BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 281: How to Get Your First Deal—An Episode For New Investors With Bill, Jacob, and David!

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Your first deal might just be your most important — because it leads to all the rest. That’s why it’s so imperative to study others who have just recently purchased their first deal! So today we’re excited to bring you a mashup episode, in which we sit down with three different investors to hear how they bought their first few investment properties. You’ll hear how Bill went from ex-con to house hacker, how Jacob used some highly creative methods to find his first deals, and how David is building an empire from across the ocean. Don’t miss a moment of this powerful episode! In This Episode We Cover: Bill Being imprisoned for 10 years What changed in prison for Bill Starting your business on the side How he ended up investing in real estate What went in his head with his first investment property The beauty of keeping expenses low Having tiny little steps Jacob Jake’s investing path How he got into real estate Buying a $25,000 house with a $140 monthly mortgage Going for the smaller banks Investing at a very young age Joining local Facebook pages His criteria for finding properties David David’s story and how he got to Hawaii BRRR, OD, and HELOC Paying close to 5 percent on a 10-unit apartment Having a great team you can trust How he built a meet up in Hawaii And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinars BiggerPockets Podcast 277: Building a Six-Figure Family Real Estate Business with Ashley Wilson BiggerPockets Podcast 157: A Simple Morning Ritual to Help You Dominate Every Area of Your Life with Hal Elrod BiggerPockets Events Dad Powered Brandon’s Instagram Profile David’s Instagram Profile Books Mentioned in this Show The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell & Steven R. Covey Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Long-Distance Real Estate Investing by David Greene The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing by BiggerPockets The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch Tweetable Topics: “My success story didn’t started when I got out (from prison), it started right away in the very beginning.” (Tweet This!) “Quit the things that are holding you back and have you put in the exact location you are.” (Tweet This!) “Find a market that makes sense.” (Tweet This!) “I want to buy something that is certainly desirable.” (Tweet This!) “Highest risk is vacancy.” (Tweet This!) “Become a person worth being around.” (Tweet This!) “If they’ll like you, they’ll join.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Bill Bill’s Blog Connect with Jacob Jacob’s Podcast Jacob’s Website Connect with David David’s Blog David’s Instagram Profile David’s Facebook Page David’s Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show number 281. And I found out I was so prepared for it through meetups, through reading, through bigger pockets, things like that, that when I did it, I was kind of so prepared that I was like, hey, this really isn't that hard. 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 your host today, Brandon Turner, here with my co-host, Mr. David, analogy man green. How you doing? I'm good, buddy. How are you today? You're good as what? I need an analogy.

I am as good as the icing on-burnton. Day cake. I actually had a really good night last night. I was hanging out with our buddies, Mario Mazumito Bo, Eckstein, and Vinnie Chopra. I love those guys. Like, how do you not love those guys? We need to get all. Like, we need to get them all in the podcast sometime. Yeah, we need to share their awesome. We do the world. Anyway, Vinny is a multifamily syndication guy. And he's telling me how he bought a $23 million apartment and he raised money to do it. He's getting into investors like an 18% return on their money. And then Mario is probably the top appraiser in the Bay Area. So he knows all about how appraisals are done. And Bo Eckstein, he works for a fund that's raised money and he gives

hard money loans to investors. So I get to sit there with these guys and I get to learn how loans work, what lenders are looking for, how to put yourself in a position to get more money. Then I get to appraisals work and how to add more value to my houses and as a real estate agent, what I can do to get my houses to sell for more. And then I get to learn eventually when I want to start buying apartment complexes from somebody who's been doing it for 12 years and's got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of units, maybe thousands by now under his belt. And I'm just sitting there thinking like, how cool is this that like I get to talk about real estate for a living and then I get to hang out with guys that are this successful. And that's what fuels me to want to like do better in my business

and learn more because I'm around guys that are so inspiring. Yeah. What's cool about that too is people listening going, oh, I wish I could do that. You can do that. Like every single person here should be hanging out with and talking with people and meeting people in your local area. I mean, that actually sounds a lot like today's quick tip, I guess we could say, is go hang out with people in your area. Whether it's a local bigger pockets event, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash events for that. Or you just find somebody on the site who's in your area. Go to biggerpockets.com. Search people in your zip code. Whatever. Just find people in your area that you can connect with just like you did last night, which I wish I was there. That would have been a very fun

conversation. But whatever. It's always more fun when you're there. Yeah. You're always too busy in Hawaii. Yeah, you know, whatever. I'm in Washington, but whatever. I would have come a thousand miles for that conversation. No, I wouldn't have. But, you know, whatever. All right, moving on. Speaking of hanging out with multiple people, Today's show is actually a little different in that there are multiple interviews happening today. In fact, we're talking with a few different people. First of all, we're talking with a guy who was in prison for a decade, got out. And rather than accepting like, oh, you know, life sucks.

I'm not going to have a hard time doing this. He didn't change his entire life around, became an entrepreneur, became a real estate investor. And he's got a really cool story of buying his first deal. And then secondly, we're talking to an engineer who turned into a real estate investor in his 20s. He's actually really good at buying off-market deal. but finding deals that aren't listed. And then our third guest is a buddy of mine who I met out in Hawaii, who's actually a Marine, who is invested in real estate on the mainland, in other words, like not in Hawaii.

And he's got a really cool story. He bought a property for very low money down recently. You guys are to love that story, 10 you now in the Midwest. So stay tuned for all those stories. So today's we've got three guests, like we said. We've got Bill, we've got Jake, and we've got David. So we're going to do them in that order. Each interview is about 30 minutes apiece.

So it's a longer show today. So stay tuned for the whole thing. thing. Again, if you have to go to work or you're in a car, listen to the other ones later, because every story is unique. Everyone is going to give you guys a lot of ideas and suggestions and confidence and encouragement on your own journey as you learn how these three investors kicked off their investing career. Here's the thing about traveling. If you buy food at the airport, a burrito, salad, bag of peanuts, you start wondering if you should have opened a savings account for snacks. So wouldn't it be great if you could actually earn money while you're traveling? Well, you can.

Airbnb has something called the co-host network. While you're away, you can hire a vetted local co-host with hosting experience to help take care of things. Communicating with guests, preparing your space, managing reservations, everything runs smoothly while you're off making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that. With their new Express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less.

And they still offer their price beat guarantee, so you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash Dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments. chasing approvals across multiple properties and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident.

One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, International Wires, Card, or Check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow? Book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets and get $100

dollar Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. Now with no further ado, let's get to our interview. Our first one here with Bill from Wealth, well done. All right, Bill, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Good to have you here. Hey, I'm so excited. So let's jump in. Awesome, awesome. So let's go to your backstory. Before we get into your, actually, your first real estate deal, how, you know, you have an interesting story. So I'll let's let you take it. You tell it. It starts off. I was 21 years old and I wake up.

I was going to college and I found out my friend died of a drug overdose. The next thing I hear is the cops, they're looking for me because I was partying in my apartment. That night before, I didn't know anything bad happened. The next thing I know, police are coming to my apartment. I go running out the front door. They're there. I get put in on a handcuffs and put in the back of a squad car for the first time my life, brought to jail where I sat in jail for the next year, got charged with reckless

homicide by delivery of a controlled substance. And before I knew it, I was being sentenced to 10 years in prison for it. And that was my future for the next 10 years. Whoa. Whoa. So you actually went. That's a lot. Yeah.

So right at your 20s, you hit your roaring 20s, nice and, you know, slow pace. 20 years old, I thought I had life all figured out. I was in college. I was doing well. I had two different lives that I was living. I had this perfect, what I thought, perfect suburban life going on. But then it had this other drug life. And I thought, hey, as long as I'm doing what the suburban life wants me do, I can party it up.

And I got away with that for years until one night happened. And I never thought a friend of mine was going to die. And it happened. Wow. That's crazy. So a lot of people that they would look at, did you spend the whole 10 years in prison? Did you get out earlier? Yep.

No. There was no, in the state I was incarcerated. And there was no good time, no parole. So once I got sentenced to it in 2002, there was no way out. No matter how good I was, no matter what programs I took, I was. in for, I think you do 10 years is 3,650 days. So I was locked up in 2002 and I finally got out in 2012. And I've been out five and a half years now.

And I'll tell you what, these are the best years of my life so far. I bet. So like, man, you seem like a pretty, like I met you in person once before. We hung out at FinCon. And you were a super positive, uplifting, super friendly guy. There are other people I have met in my life. And I'm sure David can agree because David is the police officer. here, like, who are not super friendly and uplifting and happy when they get out of prison.

Like, they don't change their life around. So why, why did, why was your story different? Like, like, what changed in prison for you that other people don't seem to have happened to them? Yeah, and I will definitely say my success didn't start when I got out. It started right away in the very beginning. And I'll tell you what, I went through the same feelings of when somebody fails at life or bad things happen to somebody. I went through the same process that everybody else does. First, you have shame because I felt shameful for some of the decisions I made that put me in that situation, then you feel guilty because you're like, man, I did this to myself. And then, you know what? Acceptance starts to come. And then at least for me,

I had this little voice inside my chest that went to my mind and it said, you're better than this. And at least for me, I chose to listen to that voice. And I said, you know what I am? And my first cellmate ever, I remember him telling me one time, he said, you know, this isn't going to last forever. you will get out of here one day as long as you don't have a life sentence. And I held on to that. That was a thought that I held on to for the next 10 years. I said, you know what? I will get out one day. And every day in here, even though my life sucks or it seems to suck, I'm going to do something with it. So then when I get out, I'm going to be 31 years old and I'm going to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way. I don't know what's going to happen to me. I don't know if I'll be successful. But you know what?

I'm going to do it. I'm going to stay out of prison. And that was my goal the first day I got out of jail. So what I love about that is that you took responsibility for your part. Like you could have played the victim. You could have blamed the cops. You could have blamed the system. You could have blamed anyone. But you said, nope, this is what I did wrong. And I want to change that.

And then you took it a step further and said, I'm not just going to sit here and wait. I'm going to start taking proactive steps to prepare myself. So when I get my chance, I'm ready. And that's something that I really, really love. I feel like Olympic athletes know four years later, I'm going to be in a competition. You could wait until the competition to start getting ready or you can start training right now. so that when it comes, you're in peak performance, right? And not enough people understand that.

They're like, well, I can't buy a property because I don't have any money. I'll wait until I save up money and then I'll learn how to invest. Well, you just put yourself back however long it takes you to learn. Like, you could be learning while you're saving up the money. That was something that you did right while you were there. And you talked a little bit about some of the books you read. Brandon, do you have anything you want to add before we ask about those? I do.

Well, I just wanted to point out, if you're listening to the show right now, maybe you didn't end up in prison, right? But like, maybe you just screwed up your life in some other way. Maybe you would just woke up one day and you're like, I'm 45 years old and I have no savings, right? Like put yourself in Bill's shoes, not necessarily like the same exact situation, but the same solution that you found Bill is like take responsibility, accept the fact and then say starting now, like I'm going to be a different person. I'm proactively changing my life. So I just want to again commend you for that, like just the attitude was really. And let me just add one point.

I've never shared this on the air before. But I remember one moment that it all came real to me. I'd been in prison for two, maybe a year and a half or so. and a friend came to me and he says, hey, man, I got some pills in here. You want to take them. And I remember thinking, like, for a second, I thought, oh, I could just do this as a special occasion.

Like, I'm not getting out for eight years. Like, who cares? And then all of a sudden, there was a revelation in my mind like, you know what? If I'm going to be successful out there, I got to start here with nothing. Like, I got to make the decision,

no. And from that day of saying no to that, I said, you know what? From now on, I'm just going to keep doing it no matter where I am. That's amazing. I love, love, love that. That's why you're successful right now because of that decision that you made,

you know, eight years ago or whatever that it was. And people need to understand that. So tell me, you were committed to being successful, although you had no idea what that even meant at the time you were there. What were some of those things you did or the books you read that helped transform your mind to prepare you for where you're at now? Yeah, totally. So, you know, I've been successful financially in the last five years I got out.

But when I was in prison, like, money doesn't exist in prison. So I was no way able to comprehend like financial, you know, ideas. So I took the opposite. approach and I looked at, okay, what can I control right now? And I was like, I control my mind. I control my thoughts. I can control my feelings. I can control what I want. And I started getting into reading a lot of just leadership books, you know, even great leaders, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, people like that. And then I got into like John Maxwell, his all his leadership books, 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. Some Tony Robbins, awaken the giant within type stuff.

And I didn't know if it would work, but I started being like, you know what, if I can learn how to become a leader and not a leader of others, but if I can just lead myself and learn how to be a leader of myself, then theoretically, I should be able to lead myself through no matter what happens to me to the goals I want one day. And that was a philosophy I grabbed onto and I just read as much of that stuff and prepared myself to not only how do I lead other people, but how can I best lead myself to the dreams I see in my mind? Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, I think the books you read like influence so much about who you are. Like there's a famous quote. I remember who said it, But like in five years from now, you'll be the same person you are today,

except for the books you read and the people you meet. And I love that quote, right? Like that our surround, the people we hang out with define who we are and the books you read define who we are. And I would even add the podcast we listen to and change who we are as well, right? So when you got out of prison now, now you can't easily, like, people don't like giving jobs to people get out of prison. So now you are going to do nothing for the rest of your life.

You're going to sit around and blame the system for the next 40 years, right? That was one choice I had. Okay. So what did you do out of prison? So I got out of prison. I had three goals. And some people might look at me and be like, oh, those are easy goals. But to me, they were hard, scary goals because I was getting released into a scary new world that I didn't even know.

Social media didn't exist. Cell phones like what they are today didn't exist. I didn't know anything. So I had three goals. One, quit drugs. You know, quit the things that were holding me back and put me there. Because I knew if I wasn't using drugs, I would never go back to prison again. Two, stay free.

And then three is just get a job that makes $10 an hour. because I could, I knew financially I could live on $10 an hour. It might not be the most glorious lifestyle, but I could do that. And I thought being a leader or the things that I'd read, like, you know, that doesn't have to be the rest of my life. That's just one step because once you get that $10 dollar job, you can set your next goal, a $15 an hour, or $20 an hour, starting your own company or whatever. So that's what I did.

I got my first job stacking magazines for $10 an hour. And that only lasted a couple months until I started my company or started my first business. and we've been rock and rolling since. So tell us about that. So what did you start and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur then? So I was at my, I had my first job and I started interviewing for better jobs and I met a business owner. And he basically, I just had an interview. So I was doing nothing more than what most people do when they're looking for a better job.

They go on interviews. They network. They meet people. And the business owner looked at me and he talked to me. He found out my backstory. He's like, you know what? You could start your own business. And he's like, you know what?

I could give you a job. But you look to be happier and what you're talking about. out to doing your own thing. He's like, how about I teach you how to start a business? And then you can just sell my products and I'll fund your purchase orders. And I was like, sweet, that's, that's kind of what I'm looking for because I always want to get back the life I lived in prison, like not the bars and stuff, but being free, reading books that I wanted to do. So I looked at him as like, that sounds great. So he just said, man, start going door to door, make contacts with business people. I'm actually in my home office now, so I sell branded apparel to corporate accounts,

so promotional stuff. And for six months, I think I sold like $10,000. And that's like $300 a month. You can't live off that. But I kept at it. I kept networking. I kept just going door to door looking for people who wanted to buy for me. And the next six months, I think I sold $180,000. And then I started to be profitable enough to save money. And I was living my parents' basement at the time. and then I was able to start saving money and actually getting out of there. And that's when I bought my first house. That's awesome. So we're going to get to the house here.

Yeah, I know. Yeah. I live in the suburban area, the metro Twin Cities, Minnesota. Minnesota. Yeah, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota. My home turf. I left there at 18 and didn't come back. Okay, I've been back.

But I do like Minnesota. I'm glad that, you know, you're representing my home state here. But let's go. I want to talk real quickly. again about the entrepreneurial thing before we move on to the real estate because so many people listen to this show right now work a job that they do not like. They're making $10 an hour, maybe $15, maybe $20, right? But they got a job they don't like. And they look at real estate like at some kind of magic pill. Like if only I can buy enough real estate to quit my job,

what they don't realize is that there is an in-between that's possible and that's called entrepreneurship. You can start your own business of some kind to start driving more revenue than you were making from your job. So I know David here is now a real estate agent. So he does what he loves in the industry he loves, but he's a real estate agent. I do, I write books, right, for bigger pockets, but I also buy real estate. So like, there's other ways to make money besides just real estate that a person can go into. So do you have any advice for people who are thinking maybe they do want to start their own business. Like, what have you learned? What I've learned is, you know what? You don't have to, I mean, it starts slow. I had to work a job I didn't like

first before I found a job I actually liked. So one is I started somewhere, but I always had the next goal of what do I want to do next? And then if you look at my story, I didn't have this great idea to start a big business. I was just networking, finding other entrepreneurial minds. And the entrepreneurial minds that I was meeting with me actually looked at me and said, this is what you should do, try this out. So the networking thing was my next step. And then the final step was just not being afraid to get out there and start selling and making contacts. And for me, you know, I'm a salesperson. That's what I am. But really, when you get down to it sales is helping people. They need a service or a product. And all I'm doing is presenting

them that service or product at a good value. So you're looking for those, you know, but you're looking for that 10% of people you meet that says, yeah, I could use what you're doing. Let's work together. Okay. That's awesome. So you, I like that you mentioned that you got around other entrepreneurs that said, hey, you should be doing this. I mean, that's really, really powerful. My life changed when I got around more successful people because, you know, I was working as a police officer. I was the most successful person in that world. Everybody was looking up to me like, what should I do? And you get lulled into this false sense of security that you're really, really smart. And then I started hanging around with guys that were much more successful than me. And all of a sudden, I felt like,

you know, that big. It was like I was the guy that was in really good shape. And all of a sudden, I started hanging with CrossFit people. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't want to take my shirt off. This looks really bad, right? So it forces you to kind of step up your own game. And you're around smart people that tell you smart things. Like, you'd be really good at that. So then you get into it and you start to crush it and your confidence goes up and your skills get built. Now, what I understand is you took some of those skills and you applied them into real estate investing. So tell us a little bit about how you found your deal, what kind of deal it was, why you bought it, all the details. Sure. So I bought my first investment property in May of 2017. So a year ago, so I've been a landlord for a

year now. So I actually have some real life experience. But now the property, the beginning of it started in 2015 when we bought our first house. We bought half of a twin home. So it's basically a duplex or if you think about it, it's like a large town home that can be split up and it's zoned as single family property. So we bought half the property. I didn't know. Here's another thing is I had no idea if I was good at real estate or fixing stuff and all the things that come with home ownership. But in 2015, I found out I liked it. I liked projects. I like working at it. So we lived in our house. We kept saving money. And I became friends with the neighbors who owned the other half of our property. And, you know,

when their family got big enough to move out to their next house, I just planted the seed and said, you know, if you guys ever want to sell, I'm here. If we can find out a deal that works for both of us, so we both walk away, feeling like we got a deal out of this thing,

I'm open to buying it. And I planted that seed about a year before they sold. And all of a sudden, one day I got a text saying, hey, Bill, you want to talk numbers with us. And at that point, I got all excited.

And I said, all right, let's start talking. And then the next thing we know, we were in negotiations and I bought it. That's awesome. That's awesome. So why,

I mean, what even sparked the idea? of I'm going to buy, I mean, essentially, it's a twin home. So the two single family houses that are next to each other. I mean, combined. So it's like a duplex. But what made you think I want to buy the neighbor's house? Like how did that even come into your head?

Yeah. So I had a couple of inspiration. And I think if you want to live your dreams, you first need to look at other people in the world who are living their dreams and say, that's the dream I want. My friend had 10 properties. And I saw him leave Minnesota and go live down in Austin. And now he's living a dream down there with his properties up here.

So I looked at his life and I said, man, that's the life I want. So that was the first steed that stuck in my mind. And I said, hey, I live next door to this property. What a great first property to try to own because I live next door to it. You know, I had a ton of fear. You see the news saying, oh, landlord or a tenant trash is the house. And the guy loses $100,000. So I had all this fear that I didn't want that to happen to me.

So I thought, hey, I could live next door to it. And then when I got in the numbers, it started making a lot of sense. It was going to cash flow me from day one. I was going to make money living in my own house. And eventually I'd have this massive, you know, it's a 2,000 square foot side unit. I'd eventually have two properties that I could go out and buy another one. And I'll also say is, since I'm self-employed, I just in case I had a bad sales month, I have rental income coming in.

So I didn't have to worry about losing a big account or something like that. So it helped real estate help my entrepreneurial endeavors. Yeah, I love that. You know, we talk a lot about this idea of house hacking, which is basically what you're doing in this property. you live in one unit, rent the other ones out. And I love, in fact, I wrote an article for entrepreneur.com a long time ago called like how house hacking can help you build your entrepreneurial business. And it was, that's not the exact title.

But basically the idea being if you're trying to build a business, you're trying to be in a real estate agent or have a screen print screen company. What do you call it? Yeah. Promotional company. Yeah. Or whatever. You want to sell Tupperware door to door.

Whatever. Like if you're trying to build a business, like what better like way to build a foundation for your life, then house hacking where if something goes wrong, you have a bad month, which does happen. There are months where things don't go through the way you want them to, that you're not like, oh, well, honey, gets we're eating the kids this week for dinner. You don't have to, like, start like cannibalizing your family because you don't have money. So sure, absolutely. You know, because when you're self-employed, you're a hundred percent commissioned salesperson on the

money you bring in. Yep. And that can be great with big months, but there's always going to be lean months. And if you're in it long enough, there's always going to be big accounts that leave for whatever reason. And it's nice to, for me, it's nice to have real estate that's still cash flowing me through those hard times. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So to me, it's just added up to the whole awesome experience of being an entrepreneur. So what about funding your deal? Did you end up getting just normal traditional bank financing for this thing for both different, you know, two purchases? Yep. For our first

property, we saved $40,000 between when I say we, I'm married. So my wife and I saved $40,000. We put the down payment. It was 20% down in our first house. And then for the second house, we had three years from when we bought our first house to another house, so we saved our money. We needed another 20% down for a conventional loan, which we qualified for. And then we had the decision, do we put 20% down or 25% down to get a lower interest rate? We had saved aggressively, so we had the 25%. And for me, buying my first investment property was still scary. So my logic was let's put as much down as we can. So the sucker cash flows as much as we can from the very beginning and then just in case I hate being a landlord and I like literally I hate it. I wake up

I hate my life. My backup plan was it's still cash flow is enough that I can hire a property manager to run the whole thing for me. So we put we put 25% down just to protect ourselves. And you know from day one it cash flow is $600 a month. That's awesome. So we paid down $2,200 per mortgage on the month and then a cash flow is $600 a month. You know, increasing my net worth for me is a sweet deal. So let me, let me interject here, Bill. I'm going to assume that because you've talked to us about how you like to be prepared and put things in place, that is what led to this investment strategy and why you chose this property. Because like you said, I knew if I didn't like it, I can hire a property manager. They can take it over. It's going to be there for me when my own business work is not

producing as much money. I'm going to have this cash flow. Like in every way, you found a way to make your fears. You found a hedge for all your fears so that you could move forward. Now you develop a new skill set in buying this property and your confidence is going up so you can buy the next one. Tell me what's your plan for the future? How are you going to expand on this and grow? Yeah. So for me, like you said, it was dead on. I first had to overcome the fear of the unknown of owning and investing in real estate. And I found out I was so prepared for it through meetups, through reading, through bigger pockets, things like that, that when I did it, I was kind of so prepared that I was like, hey, this really isn't that hard. Like, like, this. And sweet,

It's making me money. I own this giant property to me. And I basically don't, barely little in my own money comes out of the pocket to service the whole thing. So now that I did that, it broke down the barrier fear. I've owned this for a year. So my wife and I are just going to continue our aggressive savings way, keep building up our portfolio of investable cash and some investments too. And that way, when we're ready for the next property, then we can decide what we want to do. Do we want to move out of our house by another property, another single family home for us to live in?

Do we, right now we love our house. So maybe we target another twin home because I've had another, I've had so much good experience owning this one. So right now we're in the saving strategy of not getting carried away because I like the idea of large down payments that keep my mortgage costs low so they cash flow me. I'm into real estate for cash flow. Like that's what I'm here for. And so, you know, I think we have a goal of just continue and making bigger down payments till eventually we're one day dreaming of buying them in cash.

That could be 10 years out, 20 years out. And I think our long-term goal is I'm a big time skier. I love beach weather in the Minnesota winters. I mean, I love Minnesota, but I hate the winners here. So maybe we buy a ski condo, maybe we buy a beach condo, and then we just kind of go in a circle around our favorite properties throughout the year. So that's what I'm aiming towards eventually. That's super cool.

So do you currently manage the properties yourself, then I'm assuming, right? Yeah, I do. I live next door to it. Cool. I'm self-employed, so if something happens during the day, I can run over there. It's easy. I like the occasional project, and I was prepared to get a property manager, but for this deal, so far, it's been great.

I love the fact that you pointed out the idea that you ran, like, you basically ran the numbers. You made sure it still worked with a property manager in place, and then you did it yourself. And that's something I teach all the time is, even if you want to manage yourself, which I think is a good idea. If you're local, you can do it, great. I think it's a good skill to have. But even if you do, always act as if you're not going to, right? Because I made that mistake because I own properties today that if I didn't manage them myself, they wouldn't cash flow anymore.

So did I really buy an investment or did I buy a job? I bought a job. Yep. Right? So I love that you said that. And I'll say as a beginning investor myself that owns my primary residence, another one, that was the number one tip that I got from an accountant that helped me. And if you're going to buy property, just worst case scenario,

hire a property manager if you can afford it. And then it's making money somebody else is doing. in the work and you're in a great spot as a backup plan. Yep, I love that. You mentioned that you're in sales, so your income is inconsistent. You might have a lot. You might have a little, right? Now you're investing in real estate, which there's another little wrench in this. It can be great because it's consistent income, but you never know you can have an expense that hits out of nowhere, right? So you have a lot of uncertainty that's kind of swirling around you. And one of the things you hit on, I want to make sure we we cover is you planned to combat that uncertainty by the way that you lived your life, right? Tell us a

little bit about some of the ways that you live frugal, because even though you haven't mentioned this, I can guarantee you do because I know how your brain works now after listening to you. What are some of the things you do to live beneath your means so that you don't become overcome with anxiety and fear that something could go wrong and I won't be ready? My wife and I will look for as much free entertainment as we possibly can. And what I mean by that, if you go stroll through our house, you'll see guitars laying around, you see pianos, you'll see mountain bikes, you'll see skis, you'll see cross-country skis. And we have everything we could do that we could literally go out our backyard, which is a

preserve, by the way, and have fun. I mean, all of our date nights are spent just on a bike, doing stuff, and that doesn't cost us any money. So that was the first big thing. The next big thing was our first house, we were able to afford, you know, under $1,000 a month for our mortgage. So that helps us put it in position to be flexible with our money and spend wise. So when we keep our expenses as low as possible, I drive old cars. That's another big thing. So if you look at this, my house is cheap, my cars are cheap, my hobbies is cheap. And before you know it, you're living a absolutely fantastic life for basically nothing. And then I know what's going to happen is as we become more financially successful, as we start having more investments in our

portfolio, then they're going to start paying us to have a wealthy life, which is, you know, starting to buy it, go on ski trips, starting to do all that stuff. So that's our long term plan. Prison taught me how to see life in 10 year intervals. And that's what I do now. Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah. That's incredible. I just, the perspective you have is really where your real value is because it's going to make you so much money. You're not missing out on life by not driving a Corvette and not going on big of vacations. You're having just as much fun or more fun than the next person by hanging out in your own backyard. And it's helping you accomplish your goal, right?

Like if someone says, you know, David, I really want to get a good shape and I'm just, I don't know, it's really hard. I'm having a hard time with it. If I open up their fridge and I see a bunch of junk food, I can question how bad you really want to be in shape. Right. If you tell me that you want financial independence and you want to invest in real estate, but you're just scared and it's really hard. By the way you spend your money, I can tell how serious you are. That's your fridge, right? If you've got tons of credit card bills and you're going out to eat all the time and your expenses are really high, you don't really want this that bad. You just want to pretend that you do and you want to talk about it all the time but not do anything with it. It's the same way with what you're accomplishing. I know you're serious about it. This is something you really want.

And you've made the adjustments to your life to get there. Brandon, what do you think about that? I agree. I got something I can add on to it. Please, please. And I hope people that are listening to this are realizing, like, you know, it started with me with tiny little steps. Like, my first goal was just to be drug-free. That's not that hard.

My second goal was just to get a job that made $10 an hour. Okay, we can all do that. And then, but then the thing is when you do those little tiny steps in the beginning, you start feeling confidence. Like, hey, I did this. Let's push it. a little further and see what happens. Let's put ourselves in a safe place, you know, in life, and then let's take a little risk and see what happens. And you protect yourself from the risk.

Even the risk goes bad. Well, you're protected from it. And just keep growing that. And before you know it, you'll find yourself in a situation. You never thought you'd be in like I'm in now. Yeah, that's cool. You know, we interviewed a guy back a few weeks back, Bryce Stewart on episode 277 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And he tells a story in there about how he wanted to sell his truck, but he had a loan on it, didn't know how to do it. And so, like, he just, like, didn't do it for the longest time. And finally, he was like, you know what? I don't know how to sell the house, but I know how to vacuum my truck.

So, we went out there and vacuumed it. Next day, he's like, well, I don't know how to sell it, but I know how to take pictures of it. So, like, by taking these little actions ahead of time, they propel you and give you confidence, even though you can't see the whole picture. I use the analogy of driving through fog, right? You can't see a mile down the road when you're driving through fog. You have to trust that there is a road up there and there's not going to be, you know, a murder in the middle of the road with an axe.

But all you can see is 20 feet in front of your car. But if you keep driving, just keep moving forward. You're going to always see a little bit further and further and further ahead. Yep. And for real estate investing, I first had to move out of my parents' bedroom and buy my first house. And that gave me the confidence like, oh, real estate isn't that scary. I can figure this out.

And then that gave me the confidence for the next one. Yep. Well, that's what's so cool about this episode because we're talking about people who are taking some of their first steps. We're not talking about the guy that's 25 steps down the road. and you're like, well, that's so cool, I have no idea how I'm going to get there. You know, those are the, those are the bodybuilders that are competing professionally. And you're like, how will I ever look like that person?

All you need to do is go to the gym, right? Just get there. When you're in the gym, look at somebody else lifting weights and try to copy them, right? Doesn't have to be a heavy weight. Just pick up a weight and start getting the movements down. Once you've got the movements down, start to see how many of these can I do before I get tired, right? And you're incrementally adding to the weight or adding new exercises as you're there.

Being around people at the gym is going to teach you more about work. out, you're going to be seeing what they do, you're going to copy it. If you're in that environment long enough, you will learn how to work out. And then it's up to you if you actually want to become in great shape. I got to stop using these workout analogies because I'm a terrible shape. But I know that like, that's just how life works, whether it's real estate investing or getting a better job or getting in really good shape or building up your own wealth, like whatever it is, it always works in these small incremental steps. And that's what we're teaching people. How did you get that first couple steps going? Because everybody can do those. Everyone can vacuum their

track. And keep your eyes on that. Like Brandon was saying, keep your eyes on what's right in front of you, the road that's right in front of you and keep going in that direction and eventually you're going to get there. I have to say this too. I remember one of our first steps, my wife and I,

we were just getting our life started. We didn't have a house yet. And one of the first revelations we had, we were out probably on a bike ride or something, and we were stopping at McDonald's to buy breakfast. And there was the 99 cent McMuffin, and there was like the $3 with egg McMuffin. And we looked at that and we said,

you know what? one day we will buy the $0.99 at 99 cent, but today we're going to buy the 99 cent. And we repeated that over and over. And I guarantee there were people that they heard that conversation, the car would laugh, be like, oh, look at these idiots. And then five years later, you look at, man, that guy who didn't buy the egg McMuffin has two houses

and is worth about $250,000 to $300,000 and is kicking butt in life. And he's like, man, I wish I would have bought the 99 cent meal too. That's funny. Can you post that on your Instagram? Like one of those, you know, when everyone else is posing for Ferraris and you've got like a $2.99 egg big muffin in your picture and like with an inspirational quote, work hard and you two can be where I am eating the expensive. This is how you get rich. This is how you buy investment properties right here.

It reminds you the videos you see how like YouTube ads a lot of the guy like holding this check for like 100 grand and he's like, I'm just going to my bank to go cash this $100,000 check right now. like people get checks still at title companies. But like, yeah, I love the fact that you're saying, like, just take these little, you know, these little things matter. Like they're mindset more than they are tangible. Yeah, that $2 you save, does that really change in anything? No, but it's the mindset that you have that changes everything. Because that way when $2,000 opportunities come and you know how to buy the $200 one rather

than the $2,000, one, man, you can start kicking butt. Yep, there you go. And so many people in this world want to achieve. Like, I don't know if it's like the mentality we have, whether it's a millennial thing. I don't think so. I think it's an everybody thing. It's a human nature thing. But like, we want the end result now, especially like, I remember this getting out of

college, you see your parents and they have a nice four bedroom house and they have a nice BMW. And so you're like, well, I deserve that as well. And so like they go out and finance those things. And I get into a ton of debt because they want that life now. I love that you brought up the 10 year increments. Think of life in 10 year increments. Like this phase of my life, this little time here is going to be about this.

And if I do this right, I can do that differently. Then I can get my parents' life that they worked for 40 years to get as well. For sure. I remember when we bought our first house and it was connected to another house. I'm sure people looked at us like, oh, I wouldn't want to live in that house. Yep, yep. But when they look at now that I own the whole thing and own multiple properties and I'm thinking about buying a ski condo and a beach condo eventually, they're probably like, man, that was a good idea.

Yep. Yeah. What's Dave Ramsey? I would say like live like live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. I always liked that a lot. So cool. All right, well, let's shift to you here and head over to the end of the show, which section we'd lovingly refer to as our What is your favorite or current favorite real estate, specifically real estate related book?

I'm going to go with the one that changed my perspective so much, and that was just rich dad, poor dad. It defined what an asset was and what a liability was in my life. And once I really understood those meaty terms, then I was able to focus all my cash on buying assets. There you go. Perfect. All right. What's your favorite business book? I'm going to stick with leadership books because that way, if you understand leadership, you can use leadership skills to build whatever business, whatever field that your soul craves of living in.

So I'm going to go with John Maxwell, 24 or either, I think 21 irrefutable laws of leadership or let's throw Tony Robbins, awaken the giant within one, something I remember. Cool. Love it. Both fantastic books. Tell me about some of your hobbies. And I'm very excited to hear about this because I know you do stuff that doesn't cost much money. Favorite hobbies. A lot of our hobbies are we consider our hobbies are biggest investments. Yeah, it costs some cash going up front.

But once you have the gear, you're set for a free life of it. So my wife and I got mountain bikes. We got trail bikes. Biking in the summertime is one of our favorite things. I'm a big time skier. So as my wife, we love to fish. my wife actually can outfish me because I like to swim a little bit too, but she can get in the boat and go all day long. So anything outdoors. And then when it's rainy, I kind of like working on

real estate projects. I like Googling YouTube, how to do a project, you know, using some physical exertion and then looking at it when you're done being like, oh, that's cool. I did that. I learned a skill in the process. I love it. All right. Last question for me. What do you think sets sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? understanding that we all have the fear of the unknown in our brains. That fear of the unknown is there for every human being. You're not alone if you're afraid of it. And I think the successful ones are the ones who stop back and think and know that, yes,

the fear of the unknown is there. So therefore, I'm going to take a lot of time before I get to that fear and prepare for it. So even if that fear that I have happens, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to have food on the table. I'm going to have a dry, safe, warm place to live. And then also, you know, one of my favorite things that inspired me was a Warren Buffett quote. When he began investing in companies, he had to learn that sometimes a terrible company at a rock bottom price isn't the best thing. He found out that best or, you know, good companies at a fair price were a better investment.

So that's what I, that I took that to real estate investing. And I look for good properties in good locations, in good school districts. districts, I look for properties that good tenants would want to live in. That when they come tour it with me, they say, wow, this is a really nice place. Because if you can have a product that people want to use and own and live in, then you're going to always have people that want to live there. And it makes the job of a landlord or real estate investors so much easier. That's fantastic.

I love how you mentioned that you're going to have fear and anxiety anytime you're dealing with uncertainty in the unknown. The quicker people can just understand and accept that, the more successful they'll be. As a real estate agent, that is like the number one problem for me and my business is working with clients who are just always like at a very, they're on edge the entire time because you just don't know. Brandon's going through a transaction right now. He's trying to buy a house in Hawaii. And he's stressed, but he's dealing with this better than most people because he's just accepted. I don't know if I'm going to get it. I might, I might not. I don't want to get emotionally attached because you don't know if your loan's

going to come through if the property is going to appraise or what the inspection reports are going to look like. There's a million things you don't know and you can't know. And anxiety will always accompany that. And anxiety doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It doesn't mean that you're making a mistake, right? Like life is not meant to be lived in a way that you're always avoiding anxiety. Just like when your muscles hurt when you work out, it doesn't mean you did something wrong. It's supposed to be like that. So embracing that uncertainty will bring anxiety and anxiety is a part of it, but it will go away

the more I do it is to me one of the biggest keys to living a successful life because you miss out on opportunities when you're afraid of anxiety, you want to run away from it. And I just think that, Bill, you've like taken that head on and you're running right at it. And I have no doubt that anything that's in front of you is going to get knocked over because you're just like an unstoppable force right now. You have a very fascinating story. Can you tell us where can people find out more about you? Yeah, absolutely. They can find about me at my blog, Wealthwell done.com. So just think of wealth grid like a steak and well done. So it's wealthwell done.com. We published weekly articles there about everything I learned when I was in prison when I was out.

And I'll tell you what, if you want to learn more about my prison story, go ahead and subscribe to the email list. and you'll have all the interviews. I do like this where I talk about everything I went through and how I got there. Perfect. All right. Very cool, Bill. Well, I really enjoyed having you on today. I guess we'll see you around the community.

Yep, we'll see you around. Thanks, Brandon. Thanks, David. It's been a blast. I absolutely loved it. Hey, thanks, Bill. Well, that was incredible. I've not been this inspired as a long time.

Bill's story was awesome. Yeah. Let's see what Jake has to say. He's another awesome investor. Let's do it. All right, Mr. Jake, Jacob. Joseph had Jake, right?

We're going to go Jake today. Welcome to the show. Jake is good. Jake is good. All right. Well, welcome to the show. I want to get to know you a little bit more. I know you and I have kind of seen each other,

talk to each other social media wise online, knowing each other for a little while that way. But I've never actually talked to you in real life here like this. So this is going to be kind of fun to learn your story. Why don't we start at the very, very beginning? What did you do before real estate? What did you do now? And how did you get into real estate in your first deal?

Yeah, all good questions. Well, first off, guys, thanks so much for having me on. I'm really excited to be here. I think it's going to be really fun. Well, a little bit about me. I'm a young professional, obviously. I'm 28 years old. And I work in engineering and I'm a part-time real estate investor.

But going back before that, like many of your audience members out there, many of the people listening to this podcast right now, I was kind of raised with this blueprint to go to school, get a good education, further that education, get into college, study something that challenges you and get a job. So I did all these things. and I found myself in corporate America working in an engineering firm. And I realized that this blueprint only gets you through about your mid-20s for most people. So here I am sitting in corporate America, kind of wondering what's next.

I've always had something to shoot for after this, you know, get into college, get a good GPA, get a good job. And so here I am looking about like in my life, like, hey, what's next? So what I'm seeing is essentially retirement at age 65 and a half if you're lucky, right? So, you know, I just didn't really sit well with me. I knew there was something more out there, something that I wanted to do. And at the time, I was really involved and really interested in my own personal finance and kind of building a life I wanted. So I kind of started looking down this investing path. And going down this path, I realized there's kind of a fork in the road. And on one side, you've got like the more traditional sense,

investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, through your retirement accounts, things like that. And that didn't excite me so much. And then on the other fork, there was the alternative asset classes, including real estate investing. And that just kind of rung true to me. There's a lot of stuff that drew to me, just like for the same reasons of many of the audience members out there. It's a tangible asset. I understood it.

I could see it. I could touch it. So that's just kind of where I found myself. And I jumped into real estate investing and I've been practicing it ever since. Okay. So what would you say like, you know, first of all, what kind of engineering were you? I'm just curious.

Yeah, my background is in fire protection engineering. So a little bit niche. And, yeah. That's kind of cool. Is that like if somebody builds a house? they call you it and be like, hey, how do we put in the right staircase so it doesn't burn down? Yeah, that's part of it. I work more in the industrial space.

So I work for oil and gas projects, refineries, chemical plants. So yeah. So you don't want people to blow up themselves. That's the kind of thing. Exactly. That's a cool job. Okay. So you thought real estate sounds better than like this other, you know, the other investments

out there. Real estate sounds kind of cool. Did you have anybody in your life at that point? I mean, like, were people telling you real estate? Did you read a book or like, what made you go? Yeah. Oh, oh, real estate. That sounds.

cool. You know, it's kind of weird because, no, the answer is no to all of that. I didn't have any previous experience in real estate. I didn't have, you know, a family member into it. I just kind of stumbled into it. And I can remember sitting at my desk one day. And somebody mentioned, hey, you should check out podcast. And this is in 2014. I never even heard of what a podcast was. So I start looking at, you know, real estate investing podcast, bigger pockets being one of them. And I just stumbled on all of this information. I mean, there's like a treasure show of, of, you know, information and knowledge out there. By the way, Jake, you just said that wrong.

You said one of them, bigger pockets be one of them. I think you meant to say the best, most handsome, most professional. Right. With this really cool host, Brandon Turner at the time. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, right. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So you listen to the podcast, learning that way. Then what came next? Well, so I've spent about six months kind of educating myself, just diving into podcast, forums, books. And then about six months in, I bought my very first investment property. And looking back, I probably did several things wrong, but it turned out to be pretty good.

So it's a pretty fun story. I think it's one of the more interesting ones about myself because it wasn't so much impactful at the time, but it got the ball rolling. I think that was a really important takeaway for the audience members listening into it. So this property was a $25,000 single family house in my home market in Oklahoma. So most people think $25,000 property. Does that even exist? Is it in the, is it in a war zone? is a terrible condition and the answers are all no. I mean, it was a fairly normal single family

one bedroom house. So that's how I got started. All right. Tell me a little bit about Jake, why you chose that house and what got you moving in that direction. Yeah, that's an interesting question. And at the time, I wasn't sure that this investing thing was what I was going to do. This was kind of more like a test, kind of proof of concept thing. And the risk was so low that I thought, hey, at the end of the day, if it doesn't pan out very well, it's not going to cripple me financially. So my mortgage on the property, yeah, I do have a mortgage interesting fact about it on a $25,000. Yeah, I don't ask you about that next. Go ahead. My mortgage is $141 a month. So, I mean, Brandon, I'm sure your cell phone bill is more than $141 a month. That it is. I mean,

my cell phone was $240. It's like $7. I don't know how two phones can be $247. But it is. Especially because Brandon doesn't talk on his cell phone. I never. He basically pays $250 for. a texting device. It's so true. Anyway, so you got a hundred and how much you say one, one, one 40. $141.141. It's insane. Can I ask you real quick, but how a lot of people have a problem when they're trying to get

loans on property. And I hear it all the time, people are like, they can't find a bank that will go that low, like go into the under 100 or under 50 even. Like, how did you find a bank that would do that? I didn't even know that was a problem at the time. I was so naive. I didn't know that you weren't supposed to be able to get loans for something that cheap. So I went to a local lender in my market, a credit union. And, you know, they obviously

kept it in-house through a portfolio loan. And they just lent on it. And there was never any question like, oh, it's a little bit below our limit. There's just, I just didn't realize that that was supposed to be a hurdle. What is a portfolio lender for those who don't know? I don't know. David, were you going there too? I thought David pointed out. Yeah, I was. So my understanding of a portfolio loan is it's a loan that the bank will lend to a borrower, but they keep it on their own personal balance sheet rather than packaging it out and selling it to an investor. So they can be a little bit more lenient with the terms of the loan. So tell me, how do I find a portfolio lender that's willing to give me a mortgage where my

payments $140 a month? Well, from my experience, you go to local banks, credit unions, local, regional banks, you know, not the big branch that you see around. You don't go to a big bank. You go to a smaller bank, smaller credit unions I found are actually more competitive than even banks. So that's been my experience. Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100%. A lot of the time, When I was first trying to find portfolio loans, I was going to every big bank I could find. And then I found that going to smaller credit unions or savings and loan institutions, my odds of success were skyrocketing by like hundreds percent up just for going to those smaller banks. And another thing that I found just as a little add on is that if they're telling you no,

you might be able to get a yes out of them if you deposit some money with their bank. If you can go in there and say I've got $10,000, $30,000 to put on deposit. All of a sudden, that conversation changed a little bit to, oh, Mr. Green. well, tell me more about this. Maybe we can make something work out. So don't, don't stop when you hear no. No doesn't mean no. No means not yet. I love it. Yeah, good, good points. Say, hey, Jake, can you walk us to the numbers a little bit? I know you said you bought it for 25 and you put how much down. Did you say? And then kind of what are the expenses? What's the income look like on that? Yeah, sure. So it's a traditional loan. It was an investment property. So I put 20% down or $5,000 down. So I bought this property when I was

24, 25 years old. I was a recent college graduate. I didn't have a ton of money. I mean, I had a good job, but it's not like I had a ton of cash to go deploy somewhere. So I'm kind of bootstrapping things at this time. So I put $5,000 down, a few thousand dollars in closing costs. So I get into this property for $7,500, $8,000 kind of range. So my mortgage we've already covered is $141. I'm setting aside money for maintenance and capital expenditures, things like that. Things were taught through bigger pockets. And I rent it out for $475 a month. So I'm cash flowing about $300 a month. That's awesome. That's cool. I like deals like that because they're, they're so attainable to somebody getting started. You know, a lot of people think you have to

have $20, $30, $50,000 to buy a deal. Now granted, you must live or whatever, investing in a lower priced market. So some people are listening to this going, well, there's no way I could do that. I live in, you know, insert expensive crazy city here, Seattle, Portland, whatever, New York, anyway. So if that's the case, though, like, do you have any advice for people? I know you're still, you know, early on your journey, but for those people who are saying that, like, well, I can't find that house right now. I'm going to go shut off this podcast and go back to watching, I don't know, dancing

with the stars. Any advice for those people? Don't shut off the podcast. Continue listening. So, yeah, I understand that, you know, a $25,000 house doesn't exist in every market and doesn't exist in most markets, but there are markets that out there that makes sense for you. So if you live in San Francisco or Seattle or New York or one of these more expensive markets, there's a guy that wrote a book recently about investing out of state. It's a really good book.

You should check it out. But yeah, do that. Find a market that makes sense because location is the most important thing about real estate to begin with. So find a market that works for you that you're comfortable with, that you're comfortable with the numbers. And yeah, I would say go there, follow the money, follow where those numbers make sense. Yeah, I like that a lot. And of course, the book you pick it up at BiggerPockets.com store, it's called Long Distance Real Estate Investing written by my buddy David Green here. Fantastic book.

And anyway, so let's walk through real quick. Like, how did you say how you found that deal or am I just blanking and forgot what you said? No, I haven't mentioned it. Yeah. Yeah, let's know you find it. I found this deal off market. So it was just in my local neighborhood that I grew up in.

I knew that it was for sale by the owner and I just approached this owner and made a deal. And yeah, it was all kind of handshake stuff. You know, keep in mind, this is my first deal. So I had no idea what was normal, what was regular, you know, I was kind of, I was really naive at this point. So, you know, I wasn't held back by what I knew in other words. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. And so did you like just contact the guy or what kind of walk into that story?

Yeah, I knew it was vacant. And I knew nobody, I knew nobody's living there through family friends. and yeah, I just approached this person and we made a deal. And the numbers worked. You know what they were asking for it. I knew that I could make it work based on, you know, the calculators and the numbers I'd learned so far. So yeah, just kind of off market deal.

Awesome. I love that. Let me jump in right here, Jake. How did you hear that they had this house that they wanted to sell? Well, it's a very small community. So obviously this is real location, real community. So pretty tight knit. My hometown actually has 2,000 people in the town.

So it's kind of one of those, everybody knows. knows everybody type thing. So it was just from local market knowledge you could say. All right. Two things. One, I love that you said rural because that used to be a thing on bigger pockets of making fun of Brandon every time you're trying to say rural.

Rural. I don't remember this. It's way old school. We are way past that joke now. Thank you, David Green. I just want to bring it back. At a memory of Josh. I'm sure you would appreciate that.

I'm not how to say it though. Yeah, I've learned how to say rural, rural. Brandon was sent to speech therapy. I've been working on that ever since. But here's the second point that I wanted to make. Sure. I don't want to gloss over the fact that what you did was you found several different things that would increase your odds of success.

You added them all together and you ended up with the positive result you wanted. So you knew you wanted to buy a house, but you're only 24, 25 years old and you don't feel comfortable taking a big risk. So what you do is you go to a market where you can buy houses for $25,000. You get all the experience of getting into real estate investing, but much less risk because you're playing in such a smaller field. Then you let everybody know in your community, I'm buying. I want to know when somebody has a house to sell.

You're looking for off market deals. You're not just waiting for someone to bring this deal to you, right? So someone finds a person who says they want to sell and it goes right to you before it hits the MLS, before a realtor gets involved, before another investor gets involved, you get involved. And then they're also vouching for you saying, hey, we know this guy. He's a good guy. He's going to close, right? You're also working at a price point that isn't super risky for you.

You're not like, well, let's go buy a $300,000 house. You're like, no, I'll buy one for $25,000. And I'll go to the market where they have $25,000 houses to make sense. sense. So it sounds like when you're talking like, oh, I just kind of stumbled into it. But really, you did a lot of things right. And I tell people that if you're doing everything right, it's a matter of just turning the crank on that jack in the box. You know, da, da, da, da da da da da da da da da. You keep cranked it. And it's going to whom you have your deal, you know? And I just love that like you were intentional about going after what you wanted. You didn't let all these reasons stop you. Like my market is too

expensive. I'm too young. I don't have enough money. I don't, I can't find any off market deals. I don't have $10,000 for direct mail. You just did what you could. And you found. it. Tell us a little bit about how you got your next deal. Like how did you take what you learn with that first one and then apply it to go get the next one? Yeah, like you hear so many people say, once you get the first deal, the second one comes easier. And you know, you've already got a got a little bit of a knowledge base, understand how things work. So once again, off market deal. At this point, I knew that, you know, backing up to this property, when I got that first rent check, it was like my proof of concept, my aha moment. Right. So I thought, okay, this thing really does

work. Now I'm confident to go out and do another deal, but I knew I wanted to grow. Another $25,000 house wasn't really going to move the needle for me. It wasn't going to change anything for me. So I really wanted to get into a small multifamily property. So I started looking at duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, that kind of thing. Well, I had some targeted markets that I wanted to invest in and I would join their Facebook marketplaces like local Facebook pages. And I did this and I saw somebody advertise this duplex for sale. And what this duplex was is, uh, it was, it was a, it was was recently inherited by three siblings, like middle-aged people, and they just wanted to get rid of it. They didn't want to rent it out. They didn't want to fix it up. And I saw this like the very same hour.

They posted it, reached out to them, went over and met them and made the deal on the spot and bought it. So this was a duplex. And this was a $55,000 duplex. That's crazy. That's awesome. Okay. So you saw that listing. You said where was, did you say Facebook or did I read that that you wrote? No, it was on Facebook. It was like a Facebook marketplace kind of page. I wanted to make sure we talked about that. So, yeah, it was a Facebook page for like, say that again? Yeah, it's like one of these like, you know, Oklahoma City, buy, sell, trade, Facebook kind of pages. You know, like all these little communities have them.

So, yeah, it's just one of those. That's awesome. I don't think we actually talked to anybody on the podcast who found a deal that way. But that's super cool. There's so many ways to find deals out there. People are saying, yeah, I can't find anything, can't find anything. Well, what are you doing to look for them? I'm working on a book right now for bigger pockets that'll be out later this fall.

kind of like a beginner's guide to real estate. And in there, I have a chapter on 28 different ways to find real estate deals, like completely unique ways. And that one wasn't even there. So now I want to add that number 29. 29. Yeah. It's just crazy.

There's so many ways to find deals that people just don't do it. I also want to come up one more thing before we dive in the specifics on that. I say this a lot lately about how the first deal people do. Like that deal for 25 grand will not make you rich, right? We all agree. It's a decent deal. Fine. You get a few hundred dollars a month in cash flow.

Great. What does that really do? What it does, though, was it gave you the confidence to do the second deal. And that's the beautiful thing, right? Now that second deal gives you the confidence to the third and the fifth and the hundredth. And before you know it,

you'll be, you know, financial free. But so many people just can't get off the couch to buy that first deal. And so I love that you did that. Yeah, it was super important at the time. And I kind of knew that going into it.

I knew it wasn't going to make me rich. I knew it wasn't really going to move the needle. I mean, $300 a month or so in cash flow. It's nice, but it's really not going to change my lifestyle or, you know, allow me to,

you know, retire at the age of 30 or something. like that. But I knew that it would get the ball rolling for me. And sure enough, it did. Yep. It's like, uh, it, yeah, it's like a train, right? Like, you have to like get the train moving. Like my analogy, David, look at that. I'm not the, I'm, I'm an analogy king like you know. So you get the train moving and it's slow at first, right? But like, once you get it going, it just kind of goes and it kind of propels itself. And that's how I've always felt my real estate has been. It was really hard in the beginning. So just a message everybody out there who's

struggling right now with your real estate. Like, if you're like, I'm having a hard time getting that first deal or the second deal. And it just, This is so hard. I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life. Just know that it does get easier. Like the train does start picking up momentum as long as you make it kind of a goal to like always be asking, you know, how do I make this run more smoothly and run more efficiently? And how do I do a better job with this? You're going to find that.

So tell us a little bit more about this duplex. I mean, did you rent out both sides, both halves then right away? Did you have to do any fix up on it, anything like that? Yeah. So three, like I mentioned, three siblings inherited it. They didn't want to do anything with it. they didn't even want to rent it out. So they really just wanted to get rid of it immediately. So I went and met them. I asked them, you know, a little bit about the property. We walked it.

It was fully vacant. So that's kind of scary, you know, you're going to take on an investment property, but have to, you know, go out and get it rented. And so that was a little bit of a risk. Something kind of set me off about it a little bit. But, uh, so they were asking $55,000 for it. And I knew that it had been rented in the past for $600 per unit. And I thought, wow, with those numbers, I mean, I can't go wrong. So I just said, sure, I'll buy it for $55,000. So I'm only like a year into my investing journey at this point. So I still don't know much.

I'm not like super experienced. But I just knew it was a good deal at the time. So I pulled the trigger, wrote up a contract, you know, and they accepted it. And, you know, 30, 45 days later, you know, we closed. And it didn't need that much work. You know, it was a little musty, you know, needed some freshing up. So just did simple things like interior finishings, you know, ceiling fans, hardware, fixtures, interior, exterior paint, just increase that curb appeal and then advertise

it and got it rented and it's been rocking along ever since. That is awesome. Tell me a little bit more about how you're taking that Facebook strategy that you use and give us some details about what you look for, how often you look, what you're targeting, like kind of walk us through that so that other people can kind of copy that strategy in different markets. Yeah, sure. So I kind of mentioned it early, but the very most important thing I always look for is

location because you can change a lot of things about real estate. You can paint it, fix it up. You know, you can change the floor plan. You can change the use even, but you very rarely can you pick it up and move it somewhere. So, you know, I'm really first off selecting certain markets that I want to invest in. And then after that, I'm looking at cash flow because I'm not doing this for my health. You know, I'm doing it to, you know, achieve financial freedom. So the cash flow is pretty important to me.

So I'm looking at certain numbers like I want to achieve $300 in cash flow per door. So if I buy a duplex, I want it to cash flow $600. And a good rule of thumb I've been finding in my market to do that is everyone knows the 1% rule, 1% rent to value ratio. I've kind of found that it's easy to achieve 1.5% in my market. So if I can look at something really quickly and identify that it achieves this 1.5% rent to value ratio, I know that it's probably going to work for those criteria that I have set. That's perfect. And I love that you've set this criteria for yourself.

This is my I think it's so important is like investors, especially if you're newer, but everybody, needs to like set like what is your metric what is your criteria you're going to examine a deal of being good or not like if you don't have that defined you just either buy whatever comes your way or you won't buy anything i find that once you have a benchmark like for me it's like a hundred dollars per month per unit on a multi-family property is where i'll go and jump so a 20 unit and that's after like i'm super conservative in my like repairs and capex and all that like so after everything's done including property management i want 100 bucks and i just know that's my metric so if it if it passes great i'll move on it if it doesn't i won't it's it's

takes the emotion out of it. So I love that you've got that as well. So can we move on? I want to talk about what else. I mean, what else do you look for now in properties? I mean, if you're looking for, anything else, what are you buying? What are you looking for? What do you multi-single? Let us know more. Yeah. So in terms of physical assets, what I'm looking for is I don't want anything with like an obsolete floor plan. I want something that's going to be easy to rent because I understand that my highest risk is vacancy. And I don't want to have to struggle to get it rented. So I want to buy something that's certainly desirable. In terms of, you know, what I'm looking at these days now, Obviously, I wanted to transition into small multifamilies as quick as possible from that initial single family purchase.

And I want to scale even larger from here. So I want to get into larger multifamilies and I want to grow a sizable portfolio. So I've got some pretty lofty goals. I really want to be financially free by the time I'm 30 years old, which is in two years and some change from today. So, yeah, you know, I really want to scale and grow this portfolio to, you know, quite sizable. Yeah, I love that. That's cool. And you mentioned a phrase that I wrote it down here.

I don't want to cover it. highest risk is vacancy. I think that's like a lot of people don't look at vacancy as that big idea. A lot of people don't even calculate it on their numbers. But like vacancy is probably the number one greatest expense when your unit is vacant. Right. I mean, it's a huge, huge, like, bleeding wound on your investment portfolio. And so many people are really, I don't know, they just like, they ignore that metric,

but that's, that's a, it'll kill your cash flow. I mean, you're like, you could have a property this cash flow in amazing 11 months out of the year and you go vacant one month. goes your entire year of cash flow. And if that happens every single year, you don't have an investment, you have a job that you just bought yourself that doesn't make any money. I mean, like, it's just like, yeah, so I love that you said that you look at vacancy and you want to find things that are going to rent, that are going to be easier to rent. And that is so, so important. So I just wanted to point that out. If you guys are listening to this and you have rental property you're getting into it,

don't underestimate the value of learning how to rent out your unit fast. If I just this morning, I was looking at the number is my 24 unit over in Ohio. And I'm pulling up the metrics of property manager sent over and there's three three or four vacancies and I'm like out of 24 units I'm like ah like I got to deal with this because this is killing my cash flow that's over two grand a month or like two grand this month I lost just out of my pocket gone I'll never see that again because they didn't get the units rented and there's four of them I mean come anyway so yeah I'll go one further on that brand and I'd say real estate investing as a whole your biggest threat is going to be vacancy like when When I look at just investing in real estate versus investing in stocks or businesses or anything else,

you almost can't miss with real estate as long as you have enough in reserves or whether a storm, unless you can't find someone to rent out your place. That is like the one Achilles heel in this entire thing that your whole business is dependent on. As long as you have a tenant and you're cash flowing positive, anything that comes up, the rent can cover whatever your expenses or be. You might make less profit, but you'll keep your unit. If you buy a multifamily or a single family in an area where people are leaving or jobs are leaving, like a Detroit, something like that, there is nothing you can do to turn that around and you can find a way

to save it. Like if there's no one to rent your place, that's the only way you generate income with this investment vehicle at all. It's not like you're a business and well, people aren't buying shoes, so let's go sell shirts. You know, all you can do is rent this place out. So vacancy is something that I take very seriously when you're deciding where you want to invest or why you want to be investing there. It hurts you in the short term when you have it and it can destroy you in the long term if you just can't find people to rent out your unit. And so when I listen to people say like, well, David, what about this or what about that? I'm afraid about real estate investing.

What happens if a toilet breaks or, you know, all the things that people worry about. None of those are legit concerns, right? What you need to be worried about is what if there's no one available to rent my house? That is like the only thing that I need to make sure I get right. And if you're okay on that, everything else will work itself out. Yeah, definitely so. So tell us, like, what else have you done before we move on to the famous four? Like what else have you done since this?

You got the single family, you bought the duplex, anything else in there as well. Well, yeah. So I try to look at, you know, my investing journey is like a holistic thing. And with an engineering background, I realized that I was pretty good with the numbers. I spent a lot of time in bigger pockets in the forms, picking up stuff, practicing on the calculators. So I felt pretty comfortable with the numbers. But I realized that I wasn't getting as head of as quickly as I wanted to because I didn't build those relationships. So, you know, I didn't have a team in place.

You know, I was kind of working with my nose down. And so once I started to open up my eyes to building a team and developing relationships and networking with other people and finding people who are doing what I wanted to do and are where I'm. want to be in a few years. I really felt like that really kind of sped up my process in the whole real estate investing game. So yeah, there was that. And yeah, it's just kind of one unique thing about that is I have since launched a podcast to help grow that network. So that's been a really big helpful thing too. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good way to like, you know, just interviewing other people, talking to other people, whether it's on a podcast or whether it's out at coffee or at a local networking event. Like just connecting with other people is just so important in growing it. So

So anyway, so total units now. What are you up to then? Is that the three? You got more than that? I have eight total units now. Wow. So what else are you? Single family, the duplex.

What else? I have a single family, two duplexes, and a triplex. That's awesome. And I've started two and a half years ago. That is fantastic. So for the people listening again, like two and a half years ago and you're up to eight units, like those eight now, like you start with that single family, gives you the confidence to move to the next, gives you the confidence for the next.

Pretty soon you'll be buying bigger. I mean, if you want to anyway, buying it. and bigger and bigger deals because the bigger you get, it actually tends to get easier. At least that's what I found. Have you found that similar? Yeah, definitely so. You know,

once you get that ball rolling, it's almost hard to stop it. You know, you have to do some work to, you know, not buy a deal almost. I know, I know exactly what you mean.

Like I, yeah, I, I, it's like a train, right, Brandon. It's like a train. It's hard to get that train moving,

but once it's going, it's hard to stop it. Yeah, as long as you keep that crank turning on the jack in the box. Look at that. All right. All right.

All right. for what real estate books have you read or do you enjoy or what's your favorite real estate related book um you know there's so many but i'd say i'd have to say it's probably the advanced guide to real estate investing by kin mackleroy it's in the rich dad series it's a really good book covers a lot of different topics i'd say that would probably be my number one real estate book fantastic book love that all right number two brandon loves that guy every time mackerel's name come up his eyes light up He's killing it. We should get him back on the podcast.

It's been like four years since we had him on. We'll have to reach out. Ken, if you're listening, come back on the show. I want to talk to you. All right. Moving on. Number two. Favorite business book.

I have two favorite business books. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. Nice. Good choices. And I believe maybe we shouldn't announce this. I believe Hal's coming back on the podcast here shortly. So whether it's before, after this interview comes out, I believe it's happening soon if it hasn't already. So listen for that.

Awesome. Yeah. He's confirmed it. We're going to be good together. Hal's an awesome guy. If you guys haven't looked him up, look him up, read his story, learn a little bit about what Hal did. He ended up writing the endorsement for my book that's on the cover. Just as a super inspirational guy, very, very smart.

He's very big into teaching people how to be successful. And as you can see, it's working for Jake because he's got eight units in like two years. We can give, we can give Hal Elrod some of the credit and bigger pockets to rest. Definitely so. There you go. All right. Tell us about some of your hobbies. Oh, I love to kayak fish when I get the chance.

When I'm not building my real estate empire, I love to be out on the water and fish. So I live in Houston, and I've got the opportunity to do both saltwater and freshwater fishing. So, and lots of, lots of warm weather. So that's what I like to do in my free time. Nice. So wait, we never really covered this earlier, but you live in Houston, but you were buying in, where were you buying? I'm buying predominantly in Oklahoma, so out of state.

We never even talked about that. That's actually a really interesting point as well. Like you're doing this, even though you live in a market where Houston's not expensive, but it's not cheap either. Sure. You know, depending on the area, I guess. But yeah, my sister lives there. Just bought a house.

It's really nice house. And it was not cheap. So yeah. Yeah, cool. All right. Well, next time I'm visiting my sister down in Houston, we'll have to go get some coffee or something. Definitely.

Jake, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? This is so good. And for me, it comes down. to your reasons why. If you don't have strong reasons why, you're probably never going to get started in the first place. And if you do get started and you don't have strong reasons why, you know, real estate investing is full of ups and downs. You get told no a lot. You get a lot of rejection. So you don't have strong enough reasons why you're probably going to fail, quit,

never even get started. So what I mean by your reasons why are understanding what drives you, what motivates you, why you're doing what you're doing because you're not just going to haphazardly build a real estate empire. You're not going to have a real estate empire. You're not going to haphazardly fall into extreme levels of success. So you have to have something that's driving you, something that's motivating you to get out of bed every day and chase that success. What drives you? Oh, man, a lot of things. You know, first and foremost, financial freedom. But, you know, that's very near-sided. I think that you have to have bigger goals than financial freedom for yourself, because most people are comfortable in their financial lifestyle. They've got enough to get by.

And if that's all you need, then why even get started? So I think you have to have something, a reason bigger than yourself. I don't really know why. I don't have any kind of, I don't have any kind of background to it, but I've always had kind of a soft spot in my heart for kids in poverty. So, you know, I always wanted to write a big check to, you know, a school one day. And I've always wanted to, you know, give back to children. So I don't know why. I don't know what motivates me to do that, but it's just always been, you know, something I've wanted to do. So, you know, when you can kind of identify with a reason that's much bigger than yourself, like, oh, I want a nice car, you know, I want a bigger house and you know you've kind of got some responsibility from others riding on your shoulders so

those are some things that drive me and motivate me super cool super cool you also you also mentioned you want to be retired by age 30 right yes financially free or i.e retired by age 30 so um i've got some exponential growth to to uh hit that but you know it's looking well and i'm excited and now i don't have any illusion that when i hit 30 i'm going to kick my feet up and start drinking mojitos on the beach and cancun you know i'm still going to you know hustle and build stuff and you know grow my business and help other people, but I just want to be able to replace my earned income with passive income by the time I'm 30. Perfect. It's a pretty big, pretty good reason why. What are you? You're 28 right now, right? 28. All right. Well, looking forward to let's have you

back on here in two years when you hit that number. That's your motivation right now. There you guys. All right. Well, Jake, thanks so much for joining us today. That was a lot of fun. And where can people find out more? I took your line, David. Sorry, where can people find out more about you. Yeah, sure. So I host a real estate investing podcast called The Real Estate Way to to Walth and Freedom. You can find it anywhere you can find podcasts. And if you want to connect with me, learn more about me, you can visit www.com. Perfect. A-Y-E-R-S. Yes. All right. Perfect. Thanks, Jake. We'll see you around the site. All right. Super cool. Yeah, you know, what I like about Jake's story there is that a lot of people think that your first deal,

like you have to find an MLS. You have to use a real estate agent. But I love that he just was like, I'm just going to find a different way to do it. I'm going to use networking and connections and a Facebook group, right? Like I love that he looked outside the box and went and found two good deals. And like we talked about, he's getting that train moving, so to speak, right? Yep. Yeah, super cool. Wouldn't it be great if your house plants paid rent while you were out of town?

I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there. Airbnb has a great feature called the co-host network, which makes hosting your home so easy. If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. These co-hosts are vetted locals who already have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests, creating your host space, and managing reservations.

So everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip. Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making. memory somewhere else. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Tax season reminder for all the real estate investors listening. If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, basically anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation. It's an IRS compliance strategy that lets you accelerate depreciation on your properties, which means

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All right. Before you guys get tired of hearing me and David talk to each other, or me just babble on, let's get to the third interview today with David Peret. All right, Mr. David Peret. What's up, dude? How you doing this show? Living the dream.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, so you and I go way back, along with David Green here, and by way back, like, I don't know, a year or so. You are living in the great state, my favorite state of Hawaii. Tell us about that. are you in Hawaii and then we'll get into your real estate.

Okay, so I am an active duty Marine. I've been in the Marine Corps for just shy of 10 years and they decided to send me to Hawaii for three years. So I got to get paid to live on one of the nicest bases in the world and spend some time on a beach that's basically a private community, not a bad gig. It's pretty awesome. So the first time I met David was like a year ago, right? We connected when I was in Hawaii the first time.

We did, right? Yeah, right? And we went surfing, and we've done that actually a few times now. David's actually a good surfer and as well as just a super genuinely good guy. So I was super excited to get you on the show and a super good investor. Even though you're just ramping up your investments while working a full-time job, while living across the seas. So that's why we're excited to talk to you today and kind of help other people who are just getting started

and figure out how to get their journey on. So without further ado, let's jump into it. So tell us about your very, very first real estate investment. Okay, so first real estate investment, I was a recruiter living in Little Town, Springfield, Missouri, and I can't even remember who it was. Somebody told me to read the book, Rich Dad, Bored Ed, right? And that starts everything for everyone. And I told them, I don't have time to read. So they told me to download Audible because I spend a lot of time driving from, I mean, as a recruiter, you're driving to high schools all over the place. And so I did, and I listened to it. And I want to say it was less than

two months from when I finished the book to when I closed on my first property. I just basically took away from the book to ask, how can I and take action? I figured I'd learn the hard way, if anything. So I was paying about $485 a month to live in a two-bed, one bath apartment. And I used an FHA loan, three and a half percent down to do a house hack on a duplex. I paid, after some negotiation, paid $81,000. So about $28, $2,900 out of pocket. And I had the one side rented for, I'll say it's 515 and the mortgage was 615. So I went from paying $4.85 a month to live in an apartment to, I think my total expenses were like $200 a month to own a two-bedroom duplex and have a shed and a porch and be able to tell my neighbors to be quiet because I own

the place. That's awesome. Super cool. So you house hacked your very first one. You bought a little duplex. Again, like we talk about that a lot of the show because house hacking is one of the I think one of the best ways to get started. I mean, not everyone has to do it, but man, if you can live for cheaper or potentially for free and learn how to be a landlord, learn how this whole real estate thing works, it's just awesome.

So, okay, so you bought a house hack. You lived in that while in the military and doing a recruiting thing. What happened next? Well, I got married, so I moved out of the duplex into my wife's house, which, funnily enough, she didn't have any idea she was doing this, but she did a burr.

So she bought a house that, somebody had actually OD'd in that was across the street from her dad. And she got it for pennies on the dollar, rehabbed it with family and stuff like that. And so we moved in there. And then we, since then, we've done a he lock refinanced, stuff like that. And we, you know, over time did a burr strategy with it, I guess. Live there for a little bit. And then it was like two months and off to Hawaii.

And then from Hawaii, we've been, I guess the next deal we did was actually the five acres. next door to that house. The neighbor decided to move out of state. And so we figured we wanted the five acres. It was originally less of an investment and more of a we want to own the five acres. So we don't get someone who builds a big house and ruins our view. But we turned it into an investment because we took out an agricultural loan on it. And we her dad's a cattle farmer. We have a little bit of cattle. And we actually moved cows onto the five acres. And we were going to do an annual payment. But we ended up doing like a semi-annual. nonetheless, every year we sell the cows and it pays off our entire year's mortgage and some pocket change.

So we, a joke, I know I've joked with you about the fact that we cattle financed our land. That's awesome. That's super cool. All right. That was fun. Dave, I'm going to need you to unpack some of this. You just use three acronyms, Burr, O.D, and Helock. Can you describe all three of these acronyms from me. Sorry.

Listeners, though, we're talking about. Sorry. Absolutely. I will revert to non-acronym usage as much as possible. So the burr is the buy rehab, refinance, repeat, and then, or in this case, instead of the refinance, we did the helock. So we bought it, we rehabbed it, we rented it out,

and then we did a helic instead of the refinance. So that helic is actually, we'll talk about my 10 unit in a little bit, but that HELOC is actually what paid for the down payment, the little down payment I had on that 10 unit. So the HELOC is a home equity line of credit. So we bought the house for, I think she bought it for $55,000 and then spent like $40,000 renovating it. And then we owe $91,000 on it. And we got it to praise for like $160,000. So the home equity line of credit allowed us to pull 70% of the value of the house.

house out as it's basically a checking account. I can write a check for it and then I pay it down with 3.4% interest. So it allowed us. We got $72,000 worth of money that we didn't touch. So that's actually more than what she bought the house for. So we didn't have to do anything for that money. And it's the cheapest money I've ever had. And anytime I want to buy something with it, I just write a check, which I had to remember how to do because we don't do that anymore. write a check and put it in the mail and then I pay my super super low interest that's not even amortized. So it's like the cheapest money you could ever get to buy a property. And then the final one, OD was overnose.

Overdose. I thought it was like overwhelmingly good deal or something. Yeah, yeah. So it was definitely more like silhouette of a guy who almost died in a bathroom. So nobody wanted to buy it. So she got it super cheap. He didn't die, but he definitely didn't feel like living there anymore. So I guess that's kind of like a taboo area, like probate.

Nobody wants to talk to, you know, nobody wants to buy a house that someone died in. But definitely. I mean, if it was like, if it was like guy comes in with an axe and, you know, took off a few heads, like that I would not want to buy. But like somebody overdoses in a house or they just die, pass away, whatever. I'm personally okay with that kind of thing. I don't know. What about you, David Green?

Well, let me ask you, did you have to disclose that to the tenants? Did you look up laws about like when someone passes away in that area, how long before you have to let someone know that somebody died here? Well, he didn't actually die. So we did not have to disclose it. But I want to say in the state of Missouri, I would have to double check on that. But I don't, I don't know the distance. I know you do have to disclose it for at least a certain amount of time. It's probably some generic five year mark.

But I would have to look that up. Yeah. So that's good to know. because, I mean, you've found a deal. You found a form of distress in the form of drug overdose, which is, you know, a unique way, but I like it. And you got yourself a deal there. But you do need to be aware when you're getting a deal.

You have to disclose certain things to your tenants or if you're planning on flipping the property to the buyers of the property. Brandon and I talk about this a lot where if you get a really good deal on your first deal or your second or your third, it will pay for your next deal. And that's exactly what you did. You take out equity from this house and basically gave yourself the cheapest loan that I know of in real estate, other than maybe like saving up all your birthday money if that counts and bought another house with it, right? And if you do that right and you steamroll it, you get a really good deal on the next deal.

You're going to have equity in that deal. You can either refinance it, take out a HELOC, sell it, whatever you're going to do, roll that money into your next deal. So you really only have to work really hard to get that first deal. Tell us a little bit about what you did to target in on that deal specifically, how you found it and why you pursued it. You want the duplex or the single family? The one that you took out the HELOC on. Gotcha. So that was actually a referral from a church. So it was just the neighborhood knew that this had happened. And then it was basically a, hey, let's contact them and see if they want to come back to the house or if they plan on selling it. And it was as simple as that. So this was you telling people, hey, this is what I'm looking for. Do you know of anybody who's in this situation? And like the universe just brought that right back to you when somebody found someone.

Well, this was actually the one that my wife did before we got married. And she was actually the one. So it was like her and her dad found it. And since it's in the neighborhood, her dad was like, hey, you should, you should buy that because we can help you fix it up. And then you can live near us. And so I don't even know that she was necessarily telling people she was looking so much as it just kind of came up. And then they were smart enough to say, that's a really good deal. We're going to jump on it.

And then from there after the refi or after the rehab, that's when we stepped in and said, hey, instead of just selling this when we move, how about we rent it out, make some profit, we can take out a home equity line of credit, and then that will be the jumping off point for the rest of our investing. Well, what's cool about home equity lines of credit is that, like, typically you can get up to 90%.

Back in the day, they'd go up to 120%, which is, you know, crazy. But, you know, you typically go up to 90% today. I see that quite often at super low rates. And then you only pay, like you mentioned this earlier, but I want to just reiterate, You only pay on it when you're using it. So it's kind of like a gigantic credit card in that way. And that might scare people, but it's just a gigantic amount of money you have sitting there.

It depends on how much equity you have, obviously. And then when you're ready, you just use it. And then you start paying on it. And when you do pay on it, it's super, super low. So I financed a number of deals that way over the years is using equity. In fact, I have a triplex. And I bought this like six years ago, didn't know how I was going to fund it, didn't have a job, didn't have any, you know,

W2 income, couldn't get a loan. But the deal was fantastic. So I contacted a friend of mine who I knew one to do real estate. I was like, hey, do you know, I'm looking for this deal, looking for a partner? Do you know anybody who would be interested? Of course, I knew he would be like, I'm interested. So he's like, I'm interested, right? But he's like, I don't have any money.

And I'm like, oh, okay, well, I was like, do you have a whole mic put a line of credit? He's like, well, of course, yeah, my house is paid off. And we just have a line of credit sitting there for like 100 grand. I'm like, oh, well, you could use that. And he, he's like, oh, yeah, you're right. So we bought the deal together for technically no money down because we used his line of credit. And then we as part of the cash flow from the property just paid his line of credit, which is like a couple hundred bucks a month.

Maybe not even that. I know it's not even that. It's like 50 bucks a month. It's tiny. Anyway, so like home equity lines of credit. I don't think people look at them enough is like a really, really powerful tool. So how did you, you mentioned a minute ago, you said the word 10 flex and you said you use the home equity line of credit for a 10 flex.

You tell us what was that sort of had that go in there? Because you're living in Hawaii at this point, right? Yeah, absolutely. So I would say creativity would be the word that I'd use for this duplex, or duplex the templates. So I was going home for Christmas and we decided that, hey, we're going home for Christmas. Let's turn it into a business trip and look for some properties. And so what I did was I went on list source and I got a list for a specific zip code that I knew I wanted to invest in of absentee homeowners.

So people who own the property but don't leave. live in it. Typically, investors or someone who inherited a property, I find they're more likely to want to be willing to negotiate a sale. So I sent a list out to, I think it was like 80 people. I got a bunch of different callbacks. But there was one guy who called me back and said, I do have a duplex. I'm not going to sell it to you. But I have a 10 unit. Would you be interested in looking at that? So I said, well, if we're going to be home on vacation anyway, I might as well look at a 10 unit. And that's exactly what we did. So we walked through. And And truth be told, I looked at two of the 10 units and the laundry room and the parking lot.

I was there for maybe 25 minutes. And I was like, hmm, the numbers seem to make sense. I'm going to have my realtor and my property manager walk through this in more detail. But first, I'm going to get it in contract. So we made an offer. The seller wanted it for, he wanted to sell it for $250,000. And we walked through, we ran some numbers. And honestly, 250 probably wouldn't have been a terrible deal for it.

the gross rent is like 4,100 at the time. So if you use the 1% rule, that's well over. So should have been like 410,000. It doesn't really work that way in Springfield. But we negotiated down. We got $225,000 as the contract price. And then as we were doing our due diligence, which keep in mind, I only looked at two units.

So I had my property manager walk through with the inspector. And so I had property manager and inspector walk through together. And they gave me their feedback. and again, still could have probably bought it for that price, but there was about $8,000 worth of stuff that needed to be done to it. And I had just finished reading the book, never split the difference. So I decided, I'm going to try some of these negotiation tactics and see if they work. And without getting into that, we turned the $8,000 that I was going to request in repairs into $12,500 that I got kicked back. And they just kind of did a weird deal where instead of giving me the $12,500 at closing,

they just took it off the sale price. So instead of $2.25, we closed it $212.5. But the bank had already approved the loan and the seller had already committed on the seller financing. So what that did for me was my down payment on the property went from $25,000 to $10,900. So, yeah, I mean, if you factor everything in, I paid like 5.05% down on a 10 unit apartment with a commercial loan seller financing. And that was out of the HELOC.

So realistically, my bank account didn't see a dent. And we walked away with the property that cash flows like $1,000 a month, $1,200 a month. That's awesome. Yeah, there's a lot in there I want to unpack. But essentially, you use creativity, use a combination of different creative methods to get this thing down. So first of all, you negotiated a credit for the discount. The bank, you know, a little bit of seller financing in there. And then the bank approved a little bit, you know, they were okay with you not putting a full 20% down

because of how it all worked out, which is great. I'm assuming this is like a small local community bank there or was one of the big national banks. Absolutely. So I was actually working with a larger bank and they just took forever to get me answers on anything. And when I did get an answer, it wasn't ever really what I wanted to hear or the full answer. And so while I was working with them and I'd been working with them for the whole due diligence process, it'd probably been like 20, 30 days at this point. I called a local bank, another local bank that somebody recommended.

and they had me approved for the loan in like four days. And it was a better rate. It was 85% of the purchase price rather than 80. And then the seller covered the other 10. So yeah, it worked out great. Honestly, that's like what David talks about. That's a huge just shout out to referrals because that was literally somebody I knew said, hey, this guy's great.

Why don't you call him? And I called him. And that was the best decision I've ever made. I'll probably use him for everything. That's super cool. All right. So, yeah, you put together the 10plex. And while you're in Hawaii, you did all this from Hawaii essentially, right?

Yeah. I mean, because I know that because we were sitting out there on the waves talking about this deal, waiting for the next wave to come. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. How did you buy a property in Missouri when you're in Hawaii? Shouldn't you have to only buy property in Hawaii if that's where you live? Is this where I'm, I think I'm supposed to give you a plug here.

There's this book by this guy. No, so realistically, the way you do it is with your team. If you have a good agent, you have a good property manager, which I have a phenomenal property manager, I could tell you all kinds of stories about times that I thought I had an issue and I'd call her. In fact, last week, I got a letter saying that there was trash outside my apartment. And I called her. She's like, oh, yeah, we took care of that three days ago.

We just didn't call you because it wasn't too much money. Perfect. I don't even get bothered. It's great. So, realtor, property manager, insurance agent, lawyer, who, who is? your team is, but realistically, I trust all of them and I can make a phone call and have my realtor, my agent, my agent, my inspector walk through the property and call me and they will say, yes, no. I also have a couple buddies that do some contract work that can do bids. And so being

able to have to have people in place that you trust allows me to, I mean, I can MLS surf, I can send out letters. It really doesn't matter. I'm fully comfortable trusting them. And the other thing is that I won't look at a property until the numbers make sense, right? So I won't send my agent out somewhere unless I've already run. There's three like super basic things that I'll that I'll run numbers on. And if it doesn't meet those criteria, I won't waste their time. And then I don't have to worry about it being a total, you know, unless the place is just totally falling apart. I know it's going to be an okay deal. There you go. I like it. All right. So kind of what comes next for you then? Like, what do you see down the road in terms of your investing?

How far do you want to get? Do you want to stay in the military working full-time long-term? Or what's kind of the plan? Okay, so there's a whole lot of stuff, I guess, involved in answering that question. So we'll try to make it as short as possible. So military, most likely going to stay until retirement. I almost didn't this year around, but I realized that the reasons I'm staying in the Marine Corps are for things that I won't be able to get most jobs elsewhere.

So, like, the adventure, the thrill of travel, the people. people I work with and just the culture that is the Marine Corps, right? It's not got anything to do with the paycheck or the job. That's, I mean, I could make that money, maybe not anywhere, but, but I could find a place in Missouri where I could live cheap enough that it wouldn't even need to make that kind of money. It's just, I love what I do. The investing side of things, we actually close in nine days on a flip out here in Hawaii.

I did a like a wholesale. I found a property that nobody seemed to be buying fast enough. And I sent it to a mutual friend of ours, Corey. And he was all about it. So we decided to, we were going to go ahead and close on it. And I actually pulled, basically pulling my HELOC. I'm playing the bank, I guess. So I'm taking my three and a half percent interest,

He lock loan. And I'm going to throw it into the property with him. And I'll earn 12% interest plus a kickback when the property sells as being his partner. plus, you know, like a wholesale fee. And so we'll partner up on that and I'll end up earning some interest on the HELOC. So that's the next deal. Long term. That's cool.

Yeah, long term, long term, more buy and hold stuff in Springfield. The goal is when I retire from the military after 20 years, so like 38, 40 years old, the goal is to not ever have to work again unless I want to. There's also some other stuff in play. So I started a blog somewhat recently, which is kind of kind of your, you're doing. And that was really just, I kind of realized when I get out of the Marine Corps, I'm going to want, I guess purpose is the word. I'm going to want something that I have to wake up and do. And I felt like a community where I could talk about things that have benefited me.

The things that I wish I'd learned at a younger age would be the way to do that. So we got that. And then the other, I guess, thing that's going on is the other guy's idea, which is that I'm currently sitting in a class to earn my real estate license to sit on the side and figure I'm already in the real estate community. I already know people in the area. I might as well make a little money on the side by selling houses as well as just buying houses. Super cool. There's so much in there that we're not in the time to dive really deep.

But a couple things I want to point out. First of all, I love that you're getting your license that to get super smart, especially when you live in an area that's really expensive because if you can sell one or two houses a year, it will pay for your license many times over. Whereas you live in Detroit and you have a license, you might make $1,000 on a sale. It might not be worth having it.

unless you're going to do volume, right? So I think that's super cool. Also, you mentioned this flip that you're doing now. Kind of the backstory, because I got to see the backstory, you sent that deal over to me once. You're like, hey, nobody's buying this. Like, I think it's a good deal. I looked at it.

I looked at, I'm like, this does look like a good deal, but I don't know if Hawaii's market at all. So I passed on it, simply because I don't know the market. So you brought it to Corey, who we're going to get Corey on the show at some point, too, because he's legit, super cool investor dominated in Hawaii and doing some amazing flips out there. But what I think is so neat is that you're working,

You went out there and hustled and found a deal. Then you used that as like collateral to build a relationship with an experienced flipper that you can now learn from. So you build a relationship. You brought value to me. It wasn't just showing up, be like, hey, will you teach me everything you know for free and waste all your time with me? It was like, hey, here's a really good deal.

I think you should pursue this. And then, hey, do you mind if I like work with you on it somehow? I can provide, I can bring some money or I can bring some labor or materials. You know, whatever a person can do to bring value, you did that. you brought this guy massive value, and how you brought you into the deal, you're going to see everything how this is done. And that is going to be worth more than any flip would ever pay, you know, in terms of profit. You'll get so much more value.

So anyway, very, very cool. And then last thing I want to bring up is you also started a local meetup while I was up in Hawaii as well. Tell us about that. Why did you do that? And how does that work? I think a lot of people would benefit from running meetups like you do. Okay. So Brandon talks about in like all of his videos that if you go to biggerpockets.com slash events,

you'll find events in your local area. And then he always says, if you can't find an event, go make one. Well, I realize that in Oahu, which for those of you who aren't familiar with the island, I live on this side and like the whole rest of the world lives on this side. And it's not a big island, but with traffic, it takes a little bit to drive across. And most of the meetups were during the week at like 6 o'clock, I don't get off work in time to drive over there, just if I hanging out for two hours, drive back and not see the family.

So I decided there's not one over here. Let's make there be one over here. And so I posted it on Bigger Pockets event and my little Facebook group. And I said, hey, we're going to do this meetup. It's going to be at this awesome place called Grace and Growlers where you can drink adult beverage if you would like. And I'm going to buy pizza and bring pizza. So if you want to have pizza, have an adult beverage or not have an adult beverage and talk about real estate with other people, come hang out and have some pizza. And we had, I think we had like 11 people on the first month.

You were one of those. And then we had the second month. I showed up. And there were only a couple people in the place. And people just started showing up. And all of a sudden we realized, oh, man, this venue's no longer going to work. We had it. We had like 22 to 25.

I don't know. I couldn't keep track because we were like seated all over the place because there wasn't enough room for us to sit together. And so this next. month in two weeks we're going to meet at a church one of the guys who is at the event it works volunteers with the church and they let him use the cafeteria so we're going to pull some tables together hang out there won't be able to have it all beverages but we will still have pizza maybe i'll fill in some donuts or something to make it up and uh yeah we're going to hang out network

talk talk shop and honestly it's going to be a lot of fun it's it's i think networking is honestly one of the i mean there's there's some key tenants to anything you do in life but i used to as a recruiter. I always said, if they like you, they'll join. And I don't mean that like you need to try to make yourself likable. I mean that like if you become a person that's worth being around and you develop yourself and you bring value to people and you genuinely care about talking to people, good things are going to come your way, whether that's from a referral or networking or just the fact that you're going to learn something. I mean, shoot, I met you a year and a half ago and I'm on a podcast, which pretty cool

it's awesome yeah that's that's awesome and so yeah I I do stress the meetups all the time I know David green here does as well because he hosts meetup as well like they're so valuable I can't like over hype this

because like they're just so incredibly valuable like even at the one that you went like the one that you hosted I showed up there with your very first one I'm talking with this older couple like not older I mean they were just older than I but like this couple that was like established living in the area and they're like talking about how they have this amazing

contractor who's just unbelievably good, super hardworking, fair rates. And all of a sudden, now I'm like, I got, you know, I got connected to these people. And now I'm looking at a deal. I'm trying to work in Hawaii right now, as you guys know. And as soon as I'm like, oh, and this, guess what contractor I'm going to be calling to see if you can go over and work on my deal? Like, it's like those things that cost. And then it wouldn't it cost me, like, $2 for like, I don't think I, I don't think I

ate or drank that night. It was totally free. Like, I was like, you didn't have my pizza? It just, I don't think, I mean, I did have sensitive pizza. Anyway, it was, yeah, I'm sorry. Anyway, go to Biggerpockets.com, such events. It's totally, like, most of the events there are free. Most of them are put on just by people just like David or David here that are saying,

hey, let's get together and talk real estate because we know that we all help each other by getting together. There are also maybe paid ones on there. I don't know. And if you have to pay a few bucks, he cares, right? Like show up, network, talk to people and get some food and drink. So, all right, with that, we got to move on and get to the world famous. Famous Four. All right, but before we get to today's famous four, let's hear a quick word from Mindy Jensen on what's going

on this week on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Monday's guests join us during the first half of their gap year, a pre-FI road trip around America. Becky and Noah didn't grow up rich, but carefully planned out their life to avoid student debt and chose employable in-demand degrees that allow them to earn high salaries. After discovering FI on Reddit, they made a few tweaks to their lifestyle, quit their jobs, and hit the open road. This episode shows that financial independence isn't just a pipe dream.

And while Becky and Noah aren't there yet, they're well on their way. All right. And now back to the famous four. All right. Make sure you guys check out that money podcast. And be sure to subscribe to that podcast. If you were like on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel.

If you're on iTunes or Apple, I mean, or Google, hit the subscribe button. It helps us out a lot just like ratings and reviews do. So both that show and this show as well. So with that, let's get to today's famous four.

Number one, what is your favorite real estate related book? Okay. So we're just going to go with this. guy, the long distance real estate investing. I know I didn't want to give him the plug earlier, but it was just because I was going to steal my own thunder. So and the reason I picked that book, don't get me wrong, there are a ton of great books. And honestly, I had to think about it last night because I realized that you were going to ask me that and I hadn't got an answer. And the reason

I picked that one is not necessarily. So I don't know that I would say that's the first book you should read. But I would say that if you have any desire to invest out of state, that is the first book you should read. So I had been investing out of state for however long, two years, three years, and I've had a system and it was working great. And then I read this book and realized it really wasn't working that great. And if I'm being honest, I was looking at a property in a different state the other day. And I literally sat down with the book and typed out the emails that David had suggested sending and sent them and they worked. And I had a super high value real estate agent call me or email me back and shot me not only that deal, but like three others that were pretty

solid. So just being able to refine what I was already doing and find out things. I mean, I didn't even know about rentometer, which I don't know how I didn't know about that. But just things to, it's really streamlined my processes. So that book. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. By the way, when I was at your house, we had dinner at David's house when I was out there. And, I go in the kitchen and they're sitting on the counter was this book. I took a picture when I snapped it and sent it to David Green. I was like, look, you're famous. I was not being in my house constitutes famous, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Yeah, super cool. All right. I don't see any reason why we should keep going. Thank you, David. That was great. I think the people have got everything they need. So side note, I reviewed David's book on Amazon right after I finished reading it. And like a week goes and it's a non-year-old.

anonymous, right? No one knows who it is. And like a week later, I see him post on Facebook about this awesome review he got. I'm like, hey. Oh, that's very. Nice. I like this guy. He knows his mustache. All right. Dave, tell us about your favorite business book. All right. So again, tried to narrow it down. And so I came up with the Miracle Morning as one. And the reason for that is not necessarily a business book. It's more of a lifestyle book is because it basically told me, I was waking up at five in the morning to work out. and it told me, hey, you should wake up at four in the morning to do more stuff. And so now I wake up at four in the morning every day because that like two hour window before the family wakes up is time that it's me time, right?

I don't have to feel bad that I'm not hanging out with the kids. I can read a book, work on the blog, find a deal, fall back asleep on the couch while reading a book and no one's going to care. The other book, and this was probably the more business related is the 80-20 principle. And the reason for that book is because it applies not only to myself, but to the military career. So in the military, a lot of people do things the hard way, not because they want to do things the hard way, just because that's how it was always done. And so I like to try to find, like, what are the most important things and how do I knock that out to be effective? And then the rest will fall into place.

Well, that helps in the Marine Corps side. It also helps greatly in the civilian side, because now I'm able to streamline work. which allows me more time to streamline real estate, which allows me more time to streamline personal development. And I think that single-handedly being able to pick out like the one thing that'll knock out the most for the least amount of effort is, you know, it'll save you.

Anything that saves you time is, is a worthwhile investment. That's brilliant. Before you move on real quick, speaking of books, did you guys watch the Jimmy Kimmel bit that they did, I think came out this week or something like that. Do you say it?

So, okay, so they go on the streets like interview people. They do this like random, like interviewing people in the, street and they asked just a bunch of random people, can you name a book? Like any book, just name a book. And like legitimately, tons of people could not name a book. And people were like, uh, the Lion King. And like they could not. And then finally some guy goes, uh, Moby Dick. No way, no, no, that's the author. That's the author. He wrote up. Like they couldn't, like people legitimately could

not name a book. Anyway, I thought that was funny. That is really funny. That just, that just means the two of you aren't marketing enough. That's a good point. I guess. They all. I don't need to name our books. I was waiting. I was like, come on. Name the book on rental property investing. Anyway, all right, moving on. Also, let me add, as far as your miracle morning, I know that you do it in a closet. You literally lock yourself into a closet away from everybody else. And I don't know if you're still doing that, but you did it for a while. And if you can do a miracle morning in a closet, then there's no excuse for not doing a miracle morning. Yeah. It's a full-size closet. I mean, my desk fits in there. We'll make it sound a little better.

but yeah. That's your closet time. I have to come out of closet every day. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for doing that for this show. All right. Tell us about some of your hobbies. You're in Hawaii.

I can only imagine what you might be doing all the time. Well, when I'm not busy having my appendix removed, I like to surf. Hiking, hiking, surfing, networking, going to the beach. We just bought this awesome little. It's called the dad-powered, like, little surfboard thing that I drag my kid along in the beach. Yeah. Roderick's company. Yeah.

We should give me a shout out. What is that? Dad power. I'm going to look at up. Dad powered. You should check it out. I have some awesome photos and videos. I'll probably post bigger pockets of my kid rolling around it.

That thing's sweet. So dragging him around on his sled while he smiles. Surfing, hiking, really, the biggest one. Dadpowered. Dadpowered.com, by the way. Yeah, it's like a little sled that you, like, pull little kids on. It's amazing. He got him.

He gave me one when I was in Hawaii. Yeah, do you guys check out of dadpowered. com and get your kid one. It's super cool. definitely. All right. All right. Yeah, very cool.

All right. Number four, my last question of the day. What separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Taking action. So I'm a huge believer in just learning the hard way, as I like to call it. But the reality isn't learning the hard way. The reality is that I found every time I think about doing something, I learn, which is great, but I don't do anything.

But every time I stop thinking about doing something and just, just go do it. Everything seems to fall into place for me. Like the 10plex was way out of my comfort zone. And I had a duplex on the table that I was like, oh, I can buy this, you know, no big deal. And I could have bought it. And I could have made $100 in cash flow.

But I went all in for this 10plex, figuring I'd learn the hard way and we'd see what happened. And I ended up buying it for less than I would have put down on the duplex and making like 10 times as much every month in cash flow. So I would say just taking action, just do it. you know, if you ask the right questions, you'll learn. Whether you learn the hardware or not, it's better than getting stuck in the analysis paralysis trap

and just not doing anything. Very good advice. That's one reason I really like you, David, is that like whenever I talk to you, you're just like, yeah, so I was thinking about doing some direct mail so I'd have sent out a whole bunch of direct mail. And I'm like, how many people do that in reality? People are like, oh, yeah, I was thinking about doing direct mail.

And I'm going to keep thinking about it for the next several years. And I do it wrong sometimes. I sent out 10 the other day and I got seven back in the mail. apparently wrote the wrong address on all of them. That's awesome. Well, at least you take action. There's more than most people do. So, yeah, learn from David Perret here and take action.

Well, David, it's been awesome. Really, really good to have you today. I hope people enjoy it and your story and learn something from it and can take some action in their own life. So last question, where can, I'm going to steal your question, David Green, but where can people find out more about you? Which blog and your Instagram and all that good stuff? I get to shamelessly plug.

So they are all piloted from military to millionaire. So the blog is from military to millionaire.com and the Facebook and Instagram both have that on there. I have a YouTube channel as well that I just started. However, that's name is like paintballer DP2 because I just did when I was in high school and it won't let me change it back until I get over 100 subscribers. So if you want to go subscribe, then I can change my name and it'll match. Helping man out. Come on, people. Help them out. But you can find that through the Facebook and the Instagram. That is, so there was a paintballer DP 1 and you had to be DP 2. Yeah. No, no, it's actually worse than that.

There was a paintballer DP 1 at DP, David Peret, by the way, if you can't figure that out. There was a paintballer DP 1 and it was me and I lost my password and then I decided that that was a great name. So I did a second one instead of just upgrading to a normal name. And the sad thing is that I was never good at paintball. So it was just like I had fun once and it was around the time frame where I was building the, you know, back from the instant messenger days. And yeah. Yeah. That's hilarious.

All right. All right. Well, thank you, David. It's been fun. We'll see you around. Absolutely. All right. And that was our final interview.

I like that guy a lot. He's a good buddy of mine. We did some surfing together. I know you were. We did some surfing with us as well. So, yeah, David, good guy. Dave is a solid guy and his business is just as serious as his mustache. There you go.

You know, David actually, we didn't talk about this, but he was recently on an episode of Hawaii 50 because he was an extra in the background on Hawaii 50. So I'm going to see if I can't find that clip and put it in the show notes on this show at Biggerpockets.com. If I can't find it, you know, sorry. He played a Russian spy in a show. Yes. Very serious man, Dave. He plays good Russian. I don't think he talked like that, though.

But anyway, I love today's show. I love talking with newer investors who are getting their feet wet jumping in because it reminds us like of the principles, right? Because like you and I have been doing this for like, you know, like a decade almost, right? Like we've been doing this a long time. But it's good to kind of refresh with, you know, what are those first initial steps? What's the fears? What's the thoughts, the scary things that come up? So just kind of learning from these three guys, Bill, Jake and David.

I don't know. I really enjoyed it. Well, your first steps are the most important. And that's why we want to keep coming back to covering those because, while we look at the guys, like we use the bodybuilding analogy a lot that are in incredible shape, and we see him working out at the gym, and they're working out so hard. And it's like, wow, look at that guy. I guarantee you the workouts he does now are not nearly as hard as his first ones. He was first getting started. I mean, that's where the battle is won. Can you get through that initial stage of getting that train moving?

Because once it's moving, it doesn't take as much energy to keep it moving. And like, and success just kind of comes easy. But you got to get moving in the very beginning. And these first steps are so much more important than the hundred step. There you go. So true. All right, guys. So thank you so much for joining us today. Could you guys do us a favor? If you've not yet subscribed to the podcast, it matters. It actually helps us a ton if you actually click the subscribe button. So please do so.

iTunes, YouTube, whatever, Stitcher, Google. Subscribe to the show. You'll get it automatically delivered to you and it doesn't cost you a dime. So please do that. And then, you know, follow us over on Instagram at David Green 24 and at Beardy Brandon. That's our Instagrams. Sound good. Anything you want to add?

DG before we get out of here. I just want to talk about in the beginning. The quick tip was masterminding with other investors and letting other people know what you do. You want to put yourself in a community where other people are like-minded and keeping yourself pumped up. My favorite way to do that is to share my favorite podcast episode with somebody else and say, hey, check out this cool thing I'm doing. It's like inviting your friend to the gym. Your friend probably won't go by themselves, but they would go if you invited them. Now you have a workout partner and you got someone to spot you and bounce ideas off of and keep you encouraged.

So think about in your life right now. Who do I know that I can share this with that is going to love me forever. as I did. Send them the podcast, ask them to listen to it. Start the conversation right there and boom, you just found yourself a mastermind buddy and you never know what that can lead to. I love it. That's like a second quick tip of the day, but we'll take it. All right. Well, with that, let's get out of here. Until next time, you want to take us out? This is David Green for Brandon, like a train, 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. Our new episodes come out Monday.

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