BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 258: Six-Figure House Flipping with Gabe DaSilva

Episode Date: December 21, 2017

Massive goals encourage massive action—and a massive plan to get there. That’s the truth behind today’s episode of The BiggerPockets Podcast, where we sit down with Gabe DaSilva, a New Jersey real estate investor who specializes in a unique niche of house flipping: “add-a-level” or “pop tops.” You’ll hear how Gabe shoots for a six-figure payday on each flip and how you can incorporate this strategy in your own business. Be ready to take some notes—this is an action-packed show! In This Episode We Cover: How Gabe got into the real estate business Tips for using your 401k as capital How he landed his first deal A discussion on doing things yourself How to finance your deals using hard money Gabe’s unique definition of hard money lenders The deals he’s made to this point Which properties are good candidates for rehabbing How to tell if it’s the right market to invest in What to check for in a good house foundation The “bathtubs story“ How to find deals through direct mail What his day looks like And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Rehab Estimator Calculator BiggerPockets Calculators BiggerPockets HardMoney Lenders International Builder’s Show Upgrade to Pro! Books Mentioned in this Show A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J. Scott Set for Life by Scott Trench Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Fire Round Questions Would you contribute to a 401(k) or not? What did you do wrong on your first flip? Flipping Houses Under One LLC Rehabbing a remediated meth house Tweetable Topics: “Sacrifice the life you have now so that you can live the life most can’t live later.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Gabe Gabe’s BiggerPockets Profile Gabe’s Facebook Profile Gabe’s Youtube Channel Gabe’s Instagram Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 258. I have them to thank for helping me scale the way I did. And then that's probably how I got from one to three to six to now 12. We've been doubling year over year pretty much. 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, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, your host of today's Bigger Pockets podcast here with my guest co-host, Scott Trench. How you doing, Scott? I'm doing great. How are you doing, Brandon?

Good. I'm actually really good. You know, the holiday season is upon us. We're recording this here a few weeks before the Christmas holiday, but obviously this comes out right before Christmas. And, you know, got the time. tree up, went to the tree farm, got lights on it. You know, my house looks like something out of like country living now. It's fun. Awesome. Well, I live in the bottom half of a duplex. So I'm

going to use that as an excuse not to decorate this year. Are you not going to get a tree? Come on. No, I think my, I think by going for a tree. I was just going to say, I bet your girlfriend will bring over a tree if you don't because I don't know. Very cool. All right. Well, get a, get a tree and I'll send you a present to put under it. Deal? Awesome. Yeah, I would love a present from you, Brandon. All right. I'm going to send you one. I need some, I need some new socks. I was thinking something a little more educational, like a book or something, but you know, I'll send you some socks. Have you ever heard of darn tough socks? I think you're called darn tough. Have you heard of them? Yeah. A friend told me about them last Christmas and I ordered a pair and they were like the best

socks I've ever had in my life and they're like expensive. They're like 20 bucks a pair. But they were so comfortable. I'm actually wearing them right now at this moment. And I asked my wife, I said, all I want for Christmas is like 10 pairs of darn tough socks. So. Check them out. Well, I can already hear our listeners thinking, wow, this conversation sucks. So let's move on and talk about our guest a little bit here. All right. So today's show. Our guest today is Gabe De Silva. Gabe is a flipper, or more accurately, he adds levels to properties like ranchers and stuff. Some people call it Pop Top. And he has got a thriving business and was a really knowledgeable guy about a lot of different topics.

It seems like he's really taken opportunities to expand his business and build it out. in lots of different creative ways and really just a good business and systems thinker. Brandon actually got dinner with Gabe a few months ago and completely forgot him. It had a really awkward moment in the middle of the show. He did remember a giant cookie that he ate at the restaurant that he was with Gabe,

but he totally forgot him. Yeah, the back story is. So before the show, Mindy Jensen, who's a bigger pockets community manager, is like prepping it. I get on the call with Gabe and Mindy's like, okay, Brandon, this is Gabe. And I'm like, hey, Gabe, nice to meet you.

And I mean, he's like, hey, have you guys ever met before? And I was like, I don't think so. I mean, you kind of look familiar. And he's like, yeah, you know, I met you real quick. And like, we just kind of moved on. And then in the middle of the show, all of a sudden, like, it just occurred to me. I know this guy. We had dinner for like four hours together.

And yeah, anyway, that was fun. So you ever head out on a trip, lock your door and think, cool, my most valuable asset is now doing absolutely nothing. Because while you're off traveling, your home is just sitting there. Quiet, empty. not contributing, which feels like a missed opportunity, considering it has solid Wi-Fi and a very comfy bed. With Airbnb's co-host network, your place can earn money while you're away. You can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle guest messages, prep your space, and manage reservations so everything runs smoothly. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much

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That's HAPY 2018, no spaces when you upgrade. And oh, by the way, this expires 1159 PM on New Year's Eve. So jump in now. That's awesome. With that, let's get on to today's show. So Scott already brought in our guest or talked about our guests. So I'm not going to go any longer. Let's just bring them in.

All right, Gabe, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How you doing? Good, man. Just fight Nicole, but excited to be on the show. Yeah, well, if you sneeze and stuff, you know, it'll just be awkward for everybody. All right. All right. So we want to talk to you today about your flipping primarily.

You've been doing a lot of cool stuff out there. Where are you in New Jersey, right? Yep. New Jersey. Do you have a good accent? Can you do a New Jersey accent? No, I don't know. Do I have an accent?

It'll probably come through. Yeah. Maybe we'll hear it. I want to know, if you guys, while I listen to this, if you think he has a good accent, let us know over on like the show notes or something. Please comment in your thickest New Jersey accent. Yes. All right. So, why don't we just start with your story? Where did you, I mean, how did you get started with real estate? What'd you do before that and how'd you get into it? What was your first deal like? So I've been at it about a little over three years. I got started in the business after having a handful of finance jobs. I was got laid off three times and 18 months working in financial service. during the crisis, especially. And I realized then that I needed to be the master of my own destiny. So I went into business for myself.

My first foray into entrepreneurship was food service. So I had a restaurant for a little over four years, did that. That ran its course. I actually sold out of that business. And I got into this. And first deal was a cosmetic rehab. Did really well with it. Actually pull money out of 401K to do my first deal and just got the ball rolling.

and here we are three years later. I'm going to talk about that. The first thing is, if you don't mind me, Scott, kind of taking the lead here. I know you're the official host today, but I want to know about 401K stuff because, you know, that is an option for people. They can pull money out of A4. What does that mean and how does that work? Can you talk about that?

Yeah, well, what I actually did with it is I rolled it into a self-directed IRA. So I did the 401k roll out into a self-directed IRA and then use those funds to do my first flip because if you self-direct your IRA, obviously you can invest in anything, Bitcoin, gold bar, is anything you choose. Obviously in a 401k, you couldn't do that. You'd have to take the early withdrawal penalty. So we did it the other way, put it into a with a custodian, an IRA custodian, and those are the funds I put to work on that very first deal. So I've got a question here. So you've got this, you got a 401k and you liquidate it or you move it into self-directed IRA to begin working on it with real estate funds. But your goal, I believe, was to go ahead and

sustain your lifestyle, you know, take control of your own destiny. What was your plan going into this to take out that money and fund your lifestyle. Yes, it was it was tough at first. I actually started out of a 400 square foot garage. So that's where I was living when I did this. So after I sold out of my first business, the little money I did get out of that is what I used to sustain my lifestyle, had a very obviously minimalistic lifestyle working out of a out of a garage apartment. And slowly but surely built one deal into two into 10 into 20. And fortunately, I was able to, uh, to move out of that place. But, you know, that was, that was the idea. I was willing to sacrifice at first to get there. That's cool. Yeah. And we talk about a lot about that. Scott talks about it.

Scott wrote a book called Set for Life, right? And the whole book, well, I don't know, I'm not going to paraphrase the whole book in one sentence. But like the book is a largely about like what you can do now to set yourself up for a life of financial independence. Is that a good summary, Scott? You want to correct me? Sure. Yeah. I think, I think that, yeah, it's how to go from zero to of financial freedom. But, but I mean, as far as your story here goes, I mean, you had this 401k. I guess what my question is more is the funds were in there. So were you just planning, oh, I'm just going to pay the tax or pay the penalty and then withdraw those funds after I've done a couple of these deals to then fund my lifestyle? Or were you planning on, were you trying to simultaneously

build that 401K, the wealth inside there and the wealth inside of, or outside of that with a flipping business? Yep, that's exactly right. Build them both simultaneously. At first, it was just what am I going to do? How am I going to get started? And I was willing, it's just like you said, you know, sacrifice the way few would now so you could live how most can't later. Yeah. That was the idea. So I didn't need much, like I said, super minimalistic lifestyle. Didn't cost me much the money out of the 401K. That's how I got started there. And what little I did have from the sale of the restaurant business kept me going living expenses wise. And yeah, it's just like you said, I started building them in parallel. And now the flipping business is doing well enough that it

kicks off, you know, the cash I need to live. So just to confirm, the 401K, obviously, when you have a 401K, you're, your employer, I'm assuming that came from your previous employer, right? So then when you left the employer, you keep your 401K. So the idea being you put money in before tax, correct? Yep. Then that money's in there. Now, if normally, if you were to take that money out, you would have to pay early withdrawal penalties.

Yep. And then pay taxes as well. So you're kind of double hit with penalties saying, hey, don't do that, right? So what you did is you rolled it into a self-directed IRA. And obviously, you're not like a CPA, so we don't need to go deep into this. But like, do you remember what that cost or like, was that a, no penalties to do that, right? No, there's no penalties to do that. The fees are minimal.

I think at the time I paid 500 bucks to do it. I know that there's some custodians out there that are doing like $250 rollout promotions right now. So you could roll those monies out, pay $250, somewhere between that. and the 500, I guess, I paid. And then there's a monthly maintenance fee based on account value. But yet, no tax penalty with it. Like you said, we're not CPAs, obviously. So whoever wants to do this makes sense to go and consult your CPA before you go

and do this because the tax implications can be pretty severe if you don't do it right. But the other thing I'll say, too, is when you roll it out and you go into a self-directed IRA. I mean, this gets kind of in the weeds. But if you want to self-direct your IRA, truly self-directed, you want checkbook control. so you would ultimately open an LLC within the IRA. And that's what I did. Interesting. It can get a little complex,

which is why obviously you want to work with a good custodian and make sure that your CPA is on board. Also, I love it. I think that that's a creative way to take control of this money that a lot of people just kind of passively allow to not have an impact on their lives and get started in real estate with this. Okay, so you had this money in the 401K.

We understand that was a great summary of how you were able to then harness it. Can you walk us through that first deal and how you found it, what the numbers were, how that was able to launch your business that you're currently well underway with? Yeah, so it's, it's been a couple of years, but memory serves me. We picked it up for $2.2.92. I put in about 80 and repairs. It was mostly cosmetics. You needed a kitchen, two bathrooms. Did some siding repair, finished the basement, and we got it, we got out of it at four. We were listed at 499, we wound up getting 518, if I remember the numbers right. So it was a great first deal. I found it. Actually, a broker brought it to me, and I bought it. I saw it, offered on it,

and closed within a couple of weeks. Just saw it. First guy in there stepped up right away, paid him exactly what they were asking. Went in there, made a lot of mistakes, learned a ton, managed to rein in a lot of expenses by doing most of the work myself. which I feel like is probably the way everybody should start. I know that's a lot of times people will suggest investing is about writing and cashing checks, but I'm a firm believer that you got to kind of do everything once yourself so you could see how long it should take and how much it should cost before we start subbing it out. And that's exactly what I did on that one. I want to say we were there for maybe six months or so. So it was a good deal. It was a quick deal. I'm more than double

my money. And that's the one that got the ball rolling. That's fantastic. So can you, I have a few questions in there. First of all, I love the idea of doing everything once yourself. There's a lot of of debate in the real estate community over this. We've had people in the podcast saying there's no way you should do things yourself and other people like you. And like I did a lot of my own work myself. And now I know exactly what it takes to change a water heater or to replace a roof. I know what that is like. In fact, I'm debating with a or working with a contractor right now who wants to charge me like way more than I think you should for a simple roof. And I'm like, dude, this is going to take you two days because I've done roofs this size before on my own. And I, you know, so like, I think just

you in that. So I think that's interesting you say that. Absolutely. I think that and that lesson, I mean, in the food service business, you almost have to do that. And in any business, I guess you go in blind. You don't know what you don't know. So a guy might tell you it's going to take him X number of days in this many man hours. But until you've done it and you see what you can do and how long it takes you and how much it costs you, how are you in a position to give a guy a job like that? Yeah. So I agree. And this is where like I think a lot of people get mixed up because when you do the first, when you do things the first time yourself, it always takes way longer. You know, I don't know if this experience for me was I would start a simple project,

a simple planning project. I would go to Home Depot. I would come back. I would not have some parts. I would go back. And the whole thing would take me eight hours and I would take an experience guy, one or two hours. But the fact that I can do that, like Brandon just mentioned, I think enables me to avoid a lot of expenses in other scenarios, know when I'm getting ripped off, no one I'm getting a good

deal, and just manage the whole process more effectively. what would you say to that if you were investing back in your financial services day passively on the side however would you still would you still have that mindset of that hey you should do it yourself or would you have a different perspective on that well i think i think my investors appreciate the fact that i did do all that stuff myself and that at any given time i have the ability to do it should i absolutely need to at this point it makes absolutely no sense for me to swing hammers it just doesn't it's not the highest thing best use of my time. But I know that there's a comfort level with my investors that if for whatever

reason someone walks off a job, they know I have, I have the ability to step in. You know, now we'd find another sub to step in. But I think that puts the passive investor at ease knowing, you know, if something goes sideways, this guy's going to step in and get it done because he knows how to get it done. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. And me as a passive investor in other people stuff, that's what I look for. Like if they're first time flippers and they're getting into a deal, You know, just because they're willing to pay me four and 14, like, I don't want to lend them the money if I think they're going to fall in their face because, you know, I'm not looking to get the property. I'm looking for them. I'm looking to make money passively in that scenario.

That makes sense. Makes sense. So let's go back to the financing a little bit. You mentioned using the 401K for this. Did you have all the cash needed? You just, you know, $200 or $300 and some thousand dollars or was there something else? No. So I had to, I had to go and get hard money, which is where this gets a little more complicated.

with the IRA taxing with Ubit tax and I forget the acronym for the other. So I had to borrow a portion of it from a hard money lender. So there's, so there's a, I mean, like you said before, we're not CPA. So you got to go back and obviously consult with your guy about that. But no, I didn't have everything I needed, but I modeled it. It was a solid deal. If I remember right, I barred at two and 12. So I'm a very first deal.

First of all, can you explain what a hard money lender is and then what two and 12 means for somebody who doesn't know? Yeah. So hard money lenders are, I mean, that's where I feel like just about everybody gets started. Friends and family money first. And then after that, you go to a hard money lender who will take the property as collateral. They'll take first lien position and they'll lend to you at what are typically pretty aggressive or exorbitant.

I should say rates. You know, so I want to say I got my money at two points and 12 percent. And they were financing 80 percent of the purchase price and 100 percent of the construction on that deal. Okay. And since my terms have improved with my hard money guys, you know, they'll let you put less skin in the game, you know, as you develop a proven track record with them. So maybe down the line, you'll do 10% down for the purchase. They'll come in with 90% of the purchase, 100% of the construction,

and they'll do it at 2 points and 10%. With time, the rates get better. But that's how I feel like everybody needs to get started because you can only, unless you have a rich uncle. I mean, I exhaust my friends and family money pretty fast at the beginning. So now to scale to the, you know, to the level we're at now, it's a necessary evil, I guess. Well, there's a really important thing I want to pull out here that a lot of times people think of creative finance. Like, I mean, their people's first thought is, I don't have enough money to flip a house or I don't have enough money to rehab or to buy a rental, right? And they just stop at that point. And other people think one step further and say, okay, well, I have a private money lender who can fund the whole thing.

And then they feel like now they've got a thing. But in reality, what most creative finance is exactly what you did is it's joining different pieces of creative finance into one thing, right? So you used a 401K for the down payment essentially, a hard money lender for the rest. Right. So you're kind of combining those two things together. And that's how most, almost every creative finance deal I've ever done has been that way, has been a combination of things. So I just think that's a cool illustration that you shared there.

I feel like a lot of people are frightened by that sort of stuff. It's just maybe because I had the finance background, the creative finance piece, I'm comfortable with it. There's a comfort level around it. but if someone's in a position to do their first deal and the financing is what's holding them up, but they've got a killer deal under contract, they could just find someone like me. There's a lot of guys out there that have the wealth of knowledge more so than I even do that can help you put together the financing.

You should never let a good deal go. The good deals are harder to come by than the money is. I'm a believer in that. That's true. Yeah. And if you're looking for hard money lenders to get started, by the way, you know, always tap your debt work, I'll ask recommendations. But we also have a directory on bigger pockets, a hard money lender,

at bigger pockets.com slash hard money lenders. Yeah, it's actually, I think it's the largest directory of all hard money lenders in the country. Yeah, we've got hundreds, maybe almost a thousand. Yeah, it's crazy. So, yeah, um, hard money is expensive. But I remember like the realization that I had. So this is back when I was like 21 and I was getting into flipping houses and I didn't

have any money. And I read this in a book about hard money lenders. And they were talking about how they can be crazy expensive, like 12, 13, 14% interest and then these points. And a point is like a fee that's like 1% of the price. right, if I borrow 100 grand, one point is $1,000. And I remember reading this and going, that's insane. Like, I could never afford to pay that.

Those guys are ripping people. But then right after in that book it said, but don't worry about it. Because if you just factor that expense into your numbers and then make your offer based on having to pay that, then you're, you know, it's part of the deal. It's the cost of doing business. And all of a sudden like that clicked them. I still remember that day. It clicked on my head.

And I was like, oh, well, that makes 100% sense. Like, who cares? So, yeah, don't think of it so much as it like, that's way more expensive. than what a bank would be. Yeah, that's true, but there are really nice benefits to hard many lenders if you can afford them. So very cool. So I love that. I love the story. Your first flip. Let's go jump. I like to jump. I always like to start with people's first deal and then jump to the very end. How many total deals have you done now and then we'll work backwards from there? Probably about 20 at this point. Wow. Okay. So 20 are they all flips? Any rentals in there? No, all flips. Primarily all at a level. What do you mean by that? I mean, it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So our niche. where we operate at a primarily union county here in New Jersey and what we find in the better half of this county, especially there's a lot of dated capes and ranches that make for good at a level candidates where you go in, you pop the top off and you essentially force appreciation by doubling the square footage and putting a box on top of a box, simplify it. Obviously, the construction piece of that is a little more cumbersome, but I love the model. And it's a it's primarily what we do. I'd say we've done a couple of cosmetic rehabs in my first one and maybe two or three.

three cents, but most otherwise, all we do is, is out of levels. And we've done a couple of new constructions. Okay. So can you walk us through your analysis of these deals? How do you determine which properties are really good candidates for at a level? And then, you know, what's the, how do you kind of estimate your spread on these pop tops? The houses that haven't been touched in the longest are the best candidates. We're looking for something from the 50s and 60s that is unkept. That, you know, it's probably had one or two owners and still got the shack carpet, big capes and ranches are they make for the best data levels because it's easy to double the square footage on those houses and really force appreciation because here a new a brand new colonial

is probably the most sought after product for first time home buyers and with rates where there are there's just so much demand and so little supply yeah so we find the capes we or the ranches we salvage the foundation and then everything from there up is essentially brand new new mechanicals new frame everything everything's new so You're selling a new house. You can't technically call it new because it's sitting on an old foundation. But as far as the buyers are concerned, they walk in, it's a new home. The mechanicals are brand new.

They know they have nothing to worry about. And we sell them with warranties on top of that. So just an added level of comfort for the buyers. So can you walk us through an example of a recent one of these that you've done? Just start to finish how you found it, what you did, what you sold it for, kind of just like a bread and butter of your business. So that's changed too. What we realize was you can do them at here in my market, you can pick them up in

the 150 to 200 range or you can pick them up in 450 to 500 range depending on the town you're in so obviously you don't want to be putting more money to work to make the same spread unless you're in a town where you can really force appreciation and doing an add-a-level on a on a big ranch for example the biggest one we've done we paid 455 for we dropped 375 into it I believe did a massive addition out the back and an out-a-level so really double the square footage plus the addition and we got out of that one at one point two. It was a massive deal. But you can do something smaller.

For example, buy at 175, do a small out of level, spend maybe 155, 160, sell it in the 450s. So that spreads great too and you're not putting as much money in play. So it's just really depending on where the deal is. And we're trying to put out product at a bunch of different price points. So for us, like 500, 750, and a million are typically price points that I've developed spec sheets for. So I build two those price points. The finish is just the level, the quality of the craftsmanship is there no matter what price point we're at. But the level of the finishes obviously changes.

So it's trying to find a sweet spot in each town, I guess, is what I'd say drives our model. How do you know an area is good for this type of thing? Like when I think of my local area, I feel like that just wouldn't work in my area because we're a cheaper price. Like, I mean, like Max house is going to be $250,000. But I could be wrong. And there's also massive houses all around. Is that true or can you correct me on that? Well, what we're looking for, so there's in the county where we operate primarily, there's 23 towns.

We're in the better half. So there's 13 towns in my county where I think this model makes sense. What I guess I look for at the beginning, now I'm comfortable in those towns. comfortable enough to know if it makes sense or not. But I guess what I was looking for at the beginning is what are the fully renovated colonials going for, the big ones, or new construction because our product's going to be somewhere in between there. So we're going to take the old dated Cape Ranch. We're going to blow it up. We're going to have a fully renovated colonial at the end. So that's what I was comping out to. And I was looking at where those were trading and figuring out

if working back from there, because I'm going to get that new buy premium, sort of, it's not new construction, but working back from there, is there room to buy this dated cape, pop the top off, do all the work, list it, sell it, pay your hard money, pay everything back? And then ultimately, is there a six figure profit in it? That's our model. We try and model in six figures on every deal. Six. That's awesome. I don't know. Obviously, but yeah, that's a good goal to hit every time. Aim for the six figures. Are you still financing these deals in relatively similar manner to your first deal? Or do you have partners or syndications now? Or how is that, how's that working? So it's all over the map now.

We've got private money. We've got private money lenders that have come in and funded an entire project, purchase, construction, everything. And we're just doing the project and paying them debt. We've got JVs with equity partners who fund everything and we manage the construction. We're still doing hard money on some of the bigger stuff, like the one I, the 1.2 house. Obviously, we didn't have the cash to lay out for that size project. We've also got some of our own cash in projects now where we'll buy the, the project outright and then go to a local community bank and refi out. So they'll give us back

65% of the purchase and 100% of construction at prime plus one. That's a great scenario for us. We tie up to $2.250 of our cash to buy the project, but then the construction is funded at five with no points, which is five and a quarter, which is great. So it's all over the map. It's whatever makes sense for the deal at the time, whatever we can get access to. And a lot of stuff, I'm not the only guy in my market doing this. There's probably a handful of guys looking at the same stuff and we're bumping into each other at these houses when we're going there to look. Sometimes not buying as many of them in competition anymore, but when you're doing that, you don't have time to sit around and figure out what's the cheapest cost of capital.

You've got to get the capital that you need to get so you can get the deal ball. Yeah, that's a good point. What's the average timeline on these projects? How long does it take you to add a level to a rancher in these areas? If it were strictly the construction piece of the project, I could tell you it'd be four months. I know that piece I have down. What I don't control a lot of times is the town and how many people put permits, put applications in with them on the front end. We've had towns hold us up for, you know, as little as two weeks, but as long as two months.

So that's kind of an unknown. Well, now that we've done stuff in, in all the towns we operate in, I have a better understanding of how long it'll take to get these things approved. So on the front end, we have that to deal with. Also, this time of year, for example, we just picked up seven projects in October. So we're looking to rip the roof off six of those seven houses. and the weather here is about to start turning. It's 39 degrees here today. And we're going to start seeing snow sometime in the near future.

So we could wind up getting pushed out a month, depending on what kind of winter we have. Here we've been lucky the last two years. We're super mild. But if we have a bad winter, you got snow in your house. I've literally had to shovel snow out of the inside of my houses. So that could push you out. You could get burned for a week or two or a month even with the snow.

And then on the tail end, our product typically doesn't sit. we're pre-selling, I'd say probably half our stuff, and the stuff that we're not, we're listing and moving it in about 30 days. The longest we've sat on anything was 90 days, and that was that big project. I mentioned that 1.2 house. So stuff over a million bucks typically does sit here for a good bit,

but our stuff, I think we build a really great product. And if people are out looking at stuff at similar price points, I think our stuff stands out. That's fantastic. That's just crazy. I love the, I love, I'd never even heard of the idea of like adding a level or popping the top or, you know, until like a year ago when, I don't think it was Anson Young or maybe two years ago, I think was telling me about doing it. And I'm like, that's such a cool idea. But like it just doesn't make sense that I don't think in my market. So I never thought about it. But, you know, if you can add a ton of value by doing that. So what about foundation issue? I mean, like, I feel like if you, if they built back 80 years ago, 60 years ago, whatever, a house and it was planned on being a single level and they built the foundation for a single level. Can you just add a level or do you have to go and reinforce foundation issues?

No, they were actually built better than than they are now. Okay. We find that. The foundations are solid. That's the one thing. So we don't buy flood. We don't buy oil tanks and we don't buy bad foundations because our model is at a level. So we obviously don't want to be dealing with water issues, intrusion issues.

And the foundation piece, we just make sure it's good. At this point, I've walked enough of them where I'm comfortable when I look at it, whether or not it's going to sustain the load of the new second floor. There's still one, you know, every fourth or fifth half. maybe I'll have my mason come out with me and give it a look. And then the engineer, the architect will work with his, with the engineering partner to give us a letter. Because a lot of times certain towns will want to see a letter saying that there's somebody who's comfortable, an engineer who's formally trained in this sort of stuff,

is comfortable that this existing foundation is going to support the load of the new second floor. But yeah, we always check the foundation. And if, and if it looks solid, we haven't had an issue yet. We make sure before we go in that it's good. So you just mentioned a couple guys that aren't necessarily typically part of your casual investors team here, your architect, your mason, your engineer. Can you walk us through all the folks that, you know, I mean, it might be a long list, but can you walk us through the folks that are really important to your business and making sure that you avoid these kinds of risks and successfully complete these projects? Yeah, well, that's why I'm especially fond of this niche because there's some barriers to entry with this model. a lot of the guys that have the construction savvy and are willing to undertake a project like this

can't fundraise for it because it's it's cash intensive the guys that are on the sidelines and have got the money don't necessarily have that construction savvy so a project like this might spook some spook some guys right so what i like about it is that there's those barriers to entry and for us i got comfortable with the construction piece up front and having the right partners in place is huge so if if i do need a second set of eyes on something and i don't have much time i can call the mason and he can meet me at the house and we can quickly figure out, okay, is this a concern or not? And if not, I can comfortably write an offer. So I understand that a lot of times, like the cosmetic rehabs, you wouldn't have a need for a mason.

Architecturals are minimal in those kinds of scenarios. And the architect partnering with the engineer, that's more on their end. I've got an engineer buddy of mine that I could always call if I absolutely need something. But I kind of lean on my architect to make sure that he's put that stuff in front of his engineering partner because they've all got one and making sure that those guys are, comfortable with what we're going to submit and ultimately build. But from there, I mean, all the same trades step in. We don't hire GCs. We project manage our own stuff. So we run the subs. So we bring in the framer to shore up everything to put the second floor on to re-roof to sheet. And then trades come in. They do their thing. And then all along the line, just like anybody else would.

Unless you're hiring a GC to run your entire project, you're going to need to call on all these subs anyway. So are you personally, like you gave doing the project management then, or do you have a project manager that works for you? No, so now I have a project manager in-house that runs the jobs. I did at first, first two years or so, I would say I was running all my own projects. At capacity, I think we were doing, I might have had eight running at once. And I felt like that's where my limit was running that many projects with that many moving parts. At any given time, the way I look at it, you can have, you can have nine subs you're juggling. You probably got three guys working on whatever, three tradesmen,

finishing up something, looking to get paid, looking to close out their part of it. You probably got three coming in next, right? Or three on site that are starting their part. So six subs at any given time across multiple projects. So that's when it gets tough to juggle. And that's where I feel like scaling this model becomes a challenge. It's not that it can't be done.

You just got to put the right people in place to manage those roles. That makes a lot of sense. So how do you find these content? contractors that you're working with. You have any good tips or strategies for? Yes. And not just finding them, but also vetting them, make sure that they're good. Well, so where our office is located is fortunately where a lot of the supply houses are. So a lot of people say, go to Home Depot and see who's at Home Depot early and take down the names and numbers on all the vans. So I'm a believer that the Home Depot contractor, that G.C is not the guy that's going to do the level of work that we're looking to get done.

So we're looking for tradesmen that buy at supply houses. So we build relationships. So we've in-house some of our own supplies. So we formed Silva Supply Company. And we've in-house things like vanities and tubs and doork and stuff like that. So what we typically do is we call the sales reps at the supply houses and they'll provide you with their list of preferred vendors. So buy your paints directly from Benjamin Moore and call the Benjamin Moore sales rep and ask him who are. his three preferred painting contractors in a specific area. And that's how that's how you build a

solid team. I think the Home Depot model, it works for cosmetics. And if you want to put a GC in there to just do a renovation, that's one thing. But if you're trying to frame a whole house, that's a whole different scenario. Yeah. And that that strategy, I think, makes a ton of sense for these high end properties that you're doing. You're trying to sell, you're trying to add a ton of value at a short amount of time and create a beautiful home for sale, right? Maybe some rental property investors. Maybe Brandon wouldn't, would it need that kind of level of contractor for his $30,000 single family home? Is that correct? Or am I assuming too much there? No, no, that absolutely makes sense. I think there's in the handful of cosmetic rehabs that that I have done,

looking back on them now, I don't think it made sense for us to use our resources and project manage those. I think in those scenarios, it might have made more sense to find a GC who can wear four, five, six hats and be on site every day. As opposed to. to waiting for my tradesmen who are framing a 2,800 square foot house to finish up framing there so he can come put in an LVL so you can open up a kitchen. Yep. You know, so in those scenarios, absolutely, it does not make sense. Okay.

So you mentioned Silva Supply Company. You opened a supply. Tell us about that because I not heard anybody doing that. Yes. We realized we were spending so much money on materials that if I'm working direct with some of the accounts, you're not always going to be able to get open dealer accounts with a lot of manufacturers, But when I was at IBS in Orlando, which is a killer conference, the international builder show in Orlando, it's coming up. I've been told I need to go to that.

Darren Sager keeps bugging me to go to that every year. Awesome. Yeah. He and I were talking. We're both going this year. It's, yeah, so when I was out there, I realized that if you build rapport, you build relationships with manufacturers, you can actually buy direct from them, depending on volume. So we're a dealer for a kitchen cabinet line. So I buy my kitchen cabinets at 50 cents on the dollar.

direct from the manufacturer, but I have to do 50K a year with them. So there's, there's kind of a rub there, but it makes sense for me to do that kind of volume. So a silver supply company buys direct for ourselves, but we'll also buy direct for some of our builder buddies locally just to hit our quota. So it's a, it's kind of a workaround. It saves us, it saves us a good bit of money. I mean, the cabinets alone are probably, I don't even know what they probably generate us in, in savings a year. But we're doing it with tubs and door knobs and a couple other things. And I'm looking to do it with some more things even. And again, obviously, this is a scaling thing. And I've got an office manager in-house that's

responsible for managing these relationships, paying these invoices, getting terms with these guys, stuff like that. That's awesome. You were the one that telling me the story about the bathtub a while back, weren't you? Like, yeah. I just realized just now that you and I went to dinner together and like I totally forgot we were at dinner together. I don't know. You look totally different than I feel like you did then. I don't know. You got more hair or something. I don't know. Maybe less. Maybe less. Anyway.

The Tubbs thing is a cool story because that came from IBS. And when I was last year when I went to the IBS show, I asked around if any of my local builder buddies were going and everybody said no. And when everybody said no, I said, then I have to go. There's got to be something there. If nobody else is doing it, I want to give it a shot. And I went and I formed a relationship with a Chinese tub manufacturer. And a month or two later, reengaged and ordered the tubs.

I ordered a container of bat tubs from China. And I paid probably a third of what they cost here for 60 bathtubs. And we won't use all 60 this year, but I'll use 10 or 12 myself. And I've sold off a bunch to a couple of builder buddies locally. And it just makes sense at scale. This obviously doesn't make sense for two or three flips a year. But if you're trying to build something and do a dozen or so a year and more than stuff like this absolutely makes sense. That's fascinating.

I love it. I mean, it sounds to me like you have an operation that you have your bread and butter. what you're comfortable with in terms of these pop tops at a levels. But you're adding on opportunistically in every direction that you can to save money and build that business. And if you have another great little stream, that's awesome. You know, you'll take it and move along with it and just do good business. If you own a large or complex rental property, congrats.

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One question I had, I don't think we covered related to your business overall, though, was how are you finding these deals in general of the market? Are you these MLS deals? Do you have a wholesaler? How is that working? So we started doing a lot of our own direct mail stuff. I'd say the first year plus, it was just bidding and comp with other guys on MLS stuff. maybe a couple that were brought to us directly. Once you start proving yourself as a legitimate buyer, and if you're a buyer for this specific product, you buy dated capes and ranches in the

better half of Union County, cash, if they're a fit for your modeling and you say, hey, you buy them and you do it, you say, you say what you do, I find that a lot of people will come to you first. So we're getting shown a lot of stuff that we're not even bidding in competition. Wholesalers will get these contracts and they'll just come to us and we'll take a look at it, make an offer. We've got some relationships with some brokers that do the same because you give them the listing on the back end. So there's that synergy there. And like I said, we just started to really ramp up our direct mail stuff. I do a lot of stuff on social. So my presence on social media kind of helps just kind of builds your your social authority, your social currency, kind of positions

you as an authority in the space and a guy that's out there actually doing stuff and taking action. And I find that a lot of people see that and then come to us with opportunities before they go. go elsewhere because if it's people want easy at the end of the day they want easy so if they're like gabe's the guy he says he buys stuff and he buys it why would I go call anybody else I just call him be done with it yeah that's awesome all right so maybe one of the last couple questions here before we wrap up going back to that first flip you know so we know we know we know we're doing this at volume and scale going back to that first flip however you know it sounds like you netted between 100 and 150k and profit what was all said and done how did you parlay that into the next few

deals. I went to, but with that one, it wasn't enough to do what I'm doing now. So it was, it was hard money. It was just prove to those guys that you're a good operator and that they can trust you to, to finish out a project. And then when you go back to them to raise capital for another deal, if you model the deal well and it's a legitimate deal and they're comfortable with the numbers, I didn't have a problem borrowing from them because that's the business they're in. That's the thing about hard money. As much as the terms, you know, might suck. Those guys, they have a comfort level around that. They're risk takers. That's essentially what they do. It's hard to get grandma and grandpa to wrap their heads around and at a level. Yeah. Even if they got 250K in the bank, you know,

and I found that we've had weeks where we've had private money lenders fade on $500,000 worth of commitments just ahead of a closing. Like that stuff's super stressful. That's, that can break you. You know, so I like the hard money guys for the fact, for the simple fact that they're, they're comfortable with the level of risk that they're taking on. And if you're a good operator and you perform, they're there for you. And they were for me. And I've built a great relationship with my guys. And we've been working together for a couple of years.

And I have, you know, them to thank for helping me scale the way I did. And then that's probably how I got from one to three to six to now 12. We've been doubling year over year pretty much. That might be the best, like, explanation of why to use a hard money lender. I've heard. There's a big saying of bigger pockets. I'm going to butcher it here, but it's like if you think it's expensive to hire a professional, try hiring an amateur. It's kind of like, it seems like that you're applying that kind of concept to this.

Like, do you think that, you know, hard money is expensive? Wait to you try to raise money from a private individual who might back out on you. Yeah, when they fade on you at the 11th hour and you've got a closing in two days and you were counting on these commitments and these guys just, I never asked my wife and she doesn't want to do it or, yeah, I've decided. I'm not going to take the money out or I don't want to get that home equity line or whatever the case was. There's always some excuse. But yeah, that's saying definitely applies in that scenario. Wow, that's awesome. All right.

So what does your day to day look like night now? Like what do you do when you get to the office? When do you show up there? How long do you work? And what do you do all day? I'm a morning person. So I typically try and be up by 5.30. My goal in the morning after I do my routine, get myself ready to rock and roll is to get on email early.

I try and touch emails three times a day. So first thing in the morning, I try and blast emails ahead of everybody else, getting to the office. So that way, you know, the ball's in their court when they log in. I'm at the office probably mid-morning, straight through until lunch.

I spend that time planning out, doing our marketing campaigns, talking to my office manager, reviewing financials, figuring out where we're at with funding for the projects that we're acquiring. Midday, I'll hit emails again, see what's come back.

That needs a response. And then I head out to the few, My afternoons are spent in the field. Checking on projects, my project manager, if he needs anything, if anything's gone sideways on a deal, which with this many deals, there's always something. So I'll spend my afternoons doing that. And then I'll hit up email one last time and call it a day. That's an ideal day. I mean, they don't all look like that.

There's a lot of times where whatever you got working in the office in the morning consumes you, trying to figure out how to launch a new marketing campaign, shouldn't be a two or three hour ordeal, but sometimes it is. the same thing in the field. I mean, Mason is doing work and find something, uncover something that you weren't anticipating. Now you've got to make two, three, four phone calls, figure out how are we going to adjust on the fly to keep this thing moving. So I feel like you can never really have a set routine. I try to just because for mental sanity, it's good. But no, all the days are all different, I guess.

Makes sense. Awesome. Cool. All right. Well, I guess. Last question here before we move on to the fire round. What's your goal going forward as you move along with your business here? So we're trying, my goal is to scale this thing into a $50 million company.

So I want to be a fully integrated real estate investment company. We're already, we already find fund, fix and flip deals. We are doing our first wholesale, probably another one in the pipeline. Silva supply company is small. It's just something I use for our business and kind of side hustling with some. my other builder buddies. We are building out an online brand too, positioning ourselves as an authority trying to build social currency. So I can start helping other guys do what we're doing here in their markets. I think there's opportunities, not everywhere, but in certain places.

And I think if you show people that it can be systematized, it can be scalable. I think there's opportunity out there. So we're doing a lot of different things, wearing a lot of different hats. It's just my personality type. I don't always, I don't suggest that for everybody, but for me, that's what works. And that's how that's the fastest path to the dollar, I think, is building that six-legged stool, right, and getting those different revenue streams coming in. Don't just be a one-trick pony. Have your bread and butter.

Do those out of levels. But wholesale, do some new construction, do a custom build, sell bathtubs. So is that, is that going to be $50 million in revenue on an annual basis? Is that your goal? Yeah. I'd like to, I'd like to, well, shooting for the stars landing on the moon kind of thing. I mean, we tried to do 10 million this year is our third year out and we won't do it.

But it was a good target and we'll come close enough that I'll feel good with what we did. I heard this great quote recently about that. It was like, what was it? The purpose of a goal is not to hit the goal. The person of the goal is to become the person you become while trying to hit the goal. And I probably butcher that. But you know, like by setting big goals, like it's not about the number. It's about who you are and who you become.

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Cool. All right, well, hey, let's shift gears here real quick and head over to the world famous fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's get to the fire round. Number one, these questions come direct out of the bigger pockets, forums, of course, and we're firing them at you to see how you'd respond.

Number one, would you contribute still to a 401k or not now that you're in real estate? And you can take this both from you personally and somebody who has a job. job, should they continue if they're already in real estate, keep putting money in there. No. I'm a firm believer in the value of the self-directed IRA for us as real estate investors. If nothing else, you can lend out of your self-directed IRA back and forth to other investors. So if I've got 100 and you've got 100 and we're both struggling to find money, you lend to me on my projects. I lend to you on yours. And that money grows, pays us a consistent 10, 12, whatever we agree to. 4-1Ks are limited.

I want the ability to invest in what I want to invest in. Cool. Scott, and you're a big finance guy. Do you want to answer that as well? What do you think? Well, I think it makes a ton of sense. I think that one consideration also is if you're working a job, you could contribute to the 401k while you're working.

And then once you leave, you could then roll that over into a self-directed IRA, just like Gabe did here. Especially if there's like a matching program and you get free money. You might as well double it. Always take the free money. I forgot to say that. Always take free. There you go.

Cool. All right. Number two. All right. I'm going to go with what did you do wrong on your first flip? Now, you mentioned that you made some mistakes, but can you kind of go into a little bit of depth on maybe some of those mistakes that you made on that first one? I'd say that the mistakes you make are, it's not knowing what you don't know.

I mean, at the time, I don't know why I didn't think to YouTube. Like if you're going to be doing your own stuff, YouTube, you can figure out how to do open heart surgery on YouTube. There's literally everything there. So I think I was trying to figure out how to do things without necessarily knowing what the proper process was. and for me to do that, how long does it take, how much does it cost model and do it myself and learn? That wasn't the most efficient way. We weren't there terribly long,

but I know I should have been there. I shouldn't have been there the six months. So I'd say what I probably did was wasted too much time doing things that could have been done faster. Not to say that I shouldn't have been the one doing them. I just should have done some more research and figured out what exactly it was that I needed to get done before I sat there and spun my wheels.

That makes sense. By the way, I just went and search YouTube and sure enough, you can figure out how to do open heart surgery. And you too. So I wouldn't recommend it, but, you know. All right. Next question.

I'm closing my first flip house in the Houston area on Thursday. It's a 3-2 in a pretty nice area, standard mid-range community built in the late 70s. ARV 175. It's a little bit lower end than what you're working on or at least lower price point. I work for a flooring company and I can get the material in labor myself,

but I'm not sure if I should use a mid-range vinyl plank for around a buck of square foot or waterproof click product with like a foam backing that's three times as much. What would you do? At that price point, I would go with the cheaper product. I just don't think in this market, I know the 175 buyer wouldn't notice the difference. So I wouldn't spend three times on the material for something like that.

All right. All right. Question number four. Hey, I was wondering what people's thoughts were on flipping houses under one LLC. I know in rentals, most people or many people set up a separate LLC. for each property to minimize liability. But for flipping houses, since it's so short term,

would it be okay to use one LLC? What's the entity structure? And obviously you're not a CPA. We know that. Well, the way we do it is the Silva Group is an S-Corp that owns individual project-specific LLCs. We do that for liability reasons

and for financing purposes because of different partnership structures and different financing structures. So I can't have all my projects under the same LLCs because I have different JV partnerships on some of them. And lenders want lean position on a specific house in a specific LLC. So I can't necessarily blend them.

But I don't think you'd want to anyway. From a liability standpoint, every LLC is its own, every project is its own LLC, insured accordingly, structured that way, and then dissolved once the project is complete. So I think it limits liability. And here in New Jersey, especially, like, that's a big issue. People are so too happy here. So we don't take that chance. All right.

Very cool. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. All right, well, let's shift gears one last time and head over to the world famous. Famous for. All right. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. And we want to hear what you got to say.

So number one, Gabe, what is your favorite real estate related book? This is going to be, this is a super generic book, rich dad, poor dad. All right. When did you read it? Do you feel like that was a book that got you into it or did you read that later on? I read it early on. and it was it was mindset. So that's what that's what it did for me. I think more so than anything else, it didn't matter what the product was. I've always been kind of a business guy regardless. I think this

was always in my blood. It was just figuring out where to focus those energies and efforts. And when I saw that, when I read that and learned, listen, if you're the master of your own destiny, real estate's the way to go. And so I'd say that. Yeah, that's probably my favorite real estate related book. That's cool. You know what I always say about Rich Dad Port Ed is that like that book, it put words to what like my soul, was like groaning for. You know, like, I knew there was something that I wanted. And like, I didn't know what it was, but it was like there. And then I read it. I was like, that's it. Like, I don't have like to say it. I just give people the book. I'm like, this is what's on my mind. Like, that's what it did for me. It just, it put that into words what I knew was true. So anyway,

cool. All right, Scott. Since rich dad, poor dad is kind of like a business book as well. I'm going to give you a choice on the second question here. You can either tell us what your favorite business book is or you can give us a resource that you regularly read up on that helps you with your business. I'll go, I'll go, I'll go the book route because I think there's, there's two books that are critical that every entrepreneur needs to have read, and they're probably all been said dozens,

dozens of times on the podcast, but the e-myth, yeah, for sure. And, well, I'm blanking. Oh, think and grow rich. Think and grow rich. Yep. How did I almost forget?

William Hill. So those two books are critical. I think think and grow rich is just big on, on the millionaire mindset, at just getting your head right. And the e-myth is more tactical. It's how you, I mean, the systems piece of it, I geek out on systems. And it's the only reason in three years we've gone from doing one cosmetic rehab to doing 12 this year. That doesn't happen by chance. That happens because you take a systematic approach to everything you do, like to do everything once, you know how much it costs, how long it should

take. Well, the other step behind that is documented. So everything we do, we document. We have processes for everything. And I got that from the e-myth. I had that mindset and had a look at things. Just don't be a technician, be an owner, not an operator, and have that in the back of your mind. As you're doing everything, do it. But understand that you can't be doing it forever. If you are, you'll never scale. It's great. Fantastic. All right, number three, Scott. What do you do for fun? What are your hobbies? Well, I'm guilty of working entirely too much. So I don't get out much as much as I would like. I think the one thing I do love is food.

So I like to cook to get my mind off what's going on with work. I like to travel. And when I do travel, it's always food focused. I could probably afford to have more, like, entertaining athletic style hobbies. So maybe that'll be my goal in 2018 is to find more balance and take up yoga or something. Do you remember the name of the restaurant you and I went to in Summit? The office. Okay, the office.

Yeah. So if anybody ever is in Summit, New Jersey, go to the office and get there. They got three chocolate chip cookies. with ice cream like baked in this little thing. Did you eat that by the way, Gabe, when you were there? No, no, no, no. Oh, you missed out.

It was the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. It was so good. And I think I had it after you left. But man, it was so good. I actually had it four times that week. We went like four different occasions to the office. And I had it every time. That's what brand of remembers from that dinner.

I know. I don't remember anything else. I remember the cookies and ice cream. It was so good. Anyway, all right, the office. That's my little plug for them because it was fantastic. All right. Last question for me.

Gabe, what do you think sets apart? successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or never get started. I think it's the same thing that sets successful entrepreneurs apart from the unsuccessful ones. I think it's grit. So in this business and any business, you're getting kicked in the teeth every day. It's just the nature of being an entrepreneur. It's the nature of real estate investing.

I think you need to be mentally prepared for that and just know that after you beat that, after you, whatever problems are being thrown at you. You figure out how to work through them and move on to the next. Like, that's what entrepreneurship is. That's what real estate investing is. So I think it's just great, just being able to buckle down and get it done at all costs. I like that. Perfect.

Where can people find out more about you? I'm on social. I'm pretty active on social. So I'm on all the platforms, Facebook, Instagram. What I think I can do to add the most value to listeners is over on my YouTube channel. We've started a docu series. And I've got a videographer with me every day. and we're capturing the realities of the real estate investment business.

We've created a show called The Build, and that's what we do. We show people what's going on, what it actually takes. None of that foo-foo guru stuff. It's, you know, what are we doing? We had a, we had, we have tradesmen walking off the jobs. We have financing falling through. We've got, we're capturing all that stuff. So people can see what it really takes to do this.

And if, and if you're cut out for it or not. So I'm hoping to help a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors with that. And that's right. That's right. can go and find out more about what we're up to. What's your name on like all the social stuff in YouTube? It's my name Gabe De Silva. Okay.

If you just Google Gabe De Silva, YouTube, all that stuff should come up. I'm going to check that out because I love those videos like kind of the following around seeing the real thing. I love that. So very cool, very, very cool. Well, Gabe, this is awesome. Thank you so much for being a part of our podcast today. I learned a ton.

This is another one of those shows where I'm like, after I get off the column, I'm going to go do that. I'm going to go tell my wife. We're taking the roof off a house and we're going to build something cool. So anyway, thank you so much. Thanks guys. All right. We'll see you around.

All right. Take care. All right. Big thanks to our guest today, Gabe. That was awesome. I, like I said in the show, I'm totally like pumped up. I want to go do a at a level or pop top or whatever we want to call it. That's cool.

How about you, Scott? Every time I think I'm getting a little better at this whole business thing that we're trying to do here, I just like, then I talk to guy like Gabe. I have so much to learn. I just, I need to go back, get back to work and start thinking like with systems. thinking like with systems thinking, go back to the basics and I just take as an advantage of many opportunities as I can. What an impressive story. Yeah, very much so. And in fact, I was actually just thinking like, I want to reread the E myth now. It's been a while since I read the E myth. I'm going to reread that because, you know, Gabe kind of re-spurred that in me. So I actually

got it sitting here on my floor because I was sorting through all my, I was sorted through all my real estate books other day. I have like a hundred books. It's crazy. They're all over my floor working on that. Anyway, well, should we get out of here? I don't know. You want to talk about anything fun? And you want to I don't know, talk about your favorite movies, books, how you're feeling right now? Need a pep talk? No, I'm feeling pretty good. I watched How to Train Your Dragon the other night, which is pretty good, surprisingly.

I have not seen that. But you know what I watched for the first time? Kind of like Shrek. Is it? Yeah. I've not seen Shrek. Of course, I've seen Shrek. I actually love Shrek.

But I saw Moana, which, you know, I never watched like kids movies anymore, but Moana, the new Disney movie. I don't know how new it is. But anyway, my little daughter, Rosie is obsessed with the song in there. What's it called? like, Heather, what's that song in there? How far I'll go? Yeah, my wife's here.

Like, that song, like, my daughter will listen to it on repeat. She's 18 months old, and she'll listen to it on our Amazon, like Alexa, like a hundred times in a row and get angry every time we turn it off. Like when the song ends, like the final music's fading out, she'll go, ah, ah, ah, uh, uh, until we turn it back on again and then she gets happy. Anyway. Oh, funny. I just mentioned Alexa. Now my Alexa's talking to me. Anyway, all right.

Would you ask? All right, well, let's go ahead and get out of here. Hope everybody enjoyed that. I thought it was really informational. I learned a tremendous amount from Gabe. And yeah, I'm going to probably go check out his YouTube channel at some point. Do it. Check it out.

All right, guys, thanks so much for being a part of our podcast, listening again. And stay tuned for the random six right after the music. For BiggerPockets.com, my name is Brandon. And this is Scott Trench. Signed off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place.

Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. It's time for it. It's time. The random six. All right, there's one more segment of the show here. We like to throw in the end. This is our random six. There's six random questions.

Get to know you a little bit better, Gabe. Number one, if you could take time. take a year off, what would you do for the whole year? If you had to take a year off? I already know. I go eat my way through Europe. Ooh, nice. I go from city to city and just eat my way around the entire continent. And come home like 120 pounds heavier.

Yeah. It'd be totally worth it. Yeah. All right. Number two, do you know any magic tricks? No. Someone tried to teach me one on Thanksgiving, some funky car trick. But no, I, uh, they got me. I mean,

y'all want to learn one right now? I can show you one right now. This is my favorite magic trick in the world. Only people on YouTube are going to be able to see this. But all right, look, check out my thumb. You ready? Ready? Oh, lost my thumb.

Isn't that great? That was great. I guess I do know that one. Yeah, okay. Well, that one's the best. Actually, I got one more to show you too. And again, people who are listening to this are not going to get the fun of this.

But pen, this is one of my actually all-time favorites. Penn? Straight. Do you have actually like seven layers? a skin on your hand, you can actually shove a sharp pen through the outer layer and you go down like this and then it just hangs right there for forever. And no matter what I do, the pen just hangs right there. And you want to see the magic trick? Yeah. Count the fingers. Isn't that a good? You guys are all going to try that today with somebody, aren't you?

I'm trying it right now. It's the best trick. Give it away, man. I had to give it away. I've been using that trick for years. Well, there's only like nine people still watching this at this point. And if you want to, if you're listening to this and you want to hear it or I want to watch it, go over to BiggerPockets.com slash show 258. And that'll be a YouTube thing there. At the end of the YouTube video, you should find it.

All right, moving on. Number three, what historical figure do you want to see him present day? Ben Franklin? He would be a good guy. Yeah, I hear everybody rave about him. I haven't read any of the biographies, autobiographies, but Tim Ferriss,

I listen to his podcast a lot, and he seems to rave about him. So I wonder if it wouldn't be cool to have lunch with that guy. Just pick his brain. That's awesome. I like it. I read his autobiography.

I can't remember who wrote it, though, but it was pretty good. It was a lot of interesting stuff in there. Nice. All right. Number four are we in? Number four. Who would you fire?

A poor performer and a great person or a great performer, but a disliked person. A poor performer, good person. I have to pick one or I fire them both. I'd fire them both. All right.

All right, that's good answer. Because you want a good person who's a great performer. Yeah. All right. Smart. All right. What would you name your yacht? I'm not a big boat guy, but.

Well, billionaires have to have a yacht. And when you become a billionaire, you have to have one. So I would name it, I would name it productivity. I like it. Yeah. So you're the kind of guy I think who had given this question a lot of thought already, which is, what is your spirit animal? Spirit animal. We curse on this podcast?

It's the random six. You can do whatever you want. One that ripped it apart. I don't know. Lines. I just get it and ripped it apart. That's my spirit. All right.

Very cool. All right, Gabe. Thank you so much. We'll see you around. All right, buddy. Thanks. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.w.w.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk.

So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.