BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 278: The “Boring” Path to Massive Real Estate Success with Charles Roberts

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Real estate is sexy… most of the time. But is that really what makes it profitable? On today’s show, we sit down with Charles Roberts, an investor and agent from the Denver market. He explains that the secret to success is far more boring than we like to admit. In this episode, we explore Charles’s story and the lessons he’s learned over his 20+ year career, including how his first deal failed miserably, how he helped another investor retire through rentals in just five years, and his strong belief that the deal isn’t as important as most investors think — plus so much more! Charles is incredibly wise, and he has years of experience — so this is one episode that you’ll come back to time and time again. In This Episode We Cover: How Charles got started by buying his first duplex A 15-year loan vs. a 30-year loan How he managed to go full time as a fix-and-flipper What went wrong — despite having 29 properties Should newbies get into flipping? Figuring out what works and what doesn’t What Charles looks for in a partner The benefits of helping someone else achieve success in real estate Scaling, and what he thinks about it Why lending is important in real estate Work harder not smarter Where is he finding deals And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Share your story to the No Money Book BiggerPockets Store Dave Ramsey’s Calculator Billions TV Series BiggerPockets Podcast 274: “Because of These 3 Simple Rules, I’ve Bought Over 600 Units and Never Lost Money” with Paul Morris Books Mentioned in this Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The Book on Investing with Low or No Money Down by Brandon Turner The Book on Flipping Houses by J. Scott Lifeonaire by Steve Cook & Shaun McCloskey Set for Life by Scott Trench The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley & William Danko Born to Run by Christopher McDougall Tweetable Topics: “We think that everybody else is stupid but it turns out we’re the ones stupid.” (Tweet This!) “You don’t know anything until you do it.” (Tweet This!) “You want to work with people you like.” (Tweet This!) “The harder you work the smarter you end up.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Charles Charles’ BiggerPockets Profile Charles’ Company Website Email Charles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show number 278. Partner with me on this and he was a contractor and he was a decent, nice guy. I blame myself. I blame him, whatever. He told me it would be $12,000. It ended up being $72,000 of fix-up costs. You can just imagine when you don't have a job and like you've got kids you're supposed to feed going, hmm, how am I going to put all this together?

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 is going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner. Today's host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host. Once again, Mr. David Green.

How you doing? I'm doing great. I'm actually getting very close to a Reefatts. finance of three properties that I've been fighting with for the last six months probably. And the end is insights and I'm about to get back some pretty good money and I'll be able to go buy some more properties and that's the best news that I could get as a real estate investor. That is about the best news you can get as a real estate investor. I know like trying to get through refinances sometimes is just hell.

Like there's so much paperwork involved and so much just stuff. But when it's done, it's like, ah, it's over. And then we go and go buy more that we have to do it again. But, you know, that's right back in that spot. That is life. Well, cool. Today's guest actually talks about that, why lending is so important and why you need to have the finances.

Like a lot of the time, we just, we get so caught up and looking for a deal that we don't think about actually how we're going to fund it or how we're going to finance it or what we're going to do once we get it, you know? So I really like a lot of what he had to say. And I mean, this guy was just incredible. He had so much knowledge and so much wisdom. I could have talked to him all day long. Yeah, this show is full of just like, I just want to like hang out with this guy and listen

to him talk for like nine hours. And I feel like I would just like every minute become smarter. Super smart guy. But also just like, you said the word like wise. I think you just said like, he's just very wise. Got a lot of like wisdom that just to glean from. So anyway, you guys are going to love the story today. This guy's fantastic.

But before we get to that, let's get to today's quick tip. All right. So today's quick tip. So we are actually going to be coming out with a new version, not for a little while now, but it's coming out somewhat soon. A new version of the book that I wrote a few years back called the book on investing in real estate with no and low money down. So we launched that book. Well over 100,000 people have bought that by now. It's crazy. You guys are awesome. But here's what I'm wondering. In the second

version, in like version two that we're coming out with, I want to include your stories. So if you are somebody who went out there and read this book, the book on investing with no and low money down, and then you did something cool that was like no and low money down. I want to hear from you. So we can put a bunch of stories throughout the book to kind of inspire more people with stories. So it's not just me giving examples of what I've done. I want your stories in it. So do me a favor if that's you. If you've done anything with no or low money down because you read that book,

go to biggerpockets.com forward slash no money success, no money success. And I just fell out the quick little form there. Let me know. And I'll be picking a few of those to put in the new version. So again, biggerpockets.com slash no money success. And by the way, if you guys want to pick up a copy of the book, if you haven't ready yet and you want to change your life, go to biggerpockets.com slash store.

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He is a Denver Metro real estate agent and investor. He is a rock star, very, very smart, like we said, very, very wise. has a great story of getting started, failing a lot, struggling, trying flipping, doing rentals. We go into really deep a lot, like the power of real estate, not just in terms of like numbers, but like how it can actually change your life forever. I love hearing that from Charles and you guys will as well. So without further ado, let's just jump right into the interview with Charles. All right, Charles, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast.

It's good to have you here. Thank you very much. Looking forward to it. Yeah, this should be fun. So let's talk about your journey. into real estate investing. Can you walk us through the very, like how did you get into this real estate investing thing? Talk us through your first entrance, your first deal. So I truly just fell backwards into it. I have no great story. I read a book by Bill Branchick, who is a local Denver

attorney and he started a real estate club called Carrie here in the early 90s. I read a book and I thought it was interesting. And I just, I had $30,000. I'm 32 years old and I's had a little extra money and I bought a duplex. And amazingly, I bought the first duplex I saw, which, Sounds like a bad idea and I can't buy a stick of gum without analyzing it. But the guy who showed it to me, he was an agent, still one of my best friends in the business. And he was right. And thank goodness that he told me to buy this property. I bought a duplex.

It went pretty well. I bought another one the next year. And then I dove in headlong a couple years later. Okay. Did you live in that unit at all or it was purely investment? Pure investment. I got married about 20 years ago, bought a house two months later. And then I bought a duplex six months later.

So yeah, just a normal duplex and I still own it. And by the way, that's about the best thing I've ever done in my life, short of getting married and having kids. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. So you bought this duplex. Do you remember what you paid for it? Yeah, I paid $144,000. I know exactly what I paid for it. I paid $14,500 for it at the time, put 20% down. And I got a 15-year loan. And honestly, one of the best things that I ever did in my career was to buy a long-term rental and get a 15-year loan. And of course, there's always discussions, long-term financing, 30-year versus 15-year. And I love having those discussions. For me, at that point, with my first bunch of properties, it being 20 years later, I'm very, very happy that I chose a 15-year loan at that time. Well, let's talk about that.

What are, for those people who maybe don't know the debate, and they're not sure, should I get a 15 or 30, which, by the way, for everyone listening, like, those are the two most common. I mean, you could technically do probably a 19-year loan or a 21-5 year. But, like, generally 15, 30 are the two, like, by far the most common. What are kind of the pros and cons of each? Can you go through that real quick before we get back to your story? Absolutely. So a 15-year loan is.

great if you want to buy property and pay it off. You're going to get a slightly lower interest rate. But most importantly, you're going to have to basically follow the discipline of paying it off. And what you're going to get for that is paying a lot less over time in the interest costs. So it's a lot cheaper. So you get it, you buy it, you pay it off early, and it's cheaper. But that doesn't mean you should do it. What it means is you need to evaluate yourself and figure out your financial position and your goals. For example, some people get 30-year loans because actually what they say is, is, you know what, I don't want to put all that money into a property. I want to buy more properties. And I completely understand that. And the math is such that they probably will make more money

if they buy more properties over time. So anybody who says you should do one or the other, well, they probably don't understand that it's up to the person to actually make that decision. And there are absolutely solid reasons to do one or the other. For me, I didn't know better. I think I just guessed right and it was right for me. But some people absolutely should buy 30-year loans. The problem is, everybody who gets a 30 year loan says, well, I'll just pay it off in 15 years. They never do. One of the top 10 myths in real estate, 2% of people who get a 30 year and pay it off in 15 years. So if you're thinking about it, just be honest with yourself, because I'll bet 50 to 1 against you. That's funny. Yeah, I always looked at it like, I mean,

because I hadn't said that. I'll pay it off early. I'll just, you know, whatever. I never did because, yeah, it's just like, I like cash flow. And that was always my determination, right? Do I want cash flow now more of it or do I want to pay properties off? And that's really what it kind of comes down to. A lot of it is do I want to pay it out. Some people ask me, well, should I do 15 or 30? It's like, well, what do you want? Do you want to scale?

Do you want to build more? You want to save as much cash flow as possible? Do you want to quit your job as soon as possible? If so, then maybe the, you know, like 30 years better because you get more money to be able to quit that job. I actually recently just did a refinance. And my plan was to refinance into a like an 18 year loan, basically. And so what I did is I went through a 30 year loan.

And then I set it up and I actually went and, set up automatic payments. And I worked out the math. I went to like, I think Dave Ramsey has a really good calculator for, you know, how much you got to pay out extra. So I set up. So it'll be paid off in 18 years. And the reason I did that is because that's my daughter's fourplex. I bought her a fourplex the week she was born. So it'll be paid off when she's ready to go to college, right? So that's like the only way I could, I could force myself to actually pay it off in less than 30 years. And you're the one in 50. And so I guess it's no surprise that, you know, you're you, but this is you're the one in 50. Yeah, well, you have to automate it. You have to, you have

just you can't rely on your own, what's the word, like self-control. Like, I have zero self-control. Like, you put cake in front of me, like, it'll be gone. Like, I just can't not eat the cake. But if, like, you, like, lock your refrigerator, then, like, I mean, yeah, I'm not guy. And you're like everybody, basically. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, you have to come up with systems in your life to make up for the fact that we all just suck at generally everything. And, like, I've actually found, like, most successful people are just in life are just better at finding ways to, like, fight against themselves. Like, that's what causes success, right? Right. We're all the same, you know. Yep. Yep. Yep. Super cool. All right. So moving on. All right. So you got this

duplex and you said you went and bought another one. Then you jumped in full. What does that mean you jumped in? It means that I went full time and early in in the decade. So 2000, 2001, I became a fix and flipper. And I started fixing and flipping. And I really found over the course of a couple years that I was pretty terrible at it. And it wasn't like nearly as fun as you think it would be. So we went through something of a downturn in the Denver market. But, you know, I blame the market maybe 20 percent and I blame myself about 80 percent. I just don't think I was very good at it. And I mean, I get hives thinking about having city inspectors crawling around my places and, you know, trying to wake up my contractors and sober them up and all that sort of stuff. So to be perfectly honest, I did a whole bunch of fix and flips, many of which I didn't sell. So by 2003 into 2004, I had 29 properties. And, you know, life would have been better had the market been stronger. but it wasn't. And, you know, I found myself in a bit of a crevasse for several years in 020, 0, 3, 04, working 80, 90 hours a week trying to keep it all together, fairly young guy, wife at home, two kids, a dog, the picket fence, the whole bit saying to myself, wow,

what have I done? So I've seen a little good time. I've seen a bunch of bad times. I've seen a bunch of good times. So that's one of the things I try to bring to the table is understand this is what happens, deal with it. So let's talk about what went wrong because we talked about that a little bit earlier, you know, kind of limiting the areas of your own weaknesses so you don't get in your own way or sabotage yourself. That's a lot of houses that you were jumping into. Can you tell us what you didn't do well and how maybe you worked around that? What you learned from your mistakes so that you could put workarounds in place that our listeners can recognize when they're in the same position. I think the first mistake I made was thinking that I was smart enough to do something

different and I wasn't and pretty much nobody is or very, very few people are. And I think a lot of people like me jump into real estate and say, I'll be different, I'll be smart, I'll do systems. Everybody else is stupid. And it turns out we're stupid. And it's just a matter of time that most of us figure that out. And I did figure it out. Yeah, that in Keller Williams, we have the saying P to E. It stands for, or E2P, sorry, entrepreneurial to purposeful. And there's this temptation that everyone has that I am so smart and so brilliant. And I will find the secret way to do this that no one has found I'm an amazing entrepreneur and I'm going to go invent some idea and it never works. It's always better to follow a model that someone else has already done or probably like hundreds

of thousands of people have already done and just become purposeful with your business. And what you're saying is so right. And I found it in so many things. I always start off thinking that I have this revolutionary concept and then like 10 steps into it. I'm like, this was so stupid. I'm wasting so much time. I could just follow the proven path and get there so much quicker.

And like I'm a firm believer in that now. Like I'm not that smart. Stop thinking. I'm not smart, recognize I'm not that smart, and just get purposeful about what I'm doing. And you've done that, Charles. I mean, you've built a very, very impressive portfolio and knowledge-based. Can you tell us about, like, maybe a deal you had that went wrong, a flip that went wrong or something like that?

Sure. I can, I mean, how many dozen do you want? But let me just start with my first one. So the wonderful story is I'll teach a class and someone will talk about something they've done wrong. And then I'll get competitive. I'm like, you think that's wrong? You think you're stupid?

You got nothing. Let me tell you what happened to me in my first one. So I was off 600% on the bid of my first fix and flip. I had worked with a guy and he was actually a partner with me on this. And he was a contractor. And he was a decent, nice guy. I blame myself. I blame him, whatever.

He told me it would be $12,000. It ended up being $72,000 of fix-up cost. You can just imagine when you don't have a job and like you have got kids you're supposed to feed going, hmm, how am I going to put all this together? And, you know, frankly, maybe I should have stopped, but I didn't learn my lesson for a while that I just, I still don't know exactly what I did wrong. I just know that in the end it's probably what I shouldn't have been doing, and I'm glad to not do fixing flips anymore.

But I'll tell you, I invite your podcast listeners. Try to beat that story. That's crazy. I did a flip once. Yeah, my budget was like, I think it was like 40. I put 72 in. So like, or 70. So not quite as good as yours.

Not quite as bad as yours. Man, okay. So with that being said, do we think newbie should get into flipping? Yeah, I was going to ask the same question. Yeah. possibility. There's a loaded question. Should newbies get into flipping? I think that certainly universally the answer isn't yes. Obviously, some newbies will do great in my experience. And when I say my experience, you know, 20 years are doing this, having 750 agents, hundreds of clients, like seeing

lots and lots of people do it, the vast majority of people who get into flipping fail. And some fail just very easily. They go to a couple of club meetings and realize maybe they shouldn't do it. And some fail, disastrously and some fail like I did double disastrously but just wouldn't stop working 90 hour weeks for years because I just couldn't accept failure. So I certainly would never say newbies shouldn't do it. What I say is that they're generally ill prepared is what I've seen. So what would you recommend on the other side of that? Like how does somebody get better prepared? Does it just read a whole lot of books into you're so smart you're never going to make mistakes or what? Actually, no. Interestingly, so we wrote a book. I know you guys have written some

phenomenal books. And the books are great, but there's a catch-22. And the catch-22 is you can't learn it until you do it. You should read it. You should read yours. You should read this. You should read that. You don't know anything until you do it. So I think the acknowledgement, the understanding, the self-awareness that you don't know anything until you do it is very important because that's certainly a mistake among about a thousand mistakes I made, not realizing that. So you prepare, but you've got to understand how little you understand until you do it. And that's a very, very, very hard lesson to learn. And that is so good.

I mean, because so many people get into things thinking they know almost everything there is to know about like, oh, I read a book on it. Yeah, you're right. You don't know anything until you actually get in there and start doing it, which is another reason I generally just encourage people like just to go buy something. Like it doesn't have to be the world's best deal. I mean, don't buy a bad deal. But like you're never going to know until you actually get in there and start doing

stuff. So even that means partnering with somebody who's experienced to get the, some knowledge and like feed off theirs or whatever, but like you can't just get stuck in this reading forever because it's not the same thing. Or you just don't do anything and maybe you'd be better off not doing anything. But I like to joke people's first deals, I think should be like really small. Like if you had to pick up the property and move it, you could do it. Like just don't, don't think you're so smart that you're going to change the world on your first one. And if you are, great, then bigger pockets will have you on their next podcast, but it's pretty darn unlikely.

Well, it's funny to go back to, I mentioned earlier that one deal I lost a lot of money on, that one flip or at the end of the day i think i lost like 10 grand uh you know we we still sold it but like that deal the reason that i screwed up is because i wanted to think out i thought i was smart and i could think outside the box and what i was was i was watching all these flipping shows right where they go on the flipping shows they go into this nasty house and they're like we should do this and this and this and they make the house look incredible but what i found later is that most actual flippers i know have a really boring relatively boring job it's like same paint same color three bedroom two-bath house cookie cutter. Yeah, it was like, I found this duplex and I decided to tear out the staircase in the

outside and put it up the middle, make it a single family home, you know, just like 3,500 square foot beautiful house now I made out of it. Like, what was I doing? Why did I go flip a simple house? Like, you know, follow the model that already works. Right. Because you thought you were smarter than everybody else and I thought I was smarter than you. And yep, we were both wrong. We were both wrong. So yeah, today when I flip houses, I'm very much more. I don't flip many houses because I'm not good at it either. Like you and I have very similar stories. So what what skills do you need to be good at in order to get into flipping? Then we'll go on and go talk about rentals because that's that's more fun for me. So I think, yeah, me too, by the way. So I think that one of the, let me start at the opposite side.

What is not a big help amazingly enough is being a contractor and being really good with your hands. And I want to be very careful here because I cannot screw in a light bulb. I am the least capable male you have ever met. I'm just terrible at it. But what I've seen are a lot of people. saying I'm a contractor, I can build anything, but they don't have business skills, and that is a disaster about 100% of the time. I actually think it's a lot more about business skills and understanding how to run a business and self-assessment, risk assessment, and all that goofy stuff. You need the contractor. And if you are that rare individual that has both, there is no stopping you, but there aren't many of those people. I think it's the business skills and the understanding of capital and where

the money is going to come from and just the boring crap. Those are the people who make it generally. You know, it's funny you say that, you know, Jay Scott, who wrote the book on Philippine houses that we published, what, four or five years ago now in the book on estimated rehab costs, like he was not a contractor. He worked at like a Fortune 50 company and he was like a manager like at this big, you know, company in Seattle or New, what was it? San Francisco, I think. Anyway, like he was like a a manager that decided to get in flipping. And he was super successful because he knew nothing about construction. All he knew was how do you manage teams?

How do you manage people? How do you run a business? And the people that I found most successful at real estate are people who can run business. So it took me 10 years to realize that I should start reading business books and start talking to business people. No, it's very, very true. It's the people who love houses. Those are the ones that scare the heck out of me.

That's so, so good. This is where I came up with my philosophy of my core four that I want when I go to a new market to invest. Because like Brandon said, I just was like humble enough to admit there's so many things I'm not good at. I don't want to do it. I don't want to manage a property. I don't want to fix up a property. I don't want to have to get my own lending license and fund my own loans, right? I don't even necessarily want to go find deals a lot of the time. I want to find people that will just bring me deals. And ironically enough, the less that I do in my business, the better off my business goes because I rely on experts. And my job just becomes like finding the expert, right? So there's like this kind of dichotomy between

needing to learn all you can about real estate. And at the same time, you're learning it for the purpose of recognizing that someone else is really good and then getting their way and letting them do their thing. I know that you help a lot of investors do the same thing, Charles, that you've actually helped some other people find financial freedom from the advice you've given them. Can you tell us, in your experience, working with other people and helping people achieve financial freedom through real estate? What are the traits that you see in someone and you know that guy or that girl's going to make it? Okay. Well, I have no idea because it's very difficult to figure out. So thank you for the false sense of confidence, but it's very difficult, honestly, to know. Let me actually

pick up on one thing that you said, let's see, how to put this. It's hard, because I'm looking at it as the president of a couple of real estate companies. I have 750 agents. And honestly, we think we're pretty smart. We think we're pretty good at this. It is so difficult to figure out who is actually going to succeed in investment and in real estate. But I really do think it's the people who are measured, who aren't sort of one-timers. Like, they're going to do the greatest thing and they're going to have the greatest open house and everything is always the best and this and that. It's the much more boring people. So in real estate as an agent, it's about the people who prospect, who make the phone calls, who are likable people and helpful. They have a lot of

common attributes, except they're good people, they're honest people, and they're good business people, you know, it's not complicated. It's that. Yeah, I wish I had a more sexy answer for you. But I, you know, I'd write another book if I had the answer. You guys would write another book if you had the answer. But I'm not a, I'm not a dreamer, and I don't see dreamers tend to be the successful flippers. I don't see people with the unique ideas. Like, I'm sorry. I know a lot of people say it's all about creativity.

I hate creativity. Why? Because I see the vast majority of people who creative this or creative that fail, and these are not bad people. These are good people. They're mothers and fathers and sons and brothers and sisters. And more often than not, way more often than not, I'm afraid I see creativity fail and I see business sense and 100 hour weeks succeed. Yeah.

I think a lot of people are looking at this. Like they reread books like the four hour work week or you hear stories of, I mean, even like me and David hanging out here in Hawaii. Like, you know, you hear like, you're, and people compare their, what's that, what's that famous quote? Like you compare your page one to somebody else's page 100 or whatever. Like, and so they see the result that they want to get to someday. But they don't realize that David and I both and you as well.

worked 100-hour work weeks for many, many years to get to the level. It's like a locomotive, what's the word? Locomotive, locomotion. Locomotive, right? It's like, everybody's doing at the locomotion. It starts really slow, right? It starts really slow. Yeah, I'm trying to use an analogy. I'm not as good as David here as analogies.

Yeah, so let me give you like an example of that. So you're a new investor. You go to a local investor club and that's great. And who do you talk to? You talk to the three folks who made it in real estate. The 97 people who failed. aren't there. And so you get a completely skewed vision. And it's not like anybody's trying to mislead you. I'm just telling you, if you walk in, understand the math is that very few people,

in the end, just there's no other way to say it. Have what it takes to get through. But the only people who are there and doing stuff are the successful, but it doesn't mean everybody can do it. It does mean everybody has the opportunity or, you know, a lot of people have the opportunity. And that's what we love so much about this business. Yeah, I know my, own my own success when I look back and I try to figure out, well, what worked and what didn't work so I can replicate what worked and stop doing what didn't. It felt like I was trying to learn. I was looking for deals. I was trying to figure out real estate and reading everything I could. And I was like this prospector looking for gold. And then I found it. And the foolish people

say, great, I found gold. Let me go look for some more. Where the wise ones like, okay, that worked. I'm going to go back to that spot where I found that goal. I'm going to get really, really about how I go after this. I'm going to just get some materials, get some stuff, get this spot really hard and find more gold as opposed to the thrill of the chase is more important to you. So you found gold and then you want to go find it somewhere else. Yeah, and that's,

you have the adventures and people and they're wonderful and you have the boring people and they're wonderful. I tend to think the more boring people are the ones who actually make all the money in the end. Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. I don't disagree. So let me,

I got in my notes here, Mindy, who's, you know, puts together our podcast notes. says to ask you about the forklift guy. Tell me about the forklift guy. Sure. A gentleman named Mark. I met him in probably 2008, which was about the depths of the downturn in my local Denver market. And he was just a nice guy. His name was Mark. He worked at Coors in Golden, just west of Denver. And, you know, just a nice guy, not overly sophisticated, just a guy who was six years old and running a for Forklift for Coors. And I met with him. I think I was teaching a class or something. He came up and we chatted. And, you know, And we started buying properties together.

And this is literally in the days where in a suburb of Denver called Aurora North, North Aurora, we were buying properties for $60,000 to $80,000 that at its height to a three years earlier had been in the 140 to 160 range. So we were buying it about half off. And he just, he's the guy who had what it takes. He could make a decision. He actually was handy. I don't think he would know how to spell Excel spreadsheet.

But he worked hard. So he worked at cores during the day. We'd buy a $70,000 place. He would fix it nights and wood. weekends. He would get it rented. He managed it himself. He was just, in my opinion, the perfect long-term investor. He never sold a property. I think he's at, I think we bought six, either six or seven over the course of maybe three years. And he retired five years after he bought his first one. And it just, it was life-changing. And it really does bring a tear to your eye to be able to

help someone who was willing and able to help themselves change their life. It's the most incredible business we're in. That's awesome. I love hearing that. So what attracted you? I mean, When he came to you, I'm sure a lot of people come to you. You have a lot of agents that were going to you. Like, what made you want to work with this guy to help him? So it's really interesting you say that because I'll tell you. So me and my buddies on a Monday or Tuesday, we'll start talking because we'll start getting phone calls from people who say, hello, I am looking to build my power team.

I would like to interview you to be my power team. And if you have what it takes, you can join me in making millions. And then, you know, I'll call Justin and Travis will call me like, oh, man. Yeah, that guy was in town. Okay. Because they teach people what to say. And there's a perfect segue into saying, like, Mark didn't do that. So, somebody in your position, if someone was to call you and give you a script, you'd know probably before they started the script, this is not a person you want to work with, as opposed to someone who calls you and says, hey, I've listened to your stuff.

Can I get five minutes of your time? I'm looking to do this. I'd love to get some insight. Right? They're not groveling. They're just professional. They're just saying, I would love to get some insight from you. and maybe I can give you something back.

And that's exactly what Mark did. And that's exactly who I like to work with. Is someone, you know, yeah, I've got more experience the most of the people who call me. But believe me, I've made way more mistakes than any of them have made. I know what it's like. And you want to work with people you like. You know, money's great. Don't get me wrong.

I like money. You like money. We all like money. But you also want to work with the people you want to work with. And that tends to be the people who are measured and reasonably humble and honest. Oh, you know, I've got a group of investors. You know, you want to work with me. Like, no, you don't.

Shut up. Oh, you don't. I know you don't. I'm calling you on it. And stop doing that. Just be honest. Be a good person. Someone who calls you or calls another, you know, icon in the industry.

Like, you guys are nice guys. You really are. You're good people. You love to give. But you don't want to work with some schmuck who's pushing you on. You want to work with nice people. And Mark was a nice person. And I'm so happy we work together.

That's so cool. There's this kid in my area. He's like 21 years old. Just got engaged. His name's Chris. And we used play all. Ultimate Frisbee. We do play Ultimate Frisbee together. Anyway, he, yeah, I love Ultimate. So he, he hit me up, like, you know, like, I don't know, three months ago, like over Facebook Messenger.

It was like, hey, can I ask you a question? Like, I heard you do real estate. Like, I was thinking about maybe buying like a house or something. And we have went, like, for the last three months, I don't think a day's gone by. I haven't had at least a 15 minute conversation with this kid over Facebook Messenger because he's so like nice and honest and like earnestly wants to learn. And he's taking action on the things that I say. And so now I might even sell him one of my properties, like, and give him an amazing deal on it just because I really want to see him succeed. Like, I just really want to help him. And I wish more newbies understood that, that we really want to help people who want to help themselves. Yeah, I mean, I'm dying to

jump in because that's exactly right. And so my, my colleagues who are, you know, accomplished people in this business, we all say the same thing. We really, we appreciate someone who reached out and we want to tell that same story. We just want to work with someone who's nice, you know, who appreciates it, not, not gives us money. It's not about money at that point. It's about kind of doing something good and frankly, our self-esteem goes up when we help someone that we feel is deserving. That is the golden nugget. Yeah. I believe that being likable is probably the number one thing you can do to make yourself more successful as crazy as it sounds.

We talk so much about analyzing a deal and finding good people and knowing what you're doing and that stuff is all good. It all helps you not to lose money, but it doesn't really help you to make money. What helps you to make money is being liked by people that know more than you that can like shorten your learning curve. They can like Brandon just said, I might sell this guy a house. I would bet you Brandon is not going to sell it for as much as he could get. Have you sold it to a complete stranger that he didn't know? He'd be looking at his own interests like you should be. Well, when you like someone, it's really hard to do that. You're like, eh, I can rationalize giving it to this guy for 10 grand less. I really want to help him out. I'm sure he'll help me out again later, right? You're just like

greasing the wheels of your own success when you become a likable person. And Jim Rohn talks about this so much. I really love Jim Rohn. He's really big on teaching. You need to work on who you are a person because you're never going to be more successful than what your character can support. And we're not talking likable like you're a sleaze ball and you lie to people. Just a genuine, nice person who wants to help other people. It is so hard not to help that guy or that girl, whoever they are. And let me jump on that because I agree 100%, not a buck. And I agree 100%.

And you know what? You're going to make more money because you help this guy. So maybe you gave up $3,000. But this guy's going to be a big wig someday. And he's going to make you $10,000. And you're going to make him $20,000. And that is what's so cool about this. The more you give, the more you get.

I'll give you an example. I have a colleague here in town's names, Bill. He's a wholesaler. He's a fix and flipper. He's a real estate agent. And he actually sold me a property a couple years ago, wasn't even looking to buy another one. Made me a great deal.

Bill, thank you so much. But price took a couple of bucks off the table. He's like, no, no, I'm good. You know, I know you're going to buy it. Great. So I'm done buying property. I don't need any more. I'm very happy.

I don't live this extravagant life. I got everything I need. A couple of months ago, he gets in touch with me. and said, look, I'm looking to sell this property. I'm like, dude, you can make a lot more than that. It's like, look, just, you know, if you can tell someone, if you want it, whatever. And I bought it without any intention of buying a property. And it was, honestly, I got it.

This guy is a professional. I think it was 15,000 less than it should have been. I bought it for less than 110. That's more than, you know, that's like 14% below. He's like, nah, Charles, you know, I know you are. Let me tell you something. It is my life's goal to make him back that money and more. I'm going to make him like, you know, he comes to conferences.

Believe me, I will. I will pay that back and more. One, because I feel like I owe it to him. And if I gave him more money, he's going to give me even more. This is what is so cool about this business is you do the right thing. And suddenly it scales enormously and Bill's a perfect example of that. I bought it two months ago. So let's talk about that.

Like you've clearly figured out the details of what will make you successful. Tell us about your scale. Where have you gone to now? What does your portfolio look like? How's your investing going today? Okay. So my scale is actually quite modest. At my height, I own 29 properties during the downturn and make a long story short, I got license in 04 just to be a better investor.

And what I found was I had suffered through being an agent for seven years, much to my surprise, people wanted to work with me. And I closed my first deal six days after I got licensed on October 30th of 2004. And I closed 34 deals in my first year. And I will tell you, I was, yeah, thank you. So I was so shocked by that. And I was so surprised to be a real estate agent. I didn't even have business cards for more than a year. Because like, you know, kind of an engineer, like, you know, like a real estate agent, get out of here.

It's embarrassing now. And if my agents are listening, they are just rolling their freaking eyes. I did not have for 15 months a business card because I couldn't call myself an agent. Anyway, what I found was that I liked being an agent. And I got so busy that I sold a bunch of my properties. I went down to nine and I paid everything off. And then about three years ago, at the time, my 13-year-old, was a pretty sharp little boy, had been coming to my classes. And for a couple of years, he'd been saying, dad, why don't you buy more?

I'm like, shut up, Jack, you know, go away. And finally, I didn't have an answer. I'm like, God, you're right. All my clients are still buying. So I bought another round of properties. So right now I have 16 properties. And so it's not a lot, right? Like, you don't have to have $500.

I get 16 properties. They're all paid off. And I have, I mean, I don't need anything more. I do everything I do 18 hours a day because I absolutely love it. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And that's a whole other discussion of Charles. Why wouldn't you want to leverage that? And the truth is, I describe myself as the youngest depression era baby you have ever met.

I'm 50 years old and I will never, ever, ever go through what I went through in 01, 2, and 3. When at one point I remember reading to Obie, my oldest, he was probably two and a half years old, you know, trying to concentrate on reading to him at night and going downstairs and talking to my wife, Jen, and say, you know, I just want you to know that I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to get myself out of this mess. There is no pathway. I don't see it. And I was, I insulated her a lot from it because I did, this wasn't her problem. It was my problem. Call it what you will. Healthy marriage or terrible marriage, whatever. This was my doing. But I remember that moment thinking, shoot, I have no idea how I'm getting myself out of this. And all I can do is keep working the 90 or 100 hour weeks until something happens. And it did eventually. So I don't want that to ever happen again. I don't need the last million or the last 10 million. But that doesn't mean your listeners or you should feel the same way. The whole point is you got to figure out what's right for you. It's right for me for now. I like that a lot. That's powerful. Yeah, I think a lot of times we just got to get caught up in this. I need more. I need more. I need more. I need more. But do we? You know, this book I recommend, probably the number one book I recommend more than any, probably more than anything else other than maybe rich that port ad. It's called Life and Air. It's like, yeah, I've recommended. Have you read that yet,

David? I keep telling you to read. No, I, that's on my list. So this book is all about, it's written by these two like real estate investors, but it's not a real estate book. It's more like a fiction book that tells a story of this couple. Anyway, the general theme, if I can summarize it up, is like that life is not about getting as rich as possible. If it was, then we would play by certain rules. Like, you should leverage, right? If the goal of life is to get as rich as possible, then Charles, you should go leverage every one of those properties to the hilt, take all the money, important of next deal, leverage those. Right.

But the goal of life is not to get as rich as possible. So therefore, different rules apply. And so instead of thinking millionaire, they called the book Life Anair. And it's just one of the most impactful books on my life. And it made me start paying off some properties and thinking, what do I really want out of life? Who cares if I'm not on this property, I'm getting a 15% return and this one I'm being a 10. But this one is so much easier and I get much more life out of it. Well, then that's the one I'm going to choose.

You know, it's something I talk about with my agents as well. So it almost have to like go out of the country and live out of the country for a while to realize how interesting Americans are. But let's say you make a million dollars a year, one year and you make 900,000 the next year. You're a loser in our culture. And it's just fascinating. It's fascinating. Like you wonder why everybody's in therapy. So try going to like, you know, France or, you know, Kuala Lampur and explaining how you're a loser because you made $900,000 the next year.

It's so important to have that vision and that sense of self. So everything you said, I completely agree with, which is why I do what I do. I was watching that show Billions, which is one of my favorite shows. And last night there was this line where the billionaire guy is Bobby Axford. He's telling his wife that they, They might lose everything. And she said, well, how much is everything? And he's like, we might lose everything.

And he goes, I can only guarantee that we'll keep 300 million. And she goes, how are we going to live on that? And there was like this very funny, like, moment where there is a serious conversation about how are we going to live on $300 million because they were billionaires. And, you know, obviously it's a fiction story. But I think that's like we compare our success to what both what other people have around us and to what we had before. And that kind of defines how successful.

we are. And if that's what you like, that's great. But you should at least question it and make sure that's what you like. You know, where I think about this is every year when I watch the Olympics, and let's say it's like swimming, the third place or the fourth place person, they don't even meddle. We look at them like, you're a loser. You failed. You put four years of training and you got nothing, right? Right. But if you went back eight years, their time would have been the world record. Like that blows me away. Like eight years ago, this would have been the best swimmer in the entire world. and right now you're a complete loser because someone beats you by like one one hundreds of a second or something like that. That perspective is really important to keep, you know, because keeping your own, like your own drive, your own ambition, your own healthy desire to do this at its maximum peak is very, very important to your own success.

And when you start looking at other people or your expectation was that this, you should never go over 600% on your rehab cost on a flip. So I mean, Phil and I should quit. You can lose that and then you lose out on all the deals you would have done in the future. I know you understand Charles, you understand real estate from every angle. That's one of the things I really respect about you is you run a brokerage, you have agents, you've got your own properties, you help people with it. One of the things that you've mentioned is that understanding lending is almost more important than understanding real estate.

Can you tell us why understanding the lending process is so important? Yeah, absolutely. It's very important to me. The thing that everybody thinks real estate investing about is about the real estate. And what I tell people is the mistake every investor makes is they spend all their time on the thing they shouldn't spend, which is the real estate, and they should spend way more time on the lending and the financing where nobody wants to. Why? Because it's not fun and it's not sexy. You don't get to tell great stories. I'm sorry, that's actually where you're going to make

your money. So everybody wants the deal. And we'll talk about that more, I'm sure, going down the road. And that's hard to find. In the middle of my flipping world, probably in 0203, I was working with a lender. It was a conventional lender. And I said, look, just tell me where the money's, how much money you're making. That's all I ask. Long story short, his on site, so it's a back basically the underwriter actually pulled me into a lunch quietly one day and said, I need to tell you that he's actually making more money. And I feel bad because he said he wouldn't do that, but he's actually pulling some money that's not on the HUD and settlement statement. And I was so freaking furious because I didn't care how much he made. I just wanted to know. And I just felt like he deceived me. So I was so angry about it. I actually became a lender and we had your castle lending, my company's lending company. It is so imperative to understand the money. So if you're thinking about right now investing, what I would say is, less about the property and think more about the lending, meet with three to five conventional lenders and meet with a half a dozen commercial brokers and get really, really, really good at that because you'll be like the only newbie who ever does it. And you might understand what you need

to do perhaps to maybe fix your portfolio or do something six months ahead of time. That is where I think people should spend more time because people don't because it's boring and that's where a lot of the money's made. That's really good. One of the first things that I do with my clients as a real estate agent is I sit and we talk about the finances before we talk about the pretty houses and what you want your wants and needs and I found that many of them are like I want to use my lender because I bank at this bank whatever it is right and that's like they feel a loyalty to them or they think it's easier these same people will fight tooth and nail over a thousand dollars they don't want to pay over asking price but we'll spend 3,000 extra on their closing costs because they don't even want to talk to

like a wholesale broker another lender that can get a better deal and it's fascinating to me how we just get in our own way so much. Like they could have saved $3,000 on closing costs and got the house they wanted. Instead, they're worried about, well, the listing price is this. And I don't want to overpay. I don't want to pay more, you know? Exactly. And someone like us, we're always, we're always evaluating ourselves and the way we think

and the way we do things because we want to be the best version of ourselves. Whereas your average citizen who's not doing that, they don't see how they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot with the way they think and the way they do stuff. So I completely agree with you. Understanding what matters to be successful is so much more important. and then just running out there and doing everything you can or what you think is most fun. Absolutely. Yeah.

Just that's why the world needs people like you, podcasts or as real estate agents to explain what people should do. If they choose not to do it, it's their problem. All right. So what is your opinion on? I know you said before that you believe that you should work hard or not smarter. Explain that a little bit. What's your philosophy there?

Yeah. Okay. So, you know, there's this saying that you should work smarter or not harder. And to be perfectly frank, I think it's people who aren't that smart that say that all the time. If they were actually that smart, I probably just lost 15 friends right now, but maybe you can edit this portion out.

But I don't know. I just like, how about you just work harder? Guess what? This isn't easy. Guess what? You're going to fail and you're going to have to figure it out. And hopefully it's a quick failure and you move on. But of course you want to work hard.

It's like advice that rhymes. It sounds good. How can you possibly argue with that? Well, you know, just come back in 20 years and talk to me what your life was like. Of course you want to be smart. But my, my, um, most of the people I have seen who broke through and it's awfully hard to break through in real estate investing and became the guys like you are. They were hard workers and they did it and they went out and looked at properties and they met with people and they did all the work, not for a day or a week or a month, but forever.

So it's not, you know, you wonder why I'm not invited to more parties. Well, that would help explain it, you know. But how about you work really hard and you might get what you want? Thank God for America and thank God that we live here. You know, I think what I found is that the harder you work, the smarter you end up becoming, right? Like when we go out there and we just grind away at this thing and then you figure out, oh, that's what worked. You just got a little bit smarter. Then you get more repetitions in because you're buying more houses or you're dealing with more contractors and you're learning how to look at a bid. And then you become smarter. It's seeing what worked and then he becomes smarter. And so I think that's kind of what you're

getting at here is you're not going to learn it by trying to avoid the hard work. You're going to learn it by doing the hard work. And everybody wants to avoid the hard work. But forget about it. just do something else. I'll give you a quick example of that, working with a guy named Rick, super duper guy. And just it's the simplest little example. We went out and looked at properties. He wanted to buy and hold for the long term. And I walked into a property that was about 1,600 square feet, three bedroom, three bath. And within seconds, maybe five to eight seconds after I walked in, I realized you could make the perfect four bedroom out of this, which took it from about a six seven, seven, seven, six cap rate, and boom, that was it. I wasn't a genius. But instead of just

sitting and looking at some online this and running through some Excel spreadsheets, I never would have known you could put that fourth bedroom if we just hadn't gone and looked at it. Is that working harder? Yeah, a little bit. We got off our asses and we looked at a few properties and we found a property that I think some other investors didn't actually find because they didn't go out and look at it. To me, that's the perfect simplest example of just doing things. And he got a great property that was its first one and we're closing on us. You know what I love about that is now your brain has figured out there's opportunities to take three bedrooms and make a fourth bedroom. You basically created a deal rather than finding a deal. And when you have new opportunities in the future,

you'll go back to that and be like, well, I know this work. Let's see if we can do that. And that's the same way that I've done it, right? I look at houses that need serious rehab work. I don't even look at them if they don't. And that scares a lot of people. But what I found is that I've done enough of them where my brain will start to find, ooh, look, there's an enclosed patio. I can, I can include that in the square footage of the house. If I can just tap into where the air conditioning is and get it to go out there, right? How do I find out how much that's going to cost? Well, if I've already done this a couple of times, I have the HVAC guy's number on speed dial,

and I call them right away. It's funny how we say speed dial. I guess everything's on speed dial with today's stones now. But it's not, the hard work that I did in the past made it much easier to do this in the future. I've become smarter and more efficient. And that's the point that I love that you're making is if you're afraid of the worker, you don't like work or you're just trying to avoid it by thinking you're smarter than the system, you're going to try to be too creative with what you're doing and you're not going to be successful. The hard work is what enables you to get the experience in that's going to make you better. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios.

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like where are you finding deals in today's market, whether for yourself or the clients you're representing, like what's working right now? So the word deal is a really interesting way of putting it. And let me talk about a little bit. So I don't do fix and flips and I don't work with fix and flippers. I have one guy, Barry, who's a phenomenal flipper, he finds the deals and I sell them for him. And it's really fun to do that.

But I have chosen 100% out of laziness not to be in the fix and flip world. In the Denver market, it's very, very competitive. People are listening to this all around the country and probably around the world. I can just tell you it's really hard. Like if I thought I could make more money with less risk and have more fun being a flipper, I might be flipping right now instead of being on your podcast. but I don't think I can. I also don't want to work for a buck an hour

and try to find the world's greatest deal. So for me, this is about me. I don't look for deals. And it's really interesting because people find that very strange. Wait a second. Huh, I thought you had to find a deal to make money in real estate.

And I would call that in the top three myths in real estate. So I think that if you are a flipper, you need to find a deal. And that's why flippers can make a lot of money. You've got to use some sort of metrics like us, you know, you pay, you know, 70% of after-repaired value minus fix-up costs, right? So if it's a, if you're going to sell it for $200,000, you got to buy it for $140,000, minus the $20,000 and pick up.

You've got to get the deal. I have decided that what didn't work for me was being a flipper. What did work for me was being a long-term investor. So I work with people like Mark and Rick because these people don't buy deals. And that might surprise you. Like who, you know, like you ever heard the saying, you make your money in real estate on the buy. It's not true. Well, in my opinion, but I'm going to go a little past that. It's not true. If you're in a fix and flipper, absolutely it's true. But we have made all our money understanding that you

have to own property and manage property and pay off property. And that's where I have seen the huge wealth creation. So as an agent as well as an investor, that's what I concentrate on. So I'm telling you, Like the property that Rick bought last month, it was basically market value. It wasn't a deal. Like a deal means you can buy it today, sell it tomorrow and make a profit. There is no other definition, right? You actually have to make money the next day. This wasn't a deal, but he's going to make so much money because we added a little bit to it.

He's going to pay it off. And over time, he's going to do it. So I work with people who can make decisions, but most importantly have a long-term vision, are going to buy and hold property for a long period of time because they are easy and wonderful clients to work with because they're all going to make tons of money and they're all going to be happy with me. And they look at what I started doing 20 years ago and they just put themselves on the same path. And this is not genius stuff here. This is just buying something that fits your portfolio, understanding the financing, doing all the right things, base hits, base hits, base hits.

And that's my entire stock of millionaire investors who sort of giggle when people talk about deals because we kind of never buy deals. We just buy and hold forever and make tons of money. That sounds really. boring, Charles. Incredible. I'm telling you. Not a lot of parties that I get invited to. You know, you haven't invited me yet either, but, you know, talk about real estate and I'm okay. There you go. Well, like, and that's why I think we all love real estate because like real estate's like that one thing or, I mean, there's multiple things in life that's like this, but right, like, the longer you hold it, like just your systems get better, you hopefully work less and less because that locomotion, locomotive is moving, right? And like, your wealth goes up,

your loans are getting paid down over time. Your property value hopefully is increasing on the long scale. It doesn't always on a short scale, but on a long scale, it usually, on a long timeline, it usually goes up. And like, it just gets better and better and better all the time. And so when you're in the game for the long haul, when you're really in this knowing that you're going to be in this for 20 or 30 years, it's really hard to screw it up as long as you continue trying to improve yourself

and getting better and don't give up. And that's a piece of advice that I would give to newer folks and some of your listeners is don't necessarily focus on the deal because that means you've got to be better than the guy to your left and the lady to your right and you might not be. But if you're thinking about building for the long term, maybe learn a little bit about lending, a little bit about amborization scales and charts and you guys have a really cool loan calculator. That is where I would spend a little more of my time. You don't have to get an MBA. I don't have an MBA. You don't have to be a genius. Believe me, no genius is at this table. You just have to think about some of the

stuff like, wow, if I actually buy it and I have it on a 15 year loan or a 30 year in three years, if it goes up 4% a year, rents go up 3% a year and I'm paying it off, the calculators do all the work and look at the wealth you can build. And that doesn't mean that's the right or wrong thing. I'm just saying that 99% of investors don't look at that stuff because it's boring. And I don't have a lot of, well, let's just hope they actually start looking at that because that's really where most of the money is made. And the truth is, it reduces the risk big time.

One of the things I like to tell new investors is if you want to make money in real estate in six months, good luck. I personally am not going to work with you because I don't think you will. But if you have a 10-year horizon, you just said it. You can screw things up 10 ways to Sunday and you're going to make a boatload of money. So it's just deciding what your time horizon is. It's about you, not the real estate. It's about you and your risk analysis, not about the property.

That's what I try to get across to my investors. Yeah, that's a really good perspective. I like that a lot. So let's shift gears here. We could talk forever on this stuff, but I want to make sure we get on with the show. And so I kind of last question before we move on to the fire round. I'm wondering like, where do you see yourself headed in the future? I know you said you're not buying a ton of stuff right now.

You got all these paid off properties. You know, you got the real estate agent. Where are you headed? I don't know, personally, professionally, like which one do you want first? Let's go. Let's go both. Yeah, I'm afraid you're going to say that. So the problem is I absolutely love what I'm doing so much. So two days ago, I had started a benefit a couple years ago where I challenged a buddy of mine, Joe Massey, who's a great lender and a really, really good friend.

We do a lot of athletic things together. And I had suggested that we see how far we can run from sunup to sundown just to test ourselves. And then each of us donate 20 bucks a mile to the Denver Dunn Friends League, the local shelter. And we did it last year and we raised a bunch of money. I did it two days ago. And I raised, you know, we raised over $5,000, felt really good about ourselves doing it. And then he had a 15-hour day yesterday. And I was teaching it at 10 o'clock yesterday morning. I'm, I'm so passionate. I love what I'm doing so much that the truth is, I don't, I don't know when I'm going to stop doing this. I'm a passionate sailor. In about a week, I'm jumping on a 42-foot

sailboat that a buddy of mine is moving up the coast in Savannah. We're going to take it up to the Chesapeake. And that's what I want to do. But I ask myself this question, like every hour is how long do I want to do it? And I'm telling you, I work 16 hour days because I'm just in love with what I do and with helping people and making money and building stuff. So it's a really great question. My wife's a teacher and we talk about it. I'm not sure what we're going to do, to be to be, to be I want to do what I want to do. And I don't even know what the definition of work is. Like evidently, I'm working right now. This is work. This isn't work. This is a pleasure. This is a luxury.

This is incredible. Anybody would love to be sitting here talking to you guys. So I just want to do what I can do to be able to do stuff like this, which is a weird answer, but that's the best I can do for you. This reminds me of a guess we had on Paul Morris. And he gave a speech to, what was it brand of Stanford or Harvard or some business school, something down in California. Really, really prestigious school.

And the title of it was how to succeed without hard work or sacrifice. Right. And he was saying that when you love what you do, it doesn't feel like hard work. You work a 16 hour day and it doesn't feel like a pain, right? It's like I love playing basketball. I can play basketball all day long and it doesn't feel like work. But I burn an insane amount of calories. You're doing a lot of work.

Brandon would surf as long as he possibly could until he's too tired of paddle. And he wouldn't say, oh, I just put it a hard day in the ocean. You know, he would love it. You're saying so if you can harness that power and you can tap into what you love about real estate once you learn it, there's a different aspects of all of it. And you could just drill down on that. It will help a lot as far as your own success. And so I love that point that you're making.

And, you know, Brandon's the living example of that. He does what he's good at. He likes doing it. It's why he can work like he can work and be successful. Last year, I probably spent about three months out of the year outside of Denver. I go back east for a lot of the summer. And you know what I do? I work from my house.

My folks house on Antutut Island off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I work 25, 30 hours a week. And people find that strange. And I don't. I find them strange. Like you don't like what you do. I like what I do so much that I want to do it. I'll work from the boat.

I'll do whatever I want to do. And to me, I don't know. That's just, that's what I want to be able to do for as long as I want to do it. So in five years, I might be selling around the world. I'm not sure. Or it might be hoping that you call me back for my second time on bigger pockets, you know. There you go. I love it.

Well, cool. Let's transition here and head over to the next segment of our show, which we lovingly refer to as our Fire Round. Fire Round. It's time for the Fire Round. All right, let's get to the fire on. These questions come direct out of the Bigger Pockets forums. These are real Bigger Pockets users wanting to know some stuff,

and we thought we would fire them at you, Charles. So number one, how do I present the idea of seller financing to a seller? How do I even bring that up without sounding awkward? Well, I think you simply have to get to them and explain to them their options and understand that this may be something that makes sense for them. A lot of it depends on the market. in a very strong seller market, frankly, they don't really need to talk to you. In a weak seller market, it could make sense.

But I think it's a lot of what we just talked about. There's no particular secret. You want to have the numbers, but you want to be able to build the relationship and not like fake, like actually tell them what you believe the truth is because it is the truth, not because you're such a great presenter. You can fool them and just say, hey, here's something you might not have seen before. You know, this is a way that I bought properties in the past and we'd like to do it. if it makes sense for you, this could make sense for me. Do you want to hear more? The only thing I can

say is you broach the topic and see if they're interested in learning what their options might be because very few sellers, of course, can understand it or do understand it short of you explaining it to them. Yeah, that's fantastic. I like that. All right, next question. What is the secret to investing in real estate while working a full-time job, Mr. 16 hour a week, Charles? Yeah, I would refer back to my favorite axiom work harder. All right. I like it. I don't have much more.

Like what? You want to work an eight hour day and build a business and have a job? Like I don't get it. I don't know. I don't have a good answer to that. I can just tell you the people who work harder at least have a shot at it and the people who think there's some mythical way to do it. I don't think they have a shot at it.

Sorry. There you go. I like it. This is kind of a long question, but I really like it. So I secured my first big purchase. a nice little cash flowing seven unit. I went in educated, the place is run down, pulling in good rents. Numbers worked. I almost had a nervous breakdown in the first month, but we're coming around now. We're good. So while I'm in the process of recovery, my down payment and all the

rehab costs, it's going to probably take me three years to build that back up again. What should I do now that I have no money? My wife's getting her real estate license and maybe I should get mine too. I've considered being a manager, but I don't really know anything about wholesaling. Do I just hang out and wait for more money to save up to be able to buy the next property? it seems like a long time to do nothing. Well, I don't know the person. I guess I don't know the person, so I don't know what they want. So it's not obvious.

I mean, maybe they would be a terrific real estate agent and maybe that would help their investing career. But the fallout rate from real estate agents is about the same as the fallout rate from investors. It's very, very high. It's very, very difficult. People don't realize how difficult it is to be a real estate agent. So I think it depends on what they want to do. There's no obvious answer here. Do you want to be a wholesaler?

I never wanted to be a wholesaler. I don't want to be a wholesale. I'm not knocking on doors. I'll work 80 hours every week to not have to knock on a door. That's not what I want to do. So I think like so much of it, it comes back to this. I don't have the answer. And anybody who has the answer is selling you their system on what you should do with your life.

What the person needs to do is ask the question, but I'm afraid they have to ask it of themselves and maybe of their wife. What do they enjoy doing? What are they passionate about? Like going back to the last question, what would they like to do after working eight hours every day? Because I'm guessing when you guys were building your business before you became who you are, you might not have been working a 40 hour a week. But you were passionate about what you did and you loved it and you built something. So that's really, if there's a secret to it, it's understanding what he wants to do.

Don't become a wholesaler because someone told you to. Don't become an agent. Maybe you just sit back. Maybe that's what you do. or maybe you start a meetup group, you know, and maybe you start meeting other people. Maybe that's your passion. But you can't fake it. So you got to do what's right for you, which is not an answer, but in the end, I actually do

think is the right thing you have to do. That's really good points. Yeah. I like that a lot. Thanks. Okay, you and I, Charles, we're both real estate agents as well as investors. Do you think that other investors should become real estate agents to improve their own investing skills?

Yeah, that's great question. I was asked that question so often. Once again, I hate to keep saying the same thing, but it depends. Clearly, there isn't a yes or no answer. God help you if you think it's a yes or no answer. It's not. It's who you are and what you want to do. So I actually built this like little continuum, this, you know, on a PowerPoint, like a continuum.

On the left side might be people who maybe shouldn't be investors, at least in Colorado. We have the Department of Regulatory agencies. They regulate us pretty closely. They don't like investors. They don't like door-knockers. They don't like agents who are investors one day and agents to the other. And I've actually counseled some great producers out of my company saying, stop, give up your license. You don't need your license.

There are people maybe who shouldn't. But let's say you're an investor. Let's say the gentleman who had bought the seven unit. And let's say you've got some friends in your town. You get some family. You know, a few people. And maybe, you know, just without a lot of extra work, you could close three or four deals a year and make another 15, 20, $25,000. Stay in the game.

Learn a little bit more. It depends on who you are. That person might be the perfect person. to potentially come an investor. So it's a lot of self-analysis talking to people in your market about what the market's like and what you want to do. But it's all about you. That's so important to do what you want to do.

Otherwise, you're just going to give it up on day three. That's the perfect answer, I think. I mean, you got to ask yourself, there's a specific skill set that goes to being a good real estate agent. Do you fit that mold and do you want that job, right? There's no like cookie cutter. This is what you do. Follow ABC and you're going to get there because no, we don't have cookie cutter human beings.

everybody is unique and they have different skills and they have different situations where like they may have seven kids and so they can't be on their phone all the time or they may be like me and I'm single and I can work 20 hours a day if that's what it's going to take right so understanding yourself I think is what you're getting at is the most important place to start like what do I like what am I good at what's going to get me inspired and then how do I double down on that as opposed to well like well that guy did it so I'll just copy what he didn't expect the same result exactly and I'll add one thing to it in my market for sure The idea that you're going to somehow get better deals by being an agent is ridiculous. So that's the number one thing I tell investors is don't for a moment.

Think you're somehow like, somehow, you know, we have the deals and we agents know everything. Certainly in my market, in the greater Denver market, that's not how it works. And I'm guessing that's the same for a lot of the U.S. Maybe you would, though, being able to go into a property anytime you want, setting showings and stuff like that, those are the subtle things that need to be evaluated. So it's a great question, but it's about you and deciding what's right for you. Yeah, that's really good. Well, cool. Well, that's good for the fire on. So why don't we wrap this thing up with our world famous.

Famous Four. Let's get to today's Famous Four. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. And we're going to throw them at you right now. Charles, number one, what is your favorite real estate related book? I will tell you, honestly, it's set for life. When I read Scott's book, I was stunned. And I will, I'll be completely honest with you. I don't read business books. I'm the one person that will sit in this chair. I think that you'll interview in the next 50 years.

I just, you know, sorry, I read literature, a little Scott Cheroe, a little this, little that. But I was recommended his book and I read it. And I'm like, who is this freaking guy? How do I not know this guy? And so I was actually talking to my son, Obie, this morning, who's graduating from high school, literally this morning. I was talking about the book set for life and asking him if I had brought it up. He said, yeah, you had brought it up. I'm like, look, you don't have to read it.

But you know, you're an adult now. But I'm telling you, you should read this book. And you should understand this guy who was 26 or 27 wrote this book. And this was me about 20 something years ago doing the things that I did, you know, wearing the secondhand shoes and buying the old car, man. But you can have the life you want. There's no secret to it. It's like, you know, how about work harder? I don't think he ever said anywhere, work smarter.

It just sounded like work harder and that appealed to me. I love it. Yeah, that's a really, really good book. Scott's actually getting a lot of accolades for that book. He's getting recognition and there's a couple of words he's up for for like Book of the Year through different places. It's a really good job he did with that. And they're publishing that book in South Korea.

They're actually doing another version of it in South Korea. So, you know, it's an international bestseller now, I guess. Excellent. Yeah. Good job, Scott Trench. If you guys haven't picked it up, by the way, go to BiggerPockets.com. like store and you can get it there. You can get the digital video or the audio, physical, whatever.

Or yeah, fantastic. All right, cool. Next question. So I was just about to ask you what your favorite business book is, but you told us that you don't read business books. So do you have a favorite maybe self-improvement book or something like that that you do like to read? Okay.

So I don't read self-improvement books. And I don't mean to sound like a jerk or arrogant. I just feel like they're all wonderful books. Just pick one book and do it and you're done. don't pick one book and then don't do it and read a second book and think the answer's there. It's nothing against the author. They're great advice, but enough, one book, do it and that's all you need. I will tell you exactly what I told Scott a couple months ago that my favorite, you know, business book, the only one I probably I read before was the millionaire next door.

Pretty much everything you need to know is in that book. And then I read that for life. I'm like, oh, okay. Now I have a number one and a number two. You know, to me, it's all there. And that's it. And just stop reading more and thinking that you're smarter, just actually do what these people tell you to do.

And you'll get there. Yeah, that's so true. All right. Next question. David, you want to ask it? You want me to see. It's up to you. I was going to give you a chance because I've been hogging the mic.

Why don't you go ahead, Brandon? Whoa. What are your hobbies? So I love to stay in shape. I don't love to run. I hate to run. Running is horrible. But it's just like the best way to do it quick.

So I do a lot of runs, a lot of races. Have you read the, Have you read the book Born to Run? So I will tell you a little story about Born to Run. So I was preparing for my first marathon six or seven years ago, and someone recommended the book Born to Run. And I love listening to audiobooks, been doing it forever in the car. And I actually, this is probably seven years ago, I actually put it on my eye thing, whatever

it was, iPod or something. And I listened to that book while I was training. And all I can tell you is I literally felt like I was cheating. It was such a good book. It was so captivating. It was so inspiring in the right way that I literally felt like I'd be running these 10 and 15 and 18 mile training runs going, thank God. I am listening to this book while I'm doing it because I felt like I was cheating. I mean, I'm like, I shake when I think about those days because it's that good.

So if you're going to run a marathon, listen to Born to Run, man. It's incredible. And I'll even say like even if you don't care anything about running, like nothing about it. It's like the best story, best written. story because it's not a book about running. That's what I was confused. When I first read, I thought was going to be a training manual for running. It's not. It's like a story of like this most amazing race in the six. Anyway, unbelievable. I recommend it. I actually had the opportunity to run a 250 mile relay race with a gentleman of that tribe. Oh, crazy. That's awesome. Really cool.

You know, he was, it was just really, really neat. So I'm glad you brought that book up because that's what I like to read. And that's what I think makes me a better person. So, so hardy. So running, I play a lot of tennis. I love to play tennis. My son, Jack, it was a sophomore varsity player in high school and love to play tennis. You know, hike and bike, probably my number one thing that was sailing. I was a baby when I first sailed. And I have sail on my life.

Now I live about a thousand miles from a body of water. So, you know, Colorado was awesome and I love to ski as well. So I like to do something like, I call it like my 50. I like to combine something like a combination of 50 days of skiing and sailing every year. So maybe 20 days of skiing and 30 days of sailing or something like that. But that's what I love to do. And if I ever give up the fun stuff I'm doing now, it'll be because I'll be on a boat with my wife going someplace and never coming back.

All right. You've worked with many investors in your day, Charles. Tell us what sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think, you know, it's partly passion and just partly grit. I think it's as simple as you're going to fail. get over it, understand it, and then you're going to fail again. And you might fail three times or 30 times. It's the people who just get up and do it again.

And there's just no way around it. I don't know any investor who hasn't failed. I like to joke, and this is a terrible thing to say, but most investors either are divorced, let's see, divorced, bankrupt, or are alcoholics. And as weird as it is to say that, I'm telling you, this is not an easy business. So I'm half joking and half not. You have to have a lot of strength of character. And it's not IQ.

Guarantee you, it's not IQ. And it's not, you know, bulbous limbs. It is just the, yeah, obviously none of us really fit that category. It's the, it's just the determination maybe is the right word to actually just say, I'm going to do this, and I can do this, and you'll do whatever it takes. And I don't know if you've ever had any sleepless nights being real estate investors, but you'd be the only ones who didn't. And that's why I, and I, you know, don't take this the wrong way,

but I honestly believe 80% of people shouldn't be real estate investors. And it's not because they're bad people. They're good people. They want to spend time with their family on a Friday night and not get called out to a meth lab or something like that. But you just got to deal with stuff. And determination is what I see as the absolute defining characteristic of the people who break through to the other side.

That's so good. Yeah, I oftentimes say that my best ideas come. at three or four in the morning when I just can't sleep because I'm so tormented by some real estate problem. Like, how am I going to do this? And then you figure it out after a sleepless night. So that definitely comes with the territory. Wow. All right. Well, Charles has been awesome. Where can people find out more about you? What's your website? You got anything to learn? Yeah. So a couple things. So website Denver Investment Realestate.com put together with my business partner, Chris Lopez. And just a lot of information on investing. It's,

It's somewhat, some of it's specific to the Denver market, but a lot of it isn't. We put on podcasts and webinars and we just kind of like tiny, tiny, tiny little bigger pockets. We look at the success you had and said, you know, Denver doesn't have anything. So thank you for inspiring us, Denver Investment, real estate.com. You can always reach out to me. I mean, I'm telling you, I just, I work a lot. Phone number. Is it okay to give a number?

I mean, if you want to, you have a couple hundred thousand people listening. Try me, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. Give me a call. Send me text. 303, 5233-3837. And my email is C Roberts, the letter C, R-O-B-E-R-T-S at Your Castle, Y-O-U-R-Castle.org. You know, I love to talk to people. This is the pleasure of my life is to see what I can do to help someone. And someday they're probably going to help me out. And that's what I love to do. And I appreciate the opportunity very, very much.

I love it. Well, thank you so much. This has been super, super helpful. I love the conversation today. fantastic. So we'll be in touch and, uh, you know, look forward to talking again someday. Thanks. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Take care. Bye. Bye. All right. And that was our interview with Charles Roberts. Fantastic. Man, that guy is, uh, that guy understands a thing or two about real estate. Yeah. How did you like them apples? I like those apples very much. Thank you. It was fantastic. Yeah. I just, I love just, I love his focus on like understanding the lending side of things, the idea that like the deal matters, but like that's not everything. Like there's so much more than just going out to find a good deal, right? Like understanding the whole business as a whole.

And yeah, I don't know. I picked up a lot of stuff. What about you? I think that what I, what I appreciate the most about what he said was he actually said, you don't get too caught up in trying to find a deal. Oftentimes that's ego driven. We want to tell people I got it for this grade of a price. I mean, I'm looking for deals as much as the next person. But even if you're not, you will make money in real estate if you wait over the long term. What I love about, real estate investing is once I got the bug and I knew this is what I want to do and how powerful I realized it was, I changed the rest of the things in my life around so that I could accomplish that and I ended up with a way better life. Right. So I got better at my job. I got better

at earning more money. I got better at saving more money. I got better at learning more things and being a better version of myself so that I could accomplish what I wanted in real estate investing. And that's really like the true beauty in what we're doing here is real estate investing is a great goal to go after. But it's not the end goal. The end goal is you. you and what you're becoming as you chase after it. And if you want to be successful in this, you've got to learn a lot of stuff. We talked about it a lot. But the most important thing is being a better version of yourself, being honest, being genuine, being likable, being someone who brings value to other people so they want to bring it to you. I mean, he just hit it right on the head

so good and you can't avoid hard work, right? So find something that you love and throw yourself into that because you're going to work hard. I could probably talk about this all day long, but I just, I'm going to listen to this podcast again. I really, really like so much of what he had to say. Yeah, he's got his head screwed on straight. So super cool. Well, with that, it's both time to get out of here. As we always ask, we will ask it again. If you've not yet left us a rating or review in iTunes, please do so. It helps us reach new people all the time.

And, you know, if you don't have a account of Bigger Pockets, a lot of people don't even know that like Bigger Pockets is not just a podcast. We are also a social network with a million or almost a million. We're going to cross that. I think we'll have crossed that by the time with podcast airs. A million members, people interacting, talking, sending messages to one another, forming groups, forming friendships, asking questions on the forum. whatever. It's such a cool social network and we want you to be a part of it. So jump in today.

And if maybe you have an account, you haven't been active in a while, jump in and see what you can do to help some people out in the forums or send a private message of somebody and just say, hey, just noticed you were in my area. I wanted to say hi. So just get active. Jump in there. And without further ado, let's take it out. You want to take us out, Mr. David Green? Yes. Thank you, Brandon. That has some great points you just made about the website. I hope that some more people request me and tell me what they like, what they don't like about the podcast. We're always looking to make it better. So let us know. what you're looking for, what we can do and improve it, and we will make sure we do that.

With that being said, this is David Green and Brandon Locomotion Turner, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

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