understand what that actual deal looks like and what the agreement is
prior to, you know, getting into a relationship with somebody like that.
Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. So how do you find these resources? How do you find these,
these folks? You know, for me personally, it's just come through personal relationships.
So let's say, for instance, I see one wholesale deal that comes through. So somebody was going
through bigger pockets or Craigslist or whatever and they pulled my email. And so I see a deal.
And then I understand who it's from. And then I come to find out, hey, this is in Arizona or,
hey, this is in California or hey, this is in, you know, Denver. Lots of guys in Denver. They're having
trouble finding stuff in your market. You know, so they'll produce wholesale leads in other markets.
And then find guys like us who will, will do that. But, you know, I think that's the word of warning,
which is understand who's actually doing that and what they're asking you to do. And
then who's putting it under contract, is that their contract are yours, and then what is your
opportunity as far as, you know, knowing that you're safe in that transaction and you have
control of the deal that you just locked down for them?
Awesome.
Awesome.
I got one last quick question, and I think I may have misunderstood, misunderstood.
You had talked about offloading your properties to turnkey.
Now, are you selling to other turnkey providers, or are you guys actually also vertically
integrating. And as you turn the properties, you're finding folks who want to acquire them.
You're managing for those new owners. Are you doing one? Are you doing both? Yeah. So we, so a lot,
there are third party aggregator businesses out there that do that. So they literally, you know,
have a platform for people to sell them. For us, we decided that we wanted to do everything in-house.
And so we have built those relationships direct with those investors.
and buyers. And so they come directly to us and they buy directly from us and our property that we
have and we give them a warranty. And then we do, like you said, we have our property management
that we then manage that property for them. Got it. Okay. So are you only flipping to folks
that you're then managing or are you flipping to other end buyers as well? We do flip to end buyers as well.
So we do say 70% turnkey and about 30% to the MLS.
Got it.
Retail.
Yeah.
Cool.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Awesome.
How are you managing this whole process?
What software do you use?
What programs do you use?
What management software?
What PRM, all that?
Sure.
So we started using some other property management software, but we kind of decided and landed
on and have now worked on App folio from the property management side.
And they, they've done a good job of continually helping solve problems within their software.
building out cool new reports and it's much more robust now.
And then the other thing that we've done is we run basically everything in our business on
Podio now.
Okay.
And so it's open architecture.
You can literally, basically anything that has a data point or information that you can
have, you can build systems, you can build automations and workflows and anything around,
anything that you can put a data point to.
That's cool.
I'm actually trying to get Podio working right now.
I'm working on this mobile home park, trying to find a mobile home park.
So I'm trying to do that entire system inside Podio.
So you and I need to have a conversation on how to get this set up.
Didn't we try and use it like three or four years ago, Brandon?
We did.
And I could never really figure it out.
Yeah, we talked a lot about it.
But I'm committed now to figuring this out.
I think this is the secret.
I think a lot of times we struggle to find something that we want to be the plug and play,
you know, end all, be all.
And boom, we can just put it in our system.
And what we found was Podio initially was just a nightmare, but we didn't really understand what it could do.
And we didn't have the functionality because we didn't tell it to do what we wanted it to.
And so over time, we started building out more specific apps and more specific things in Podio that then delivered the result.
And now you can have dashboards that tell you, you know, days on market or your average rehab cost or how many days your, you know, rentals are vacant.
And you can create these things where you can see them in views.
and we've created those kind of views for people in our organization because everybody has
something a little different that they're looking for to see.
That's awesome.
Got it.
That's awesome.
Yeah, well, I'm going to definitely, definitely get Podio working because what I've seen is it
does exactly kind of what I wanted to do.
It just takes a lot of setup to get to that point.
So I'm working on that.
So anyway, all right, cool.
So one other thing I want to commend you on as a turnkey provider, turnkey has a bad name
sometimes in terms of, I'm a,
I feel like a lot of turnkey providers fudge the numbers, we'll say a little bit, when they're talking to investors.
So I've had some buddies that have worked with you and they've showed me your numbers.
And I just want to say like the fact, first of all, you show the numbers using the bigger pockets calculators,
which I think is just cool anyway, right?
Because like, we design the calculators to help people see very plainly what the deal is like and what, you know,
it makes it hard to fudge the numbers.
Anyway, so I like that you do that.
But also, you include things like capital expenditures and repairs in your numbers.
And I wish more turnkey people did that.
I wish more wholesalers, when they came to me and they're like, here's a really good deal.
No, it's not a good deal because you've budged all these numbers up.
You know, like, I like the fact that you're very legit.
And so I just want to commend you on that.
Good job, Nathan Brooks.
Well, thank you for saying that.
And I, from the beginning, we said we didn't want to have a mediocre business.
We had an awesome business.
And if we're going to do a rehab, I want to do an awesome rehab.
And we want to have clients.
We want to have clients for a long time and we want to be their partner.
And so, you know, I think that was important.
And you guys have really legit.
legitimize a lot of things that most in in one place for bigger pockets, whether you're a
wholesaler or you're a real estate agent and trying to understand. There's so much information out
there. And so I think, you know, you guys have done a phenomenal job of having content that's,
that's real and makes sense. And for us to then be able to use the tools that you guys have
provided and then for us to build it to in the context of people who are looking on bigger pockets
to say, well, I want to, I want to buy turnkey. Well, what does that mean? Okay. Well,
now you can learn what that means.
And then we help tell the story about how we're actually rehabbing it and in trying to be as transparent as we possibly can so that they know what they're actually getting.
Yeah.
I think this isn't important for business.
Sorry,
there's transparency in general, right?
Yeah.
I agree.
Or you can get it better.
I know Brandon wants to move on to, you know, leadership and things like that.
But before we do, I had a question.
You mentioned that you are, it sounds like vertically integrating construction.
into your business.
It sounds like you're fully vertically integrating everything into your business,
which is awesome.
This morning I had breakfast for the guy who, you know,
he and I talked about contractors.
You know, they can be very transient.
And, you know, they're always looking for the next best opportunity.
And, you know, loyalty doesn't seem to be there.
And like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, this is what I hear over and again with everybody.
And he's talking about building his.
own, you know, crew of painters, getting his own crew of drywall, you know, literally building,
I mean, he works on massive projects. But, you know, for somebody like you, 120 deals, I mean,
it seems really logical that you have all that quality control. Otherwise, you know, I mean,
you can't maintain that many projects consistently with the average contractor, right? So how do you,
how do you do that? How do you find great?
contractors who are going to do the job, who are going to do a great job, and who are going to
keep coming back?
Man, that is the question, I think.
So it's really easy to put a deal together on paper that looks awesome, and it's another
to put it out the other end of the factory, so to speak, and in the way that you want it
to be.
And so I think no matter what skill you are, whether you're doing one, or I think we have 21
active projects in construction right now, it doesn't.
doesn't matter. It's always a challenge. And so there's a few things that we've been working on
to solve that problem. First of all, we are working no matter if you're the lowest guy in the
totem pole or you're the highest guy on staff running everything. We are making it very clear on what
our expectation is. This is what a kitchen looks like. This is what the design is. This is how you
put in a tub. This is what the type of vanity is. And we've started to make it clear for every single
project. And so not only do you have the scope of the project on the job site, but you also have the
selections that are there. So even if you're the, you know, the laborer person and you can clearly
see, you know, every bedroom gets a ceiling fan. It's right there. So go pick up the box,
you know, unpack it and put the ceiling fan in. And so the more clear we can be on the process
and the end result that we're looking for. And in my business, we talk about a lot. We talk
about the activity and the result. So the activity is rehabbing a house, but the result is to have,
you know, everything is, you know, completed in the way that you wanted it. And you have to tell them
what you want. And then you have to train them continually and over and over and over on what you're
expecting them to do. Yeah. So on bigger pockets, we call that our style guide, right? So it's, you know,
if you're going to create a button on the site, this is what the button should look like. If you're
going to create a page. Here's the border. Here's the margins. Here's what the fonts look like.
Here's how the page in general is expected to be composed. And we didn't have that for a very long time.
And creating it as a big fat pain in the, you know what?
It is. However, once that's in place, now you have the tools. Now you have the language with
which everybody can speak consistently so that going forward, it's just easier. You don't even have
to worry like yeah every bedroom's going to have a ceiling fan done i don't i don't have to ask that question
it's it's done right yep that's beautiful it is and i think for for the first time rehabber it still
makes sense it's still applicable so you have to decide at some point you're going to have to decide
what tile am i putting in what color am i painting the house what kind of roof am i putting it on
so start building on that stuff now and it doesn't have to be as detailed as we're doing you know
100 and some flips, but you can start with that, put the basics of that in play, and then you're
able to build from that rather than, you know, wake up one day and you have a giant company with
what, like, you have like 3,000 employees or something.
Yeah, not quite.
And, you know, trying to tell them what to do and how you want the websites laid out.
Well, it's like a cookbook, right?
I mean, like, you have to know the ingredients.
You have to know how they're prepared.
And the cookbook explains it consistently.
Here's our cookbook.
Here's how we want things done.
And so to your point, like on a new, somebody knew, hey, I really love what this looks like.
We're going to use this vanity every single time.
Cool.
Write it down.
Right.
These tiles are fantastic.
I love working with these.
Write it down.
And then little by little, don't just say, hey, I want the black tiles.
What are the model numbers?
How much are they?
Where do you buy them from?
You know, create that.
Now you're systematizing each property so that as you go forward,
you know, you just make it easier.
Well, and don't forget, then on top of that, so you put the, you know,
one, two, three black tile and you put the, you know, one, two, three vanity.
And then you go back to whoever that supplier is and you say, hey, remember me?
I was here last week and I bought the one, two, three black tile.
Hey, I'm buying it again.
See this?
It's in my cart.
Cool.
I'm going to see you next time.
And I look forward to having a conversation about what we can do better on the price.
There you go.
I love it.
So then you're instilling that relationship and then you're instilling the opportunity.
and then you're instilling the opportunity that they're going to give you a better deal.
And we've continued to do that in a lot of those relationships.
Awesome.
Cool.
All right.
Well, kind of on a related note, I do want to get to talk a little bit about leadership.
And one of the reasons why I says, Nathan, you and I had a conversation back, I don't know, four or five months ago.
And I was kind of telling you what's going on in my business, some of the struggles I'm having.
And you kind of called me out on something.
And you said, Brandon, you need to take responsibility for the leadership of your team.
He said, yeah.
Oh, Joe.
He said, yeah, he basically said like,
This is so true.
Well, so like, thank you, Josh.
No, so I have a tendency to just kind of let people do what they do.
And then I get frustrated when it doesn't turn out the way that I wanted.
Like, I mean, for example, last year we were working on a big project.
I mean, we did a huge rehab on a fourplex.
And at the end of the project, like my bookkeeping, like the person I thought was in charge of it,
like the books were a mess.
And I was complaining about that.
And you're like, well, Brennan, you need.
need to take responsibility for that. Like, that's your job. Can you talk about like, yeah, talk about
that a little bit. And I like, what do you mean by that? Take responsibility for the leadership of your team.
So I, I hope I was. Thank you for telling me that, Brandon. You were very nice about it. You're
very nice. And I, I agree with you. He was drinking that day, so he doesn't remember. But, oh, no, I, I vividly
remember the conversation. I didn't realize it was so impactful. It was. It was.
I'm glad to hear that.
So the reason I could say that is because I did that, and I had that same moment in my own team,
and I had the same experience with my people.
And I came back after a real estate mastermind, and I kind of had this epiphany
and talked with a couple of the people on our team.
And I sat everybody down at 9 a.m. meeting or whatever it was.
And I literally said, I'm sorry.
there's a lot of screwed up stuff going on here and it's my fault and we had to start sitting down
and so like in your example you know if it was over budget well why was it over budget was it clear on
what the scope was it clear when they got their jaw and and so in ours whether it was property
management how fast was our turn or how do we place our tenant or you know on the construction side
just like what we talked about they didn't have a selection sheet so the contract was
like white tile, cool.
You know, they didn't know, hey, it's the 3x6 or it's the, you know, 4 by 12 and it's
this grout color and it's this pattern.
So that was my fault.
And so for me, it had to be, and we talk about the one thing.
And so what's the one thing?
And it might be super, super tiny, which is literally what is the tile we're going to use
on the backslash of every turnkey house?
Or it's the one thing, which is how are we going to process an application for rent?
or how are we going to onboard a new client?
So for you, Brandon, I think, I was thinking about how do you help start telling the people what you want?
And then you put the processes in place for you to get the result that you were looking for.
I like it.
And I'm trying.
I'm actually, I'm doing this flip right now that I closed on last week.
And I'm like trying to take 100% responsibility for this thing.
Like I'm involved, you know, whether or not I'm the day-to-day guy that's there.
at least I want to be in charge. Everything that goes wrong is my fault. And I'm trying to put those
processes in place now because, yeah, I don't, when you don't have processes, we don't have,
people don't know what they're doing. Everyone's frustrated. Exactly. And you haven't explained to them
what the end result is that you're looking for. And so that was one of those things. So you,
in your case, maybe you do need to be on the job site more often, but you're helping train that
contractor of, this is how I want the layouts of these kitchens. This is the kind of finishes that I
expect. No, it's not cool to slot paint over the, over the white trim. You know, we want it
nice and tight. Go fix this and this and this and this. This is how it's supposed to look.
And then now you've explained to them, you set the conditions for them. And now you've explained
to them. And now you can say, hey, no, you go do that. This is what I've asked you to do.
Yeah, I like that a lot. I like that a lot. Yeah, I came to the realization that, you know,
any frustration in my life is likely the result of a failed system on my part. And I think of everything.
and that I'm frustrated in life.
There's a system broken there that I can try to work on.
Anyway, I'm starting with your brain system.
Yes.
You can take that a step further, which is what we did, where in the book traction,
they talk about the issues list and having your quarterly rocks and your yearly goal
and whatever all those things are.
And so one of the things we did, and we have an actual place in podium where anybody on
our staff can put in an issue.
And so we're not saying, hey, we're not going to.
to deal with this issue or I might not be able to get it to it today, but they have a place to put
in there.
And by the way, not only do they have a place to put the issue, but then we ask them to give a
proposed solution to what the problem is.
So that way, as problems come up, it's not just getting silent.
It's not silent.
We're not putting it away.
And so like the next time you have that come up, now you can go back and say, oh, I had this
issue.
How did I solve it?
You're not replicating, solving the problems.
and then you take the problem, you take the solution, you put it into a process, and then you
just repeat the heck out of it.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
That's awesome.
Yeah, traction was a great book about like systematizing your business and just how do you scale?
How do you get that traction, I guess, as they call it?
So what are the books are you reading right now?
I know we asked that question later in The Famous Four, but.
Yeah, we were talking about, well, actually to that point in this conversation, I have this sitting
in my desk right now in Jock, you.
me like at least 10 books, but this extreme ownership book was just phenomenal.
I'm sure that's the guy that you want to tell that he owes you something?
Yeah, yeah, I am.
All right.
There you go.
He's, you know, just because he's a Navy SEAL and just because he's a jiu-jitsu,
you know, stud, you know, terrifying human being.
They can put it in the mail.
I don't have to, you know, rest, you know, be a jiu-sit-s match with him for it.
But that book was amazing.
And one of the things I loved about it was he talked about in the very first chapter that there was this experience that had this blue on blue is what they call it, which means basically friendly fire.
And after every mission, Navy SEALs, they would sit their guys back down and they would talk about what happened in the mission, what went well, what do we need to work on.
And this was kind of one of the things that hit me right in the teeth.
And he sat everybody down after that mission.
and everybody in the chain of command for him, you know, up and down to the generals and all the way down to his, you know, lowest ranking guys were, you know, super upset.
He's in big trouble and he sits everybody down and he says, you know, whose fault is this?
And everybody starts looking around each other and people start to say that it's my fault, it's my fault.
And he says, no, it's not your fault. It's my fault.
And so I just love this book.
I love thinking about how they had people in the field.
in this book they talk about decentralized command.
And everything we've been talking about this morning is about how do you explain what you want,
but then give the power and autonomy for your guys to go get it and then reward them and praise them
and tell them what they're doing a good job and help them critique and get better what they're doing.
So what do you do when something goes wrong?
What do you do?
You've decentralized and, you know, your guys are not doing it as they're supposed to.
or, you know, it's not my fault.
You know, what do you do in that situation?
Because surely you're going to come across that.
Yes, absolutely.
Well, I think the ownership on the front end for it being my fault is true.
Because if they didn't have the clarity and what they were being asked to do, then I'll own that.
And then I think there's an importance separating the emotion we have to feeling frustrated.
And then the actual whatever they did wrong.
So, you know, you can feel frustrated, but they're not going to.
going to learn much from you being frustrated. They're going to learn from you actually telling them
what happened, what was wrong, and then how we fix it the next time. And then you give them the
opportunity and the training to do it. And I remember for years and years, even on the hiring side,
like hire an assistant, go write up contracts, go find me some deals. Goodbye, see you later.
What does that really mean? They have no idea. Absolutely no idea. And so, and then you're going to be
upset because you don't have the actual result that you thought that you would get from
telling them to go write up a contract and, you know, send it to title and, you know, find
you some deals.
And so for me, we started and even the way we onboard people now, too, is they take much
smaller bites.
This is how you do this one thing.
Let's do it again and let's do it again and let's do it again.
Oh, screwed it up?
No problem.
Let's do it again.
And then back to that selection sheet on the job site.
This is what it looks like.
This is a picture of what it looks like.
This is the content of what it looks like.
And so I really try to put it in a context.
If they want to be there, they're going to want to get it right.
And if they don't care, they're in the wrong place.
And they can go work somewhere else where nobody cares.
But that's not what we want.
And that's not the culture that we want.
And we talk about it through our core values of our business and say, hey, we're going
to do the right thing every time.
And if that's what you want to do, let's do it again.
Awesome.
I love it.
Well, cool.
Well, I mean, we could talk about leadership forever, but I'm just going to get you on a private call and I'm going to make you teach me how to be a better leader.
If you could, I mean, if there's one piece of advice we could kind of leave off this topic with is like if I want to be a better leader, what should I do?
What do I do to be a better leader in my business and my family and my life and whatever?
Yeah.
I think you have to start with you.
I was on the phone call with a friend of mine, Darren.
who's kind of got that old country boy, he'd probably hate that I'd say that.
But he's got that spiritual soul and he can really help.
And he was talking about how in his life, and he's got a monster wholesale business and
they do amazing stuff.
And he was talking about how he had to start here first, inside.
And that was not because he didn't love his wife or didn't care for his kids and whatever.
But if I am not dealing with whatever is happening in here,
I cannot possibly help anybody else.
And so what does that mean?
Well, that means I am getting to the gym.
It means I am eating well.
It means that I am learning all the time.
So I try to read a book every week or a week and a half so that I typically do audible books.
But I'm consistently, if you can get in the car or you can be in your office and there's
the radio playing, hey, guess what?
Wrong answer.
Turn the radio off.
Get an audible book or whatever that is, rent one from the library.
and you could be taking in that information and putting it in your brain.
And then I am consistently putting myself in uncomfortable positions to be more comfortable.
So if I am comfortable all the time, I'm not going to be pushing to find answers to help them.
So I'm going to sit down with one of my staff people and say, hey, what's going on?
No, really, what's going on?
Let's look at that issues list item.
Let's talk about it.
What's the big challenge?
and if you can meet somebody where they are
and you're actually helping them solve problems
so that they can do their job,
you are then enabling yourself
to be able to do the things that you are truly supposed to be doing.
I love it.
Awesome.
I'm committed to be a better later.
And by the way, can I talk about one more thing?
Which is, I really truly believe it starts with asking
what you are supposed to be doing,
what do I want to be doing,
and then how do I help the people around me
do all the things that I'm not?
I love it.
That's perfect.
All right.
Well, let's shift gears here a little bit,
and we're going to drill you on a few questions that come direct from the Bigger Pockets
forums because this is the fire round.
It's time for the fire round.
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All right, these questions, again,
comes straight out of the bigger pockets forums,
which you can get to at biggerpockets.com slash forums.
And these are some very specific questions today.
So, Josh, why don't you kick us off?
This is great.
Apparently, I'm very confused because I'm usually the second question.
You are.
I know, I thought I want to be nice and let you.
I'm giving you the ability to ask.
You give me like, you know, the TLDR question, but let's do this.
Keep track here.
You ready?
That's a long question.
Yeah, I'm ready.
Hi.
I'm 23 years old.
Hi.
I'm 23 years old and have been trying to get started in real estate and
investing, but no luck. I know this wasn't going to be easy, but it almost feels impossible.
I finally tried to get pre-qualified for a loan of about $80,000 to $90,000 or so.
The loan officer that took my application finally called back and pretty much told me,
I can't if I don't have 15 to 20K to put down. She said, I don't make enough to support a loan
of that much. I make about $2,600 a month and have only my truck payment of $560 a month.
she said that the loan payment, I would have, let's say the loan payment, I would have too much debt to income and when I qualify.
She also specifically asked me if it was for myself or to rent out.
I know I've heard before not to say it's an investment property.
What's the best way to build capital or buy your first property?
And is that okay for me to say that it is indeed for an investment property?
Okay.
And done.
Wow.
That's a really short and succinct question.
Okay. I think there's a really simple answer here.
You cannot expect to have the different result by doing the same activity.
So, first of all, if the bank's not going to do it, you're not going to just automatically go add income or properties or whatever.
Stop doing that. You're just going to have a bunch of credit polls. It's not going to be helpful.
So there's a couple ways you can do that. First of all, mentor, coach, partner. One of those things you could you could absolutely.
absolutely have. And there's some opportunity. There's there's a cost to that, depending upon which
way you go. Probably the cheapest route is that JV kind of opportunity. So you find a somebody in
your market that you look up to. And you continually ask to be a part of that. Maybe you even
work for free. Maybe you do the whole deal for nothing. Second is in the last couple of weeks,
I put a house under contract, you know, no money out of pocket. It's going to go in my personal
portfolio. So there are different ways to structure deals. So some place that you could look at is,
and Brandon, I can't remember, and please don't be offended, the book title. It's long.
The book on invest in real estate with no and low money down.
Thank you. Where do they get that? Bigger pockets.com. Bigger pockets.
Yeah. Yeah. See, I had that. All right. Thanks. Yeah, man. And so you could learn the strategy of
buying these things with less or no money. And you're not dealing with that bank underwriter who's
going to look at a thousand documents and want a blood sample and all that. And it's based around
the actual property that you're buying. So it's called an asset based loan and not your income and
you know, DTI base loan. So and I would never in a million years proposed to say if it is an
investment property that you not say it is. So you cannot ever, ever start without having your
moral compass on the right direction. Thank you. And lying on a
on a mortgage application.
It's like a federal offense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even besides the whole jail part,
uh,
yeah,
don't do that.
Don't do it.
Yeah.
It's,
it's good to sleep at night and,
uh,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
that's really good advice there.
I would also just add.
And again,
I don't,
I'm not judging.
I don't know the exact situation,
but if you make $2,600 a month,
you should not have a $560 dollar truck payment.
Like I don't have a $560.
I don't have a car payment,
period.
because it holds you back.
Imagine what if you didn't have that.
I know maybe it's,
you didn't realize it at the time,
whatever,
but man,
I mean,
if you have to have a car,
get a $200 car payment,
if you have to or $100 car payment,
but drive something cheap and,
I mean,
if you're making $2,600 a month.
Yeah.
I agree.
I think for the first time
my life,
I have a car payment close to that high.
And, you know,
yeah.
You make a little more than $2,600 a month,
I think.
And I have one as well,
but I have a lease and I,
you know,
I write off the vast majority of,
that. And so there's different ways you can structure that when you're at the point. And there's a
time and place for it. Right. I mean, like we are all like we are all consistently or more than
$2,600 a month. And there's, I think people just want to achieve the, the dream before they've
earned the dream. You know, like they. Well, my brother, my brother, you know, when he was starting
real estate investing, he bought like a $700 truck off of some guy that was getting rid of it.
It wasn't great. It broke down. Once in a blue moon, he had to put, you know, some sweat equity into
keeping the truck alive, but he didn't have a car payment, right? So, you know, if you're
starting out, and man, today we got a lot of plugs. Sorry, guys, but there's a book. It's called
Set for Life. It's written by Scott Trench. It's a Bigger Bucket's book. And it talks about all
these things, but one of the things that talks about is frugality and just being smart with your
money and using frugality as a means to an end towards getting those first deals out the door.
you could buy the book at biggerpockets.com slash set for life.
But the book's amazing.
And just that mindset is a total shift for a lot of people.
The other book would be rich dad, poor dad, and really thinking about what that earning is
and how you actually think about that result that you want and put the pieces in place to do it.
I totally agree.
I love it, love it.
All right.
Well, that was the longest five-round question.
That was the longest firearm question ever.
All right.
Question number two.
It's a lot shorter.
I'm finding that property managers are expensive.
I'm out of state. Can I just manage the property myself from out of state?
You're shaking your head and then you're...
Don't do it.
Yep.
You know, I own a property management business and yes, it is expensive.
Human capital is expensive.
Getting great people is expensive.
And so, you know, do you want to get the mediocre of property management or do you want
to get the greater property management?
So you need to interview people.
If you can't afford the management, you probably can't.
afford the house. So I just, I think that it's a dangerous, dangerous play for the vast
majority of people. I'm sure there's some people out there who are self-managing, stuff out of state,
good for you. I would never do that. I would find a great partner on the ground who's going to be
looking at your property, making sure the maintenance is cared for and it's taken care of.
Awesome. Awesome. And I love what you said in there. And I, I don't know if a lot of people caught it,
but you said if you,
it was something like if I can't afford it,
then don't do it.
If you can't afford the house.
Right.
And we talk about that.
I know,
Brandon,
you talk about that on webinars.
We have been talking about that here at Bigger Pockets
for years and years and years
from when we started talking about the 50% rule,
you know,
and what a lot of new investors will do
and a lot of gurus will kind of push is,
hey, well, you know,
if you self-manage,
that cuts 8 to 10, 12%,
of your costs.
So just do that, you know, and then you could factor that into the deal.
Well, the problem with that is this.
At some point in time, there is a likelihood that you no longer will want to manage the property
yourself.
You know, if you're just buying one or two properties, okay, maybe you'll do it.
But as you scale, something's going to change at some point.
There is a pretty good chance you're going to want some management.
Well, guess what?
You didn't factor that into this deal and opportunity.
And so what was supposed to be a great deal that you were making 5, 6%.
You got to pay out 8% now.
If now you're minus 3%, uh-oh, you're in trouble.
Not to mention, what are you buying that rental house for?
You want passive income.
You want to build your wealth.
You want to have cash flow.
You want to be able to do what you want.
Do you really want to take the phone call to fix the toilet?
And do you really want to take the weekend call when there's some water in the basement or whatever the problem might be?
So I think it's very short-sighted if you're not thinking about why you actually bought that property and what it's supposed to do in your life.
And even if you want to manage yourself, I still budget for management and then I pay myself a management fee so that at any point I could turn to give it to somebody else and I still, the investment makes sense on its own.
It stands on its own.
Yeah, exactly.
Awesome.
And along with that really, really quick, there's lots of other factors that people, you know, vacancy, really.
and CAP-X, like you guys that are new, please, please, jump on the calculators on bigger pockets,
look at all these things that we account for, because if you're not thinking about all that when
you buy a property, you're going to get yourself in trouble.
Please, please do that.
All right.
Number three, seems to me, when I look into buying a $60,000 house, it comes with issues.
It's potentially on its last leg in the neighborhood that's consistent with the same issues
in the same price point.
Okay, I think I get that.
When I go up to $100,000,
you're basically getting turnkey and not much fix-up.
And again, I don't know what market this guy's in,
but do the math in your own market?
What do you think an investor should do?
I'm after cash flow, not appreciation.
Okay, well, I think there's a couple of questions.
So this is pretty comparable in our market.
So I'll just use ours as an example.
So, you know, at 60, I think the question is really,
what am I buying this?
And what am I going to do with it?
So if you're buying it at 60 and you expect just to put a renter in it, you know, it's a bad move.
You haven't made a good choice.
If you don't have the cash to do it, you don't have the contracts to do it.
You don't want to do it.
You know, maybe, you know, ask yourself that, do you want to manage?
Do you want to run the construction, whatever?
And then the second is, you know, are you looking for what is the opportunity cost?
So at the $100,000, you had somebody else who took the risk.
So that's what we tell our clients too.
Like, hey, we took the risk.
We have a profit margin built into these things, but we also tell you what we're going to do in the scope of work.
And then we give you a warranty for it.
So, you know, I think the person who's buying this $60,000 house is the one who made the choice to put the work in on the front end.
And then they reap the benefit on the back.
But, you know, you have to make the choice if you want to actually do the work.
And if you have the capacity to do it and you want to learn and go through the hassles of actually solving that problem.
Got it.
Makes sense.
Makes sense.
Awesome.
All right.
Number four.
So this somebody, this is a much longer thread or question, but I kind of, I'll sum it up with
this.
Basically, somebody hired a contract to do some work on their bathroom at their house.
And it says here, it says, here's a dilemma.
I stupidly left a family heirloom quilt handmade by my great-grandmother draped on a chair
in the living room, and the workers decided to use it to clean up a waste in the
bathroom.
I came in one day to find it sodden on the floor of the shower.
The, you know, general contractor tried to get it washed.
what do I do?
Well, I think step one.
Step one.
Take responsibility.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's, I believe it's called extreme ownership.
So don't leave your family heirlooms in the house for a, I mean, I think the unfortunate thing is there's nobody's responsibility but their own.
You don't like deduct it from your, any pay from the contract or anything.
I don't think so.
I mean, it's hard to understand the context of everything unless you were standing there and saw it.
But at the same time, you know, the contractor, you wouldn't expect somebody to pick up one of your own personal things and use that.
But, you know, I think it's a difficult thing where if it's that important to you, why was it so close to the construction site in the first place?
Yeah.
I agree.
I agree.
All right.
That was the end of the fire run.
I might argue that one.
But, you know.
Would you?
This is not debate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean.
Why, Josh?
What do you think?
It's your fault.
You left it sitting there.
I left it sitting there.
But it was not a, you know, this is not a dish rag or unless it looks like a dish rag, right?
I mean, if it looks like, oh, this is a crappy old rag.
I mean, you know, if it looks, it sounds like it's a blanket or a quilt.
Yeah.
I mean, like, who uses, who goes to somebody's house and grabs their quilt and uses it to clean up
from the bathroom?
I mean, like, who does that?
But don't get me wrong.
I don't disagree with you.
Yeah, I know.
I think the question is, is can you really blame the person?
The challenge is how do you, how much is that stupid?
It's not stupid.
It's an heirloom.
How much is it worth, right?
So like, hey, listen, you know, this thing's probably, it costs them 50 bucks.
It's probably worth a hundred or a thousand or millions of them.
You're not going to pay them that.
I think you would probably want to say to the G.
Hey, listen.
And like, you know, yes, perhaps it should not have been there at the same token.
Your workers never in a million years should have taken this thing and used it to clean the floor and destroy it.
You know, let's figure out how we can work this out.
Yeah.
You know, and then, you know, it's also the responsibility of the contractor tell us guys, yeah, don't take people's crap and use it to clean your mess.
Yeah.
So I do think there's a conversation there.
I don't think it's like, oh, you know, you're going to eat it.
I think, you know, I'm a New Yorker.
We don't like when people screw us like that.
Well, I think the question, though, is how do you actually rectify it?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe you say, you know, you find some value and say, listen, you know, this job was of $10,000 job.
You know, what are you willing to do given that you've destroyed this, you know,
a hundred-year-old heirloom from my great Grammy, you know.
And if he's like, I do nothing, okay, well, you know, I'll be sure to keep
that in mind, you know, going forward, you know, and if it's like, you know what, I'll give you
a couple hundred bucks.
Anything to make it right.
To make it right is going to be the right thing from the contractor.
At least, yeah, something, something reasonable.
And I would.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Well, I'll just say, I would also look at it as how good a relationship do you have
with the contractor.
You know, maybe this is a really good way to get a better price on the next deal.
You know, like, hey, man, you really screwed me over here.
My wife is so sad.
She's been crying for days.
You know, let's just work this out on the next deal.
cool. And then they owe you basically. I mean, I would potentially work it that way. Yeah.
There's lots of angles. You've got to figure it out. But anyway, I just, I don't, I don't think you accept that, hey, I screwed up and move on. Yeah, you did, but they did too.
So. By the way, I'm going to put a link to all of these threads that we talked about here in the fire round today.
If you guys are listening to this and you want to go jump into those conversations, just go to BiggerPockets.com.
So I show 232. And you can find links to all these threads and jump into the conversation.
Why have we not been doing this?
I don't know. I never, I never thought about that.
Well, Josh suggested something earlier, too, is whenever we talk about a book,
why don't we just have a URL to the Amazon page?
Like, go to biggerpockes.com slash extreme ownership.
And Dave, who's our podcast editor, will make a little shortcode on bigger pockets.
So go to bigger pockets.com such extreme ownership and biggerpockes.com slash traction.
And you can get more information about those books.
So just makes obvious sense.
So Jacco can now send 100 of them in this 10 now.
Is Jaco going to send me some copies?
I don't quite know.
but I have sampled the book.
Actually, why don't we get...
He sounds like a bit of a tough guy.
Get him on the podcast.
Yeah, let's get Jocco on the podcast.
All right, we're going to do it.
And then I should just fly to Denver and then we can do a little jujitsu.
Well, Brandon said he could take him.
Brandon said he can take on Jock.
Come on, I can take him.
I follow him on Instagram and he's like the best Instagram guy to follow.
Every day he posts pictures of his, this is just random and funny.
But it's his, it's the floor under where he worked out.
It's always like this like sweat-stained black and white floor.
But it's like artwork every time.
It's like my favorite post of the day.
I don't know.
Is that weird and gross?
It's so funny.
It's totally gross, man.
Check it out.
Follow,
what's it,
Jacco Willick.
Is that how he says?
Willing.
Willing.
Follow him on Instagram and follow Josh and me and Nathan on Instagram too.
All right.
All right.
So,
uh,
with that,
we're at the famous four time.
Famous Four time.
Yeah, let's do this.
Famous for.
This is the famous four.
All right.
Nathan, did we ever make you do it back in the day?
No, man.
Oh, let's hear it.
It's too bad.
The famous four!
That's pretty good.
That's our new recording.
We're going to use that.
That's actually,
yeah, we'll take it.
All right.
It's actually really funny.
We should take that.
All right.
Famous Four question number one.
And of course, you've been on the show a couple times,
so these might be the same, might be different.
What is currently your favorite real estate, specifically,
your real estate related book?
Favorite.
A real estate related book.
Other than all of mine, of course, you know.
Obviously, other than all of yours.
You know, I think my favorite is my wife and I are going back through the millionaire
real estate investor book.
I really like it just because it's simple language, it's simple deals, it's not super
complicated.
And I've read a bunch of those books and I think there's a bunch out there.
But I just love how simple it is.
And I think those guys do a great job on really all their books.
I agree.
Cool.
Cool.
Awesome.
Next question.
favorite business book outside of the one that we've been talking about the extreme
ownership.
Yeah, I think that my favorite right now would be E-Mith.
It really has challenged me on the way that I thought about bringing on new people in our
business.
And it's really encouraged me in a way.
So E-Mith stands for entrepreneur myth.
And so the first couple of minutes or, you know, our, it really felt like the same story
that I lived through, which was bringing somebody on, telling them to go.
write some contracts and then saying, you know, have fun, go do it.
And it really helps you process that information and really apply it to what you're doing.
By the way, you can get, go to biggerpockse.com slash millionaire investor to get the millionaire
real estate investor or bigger pockets.com slash e-mith to get the E-Meth.
I like this.
Yeah, this is great, right?
Good idea.
It makes things easy for our listeners.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Nathan Brooks, besides growing very thick beards.
Yeah.
Flipping houses.
Yeah.
What do you do for fun, man?
You know, I have really gotten into jiu-jitsu and kickboxing.
Oh, nice.
You and Brandon should fight.
We should.
I could take you easily.
He'd be terrified, though.
I don't know how we'd really handle it once he was in there.
Oh, I'd handle it.
Oh, he would feel like a little girl.
It would be hysterical.
I would pay for this.
In fact, you know what?
I bet you our listeners would pay to watch
Brandon fight you or anybody in an arena.
We should do a charity event, actually.
We should do Brandon versus anyone as a charity event.
I think it would be amazing people would pay a ton of money.
It's like a really good idea.
So I hired a personal trainer twice a week.
So I have an hour and a half twice a week with a pro fighter.
So we do spend a lot of time on the jihitsu and we spend a lot of time on the strike team.
That's impressive.
You know, just got to get the practice in.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Anything else?
You know, I have actually also gotten into bird hunting,
so I was a beautiful German short hair pointer.
And so his name's Gunner.
And we do lots of fetch.
We do lots of training and shoot lots of shotguns.
Is that a dog?
Oh, okay.
It's a German short hair pointer.
Yep.
I didn't know that with him of a dog.
German point hair.
German short hair pointer.
I'll send you a picture.
Point hair.
Shh.
All right.
All right.
All right. Let's end this thing with my final. Well, we got a couple of questions, but my last of the famous four.
What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?
I think we spent the whole time talking about it today, which was really starting here.
And you have to make a choice what that actually looks like. And you have to be committed to go through the harder times.
You have to be committed to learning. You have to be committed to all experiences.
that come with that. So if you're not willing to put forth the effort and do the learning and
do all those things, then you probably haven't aligned what your actual goal is with reality.
So you have to start with the goal and you have to make sure it's congruent with what you
actually want to do. And then if you make that choice and you put the work in, I believe that
truly people can actually achieve that goal.
That's great.
That's great. Wow. Very moving. Very, very moving.
I practiced it all week.
I appreciate you, Nathan.
I appreciate you, Josh.
Oh, all right, man.
Before we let you get out of here, where can people find out more about you?
Where can they connect with you and how do they learn more?
Well, I am obviously on Bigger Pockets, and I'm sure we'll have a link for that.
I don't remember off the top of my head what it is.
And then bridgetturnkey.com.
So that's our turnkey site.
And then also on Facebook.com slash fix flip.
rent, KC.
So we have all our stuff and pictures and clients and all that stuff on there.
Cool.
And you guys can get links to anything we talked about at biggerpockets.com slash show
232, Nathan Brooks.
Thank you again for coming on the show.
We really do appreciate it.
Thank you, guys.
I appreciate it as well.
Thank you.
All right, guys, that was Nathan Brooks.
That was a great show.
That was fantastic.
I like the shows where we just really drill down into a couple of key topics,
It's like, how are you finding deals?
And those four methods, I think were fantastic.
I think anybody can apply those to their business.
Yes, yes.
Yeah, no, it's great.
And it sounds like he's scaled up a pretty serious business.
His ideas on leadership are great.
So great job, Nathan.
Yeah, thanks, Nathan.
So, Josh, what's going on with you these days?
What are your summer plans?
Summer plans, summertime.
I am.
What am I doing?
I am going on an adventure with the family at some point this summer.
And you're RV?
We are going RV in.
Nice.
Yeah, we're going to.
You can stay.
I have RV parking.
You can stay right here.
You should drive.
Yeah, in my driveway, I have a little RV parking spot.
I do.
I don't have an RV, but I have parking.
Do you have like a dump that I can dump?
I do.
Really?
I don't.
Right in your driveway?
I live on the edge of a hill.
Let all the stuff come out.
Just let it go down the hill.
It's fine.
Yeah, I don't know that you want that.
The neighbors at the bottom might not like it, but whatever.
Yeah, I think we're going to go check out Glacier, Yosemite, Yellowstone, not Yosemite.
You know where you should go?
Rushmore.
Yeah, I was going to say, you should go to the Black Hills in South Dakota and the badlands.
There's a place called Bear Country USA.
It's in Rapid City.
Oh, my gosh, it's my favorite place in the entire world.
They have like hundreds of bears.
You just drive around them in wolves.
Anyway, it's crazy, awesome.
Yeah, it's like the coolest thing ever.
We're going to go explore.
Very cool.
Yeah.
How about you?
What are you going to do?
I'm going to drive you nuts.
drive you insane.
No, I don't know.
I'm hoping to do some traveling as well.
We'll see.
But I got a bunch of rehabs going on this summer.
So I'm going to be busy managing those because I'm taking ownership for them.
Yeah.
You know, but.
Extreme ownership.
I'm taking extreme ownership.
But I'm going on to California to do some surfing in July.
So that'd be fun.
Nice.
Have fun.
It'll be great.
Cool.
You can meet me down there.
We'll do some surfing together.
Your old stomping grounds.
Yeah, buddy.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Guys, this is show 32 of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Again, check out the show notes of biggerpockets.
dot com slash show 232.
With that, let's get out of here.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
all right, so we have like a hidden segment in every show and a lot of people don't listen
to it probably because they don't even know it's there.
And so we don't usually talk about it, but today's was so funny, you guys need to go
listen to it.
It's right after this music that starts right now.
You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.
If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height, you're in the right place.
Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com.
Your home for real estate investing online.
It's time for it.
It's time for it.
The Random Five.
All right.
And of course, as usual, we've got our little hidden segment of the show here.
We want to bring in.
And this is our Random Five or Six.
Now it's six.
Five.
We're confused.
All, we're doing random six.
These are six random questions.
We're going to throw out you just to get to know you a little bit better, anything completely unrelated to real estate.
Number one, do you like any, or do you like traditional sports like football, baseball, soccer, or extreme sports like snowboarding, BMX, motorcross, better?
I'm an avid baseball and football fan, so I would definitely have to say those are mine.
And I would say go royals and go chiefs.
All right.
Is that like a hockey team football?
I don't know.
It's in the middle of nowhere.
Nobody actually cares.
Yeah, you're not on the coast, whatever.
Other than that, you know, world championship, you know, no big deal.
That didn't happen.
All right, next question.
Do you have a landline telephone in your house?
No way.
I try not to be anywhere near my phone at all times.
Well, that's sort of a lie.
But no, absolutely no.
Do you guys have a landline?
Yes, I do.
Yes.
And it was because I am old.
My grandma has a landline.
I just gave up my AOL email address.
Good job.
You have the voicemail with the cassette.
Please leave a message at the beep.
And I actually listen to the voicemails, too.
No, that's not amazing.
No, no.
I don't listen to a voice mail.
voicemail in years. Well, that explains a lot. You didn't get my message last night. Oh, man,
this is awkward. Voicemail, delete. All right. Next question. I like this one. This is fun.
If you were in prison for a long time, we're going to say, I'm going to get my number. If you're in prison
for 25 years and you had the opportunity to escape, would you? Because 25 years is not life.
That's an obvious. Of course, you would if it was life. But if you had the opportunity to escape,
you're in for 25 years, you're five years into it.
Do you take it?
Well, I have to refer to the movie that I enjoy that has a similar theme.
Well, either Shawshank Redemption or the Count of Monte Cristo.
And so there has to be that phenomenal backstory in the priest that teaches you how to be a ninja or whatever he is.
And then you read all this amazing literature.
You dig it out with a spoon.
And then you become the Count of Monte Cristo with the giant, you know, fat estate on the, you know,
center of town. So I'll go with yes in that fashion.
All right. I like that.
By the way, I'm actually reading that book right now.
I never read it before.
Great book.
Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, quartered the way through it.
It is good.
All right.
We have two more, right?
Yeah.
What is your favorite Girl Scout cookie?
Oh, man.
What's the one with the chocolate and the peanut butter?
I don't even know.
I don't know.
Whatever that one's called?
That's my favorite.
Yeah, there's thin mint cookies and then there's everything else garbage, like in my mind.
Samoa's.
No, no.
Some people like Samoa's.
No, no way.
Yeah.
Chocolate and peanut butter and the same cookie.
I'm going to come on.
All right.
Next question.
Last one of the famous random six.
For you.
For me.
Do you attend your high school reunions?
Because we're not five now, six.
Do you attend your high school reunion?
I did not.
attend my last one and it is out with the jury on the future one.
All right.
Were you cool in high school?
I know it's not the question.
No.
Definitely not.
Loser?
Okay.
Definitely.
Was anybody actually cool in high school?
Like maybe three.
Yeah.
Every high school is like three.
But they're all the ones that are like losers today.
So I'm going to, you know, it's like reverses in life.
I mean, Josh was really cool in high school, which is why he's, you know.
I was the antithesis.
of really cool in high school.
Oh, man.
If orchestra and choir, you know, really go for like the really cool category,
then I was definitely really awesome.
All right.
Pied your pants is the coolest.
Consider me, Miles Davis.
What did I miss there?
That was from what, Billy Madison.
Anyway.
All right.
All right.
That's like my favorite line of any movie of all time.
Outside.
Stop talking.
Outside of yourself.
because this show, 200 plus thousand people will listen to this over the next two or three weeks.
Outside of yourself, did any of your childhood friends become famous?
I got a buddy of mine who is on Gotham.
His name's Drew Powell.
Nice.
I got a couple of buddies who play an amazing bands all over the world and produce amazing records and play music.
So that's pretty cool.
and I think that's about it.
I think we all know somebody that's famous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, we know you, right?
I mean, your face is everywhere.
Oh, actually, here, funny story.
So, this is Josh's face.
I don't know.
I don't know what we're doing.
So my wife and I are sitting in Josh's living room and Josh has some friends over.
It was like, it was a surprise party for like your, what, 40th birthday or 50th, 60th?
Were you invited to my 40th?
I was.
Whatever that is.
Yeah, whatever that.
I showed.
did. Me and Heather came out and we're sitting in your living room and you and your buddies
like high school or college or whatever buddies are in the kitchen. And there's this guy talking.
And Heather's like, I know that voice from somewhere. How do I know that guy? And it was just
off his voice. And I'm like, I don't know you're talking about. She's like, no, I know that.
That's a walk to remember. And it was your buddy, Al, who played the guy Shane West's friend
on a walk to remember. And then like I yell out, Josh, like, or Al, were you in a walk to remember?
And he's like, yeah, I was.
And like, you have a famous friend.
And now I see him on commercials.
Like yesterday, he was on some commercial for Chase or something like that.
And I'm like, I know that guy.
He's like the face of Uber.
He's everywhere.
He's over.
Yeah.
Al Thompson.
He's amazing.
And Al is a prolific real estate investor.
He is killing it in real estate.
We've been trying to get him on the show.
I know.
He keeps turning me down.
But anyway, yes.
Josh hangs out with, you know, Seinfeld and Al Thompson.
All right.
It's another day in Josh's life.
Yeah, just another day.
When you're a big deal.
Nathan Brooks.
Thank you.
Yeah, this is fun.
Thank you.
See later.
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