BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 255: Six-Figure Real Estate Investing in Just 20 Hours a Week with Elliot Smith

Episode Date: November 30, 2017

How many hours per week does it take to be a successful real estate investor? The answer on today’s episode might surprise you. Today we’re sitting down with Elliot Smith, a real estate investor from Washington State who has an incredible story to tell about how he went from 70+ hour per week worker to “full-time” real estate investor who only works part-time. Elliot has an incredible outlook on life and business that’s contagious, so warning—you won’t leave this interview the same person. You’ll also learn how Elliot and his wife made over $100,000 their first year in real estate and the amazing tale of how they made over $100,000 in a single month. This show is as inspirational as it is educational (and filled with more than a few laughs!) so get ready to have your world rocked. In This Episode We Cover: How Elliot got started real estate investing Whether you should do house inspections Their next deals and a great wholesale deal How to wholesale with a full-time job The importance of being honest with your sellers What exactly wholesaling entails How he made $100k in just one month! How to invest part-time and earn full-time Tips for building relationships with private lenders Advice on flipping with no money down Tips on finding a mentor How to do 30 deals a year How Elliot finds deals His way of making the world better And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Brandon’s Instagram Profile Mindy’s Twitter Profile BiggerPockets Blog 500 Deals, the $100,000 Wholesale Paycheck, & the Systems That Make it Work with Tarl Yarber I’m Not Your Guru Netflix BiggerPockets Bookstore Wholesaling Resources Podio Dropbox Open Letter Marketing Gary Vee Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner Finding and Funding Great Deals by Tarl Yarber Investing with Low or No Money Down by Brandon Turner The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff Fire Round Questions How do you secure your rehabs? How do you determine what to do for repairs/improvements? I live in a booming ski town and am looking to flip condos, advice? With all the contracts, documents, invoices, and other paperwork, what is your filing system to stay organized from start to finish? Tweetable Topics: “If you’re asking if you need an inspector, then you need one.” (Tweet This!) “It all has to do with the intent. Is your intent to screw this person or is your intent to do the right thing?” (Tweet This!) “You’ll find really good people in this business who just love people and love helping.” (Tweet This!) “Money is not the most important thing. Friendship and relationships are the most important thing in this business.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Elliot Elliot’s BiggerPockets Profile Elliot’s Facebook Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's the thing about traveling. If you buy food at the airport, a burrito, salad, bag of peanuts, you start wondering if you should have opened a savings account for snacks. So wouldn't it be great if you could actually earn money while you're traveling? Well, you can. Airbnb has something called the co-host network. While you're away, you can hire a vetted local co-host with hosting experience to help take care of things, communicating with guests, preparing your space,

managing reservations, everything runs smoothly while you're off making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that.

With their new express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee so you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. A lot of property managers think their job is answering tenant emails and coordinating repairs. That's not the job. The job of a property manager is protecting and growing your operating income and earning your trust while they do it. And that comes down to three numbers, occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. If those numbers slip, your income slips. And

your trust slips too. And most PMs don't hold themselves to performance standards. They focus on activity, not outcomes. Mind is different. They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow. Go to mine.com slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free. Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show. 55. Again, it goes back to the point earlier. Just have integrity and care about people and try to do the right thing. Money is not the most important thing. Friendship and relationships are the most important thing in this business. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio,

simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? My name is Mindy Jensen. I am stepping in for the host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, Josh Dorkin, who's playing hooky or some other similar,

not being at work thing. And with me as always, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on? Brandon, how you doing? Man, I'm so good. I just got back from Disneyland and SeaWorld. And it was amazing. Did you go by yourself or did you take your lovely family with?

I went all alone. And I was on like, I was on, it's a small world like 400. Now, I took my family and we dressed up Rosie as Bell because that's what you do when you're a weird parent. And it was seriously the cutest thing you've ever seen. If you want to see it, go to my Instagram at Beardy Brandon. And you can see some cute pictures. Oh, she's adorable. She looks just like her mom, of course.

Of course. She's pretty awesome. It was good. What have you been up to? Not so much, really. Just hanging out. We've had a lot of people come in and visit. We have friends who have this thing called the pop-up business school.

And they had a pop-up business school. They teach you how to run your own business. I tried to get Josh to go, but he's all, I'm successful. I'm like, hey, maybe you should go. Yeah. Yeah. So we had a lot of people at our house then. And I am, I had a great time with them.

And I'm now equally happy that they are no longer there. Is that funny when people come to visit? You're like, oh, I'm so glad you're here. And then like 10 minutes later you're like, get out. Just go out. Well, I'm a little nicer than you. I am always, I am so glad you're here. And then as they're leaving, I'm like, I am so glad you're leaving.

Yeah, yeah. I hope they don't listen. They're probably listening right now. All right. So, yeah. With that, as we've offended all of your family and friends, let's get to today's quick tip. I tell us quick tip.

That was really good. That was the best most in sync out of all 255 episodes. Sorry, Josh. That was true. And speaking of Insync, you know, it's a really great band. Not InSync. N-Sync. Man, their Christmas album back in like 1997 or nine, I don't know.

Anyway, it was really good. Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Yeah, anyway, it's really good. Okay, I will take your work for it. On repeat. And so then I listen to it on repeat all through high school. Let's do this day's quick tip. We're talking about the Bigger Pocket's private message system.

Very short public service announcement today. We have a private message system on BiggerPach. pockets, which it's like email, but better because there's a little picture of you next to it. And you can send messages to people on bigger pockets. So if there's somebody on BP that you're like, I really wanted to reach out to that podcast guest or that one guy in the forums or that one blog post writer, do me favor. And today, go shoot you to a message and say, hey, this is who I am. And actually today's episode, we're talking about networking and relationships. So that's actually a very fitting quick tip. Anything you want to add to that? Yes. Yes, I do. Okay. So you have

to be colleagues with somebody before you can send them a message. Okay. So as you, you send them a colleague request, you also want to add a message that just says, hey, I've seen you on the forums and I think you give great advice. Or, hey, you write really great articles for the Bigger Pockets blog. Whatever it is that you want to convey to them, tell them because they're not going to read your mind. They're not going to know. And I have heard that if you add a message to your colleague request, it's like a 12,000 percent chance of getting accepted as opposed to 1% if you don't sell it. I'm sure that's the exact math.

Those might not be like completely legit numbers, but... Well, you know, like 97% of statistics are made up. Cool. All right. Well, good job. Also, a reminder, the PM system is not for spamming, so don't go on there and be like, hey, fund my deal, be my mentor or whatever, like build

relationships. This is not, don't be weird. All right. Yes. Give first. Give first. Very cool. All right. Well, that was today's quick tip. So thank you, Mindy. Now, before we get to the show, I want to talk about today's show a little bit. So today we have a special guest in Elliot Smith. He is one of the most impressive guys that I've had the pleasure of meeting recently.

I mean, really, really a fantastic guy. I mean, today's show, we talk about everything from how he went from like zero to making six figures his first year in real estate while working a full-time job, more than full-time job, like 70 hours a week. Yeah, double-time job. He talked about how when he quit his job, he made six figures like in one month. We'll talk about that as well. Yeah. We get really deep in a topic that we've never really covered on the show here today. And that's like dealing with like depression and bipolar disorder.

Like as a real estate investor, really, really, I guess, fascinating topic. Something that a lot of people do deal with and we don't ever talk about. You know, we all hide behind these personas. So that was good. And then, yeah, he just got a lot, a lot of good stuff to say. It's one of our longer shows. So many tips. So many tips.

We could not stop talking. Brandon says halfway through or well, not halfway through towards the end. He's like, wow, that was an hour and a half. I'm like, really? Yeah. It just went by so fast. It was such a great show. All right.

Now, let's get to the show. You know, we always say, leave us rating reviews. I'm not going to say that. So if you wanted to go to iTunes and leave us a review, I'm not telling you to do that or asking you even. I'm just saying that we usually say that. But today, I'm not going to say that. Cool. That was really slick.

Was that really slick? I'm really impressed with myself right now. I bet nobody is going to go to iTunes.com and leave us a review. I don't think that's where they go. Anyway, I think they have to go to their iTunes player or on their phone. or Stitcher. Anyway, but I'm not talking about that. Don't we have a link to tell you how to do that? Oh my gosh, we don't, but let's do one.

Okay, we're going to do one. I think there's link. Maybe there is. Okay. Well, check out the show notes. Today's show notes can be found at biggerpockets.com slash show 255. All right. And with that, let's bring in our guest today.

Elliot Smith, welcome to the show, man. How you doing? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm fantastic. Mindy. How are you doing? Yes, sir.

I am doing wonderful. Thank you, Brandon, for asking. How are you doing, Elliot Smith? I can't complain at all. Life is good. Well, good. So just to be clear, you are not the famous Elliot Smithy musician. Is that correct?

No, I did not commit suicide. So I'm good. Oh, yeah, Brandon. You did really? Yeah, he's not with us anymore. Wow. Let's hope that his family is not listening to this. This got really morbid, really fast.

Yeah. Wow. Maybe we should cut. Yeah, we'll leave that in. All right. Okay. Let's get. We're going to move past that.

And let's talk about real estate. You know, that's probably more, you know, uplifting. How did you get started with real estate investing? I kind of grew up in real estate investing a little bit. My dad did it on and off for the last 30 years. He was a doctor by trade, but he would flip a house or two. When I was 18, I was kind of like in between jobs. And he ended up taking me to a house.

He was negotiated with the sellers. He bought the house. And then he decided to let me and a friend do all the work. And that was a terrible idea on his part. But we did it all from the sprinklers to the roof in 110 degree weather. And yeah, it was a great learning experience. And all I learned was that I want to be the guy that writes the checks, not the guy that does the work.

And so it was kind of our intro into it. And then I went through life and got jobs and got responsible. And then came back to real estate about seven, eight years later. So let's, yeah, I want to. Let's pick up to that 18 year old. Did you do the work? you and your friend were actually swinging the hammers and doing all the work yourselves. Okay.

Yeah, we did it all. My friend was, he was a shop teacher. He's been my good buddy growing up since I was in middle school. And so he, he and I did it. And he knew way more than I did. But I just kind of learned and figured it out, like how to mud and how to texture and how to put toilets in and all this. Yeah, it was awesome. Did you pass inspections?

We did electrical. Yeah, exactly. for the panel that I hired out. But yeah, we did all right. So let's talk like, do you, all right, so obviously starting that way isn't the most exciting. We don't like swinging hammers. We want to write the checks. Do you regret that decision back then?

Or do you think it helped get you to where you are today? And then the second part of that question is, do you recommend people listen to the show? Should they completely bypass that? Or is it a good stepping stone to get to where you're at today? Yeah, I don't regret it. I needed the money and I really didn't know. like I was real estate investing at that time. At that point, it was just working for dad.

And so it wasn't really like, oh, I'm flipping a house and I'm a real estate investor. But yeah, I think having some knowledge, I worked a little bit of construction. So I have a little bit of knowledge. And so really, when we first started wholesaling, if you don't know a lot about houses, you can get duped really easily by your buyers. And so they could be like, oh, you need to fix all this stuff. And you're like, oh, I don't know any better. So I'll take a cut on my wholesale fee.

So having some knowledge definitely does help to like there's certain kind of a siding and watching it and like LP siding that's an issue that there's certain things or certain panels that need to be changed and other ones that don't. And so it kind of goes from there. So you kind of need to know a little bit. Okay. Wait, what's wrong with LP siding? Because I just put that all over my house. It was the 90s. The LP back in the 90s, it would rot.

Oh. It would absorb water. Yeah. And so it's good. It's, you know, last year's model is no good. So if you got last year's model. Four years ago. Four years ago.

Okay. No, no. So it's, it was just back in the 90s. Yeah, I've actually had two different houses that I purchased. And I mean, here's just a lesson I guess learned. What I bought these two properties, I didn't get inspections on them. I don't get inspections very often on properties when I buy them because I'm like, I know everything.

Like I used to be a contractor. I got this, right? Except for both of them, I missed. Oh, that's L.P. siding. Like I didn't realize. that. And so in both cases, I had a lot of trouble selling those houses and two different times over my career. Today, now I know what LP's hiding is. And so, you know, and I still sold both the houses. One of them, they actually made me replace all of it. The other one, the buyer, well,

the first buyer backed out because of it, the second buyer said they didn't care and they bought it anyway. But yeah, it's a good reason why even if you think you're smart, probably good idea to get an inspection. If nothing else, it gives you a checklist of things to do. I don't know. Do you get inspections, Elliot? Not really anymore. When I, I will on big houses that I'm unsure of. I'll hire an inspector just to go do a visual inspection. And that way I can kind of just hear it. But then there's nothing written down on paper that I have to disclose later on if it's just minor stuff. So. Okay. I want to jump in here. And I want to say that Elliot has a bit of experience. Brandon, kind of new, but still a little bit of an experience. I want to jump in and

say, if you are a newbie, do not follow these guys' instructions and not get not get an inspection. If you don't know what you're doing, you are going to miss so much stuff. Yeah. So when I first started, I started out wholesaling. And so I was wholesaling these. And then I started running into issues and having, I had one buyer that I sold everything to because I was working a ton and he was easy and he would buy everything. But I started, he started beating me up on stuff. And so I finally hired an inspector to walk through the properties for like 200 bucks so I could know what was going on with the house. And then if he would come to me and be like, oh, that needs to be replaced or I can't finish out this basement or I can't do that.

I'd be like, wrong. You know, so because I had an inspector and I started learning the issues that he was trying and get me, get me down on price. So I needed to build my knowledge because I was losing money by not knowing. So I do recommend inspections. Anybody that I coach, not coach, I don't coach anybody. Anybody that I help, then I have them. I tell them to get mentor or get inspections.

A bunch of people just got really excited. Like, oh, Elliot Smith's going to coach me. Yeah. No, no. He's got all this free time. I'm not your guru like Tony Robbins. There you go. That was a good documentary, by the way.

I really enjoyed it. I don't know if you call it a documentary. It's more like an advertisement, but it was good. I thought it was good. Yeah. It's on Netflix. Yeah, it's on Netflix. I didn't see it yet.

So I want to say good rule of thumb. Do I need an inspector? If you're asking, then you need one. Ooh, good rule of thumb. If you, Brandon. Go back. Nicely done. Nicely done it.

Unless you're going to gut the whole thing. If you're taking it all the way down to the studs, what is there to inspect? Like, what does it matter? If they find mold, you're going to rip it out anyway. You coat the studs, you take off your LP siding. I want to know where you're located. I have never heard this LP siding thing before. And I've done a lot of houses.

Hold on. Go back to that. If you're new and you're getting an entire house, then like, that might not be the best first house. That is a very good point. Quick tip. Taking it all the way to the studs is not a good idea for your first flip. No, that is true statement.

Okay, so where are you located and where is this LP siding? Is this like a known issue? I've been doing this since before Brandon was born. And I don't remember ever hearing anything about LP siding being bad. So I'm in two markets. I'm in Vancouver, Washington market and Tri-Cities, Washington, which is Eastern Washington. So Western Washington. in eastern Washington. It's more of an issue in the in the dry or wetter climates because the

LP siding doesn't shed the water very well. It actually absorbs moisture and then rots from the inside and it was only like their newer or like they're not they're newer but their stuff back in the 90s that they really had issues with but it was a huge they had massive recalls and and it was huge issues. So if there's like an LP has their like signature not in the siding and so you can kind of tell that's LP siding at that point. but people still get great. Okay, okay, that's good to know because I'm in Denver. So, but I did a lot of my flipping in the Illinois, Chicago area.

But it's not as moist as the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, we're pretty much underwater most of the year. Yeah, okay, that's good to know a lot. Yeah. So, all right, so yeah, LOP siding, I mean, like, what I find is just, siding is different everywhere in the country, you know, like you go to certain areas, like certain sidings way more, like around here, everything is cedar in my area because we've got like 400 million cedar mills because we live in the middle of the woods.

And so like everything is like Cedar Shake siding and LP when they started putting that in. And now today it's hardy playing. But you know, you go to other areas, it's all brick or you go to other places. It's all, you know, whatever. So yeah, to know your market, I guess. Know your market. That's right. Okay.

Moving on. All right. So you are in Washington State. That's actually where I met Elliott. I was speaking at that one of the real estate clubs put on by Tarle. Tarle Yarber's. Yeah, Tarle Yarber. He's been on the podcast.

I was speaking at his event a while back. And you and I connected there. And you're good friends with Anson Young as well. I know you guys are buddies. Yeah. Who's also been on the podcast numerous times, wrote the book on, or what's it called? Finding and Funding Deals. It's not the book on.

I always want to say that. Yeah. So, yeah, there we go. There you go. Finding and funding great deals. Great deals. Great deals. Great deals.

Hey, where can you go to get that on the site, Mindy? Oh, www. BiggerPockets.com slash great deals. I think it is or slash store. I think it is. Well, let's go over there. Oh, slash store. Yes, let's make sure that I'm not sending people to the wrong spot.

All right, while you're looking that up, I want to talk about your first deal, Elliot. So your first deal by yourself that you went and did. Did you start wholesaling? Was that a wholesale deal? Like, how did that, how'd you begin? Yeah. So, well, my wife and I, we moved to Vancouver, Washington, in 2013.

Okay. And she had bought a house, her first house at 20 over in Richland. So we turned that into a rental. And that was kind of our first, you know, investing deal. And so, and then we moved over there. We were living in our house. We're like, well, let's turn this house into a rental after the year. So we made, we, we bought another house the next year and made that house that we had purchased a rental.

So we were just doing the live in, you know, buy it with the 5% down and then turn it into a rental. And when we moved in the second houses in 2014 or 2015, we were like, we were like, let's buy more rentals. We want to buy duplexes. So we were like searched on the internet like how to buy duplexes and all this stuff. And we were like, oh, bigger pockets. What's this site? So we joined that. And I started reading a lot on bigger pockets.

And I was like trying to ask landlord questions. And so finally I'm like, oh, you can send letters to get like people to sell you houses. So I'm like, oh, let's go pull a list of duplexes. And we sent like the worst letter in the entire world out that we found on the site. Like I showed it to my stepmom. And she's been a realtor for 25 years. And she's like, this is awful. Like if anybody calls you.

Like, they're not going to call you. But like, Chrissy and I, we were like handwriting letters. We sent out like 50 the first week, handwritten letters. And we printed out letters. And then we handwrote the envelope. And we sent it out. We got a call. And that first call were like jumping up.

Like, somebody called us. Like, you're wrong. And so we ended up didn't get that deal. But we got a deal like the very next month in March. And we ended up wholesaling it. It was not the best. Hindsight I should have bought it. Like every do.

that I have wholesaled out, I should have bought. But we ended up wholesaling it for like five grand. And we're like, holy moly, we just put like $200 into this deal. We just made $5 grand. Like, this is the greatest thing ever. And so we're like, think if we did one of these a month. And so then that was kind of our first deal. So I want to really dive into that.

Just because you're, did you get that from the direct mail letter you sent the next month then? Is that? Yeah. So it was like the next batch of direct mail. So like I was, I was working with Franz Baker at the time and I was working like 70 hours a week. And so I was, the lady called.

called me at like five o'clock and I was actually in bed to sleep and she called me and she's like, hey, I got a duplex. I want to sell. I want to sell for like 120 and I'm like, okay. Like super groggy. Like, and then all of a sudden I hang up and I'm like, I'll call you later. And I hang up and I'm like, wait a second. Did she just say 120? Like that's got to be a deal. So I called my guy that I met on Bigger Pocket, so it was kind of helping me. And he ended up, he was like, set the appointment. And so I went over there, set the appointment. And he's like, get it for $1.15 or whatever. So we're, you know, I just negotiated.

And turns out she'd been a realtor for like 45 years. Like she was, and I don't know like why she wanted to sell it to me because I ended up wholesaling it out to the guy. And he ended up literally, uh, turned around, never went inside of it, relisted it for 165 and sold it in like two weeks. Wow. Wow. Like, yeah, he was at 120.

And yeah, so it was a, it was a good deal for him. So that's why you say you probably should have just kept it and flipped it yourself. Yeah, that or just done some different, you know, no hard feelings against the guy. Like, it was a good learning experience, you know, know what you have. I mean, you know, I made five grand. I made a profit. And so, and I got to learn like, hey, you need to know what you have. Don't always take the first, you know, nickel, you know, maybe a slow dive.

Yeah, I want to, I want to jump in there and say, you don't know what you don't know. And taking that $5,000 and making $5,000 instead of spending $50,000 on some wholesaling course, you just, you didn't lose $20,000 on this deal or $40,000 or whatever. You made $5,000 and that's what you have to focus on. And there's another deal down the road. There's always another deal. Correct. Yeah.

And we ended up getting a deal another duplex for like $8,900 the very next month. $8,900 for a two family house connected together. $8,900, really? Well, no, we hate my city. We profit. Oh, okay. I still hate my city. Yeah.

Our market's awful. But, yeah, Brandon's always talking about these houses you buy us for a dollar. $2, Mindy. $2. I'm sorry. That's because he lives in the part of Washington that nobody wants to live. I live in the most beautiful part of Washington that nobody wants to live in. I think all of Washington is beautiful.

But I can't believe. You haven't been to Tri-Cities. You haven't been to Tri-Cities. So you haven't been to Eastern Washington? Yeah. So, like, watch have you really? Where it's like desert and then, like, pretty. Yeah. All right. So you started, so you, I want to recap real quick. So you got on bigger pockets.

You started learning about this process of direct mail marketing. You started sending letters and you got a deal. And then you started sending more letters. But you're still working your full time job at this point, right? Or when did, when did that stop? Yeah, I worked that full time job for like another year and a half, basically. That's not a full time job. That's a double time job. 70 hours a week. Yeah. And it was, it was like worse because so, I was a supervisor for a bread company for Franz Bakery, and it was a great company to work for. I made a good living, had good benefits, but I was the manager. So sometimes I had to run a route. So I'd start at one, two, and three in the morning, and run a route, worked until like three, four in the afternoon because I have to do my supervising job afterwards. And then other days, I never knew my days off. Like, some days I started six, some days I started at one in the morning.

Some days I work Sundays, some days I work, you know. So it was kind of difficult, but I would, I just made it work. Like I was actually, I was able to answer my phone. So I was able to answer phone calls all the time. And then I drove a lot. And so I listened to like every BP podcast. I can keep my hands on. Like listen to like them on repeat. Listen to books.

Listen to whatever I can do just to learn. So it was actually a good, good job for me to have while I was trying to do this. That's cool. That's cool. And I think, you know, a lot of people who are listening to this have a full time job. And they really struggle. Like how I can't find the time. How do I, how do I do this?

how do I make it happen? But like you said, you just, you just do it because you have to. Like, you need to. Like, it's not going to happen any other way. Yeah. And it's, you know, I got another buddy that was on the podcast, Justin Severeo. Yep. And he worked a full-time job that was like an office job where he was an accountant.

And we, he quit a little bit before I did. And so we always talked, but he would just make it work. You just work on lunch. You work when you get home, you do, you work on weekends. You just do whatever you have to do to make it work. Yeah. It doesn't take forever to return a phone call. Yep.

You know, five, ten minutes, if your boss is not going to be that understanding to take a five-minute phone call, you know, you do it on your lunch break or, you know. Exactly. And luckily. Emails on the weekends. Yeah. Luckily, my job was like being on the phone, handling fires, handling problems. So I could be on the phone. I was in the car.

So I drove all the time. So I, you know, I just at some point, it shifted where I'm like, hey, this is going to be a good side hustle to like, I don't want to work for friends anymore. And so then I kind of slacked at friends. and just like did everything I could to make real estate work. Yeah. My wife and I. And my wife ended up quitting her job like six months after we started. So in August, because she's a smart one.

And so we needed her to quit first. And it just so happened that I had the job that could support our family more than enough. So it was fine. Well, so let's talk about that first year of wholesaling. Like can you give any kind of numbers or like how many deals did you do or anything like that in the first year or so or two years? I don't know. So the first year, we were consistently doing one deal a month. Sometimes we would do two.

So I think we ended up the year with like 14 deals or something like that that we wholesale out. Wow. And what was your average profit on those? I think it kind of fluctuated. But I would say right around like $10,000 to $12,000. But we had some where I started getting my buyers started saying, hey, I'll pay you some up front and then I'll cut you in on a back half deal. And so sometimes he would pay us like $3,000 up front.

then one time he paid us like 25 grand after the deal closed. Oh, wow. And so, so it kind of worked out pretty well. Okay, you said my buyer. Do you have one person that you're wholesaling for? Do you have several? Do you have a buyer's list or did you find just one unicorn? I just had one buyer. Just because I had such limited time, I needed, I needed to know that if somebody said, hey, I'm going to buy this. It's done. And the guy that I was selling to you, he was a good man, but he did like 200 flips a year in Vancouver, him and his partner. So I could just send him the pictures and be like, hey, what would you pay for this? And then he would say I'd pay, you know,

150,000. And I'd go get it. I try to get it for as low as I could, but know that he would buy it for 150. So at that point, I could just kind of learn. He kind of helped teach me and then paid me to find leads. I basically bird-dogged and then just did what he said.

He didn't tell me how to wholesale, but yeah. And how did you find him? I know you shouldn't do this, but I posted like my second duplex on Craigslist. But I told the seller is what I was going to do. And so I posted on Craigslist. And then his agent ended up reaching out to me.

And then he walked the duplex and he like walked in one side. And I had another guy there too. He walked in one side for like 30 seconds, walked out into the other side for like 30 seconds and said, yep, let's do it. I didn't negotiate or anything. He just went and signed it on the hood of his car. And yeah, he closed it and I'm like, he's like, let's do some more. And I'm like, yeah, this was awesome.

Like, yeah, you're my guy. Every buyer is absolutely exactly like that. That'll always happen every single time. Yeah, that would be nice. Well, okay, I want to jump back really quick and say, you told the sellers, I want to reiterate to everybody who's listening, you told the sellers what you were doing when you said that you told the sellers you were listening it on Craigslist and you were going to assign the contract or whatever.

I want to make that really clear to everybody who's listening. Be honest with your sellers. Don't just try to go behind their backs. They're going to find out. They're going to figure something out. They're going to not trust you as a person. And your reputation is not worth that. Totally.

Yeah. And at that point, I didn't really still know what I was doing. I just just talking to them and I'm like, hey, they're like, hey, we just want to sell for what we owe on it. We just want to get out of it. We're in South Carolina. We don't want to deal with it anymore. Our property managers, like stealing from us. Like, we just want to get done with this.

And so it ended up working out pretty well. And I'm like, hey, I'm going to make a profit. They're like, that's fantastic. They were so happy that I, you know, made some. money and I just told them when I was doing the whole way through. Good. Now, at some point, though, like, it's probably not a good idea still to do that because you're kind of brokering without a license at that point because I'm telling, I'm like,

hey, I'm not buying this. So I'm not writing it up like, hey, I'm going to buy this. I mean, so you're still kind of brokering without a license. So it's probably not the right way to do it still. Yeah. So let's talk about that for a minute. So for the people who maybe we, maybe we should have made this earlier more clear, but wholesaling is this idea where you find good properties and then you,

in a variety of different ways, you get that property over to somebody who's actually going to flip it. So you don't actually do the flipping. You just find the deal. And then there's a couple different ways to do that. Is that a good explanation of it? Yeah. It's, yeah, simple and to the point. Okay.

So the idea of a wholesaling, the problem that wholesaling is today is that, like you said, you're brokering without a license. And a lot of states are saying that's, you can't do that. You can't get a property, market it and do all that stuff. You have to have a license for that. And then if you have a license, then there's all the license. issues potentially with that as well. And so, yeah, like, if you're going to wholesale, make sure you understand the legalities of it in your state, talk to some other people who do it, go on the Bigger Pockets forums, research it.

Maybe even talk to an attorney, though. Most attorneys don't really know what wholesaling is either. But just make sure you're doing it right and legit. And I'm actually on the show notes for this show. If you go to Bigger Pockets.com, I'll show 255. I'll actually link to a few articles that we've written here on Bigger Pockets about that very topic just to hopefully shed some light on it. because, yeah, wholesaling can be very, very, very profitable.

You made what six figures your first year doing it. But, like, you just have to do it right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. And I treated, that's why I just stuck with one buyer because I felt like it was a better way because I'm like at this point, I'm his partner. Like I'm going and signing these up as his partner.

He's just paying me out my profit on the front end. And so that's kind of my thought on that. And that's why I just stuck with one buyer and not a big buyer's list. And that was after you guys had formed kind of a relationship. He, now you really are partners. That's another thing that really sticks in my craw when I see it on the on the forums. Oh, I'll just put this under contract pending partner approval. Well, unless you already have the partnership going, that's not your partner.

That's your funder. So you having this relationship with him and makes it your part, makes him your partner. But don't use the word partner unless you really are already partners. I'm not, I'm not yelling at you, Elliot, telling you. Everybody listening. You're doing it right. See, I love people and I'm a people pleaser to the max. And so I never want to hurt a seller.

And that's my thought. People don't really care. Like at some point, like, I'm just going to go tie it up. And then I'm going to like, if I can't sell it, then I'll just back out of the contract. Well, you told them you were going to buy this property in 30 days. Like they might have already packed. They might already put up a deposit down on a home. You know, that's the one thing that it's really hard in this.

And I care about people. And the deals that I've had the hardest time or ones where I'm like, I really care about the people, but I probably, they probably want too much. And I try to make it work or try to mix them with this person and maybe this person can help you. And it just waste my time. But that's the thing is you're getting people's hopes up. And so you also see out there like just tie it up and then get them committed and then negotiate them down another $20,000 or $30,000 if they have equity. And it's like, that's the quickest way to never have me talk to you or be your friend.

And so it's just there's some just care about people. And that's kind of where Chrissy and I rank our business is like, it's people first. And at the end of the day, profits definitely second. And so that's why we try to do it. I love that. Yeah. If you take care of people, they're going to take care of you. And there's nothing wrong with wholesaling a property.

If it's, you know, legal in your state, there's nothing wrong with wholesaling a property. If you're, even if it's owner occupied, as long as you're up front and honest with them, they want too much money. Hey, that doesn't work for me. It works at this price. And once you get it under contract, hey, this is what I'm going to do. do or before you get it under contract. I'm sorry, I misspoke. Before you get it under contract, this is what I'm going to do. Then they can make the decision. Hey, that's great. I'm going to go with you. Or you know what? That doesn't work for me. Let them make the decision. Don't make the decision

for them. And there are some legit reasons to back out. Like, say, there's foundation issues or there's, you know, there's certain things that that you might need to get a reduction in price. And so there is legit reasons to back out of a contract. And so really, I think it all has to do with your intent. Like, is your intent to screw this person and is your intent to really do the right thing. Yes, absolutely. Okay. I could go on forever. But you are the guest, not me. Let's talk about what did you do after that. Did you stick with wholesaling? Did you move on to flipping? How did you? Yeah. So we kept wholesaling and our goal was to save up like 15 months of our income and be debt free. Yep. So that was kind of our goal. And so we wholesale for like a year. And then I quit February 20. I put.

my notice February 2016, my job. And so at that point, we had replaced our income and or like saved up enough money to have a year's worth of salary. And so my wife's very conservative, so that worked out pretty well. And then I put my notice and I gave them six weeks notice just because I really did like friends. They gave me a great life. And so then I ended up quit on April 1st, 2016. And that was, so then we at that point, we were still wholesaling. And actually in June, So two months after we hit our job, we made $100,000 in June wholesaling. Whoa. In one month?

In one month. I just made more than what I made all last year working for France in one month. I need some details on that. You don't just, oh, I made $100,000 and then move on. Stop right there. Tell me what's going on with that. So we just tried to fill our pipeline as much as we could knowing that we were going to quit. And then I just started like going out and door knocking and sending the letters and our marketing just started,

hitting really well. I have a pretty good close rate with people. And so I just, it just so happened that I just got like six deals and ended up getting a $30,000 assignment fee in there and a, and another $25,000 back end check. And so it just worked out that we made like $101,000 that month, which was cool. It was like validation because at France, I made like $85,000 a year. And so in one month, like I made more than I made working 70 hours a week for an entire year. That's incredible. And how long did it take you to get all of those deals in that one month? Did it take you 70 hours a week for four weeks?

No. So Tarrell Yarber back to him, he would say my claim to fame is like, we built our business on part time. And that's kind of what we did. And so all our, we built systems, everything was geared towards me working like crazy hours. And so everything had to be built towards part time. And we probably continued that. You know, I might have worked that time like 25 hours a week leading up to that.

but we still consistently work 15, maybe 20 hours a week throughout. That's what we do. That's awesome. I remember you and I talked about this once before when we met about, yeah, you built a business part time because you had a full-time job. I'm just reiterating in case anybody missed this. And then when you became a full, like when you quit that job, you didn't suddenly just fill in the void with,

okay, now I'm going to work 80 hours a week at the real estate thing. You just kept working it part-time, but making a full-time income at it. And I love that. I love that mentality. I love that too. A little jealous. Yeah. So it's basically my wife and I, it's, you know, lifestyle.

Like, what's our lifestyle I want to be? And so, you know, like I just said earlier, like, I golfed a lot of tournaments the last couple months because I like, I wanted to get back into doing those things. And she likes hiking and we like taking our dog for walks. And, you know, we like traveling. We're going to go in a couple in December for three and a half weeks to Southeast Asia. So nice. And so it's just try to, how do we build a lifestyle while still working?

and that's kind of worked out pretty well for us. So cool. So cool. All right. So you, you quit the job. You made all that money wholesaling. And then you transitioned at some point to flipping, correct? Yeah. So I had a, I had met a buddy through a mutual friend. He owns like 100 plus rentals in Oregon that he bought 80s and 90s. And so he was kind of mentoring me a little bit. And at first he's like, when we first met, he's like, don't ever ask me for money because I'm never going to give you. money. And so I'm like, okay, so I started calling him and he didn't answer all the time. But as I got more and more deals, he started answering more and more because he liked hearing about the deals. I mean, real estate investors love the chase. They love the deal. It's like, it's like

heroin to. And so, and so then when I quit my job and I and I had that big month right there, he's like, hey, dude, you're passing some really good deals. Like, here's $300,000. Like, I want you to go buy a flip. Like, I'll loan you the money, work out of the terms and go, you go buy a flip. And so then I didn't spend it right away. And then I waited for just the right one because I didn't want to screw up. That's our biggest thing is I never want to move backwards. I never want to like, I don't need a deal so bad where I have to, I have to go buy it. So I waited and we ended up buying a flip in like May. We bought it for 155 and it only needed like $25,000 worth of work. We ended up selling it in August for 285.

And so, and he ended up, so he funded 100% of the purchase, 100% of the rehab. And he took a 25% equity spread on top. So he made like 19 grand and I made, he made like 52,000. That's awesome. So $52,000 on your very first flip. Yeah, we put none of our own money into it. Well, we use our airline, we use our credit card to get airline miles and then he just reimbursed us.

You basically use none of our own money for the deal. That's cool. But you can't do no money down deals. That doesn't, that's a scam. No, but I read the book by Brandon Turner. Okay. Oh, and no money down deals. So you can. You can do it. So, which you can get at biggerpockets.com slash no money.

But I want to know, like, how do you get somebody? I mean, like, there's a few things that stand out to me here. You were not brand new at real estate. You weren't, like, you weren't, like, you didn't, you weren't fresh out, you know, like, just like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing here, but hey, can I have 300 grand? Like a couple that you built the relationship with this guy, which is so key. Like your private lender, everybody listen to this. Your private lenders are going to be people that you build relationships with.

Like that's the first thing. Like it's not just some random guy you put an ad on Craigslist asking for money, which don't do that. They're not going to give you money, right? People email me out of the blue and they're like, hey, well, you fund my deal. I'm like, no. I don't even know who you are. Yeah.

There's zero chance. I get emails like that too. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have any experience. It's your first deal. I'm sorry. I want to be philanthropist, but I didn't win the lottery.

So I don't want to give up all my money to you that don't know what you're doing. That doesn't know what you're doing. I don't know how to speak. So, yeah, I think that's really important. And I'm glad Brandon said something about that. You already had a relationship with this guy. You knew him from, he was a friend of your, a friend of a friend. He was a my, so my partner, my supervisor partner, France had been friends with him since high school.

And so he'd always told me about, oh, Gary is just this guy's awesome. You know, and he's just, he's been doing real estate. He's been full time, you know, just does it, manages all his rental properties. And I'm like, I need to meet him. And he's like, no, no, no, I got to know, you're too young and immature. And so then eventually I'm like, dude, I'm doing real estate. Like, give me his phone number. So I called him and he's like, had lunch with me.

And I bought his lunch. And that's one important thing I think that people miss is like, if you're looking for somebody to like, teach you something or you're asking them questions, always buy their lunch. Yeah. If you don't, like, I bought so many lunches and so many dinners and so many things because I wanted, like, not that I wanted something you have, but I want your knowledge. Like, I want, but I want to respect your time.

And that's the biggest thing is if you're looking for something for me or somebody else, like, make sure you respect their time. And so I bought him lunch and he's like, and he told me at that point, like, hey, I'm not going to give you any money. But then I'm like, okay, that's fine. Can I call you? And like, so I'm a type of person that I drive a lot. So I just call people and we'll talk to them.

them and just talk their ear off and tell her like, hey, I got to go. And so I call him and tell him and be like, hey, dude, what would you do on this situation? Like, what do you think about this deal? Like, this person said this. And he's like, well, I would handle this. Or I'm like, hey, this has a tenant in it. What can you do with that? And so he started answering the phone more and more and more. I started getting better and better deals and like cooler stories. And he's like, he likes hearing about it.

And then I started calling him like once a month and he would answer. And then I called him like every other week. And he started answering more and more. And then finally he's just like, hey, you're getting really good deals. you need to flip your own house. And so then at that point, he's like, I can help you do that. What's cool about that too? How old was he?

Do you know, like about? He's like 54. All right. So like, and I make this point all the time and I'll make it again here. It's that older investors love to help younger investors when it's legit. Like when they're seriously interested in something. That's why like as you got better deals, better stories, like you became more credible in his mind.

Like, and so he wanted to talk with you. He wanted to help you. He wanted to train you. He wanted to mentor you because it's like most of those people, either their kids don't care about real estate or their family doesn't care about it. They're doing this by themselves. Most of them don't even have bigger pockets like because old people don't know how to use a computer.

And so they're just by themselves. So like they see this young guy or girl. And they're like, all they think that, I see myself and them at that age. You know, I want to help them. I want to get there. And, you know, take advantage of that when you're when you're younger than somebody else. And he's just, he was, he's just such a good man. And then his son ended up wasn't really super interested in real estate.

But then I started like saying, hey, come like driving for dollars for me and like, hey, I'll hire you to drive for dollars or and like hang out with me. And he's then at that point, he's like, I want to send some letters out and I want to flip a house. And so they ended up buying a house in Salem and they flipped it. And his son did like all the work and did, you know, really good job. And they ended up making some good money. And now all of a sudden they got three flips going in Portland. And they're just, they're just doing awesome.

And so it's really cool to see how his dad. help me so much. Like I wouldn't be here without him. And then I got to help his son in return. And now his son's, you know, doing. Not that I take any credit for what his son's doing, but he's got a lot more hustle than I do, I think. But yeah, I love that. That's a really cool story. And so, yeah, if you guys are listening to this right now and you're, you're looking for somebody to mentor or you want help with some kind, first of all, don't use the word mentor. It's weird when you're like, hey, well, you be my mentor. But like, you know, just go find somebody who's actually doing it in your market. Again, people come to Mindy or me or I'm sure you,

like, Elliot, that, hey, will you mentor me? But you live 2,000 miles from me. I don't know your market. I don't know what kind of sighting you have, right? Like, I don't know anything about it. So, like, find somebody who's just crushing it in a market that you want to invest in and just become friends with them. Last night, I was at the Denver meetup and this guy came up to me. His name was Brandon, which is why I remember him.

Plus, he was very nice. And he's just, he comes up and he's like, hey, I'm new. I want to get started. Great. What can I help you with? He's like, how do I become? more active in the community of bigger pockets. Like, well, you are asking the right person.

And he was just very giving and very open. And I'm looking for somebody to teach me. This is what I've got available. I've got these skills and I've got this. And I introduced him to somebody else who's doing what he wants to be doing. Just ask, but be engaging. Hey, can you help me get started? Is not as easy to help you get started as, hey, here's what I can.

can offer. Do you know anybody who's looking for this stuff? And I help, I help people quite a bit. And I've, and I usually help the people that are actually doing something. Yeah. Like they've actually like, or I tell them, I'm like, hey, they're like, hey, how do I get started? I'm like, okay, go drive 100 houses. Send me the addresses. And then I'll help you, like, get the phone numbers and I'll help you get the addresses. And then I'll help you get all the information. And then you can send letters or whatever. But like, actually go do something. Yep. And that's kind of the key is. like go do something and then then my goal at the end of the day is if I can help you and you want a

wholesale well I'll be your buyer I'll buy every deal I'll help walk you through like the whole thing just get me in front of people and then at that point I can I can show you how it's done there yeah I love I love that but I've noticed a lot that people are so quick to like either a they think it's really easy and they don't get deals and they can't figure it out or be they're quick to really go for like an extra $5 from somebody and forget who helped them get where they got. Again, it goes back to the point earlier. Just have integrity and care about people and try to do the right thing. Money is not the most important thing.

Friendship and relationships are the most important thing in this business. Yeah, I love that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that you said, oh, go ahead, Mindy. I was going to say, I feel like I'm yelling at Elliot. I'm like, I'm agreeing with you and like reiterating what you're saying. I'm not yelling at you.

I'm sure he'll serve. So again, I love, just to stress that point, like you like to work with people who are already taking action. You know, there's this phrase that I say all the time on Bigger Pockets of webinars is that there's a massive chasm between desire and commitment. And the difference is action, right? You can want something. You can want to be a wholesaler or want to be a flipper. But then to really, like, what's the difference between somebody who wants it and somebody who actually does it? It's people who take action, right? So don't go to somebody like, hey, will you teach me how to become a real estate investor? Go out and work.

I become a real estate investor and then ask for help. Be like, hey, I just went and Joe for three hours. I have a list of all these vacant houses. I'm not sure how to get the information for this. Can you tell me how to get the information? And now all of a sudden you have a really easy in. Like who's going to not answer that question? Like if you're an experienced real estate investor and somebody comes to you and be like,

hey, I got 100 houses. How do I, you know, search the county records? Like, of course you're going to be like here, go here, go to this page. And then when you find a good deal, come bring it to me. Right? Like, of course you're going to do that. We actually, we actually just like, say, send us the. the list and like we have our VA like scrub it for them and we'll pay our VA to scrub it for

them and then just send it back to it. I'd be like, here's the list. That's awesome. Wow. Now I won't do that like for people like if anybody sent a ton of emails like this. I'm not a millionaire. Where I'm going to be like, oh, here's a VA like here's 10,000 hours of work. Get it done this week.

What's your email address again? Yeah. In this market. I'll help in my market. Well, so it's cool about that too is that you are you are doing that. You're obviously a nice guy. you obviously like building relationships, but at the same time, like, there has to be a piece of that by helping these people, you know that they're going to hopefully bring you deals someday, right? It's like you're working together. It's me investing in them and investing in deals. Like it's just another way to get my money out on the street. And if I can get my money out on the street in different ways, like then all of a sudden it starts bringing back, coming back to me in different ways. It's not just my marketing. Now all of a sudden, it's 10 people's marketing or 10 people cold calling or 10 people doing this. Now all of a sudden, now it's 20 people. And so I can do all that. I don't even have to market at the end of the day because all of a sudden I have enough deals and I can

do it that way. Yeah, I love that. So how are you today and today? Well, two questions. One, what kind of volume are you doing like in the last year? Like kind of flipping wholesale and whatever. And then also like what are you doing today for marketing and for your business? So last year we did roughly 40, I think it was 41 deals.

Whoa. This year we've kind of slowed down a little bit because we transitioned to all flipping this year, basically. We did one wholesale. But, and we also moved to Tri-Cities. My wife and I wanted to get closer to family. And again, goes back to lifestyle first other than profit. Like, we wanted to make the most money.

We should have stayed in Vancouver, Portland. But we really wanted to have a good marriage and work on us and work on our family. And so that was more important. Sure. So we're slowing down a little bit just in the sense where, but we're still doing really good deals. And so I think we'll probably do right around 30 deals this year is kind of where I'm guessing 25 to 30. and then I have a full partner in Vancouver, and so a lot of those deals are in Vancouver,

and now I have a full partner, just because I couldn't handle everything from three hours, three and a half hours away. And then we're doing some deals in dry cities as well on our own. That's cool. I love that. I love it. I mean, you're still crushing it, like,

slowing down as 30 deals a year. Like, wow. And you're not working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. You're doing this part time, right? If I could work 20 every week, I think we'd do 40 deals a year. I love us. All right. Man, you make me so jealous.

I like staying up late. And I have my dog, Ted, who's a Yorkie, and I love peddling with him. And I love golfing. And I like binge watch stuff. Like, I binge watch Game of Thrones. Like, I watch six seasons in, like, six days. That's a lot of Game of Thrones. Wow.

60 hours of Game of Thrones. Yeah, that's, well done. But we do have an assistant. We just hired an assistant help get us back. Like, we kind of took half the year off or kind of like focus on Christy and I and our family and those things that were important to us, got our house in a better order. And now we're like kind of ramped it up again. We just hired an assistant help keep me organized.

How do we keep falling up? So we're doing pretty good. I mean, we have four projects we own right now. And we have, I think, eight leads in the pipeline that I probably should buy four or five of I would guess. So, I mean, we're doing good. I just need to stay focused. My biggest thing is I'm super ADD and I'm like, squirrel.

Like, oh, squirrel. So that's my biggest problem. And my wife's definitely the very like, she can be diligent and keep me focused. And now we just hired another person that just can keep me focused. Elliot, like, you have to fall up with people. You have to do this. Hey, what do you use for a CRM to keep track of all your stuff and to kind of keep organized? So we use Podio.

and then we use Dropbox a lot. So that's pretty helpful. Okay, cool. Okay, so is your friend, your 54-year-old friend, Brandon, 54 is not old? It's pretty old. Is your friend still funding these deals? How are you buying eight deals at a time,

or four deals at a time? So, no, we did a couple partnership deals, and then we did, he funded a couple. He's kind of, that's another issue is he tied up a lot of his money with his son. And so I trained him and then now a sudden he tied up a lot of money with his son because they bought some higher dollar flips,

which is fine. But I have a partner that in Vancouver that funds pretty much all the deals in Vancouver. We did just, actually I have a closing at 1130 today on one that we funded with all our own money. Christy and I funded ourselves. And then I have some my dad's money. And then we have a private lender.

And so we just kind of get it from where we need to get it from. and then if like the fix is too big, we'll just wholesale it out. So or we'll buy it, we'll buy it and then just relist it and we'll just sell it and get our money back really quick. Okay. Cool.

So what are you doing to find deals? Is that direct my marketing still working for you? Yeah, it's working. And it's definitely slowed down. Here would be my plug. I use Justin Savario with open letter marketing. Yep. And he's done really good.

He's got a lot of different tricks of his sleeve that he's working that has really helped us. And we're kind of as guinea pigs. He tests new things with us. And it's just really been a good service. We were doing everything in-house, and we actually have an envelope stuffer right behind me that we bought. But yeah, I mean, so direct mail,

we sent about 8,000 letters a month still. And then I'll do some cool calling sometimes if I can get the motivation. That's sometimes really hard for me. I deal with, like, being bipolar where I go like high highs and then low low. So like on super high days, I can call like a million people and be like, I'm going to buy your house. And then other days I'm like, I'm not getting out of bed today. And so that's kind of what we do.

Direct mail and cold calling. Like is that legit? You like deal with bipolar? Do you mind talking about that? Like, no, I don't mind talk. No, I definitely deal with it. So like, it's just something I've always kind of had some chemical imbalances in my brain and struggle with anxiety and depression growing up.

And I got sober when I was 21. So I had some substance abuse problems. and so then, but I just always dealt with some kind of chemical imbalance. And so I basically, I do, I have days where I'm like, I'm the king of the world and I can accomplish anything and like watch out. And I'll get more than done than like three people will. And then there's other days where I just don't do anything. I just, like, I have no motivation.

Like, I'll answer my phone and stuff, but I just don't really want to do anything. And so my wife is like super understanding. Like she never says, hey, it's 12 o'clock. You're still in the couch. Or like, hey, you're still in bed. She's just like she knows that like tomorrow is going to be a new day and and I will get a lot done. And so we're, I'm very fortunate in that sense where she doesn't ever yell at me. But I say I have way more good days than I have bad days.

But I still deal with just, you know, being depressed some days and like I suck. And which is so easy to do in this day and age. Like you get on Facebook and you see this guy like, I'm 20 years old and I'm making 20 million dollars wholesaling. And everybody brags about all the cool stuff they're doing. And it makes really, it can make you really feel like subpar, like I'm lazy or I'm not hustling or you listen to Gary B for like five seconds and you're like, like, I'm wasting my life. Like, why am I even doing living? Well, Facebook, I've started to say Facebook is like a highlight reel, right?

Everybody posts all their good stuff, but nobody posts their bad stuff. So you get this like feeling that we all get is that everybody's doing way cooler, better, more exciting things with cooler people than I'm ever doing. But of course, if somebody goes to your page, you're doing cooler, more exciting, fun things than anybody else is doing. Like, it's a highlight reel. Exactly. And that's one thing I just got to remind myself. Like, there's one thing when I went to AA, it was like, if everybody in the room through their problems in the center of the room or what their situation, like everybody would, and you think your problems are so bad or whatever, everybody would grab their problems back because they're really not that bad.

And so, you know, really just putting into perspective, like, I have a pretty awesome life. I have a great wife, you know, we're very conservative. We don't have any, like, huge stresses. I don't have to buy a house next week. I don't have to buy a house probably for the next three or four years. And so we don't really have stresses where I have to do it. But I do want to get better and be better for myself. That's the biggest thing.

It's like, you know, at this point now it's all about making myself feel better and, like, doing deals and working and being consistent and things like that, just to for my own self gratification. Makes a lot of sense. Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, I appreciate you like talking about that because it's something that we don't really talk about on the show very much. You know, like the emotional side of being an investor or just being a person, right? But that, I mean, that makes up who we are as investors. We have to deal with those things.

We have to use our weaknesses and our strengths, try to, you know, figure out how to make this work by, you know, maximizing what we can do. Totally. And that's the thing. It's like that's, that's this game. The game, this game is bipolar in the sense. It's like you're going to have some. really awesome days. Like you're on top of the world.

Like, and then you're going to like, oh my God, I just made $100,000 this month. And then you're like, I didn't get a deal for like six weeks. Like I'm terrible. Like what is going on? Like I am the worst, you know, person. And it's just it's highs and lows. And so I think just dealing with that and understanding like, hey, there's going to be really good months.

And then there's going to be months that aren't as good as the other month or, you know, flips aren't always going to go the right way or, you know, things are going to happen. And like, and how do you deal with it? How do you hedge it? So you don't lose money. So you're always making money. at the end of the day or one bet covers the next bet. Yeah, I think it's really important to just keep in mind that as you go through life,

other people are dealing with stuff that you might not see. You know, I don't see that you're having a really great day today or that you're having a really bad day. No. You just have to keep in mind that people are going through other things. Yeah, people are good at putting faces on, right? And I'm really, I'm probably one of the best.

I can go put a happy face on all the time. But you don't, and that's the thing, you know, always love people and try to do the right thing because you don't know where people are at mentally. Like that's the one thing is you just, you just don't know. Like, you don't know what those person's thoughts. And you might just do something to push them over the edge. So you just, you know, just love people and try to do the right thing by people. And like you said, Mindy, you don't know where they're at in that time of their life. You don't know if their mom's sick or their dad's in the hospital or, you know, their child's sick. I mean, there's a lot of crappy things that happen to people. And it's just,

if you just, people just loved each other a little bit, like this world would be so much better. Man, that is a good way to end this segment of the show, man. Powerful stuff. Really, really, really good, Elliot. So before we, you know, get out of here, let's shift real quick over to our world famous fire round. It's time for the fire round. Number one. How do you secure your rehabs or do you?

Do you use any kind of security on your rehabs? What do you mean by security? Like a security system, yeah, or do you? logs, any electronic, anything like that? Like, how do you secure it from getting broken into? No, you just, we just lock it, have lock boxes. You know, they're going to break in. They're going to break in one way or another.

You know, sometimes, hopefully they light a match and burn it down because it actually be better getting insurance money. But no, it just is what it is. It's just one of the things like, that's why you try to build deals with big enough spreads, whereas like if things, if like five things go wrong, I'm still making money. And so if somebody breaks in, then hopefully I'm still making money. Yeah. That's really important.

I just read an article today or a post today about how somebody lost money on his first flip because he didn't account like his margins were super tight to begin with. I'm going to make $5,000 on my flip. Well, that's not enough money to make on a flip unless you're doing absolutely nothing. If you're just wholesaling the property. But if you're actually putting money into it, it's so easy to go over budget. Okay. I would be a basket case if I only had a $5,000.

And margin less than like $30,000, I'd be like a headcase. Yeah. I'd just be stressing the whole time. That's really important. You've got experience and you're saying $5,000 is not enough. That's, listen, people. Okay. When it comes to determining how to bring the target value of a property up,

how do you determine what to do for repairs and improvements? I think this is an important question because I think people always tend to over rehab the properties. So I really, we try to look and we basically do the same thing like in all our rehab. Like every now and then we'll do granite, but very rarely. But it's basically the same for Micah countertops. It's the same colors. It's the same basic because we want to try to hit that first time home buyer market. You know, and it's like it's two colors.

It's like it's either color A or it's color B, but it's always the same. For Micah looks really good. You know, a tile backslash, laminate flooring or linoleum, carpet and good paint. People want clean right now. Like the market, you don't have to over rehab things to sell your project. So clean, not cheap so much. much but clean. And, you know, it doesn't need to be like, I can do a rehab for $30,000 where you go

and do it for 50. And I just made, I made the deal work. And so that's kind of the difference. That's a good answer. Number three here. With all the contracts, documents, invoices, and other paperwork, what is your filing system to stay organized from start to finish? Is a paper, digital, and how does it work?

It's named Christina Smith. Weird. Mine's named Heather Turner. I have no idea. That's okay. That's a great answer. Excellent. Yeah, we should have gotten Christina on the show today.

Man. Yeah, no. I do the networking. I do the people and she does all the back end. She makes the system run. And so that's, you know, I wouldn't be here without her for sure. I like it. Okay.

What is the formula you use to run the numbers on your flip? I do it very simple. I just use my, pull my calculator. later out. I just, what do I think a conservative after repair value is? Then I times it by 0.925 because in Washington, we have excise tax at 1.78 percent. And so that kind of gets me my closing costs. I eat 7.5 percent closing costs. Roughly, sometimes it goes a little bit higher, a little bit lower, but it works out. And then I just do that. Then it gives me a number. Then I minus what I think I need to put into the property. And then I minus where I need, I want my profit margin to be or where we need

it to be minimum. And then at that point, we go and negotiate and try to get it below that at that point. There you go. I like it. It's super simple, though. Like, we don't use any fancy calculators, any, you know, cash on cash returns. It's just we try to keep everything very, very simple. I think you can overcomplicate this and analyze deals to death.

Because while you're sitting there analyzing the deal, I've already made an offer and I already bought the property. Yeah. Because I made a decision on the spot. So do you go see the properties or do you see them, do you see them before you make an, before you run the numbers or do you run the numbers first and then determine to go to see it whether the numbers make sense? No, I usually go. If there's some sort of motivation, I always go on an appointment. I don't. And then sometimes I'll ask them kind of what they're asking for the property.

But if I can sense any motivation, I just go on an appointment and I just go getting front of them and I just be me. And if and if the property fits us and it fits us and we'll tell them, hey, you probably should sell the cash buyer. Or if it doesn't like, hey, you could list it. And here, by the way, with my realtor and he can list it for you. And so we kind of just go that route. And then we just in your head, if you look at enough of these deals, like we're buying very similar stuff all the time, especially in Vancouver. We know, we know like our buy price is 150 to 180.

We put 30 to 45,000 into them and we sell them for 250 to 285. And that's basically kind of where we're at. If we get it lower than 150, then that's a win. If we, you know, if not, then we're still in our margins there. Okay. Hey, I got one more question. This isn't officially a fire round one, but it reminded me. You said you go to the appointments and you just be you.

What do you, what do you, what do you, what do you want to sound stupid? But like, I think it's an interesting. What do you wear to an appointment? Like, do you dress nice? Do you just wear your t-shirt and jeans? Like, how do you present yourself to the seller? Do you look like a lumberjack? Yeah.

It depends on the cellar, actually. Okay. So 75% of the time I'm going to wear shorts and a collared shirt. Like I'm like a golfer. I'm just going to look like a golfer because that's always, works. Sometimes, like, sometimes I'll all wear just a t-shirt and jeans. I drive an 06 Ford Ranger, so it's kind of beat up. And I'm not trying to like be flashy. I'm just going to go, I just wear what's me, like what's comfortable to me that day. Like I don't, I'll think about

the seller and sometimes I'll dress it down a little bit, but never will I dress it up more than what I'm wearing. I usually just like, hey, these clothes are clean because my wife makes me do my own laundry. And I'm like, okay, I have this shirt clean. And then I ask her like, hey, is this match and she'll be like no and I'll be like and I'll be like, crap, I'm talking. And so,

but then, yeah, it's just, and I just go, like, I'm just a normal person. Like, that's, that's all it is.

I'm not, my goal's, yeah, do I want to buy the house? Yes, but my goal is not to buy the house. My goal is to go, how do I,

like, help this person, like, with whatever they're dealing with. You know, are, you know, I struggling with something that,

and then I'm very open, just like I was in the podcast earlier. Like, I talk about my life. I talk about my struggles. I talk about things I've dealt with. I talk about being seven years sober. I talk about whatever I have going on.

And I connect with them on a level that they understand. And then if we put a deal together, then we put a deal together that works for everybody. If we don't, then I just continue to help them throughout the process. I love it. Love it. I love that.

All right. Well, let's head over to our world famous. Famous for. All right. All right. Elliot, number one, what is your favorite real estate related?

book. So I have two. I currently have a new one. No, I said, I said one. Just one. Okay. I give you permission to do as many as you want, Elliot. It is Mindy's side so she can do what she wants.

One of those first books that I read was Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller. I think that's just a good book. I get in the mindset of like how to be a real estate investor. And then I also really like Anson's new book. There you go. This finding, funding, great deals. It's super great. It deals with a lot of the things that I, same things I do.

And I think Anson really has the same personality. and same philosophy on life and business as I do. And so it's awesome. And it's just like sitting down and having a conversation with Anson. And so I love it because Anson is fun to sit there with. Anson is one of the best people ever. He's actually in my mastermind. And we took him to the airport at like 2.30 in the morning, like back in August.

And then we couldn't find a hotel room for like less than $200. And so Chrissy and I slept in the Home Depot parking lot in Portland. Because we're so cheap. we didn't want to spend $180 on a hotel. That's funny. I slept in my car a few weeks ago with Heather because that was how we were at the hospital. But still, we've done there, done that. All right.

I just spent a couple of weeks ago when we lost, our flight was canceled and there was a giant mess. And we slept in the back of the car for, it was like two hours. You can't get a hotel. $180 for a hotel room for two hours. You can. You go in there and be like, hi, I need a hotel room for an hour. How much you charge? for that. They look at you really funny whenever that

happened. Yeah, when you bring two little girls in, it's going to look like a big weirdo. Okay. All right. New low. New law. Number two. Favorite business book, non-real estate related. So I'm going to go with Pitch Anything by

Owen. Owen Class. I love that book. I literally listened that book 15 times on Audible. And I have a lot of books in my Audible. I've listened that book a ton. it really talks to you about how you get in the seller's mind in people's mindset how do you get past their crock brain how you get past how you win the frame and how you become the authority figure

and that's really the key is how do I become the authority figure where then all of a sudden I know I'm doing the right thing by these people give me the authority to help you and tell you how to make the decision and so I listen to that thing so much before I quit my job like I would run routes and I just like listen to that podcast or that book like on repeat and it's it's awesome I still listen to it probably every six months. It was a fantastic book. I really liked it a lot. Cool.

All right. Next one, Mindy. What are your hobbies? What do you like to do? You said golf? I love golf. That's my big thing. My wife really likes traveling, so I travel with her as long as there's golf courses around.

But yeah, golfing, I like playing poker sometimes. I'm not very good at it. My wife says, I can't lie, so I'm a terrible poker player. If you can't lie, you can't lie, you can't play. play poker. Yeah. And then love hanging out with my dog, Ted. And that's kind of what I like.

Cool. Ted. Do we have Ted right there? Yeah, I'm going to get him. Okay. Go get Ted. Ted. Let's go see Ted.

If you're listening to this, you're missing out on the cutest dog ever. Hi, Ted. He's like Brandon's dog's brother. Yeah, they're very similar looking. Yeah. That was perfect timing. That was a perfect little bark. That was.

All right, number four, what sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think just self-knowledge. I think that's really the big key for us is just really trying to go, you don't need to spend a ton of money on courses. Just go find out what you need to find out from people, bigger pockets, from books. There's so much information out there and really be dedicated to, like, growing your self-knowledge in different areas. But not just in real estate, but like with dealing with people and deal with things and how do I get better? And that, I think that really sets you apart because if you can't go get yourself educated, then really what's the point of trying in this whole thing?

Because you're just going to waste everybody's time, I think. So true. Yeah. Love that. So true. Okay. Elliot, where can people find out more about you? You can find me on bigger pockets.

I'm on bigger pockets. Facebook. I don't have any, like, fancy website or course or anything. Just bigger pockets. I don't get on there as much as I, used to, but I will make a point. And then you could probably also ask me for my email and you can shoot me an email. And then sometimes I respond. Sometimes I'm not the best at responding. But yeah, I will make a solid effort to respond to everybody. Nice. Great. Great. Thank you so much.

Yeah, LA. This was really, really, really, really fantastic, really good. And I learned a lot and I'm super motivated to go do some more stuff because I want to do this part time and be doing 30 deals a year. Come on. I thought you were part time. I am. I am doing this part. Okay. I'm not doing 30. 30 deals a year though. Come on. I got to have. You're doing different deals. You're doing like different, different stuff. And that's what's great about real estate is you don't like, my way might not work for you,

you know, and that's just kind of how it is. Well, in all reality, I mean, like, so like on that, no,

we should talk about it for a minute. Like, when I looked at what I'm good at and what I'm not good at, I don't like talking to people on the phone. I don't like sellers. I don't really like dealing with that side of thing. So as much as I, like,

excited about doing a ton of direct mail and then getting a ton of volume. I'm like, I'd hate that side of the business. I'd rather hire someone. And so for a while, that's what I did. That's how we did a bunch of deals last year's. I just hired an assistant to help with that. But even so, I think I'd rather do fewer but bigger deals maybe, but we'll see.

You can also, Ryan, Ryan Dossy, he's a member of the site. He's putting a call porter together is what it's called. It's like for his company, but he also has other real estate investors. So like they only hand it. It's not like Pat Live, which is terrible, by the way. If you have Pat Live, like get rid of that right away. Like, because they just. don't, they're answering different calls. Like, they're answering different things. And so it's,

it's, um, it's really good to have like a real estate investor. There's different companies out there that will do it. But like, have real, or I have other, I have other, I have other buddies that have VAs in South Africa that answer the phones for them that understand the process and or have salespeople. They send sales training. And so you can hire that out. And that's, that's why my wife and are such a good team because I love sales and I love people. And she couldn't do that or doesn't want to do that, but I hate the accounting side of it. And I hate the paperwork and the back end side and the listing side. And she loves doing that stuff.

She's good at it. And so like, you just need to find somebody that like, your better half on the real estate side. There we go. Yeah. If you've got a task that you don't want to do, you are going to find a hundred ways to procrastinate that task. Yep.

Yeah. So true. All right. Well, man, this was awesome. So we'll talk to you later, Elliot. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Elliot.

This is really a lot of fun. Yep. Fun. Thank you. Bye. And that was our show with Elliot Smith. Man, there was so much good stuff in there. I loved, love that conversation.

What about you, Mindy? I love being in, stepping in for Josh. But it's difficult because I have all these notes I want to take and all these things I want to do after listening to the show. I know. This show is no exception. Elliot is really so many tips, so many actionable, so much actionable advice and so much just great. Raw. He was very like, on.

I think he's very, very open, honest and, like, and noble almost about how we invest in real estate. And I love that. Like, he's not like, let's just go make some money quickly. I mean, he's making money. But like, let's do this the right way. I love that. Yeah, that's, you know, that's a really good point. He's still making money and he's able to sleep at night.

Yep. He's not being some skeezy loser who's trying to take advantage of people. Skeezy. Word of the day. Like some people, I know. So if you go to at, go to Twitter and go to at Mindy at BP. Is that your Twitter? Yes, M-I-N-D-Y-A-T-B-P.

All right, I want you to go on Twitter and hit up Mindy and try to spell the words skeezy. That's our game of the day. And if you get it right, you get nothing but a high-five for Mindy. So. Air-high-five if you're watching. I left you hanging. Sorry. All right, with that, let's get out of here. I got a little girl.

My little girl actually today was the first time ever, like, I left the room. And she started crying and she would not let me go. and she was like hugging me and like that's never really happened before. So I got to go and, you know, it's a new age. As you said earlier, that's called manipulation, right? Manipulation. She's starting young. Yeah, all right.

Well, I'm going to go get manipulated because she's so cute. She is so cute. Okay, tell her, I said hello, give her a big kiss on the cheek for me. And I will talk to you later. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Mindy. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy the random six coming up after the music.

Adios. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. It's time. It's time.

The random six. All right, we have one last little segment of the show here. Segment section. I don't know, of the show. What would you like to throw on the end here called a random six? It used to be random five. Now it's random six. All right.

Number one. It's going to be random 100,000. We might have the random 100K, number one of 100K. If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be? I would probably live in Scottsdale, but not in the summer. Scottsdale, Arizona? Yeah. move to the sun in the summer.

I would golf every day. Oh, yeah, you're golf. Oh, they do have golf courses. Me moving or like if money was an object, I'd move to like Hawaii and then I'd have a membership at like every course on the island in Maui. And then like I'd learn how to surf. I got my free time. Oh, oh, Brandon and I went surfing once.

Brandon is now a better surfer than I am. I don't think that's true. But, you know. You just spent a month with Nord's. I did spend a month with Nord's. Doug Nordman was awesome. From the military guide. If you're a deleterate member?

Yeah, he taught me how to surf a little bit. I think we're going to Costa Rica in February, so I'm going to try to figure out how to surf there. That's awesome. Super easy to surf. You just stand up. Hey, I'm going to interrupt the random six here for the people on video. Oh, Rosie. Yeah, Rosie.

Oh, look at this big girl. Hi, Rosie. Can you wave? Can you wave? Oh, my goodness. She looks so much like Heather there. Yeah, good thing. Yeah, that's good thing.

She looks like Heather. I know, right? All right. Rosie's going to ask the next of the random six here. Wait, did you ask one, Mindy? Not yet. But it's okay. Rosie can ask him what his dream car is.

Do you want to ask a question? Do you say hi? How about this? Rosie, what does a doggy say? She's just smiling at you guys. What does a dog you say? Nothing just smiles. All right.

You're so pretty. You're pretty. How is Disneyland? Did you have fun? You had fun at Disneyland, didn't you? Yeah, you did. She dressed up as Belle and she went to Disneyland and Very pretty the whole time.

I can't wait to have kids. Yeah, you got to have one. It's pretty fun. I have to travel. We had to travel first and then my wife's what we did. We traveled first and then we had a kid and now we still travel with her. Yeah, how's that work? Yeah, it's way fun.

It's super easy. Brandon just had a nightmare travel with her. I had a nightmare, but it was all right. She just, it was a red eye. Don't do a red eye with a baby. It's horrible. No, never. Never.

Or with you. Mindy didn't tell me that. And then I did it. And then Mindy's like, oh yeah, didn't I tell you that? You should never do that. It's a terrible idea. Here, play with a battery. All right.

Next question. Go ahead, Mindy. Really? Brandon? Give her a battery. I don't know. She wanted it. Okay.

Elliot, what is your dream car? I really would like to have a Tesla. Ooh, which one? Like, I figured it out. It was like the P-95. and I, like, put it online. It was like $145,000. Like, I built it online with, like, all the bells and whistles.

But, like, I don't think I would ever buy it. I might buy a used one. But I don't know. That would be my dream car. Yeah, that's my husband's dream car now. Because I'm a terrible driver. My wife tells me all the time. And so, like, I just need the autopilot feature.

There you. So I just be like, autopilot. We have about five years left of driving in this world, I think. And then we're mostly done. No. I just got a super cool car. I would like to continue to be able to drive it. I got a 1991 Accura NSX.

I don't even know what that is, but it sounds old. Old. Listen, it is beautiful. I was six years old when that came out. I don't even like you anymore, Brandon. Speaking of not liking me, Elliot, what was the worst punishment? That's the first segue ever. What was the worst punishment you ever had when you were a kid?

I don't know. My mom was like, she spanked me. all the time because that was bad. And so that was probably the worst. I don't know. I didn't like getting spanked. But I didn't like, I'd rather get spanked and get grounded. And so like, but I didn't get in trouble.

I mean, I didn't get in trouble a ton. So I think I did a lot more punishments to myself than anybody else did. My parents used to do the nose in the corner. You know, I used to go put your nose in the corner. That was the worst. Like you just sit there and stare at the corner. I hate, that's the worst punishment. I think the worst one ever was my, I hate meatloaf to this day.

But my mom made meatloaf and then she made the next day. She's like, you got to eat a meatloaf sandwich for lunch, like cold meatloaf. And I'm like, this is gross. I literally sat at the table for like three hours. And then I finally like ate it. And I'm like, I'm throwing up. And then I'm like, to this day, I have never, ever touched meatloaf. And I will never ever eat because of that.

Like I felt like I was going to throw up. And I just, I'm a picky eater. So I like meat loaf. All right. Next question. Well, you are a lumberjack. I am a lumberjack. You're a mountain man.

Not quite. Okay. What would you do if you won the lottery? I won the lottery. I build my own golf course. Oh, all this golf. It depends on how much, like, how much I won on the lottery. If I won like, like six bucks.

Yeah. If I won like life changing, like powerball, like half a billion dollars, like then I would build my own golf course. If it was just, you know, like a million dollars, I just buy more houses or put it aside and, you know, probably just invest it. Maybe take a trip. Maybe make my,

give my mom some money, so she's done with the work and my dad. That's very noble of you. Yeah. All right. So. Next one. Is it mine or yours, Mindy?

It is your turn. All right. What makes you bored? Oh, man. That kind of goes back. I get bored all the time, but then I just continue to sit there and I play candy crush all the time. Nice. What makes me bored just like, I don't know, I went to a baby shower on Saturday and that was really boring.

Those are the worst. Yeah. Those are awful. As a woman, I hate going to those. Yeah. It was like dumb and I lost the game. So my wife, what was the game? I was like where you can't say baby and then you get like these clips and then it was also like a bingo deal.

And so like I was like kind of winning the clips like trying to trick everybody. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, they open a gift. And I'm like, oh, that's a baby carrier. And I'm like, oh, I just lost all my clips. And then my wife won the bingo in like six, like six moves or whatever, like way fast. And I'm like, well, this is dumb. All right. Last question of the random six, Mindy.

What do you got? What is your favorite quote? Oh, man. I don't have a good memory. I don't remember. That's all right. I don't know. This stuff that has to do with like just pushing forward, like no matter what that circumstances are.

I think that's, you know, something usually to try to do, like, no matter what life throws at you because I've done a lot of crazy stuff and put myself in a lot of predicaments that, like, no matter what happens, like, just keep pushing forward and like good things happen, end up happening. I like that. That's a good quote. Yeah, it could be your quote. It'll be my quote. Yeah, I'm going to Instagram.

word quote. Elliot Smith. From Elliot Smith. Not the musician. I have one question. Can we be best friends, Brandon? Like forever. We will be best friends forever.

Are you coming out to Hawaii with me this winter? You going to come hang out? We're trying to figure it out. I don't know. Because we're coming back on the 20th from Southeast Asia, but then it's going to be in Christmas. But I don't know. We tried to make it work, but you weren't sure when you were going.

I know what I'm going now. I'm not going to tell you right now because everybody from BP will flock there. Okay. Well, then, like, when you get off. But we are coming to. I have a big head now. We are coming to the greatest, the greatest real estate vice ever by Joe Fairless in Denver on the 8th and 9th and 10th or whatever.

Yep. And then we're doing like the BP mastermind deal like on the 8th or something. Like they have a BP like meetup with Anson. We're doing that. And then I'm doing like a mini mastermind with Anson. So I will be in Denver. Maybe I will have to go to Denver during that time. We'll see.

You should come to Denver, Branden. Yeah, when does the meet up, Mindy? Do you remember the 8th of January? It is February, February. February. This is a Thursday. Okay. It is being hosted at the Bigger Pockets headquarters.

Wow. All right. Well, the words out. So those people who have stuck around for an hour and a half on this show. They stuck around. Especially their YouTube date because they just love looking at your face, Brandon. I know. Well, I mean.

Oh, stop. Don't give them anything else to think about. It's hard having a face that's pretty, you know? Like, everywhere you go, people stop you're like, oh my gosh. that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Can I take a picture with you? And then it gets really weird in public. But, you know, someone's going to do it.

So I've been in public with Brandon? That has never happened. It's more like coverage. No, it's his wife. They want to see their wife. Yeah, probably. And the baby. I think the baby takes a lot of the looks these days.

Yes, because she's adorable. She is. Okay. All right. We're getting out of here. Elliot, thank you so much. You're welcome. It's time for the fire round.

Good job. Good job. You guys have heard the podcast before? I've listened to almost every episode. Nice. Okay. I'm sorry. All right.

They're really good, Brandon. I listen to most of the episode. Well, thank you, Mindy. All the ones that don't have Brandon on them. Like four. I went back and like listen to like the first couple other day. Oh, don't do that. And I'm like, oh my gosh, they're so awkward.

I know they are. Like a couple podcasts go, you're like, oh, yeah, the guy back on like show. 4 was like really good or something. And I'm like, I'm going to listen to that guy. And then I hear Josh and he's like very like snowing. No person out. And I'm like these guys have no personnel. They have no idea what they're doing.

That's funny. Wow. Just keep going, Elliot. I want to keep hearing it. Come on. Make me feel real good today. We want to get her like go up before our eyes on bigger pockets.

You kind of have because he's like nine. I am like nine. And he's worked here for like 12 years. So it doesn't work mathematically. The math doesn't work. Well, that's good. He's grown up. That's good.

That was the best fire round introduction I've ever heard. With that, let's get today's fire round. Hey, don't cut that out. I will not cut any of that out. We're keeping that all in. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform, our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoe content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www. www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other

damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.