BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 309: Closing 75 Deals Your First Year by Simply Modeling Others with Steven Pesavento

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

Have you ever considered flipping houses for cash but aren’t sure where to start? If so, today’s episode is perfect for you! Brandon and David interview Steven Pesavento, a long distance flipper who’s doing 75 deals a year. Steven shares several of his tips for success, including just what he does to keep his pipeline full of deals, how he follows up with qualified leads, and the strategy he used to get good at closing deals working for someone else! You’ll love Steven’s system for choosing the best market to flip in, how he systematically ramped up his business, and how he built a team from the ground up (including each team member’s job title and description)! This episode is chock full of specific, actionable advice that will apply to newbies and experienced pros alike. Download and listen today! How he finds his deals, where he is consistent and wins the long game, how he flips 75 houses a year, when to grit and when to quit, how to know when it’s time to ramp up your business, how to build and scale your business, the order in which you should hire, what makes up an all-star team, why repetitions are so important, and what to look for in a partner to help grow your business. In This Episode We Cover: Steven’s background and how he got into real estate Learning through modeling successful investors The very first deal (which was not that great) How he set his goals Knowing the right time to get serious Direct mail and other marketing methods that worked for him Partnering with great people From zero to 75 deals within two years Raising money from private investors Renting his personal home on Airbnb to pay the bills Living frugally to get the business running Not taking a paycheck until year two so he could invest in people and growth And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Gift BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Jobs Tony Robbins’ Website BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Podcast 307: The Science Behind Setting and Achieving Big Goals BiggerPockets Hard Money Lenders Tony Robbin’s Events Amazon Books Mentioned in this Show 90 Days of Intention by Brandon Turner (Journal) Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss The ONE Thing by Gary Keller Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins Fire Round Questions Does anyone know of a way to finance a house where I could sell it in 3 months without hard money or cash? What kind of presentation do you use when trying to get funding for your flips? Any tips and tricks you use to ensure that you won’t go over budget during your rehab? How do I qualify for a loan to fix and flip houses without savings or good credit? Tweetable Topics: “It’s not about how I may get rich, but it’s about how am I going to learn everything that I possibly can.” (Tweet This!) “We’re not doing anything special, we’re just doing it.” (Tweet This!) “It’s a very simple business, but it’s not that easy.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Steven Steven’s BiggerPockets Profile Steven’s Company Website Steven’s Facebook Profile Steven’s Twitter Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 309. Two years ago, I was sitting on a boat in Minnesota on a fishing trip, listening to Bigger Pockets podcast, soaking up everything I could. And I didn't know anything about this industry. And now I've done 150 deals. And most people will never do that in their whole life. And I'm not special. I just ended up working with some great people,

found out a system that worked on how to grow a business. And every day I'm out there learning. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

What's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. David, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing great, man. I've been working very hard. I'm putting out more content for free for the masses. I've actually noticed that. I have noticed that.

You've had like videos and blog posts like you're showing me up. I'm kind of offended. Yeah, basically. But see, like you do other things that matter to you like have a family, raise a kid, right? I don't have to worry about anything. My family is bigger pocket. So I'm trying to do everything I can to provide for them and share all this stuff that

we paid the painful lessons to learn with the people. But it takes a lot of time to do that. You have to edit videos. You have to publish them. You have to come up with ideas. So I am looking to hire someone to help me be a content publisher or maybe like a marketing person. So if anyone out there is listening and know someone who has experience or has skill with branding,

marketing, content publishing can help us figure out ways to make more content and put it out there. Please contact me because we're looking to hire. Very cool. And I will also say since you brought it up, we are hiring at Bigger Pockets for a number of roles as well, including a few roles that are going to work directly with me on my team at bigger pockets, which is kind of fun. So if you're interested in hanging out with me and, you know,

working it'd be fun bigger pockets.com slash jobs you can always check out listings there'll be some fun stuff coming up in the coming weeks and into the new year so with that speaking of the new year and the holiday season that is come upon us if you're listening to this when it comes out let's get to today's quick tip all right today's quick tip is very simple we are having a one day pro christmas we'll call it a pre-christmas sale on friday the 21st of december if you're listening to us in the future that sale might not apply who knows maybe we'll have another one coming up. But if you want to check out that sale, go to biggerpockets.com slash gift, G-I-F-T, because it is our gift to you. I'm not going to tell you what the sale is exactly, because I want to

tease you to actually go there. Go to biggerpockets.com slash gift and check it out. And if you're listening to this in the future, go there anyway, because like I said, there might be another gift for you. Who knows? I don't know. I can't tell the future. But I can tell you the future of today's show because today's show we have an amazing guest lined up who has a great story of going from nothing to 75 deals in his very first year it's crazy he walks through the entire marketing he used the team he hired what the postcard says he uses all that stuff so you guys are going to love today's show a lot of property managers think their job is answering tenant emails and coordinating repairs that's not the job the job of a property manager is protecting and growing your

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NREG works exclusively with real estate investors. They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow, and why insurance should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. As we get to today's show, remember, if you enjoy this content,

Make sure you share it on your Facebook or your, you know, Twitter, your Instagram or whatever you use. Share it. Talk about it. And make sure to rate and review us in iTunes. Give us a little Christmas present of your own. So with that, let's get to today's show with our guest, Stephen Pesavento. All right. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Good to have you here. All right. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So I hear I hear good things that you've been kind of crushing it lately with your real estate investing. And before we started recording here, I heard that you've read my books, You haven't read David's book, but you invested a distance. So, you know, I don't know how that works, but we're going to, we're going to dig into that today.

Does that sound good? That sounds good to me. All right. All right. Well, let's start at the beginning. Why and how did you get into real estate? You know, just like so many other people, I had this dream of owning investment properties and living life where you're making some passive income. And I kept making all these excuses on why I couldn't do it.

So for years and years, I never took the leap. And then finally one day I had this realization, I can't seem to get rid of this thought about real estate. I need to just go. I need to just take some action and just make things happen. And so about two and a half years ago, a little less than two and a half years, I decided to push my cards all in and go after this real estate thing. And so in the last two years, we've bought and sold 150 houses in two different markets while living remotely. Wow. And I never had any experience doing real estate investing before that.

Wow. That's awesome. All right. So where do you live and what market are you investing in? So I live in Denver, Colorado now. When I started the company, I lived in Southern California. It's a beautiful place out here, Brandon. It is.

It is. Yeah, what's the weather like today? Is it like 12 below, you know? It is like 60 degrees, but it's actually cloudy. It's never cloudy in Denver, but we'll take a cloudy day every now and then. That is true. You guys had the opposite when I was in Washington. We had 300 days of clouds a year.

You guys have 300 days of sun. No, Denver, the funny thing about Denver is, and we'll get back to real estate, It's like you guys will have like negative 12 degrees and then the next morning it'll be like 78 degrees and everyone's in shorts and tank top. And then that night it goes back to snowing and like you can't just predict anything in Denver. So I don't know. That's the best. Yeah, I don't know if you say so. All right.

So you live in Denver and where are you investing? You said. So we invest in Raleigh, North Carolina and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis, my home state. Well, are you guys going to get all Minnesota accents on us now? Also my home state. Is it really? Where are you from?

Yeah, I was born in Burnsville. No way. I grew up around the Twin Cities. No way. I was, St. John's. Look at you. We probably played you in sports. I went to North Branch up in about, I don't know, half hour north of the cities.

Anyway, all right. So you invest in. Why do you choose those markets and then we'll go into your first deal? Yeah, so I was living in Southern California when I decided to take the leap. And I, the way that I got started was I started going to some events. And I wanted to find somebody who I could learn from. So the person that I was working with locally started kind of copying everything that she was doing. And it was not working.

In about six weeks, I had written about 85 offers on the MLS, give or take. And I didn't get any of those deals, except two. And they were awful. The reason I got them accepted was because I offered way too much money. So once I did the inspection, I realized they were definitely not deals. And I started doing some marketing locally. And I realized I didn't have the budget to get the kind of return that I was looking for. I'd sent 3,000 letters.

I got 15 phone calls. I didn't have a lot of money to work with. And Southern California market's a pretty tough market to get into. And I started looking for models of people who are succeeding elsewhere. And I realized that if I went to the Midwest or maybe the South, that my dollars would go a lot farther. And so I started modeling some people that were doing exactly what I wanted to do. And I realized that I had to take the leap and just go out of state. So I thought, well, shoot, I'm going to have to move.

I'm going to have to move to Minnesota. I'm going to have to move to North Carolina to get this going. And then I decided to partner. Decided a partner with somebody else who already knew some of the parts of the business, but they really didn't know the marketing piece. And they didn't really know how to go find properties off market and go direct to seller. And so I kind of came up with this system that I had ripped off from other people who were doing what I wanted to do. And we just started doing it. We just started following exactly what other people were doing and put it into, place and it took, you know, quite a few months before we got our first deal and really got

moving. But once we started closing deals, we poured everything that we made right back into marketing and we created a snowball effect. And so in that first year, we closed 75 deals between those two states. Wow. All right. So first thing I want to point out here, and I'm no, David's probably going to jump with this too, but this idea of modeling, right? Like a lot of people, like, if you're going to go start, let's say you have this cool idea, you're like, I'm going to go start a dog walking business for, you know, people who, I don't know, whatever, who have like purple hair, right? Like, you're like making that up. Like, you have no idea what you're doing.

You're kind of, but with real estate, one thing I love about real estate investing is that you can just completely rip off and steal exactly what other people are doing. And it'll probably work for you. Like, there's no guarantees, of course, in this game. But like, you were like, hey, what's working for them? I'm going to go figure out what they're doing and just do what they're doing. Right. So is that, is that how you, I mean, like, is that always how you've operated? your whole life or is that something you've like you picked up on?

I mean, how did you get that mentality to just model what other people are doing? So I started learning this. Yeah, definitely probably within the last five or six years. It's something that I've looked at others for models, but one of my favorite mentors, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, some of these people, what they talk about is, let's just learn from others. And your models don't have to be people that are right in your neighborhood that you can go and see every day.

There are people just like, like you and me, where people who are outdoing an action or an activity. And this is the first time that we've met, but I've listened to 200 plus podcasts of bigger pockets before I got started. And I learned a lot from these other people were already taking action and doing it. And so that's essentially what I did here. And for example, in Southern California, I had heard an investor, a fix and flipper on a podcast. I saw that she was speaking locally. And I went to approach her. And the way that I approached her was with value. So at the end of the meeting when she got finished talking, I walked up to her and I noticed that she had this really terrible looking website.

And before I got into real estate, I was in management consulting and I built websites and did digital marketing. And I thought to myself, well, I don't have a lot of money. I don't want to pay for some course or do something like that. I want to find somebody who's already doing what I want to do. And I turned around and I offered her this website. And I said, you know, usually this, I'd charge about 10 to 15,000 for this. But if you just let me follow you around for a couple months and just let me just be close to you

and kind of hear how the deals work and what happens, I think. couldn't even finish the pitch before she had her hand out to shake to make it a deal. And within those first few months, I was able to see firsthand, how do you deal with contractors? How do you end up putting the numbers together? How do you go and find discount cabinets? And how do you put that all together into a design that's going to end up being a beautiful place? And so that was one of the first people that I modeled in real estate on a personal level where I was able to ask questions. And that really helped me kind of take that next step. Yeah, we should just stop for a minute and point out, how brilliant that approach was.

We're always telling people you need to bring value. And then what I find is people approach me or they approach Brandon and they say, Hey, how can I bring you value? And that doesn't really work because now you're giving me a job. Like, how can I figure out a way that you can help me without knowing anything about you or what you're good at, which means you're basically asking for a free mentorship or I have to teach you how to help me and assuming you can do it well. It never goes well, right, especially for busy people.

Instead, Stephen approached someone and said, I know how to do this. It looks like it could help you. Can I just do it for you and you can tell me if you like it? That is brilliant. The other person doesn't have to figure out what would I use you for. How could you help me? They don't have to interview you to find out what your skills are. And if they don't like what you made, it's no skin off their back.

They don't have to use it. There was someone that approached me the same way. His name is Dave Vanderpull. And he makes like 3D animations for movies and stuff. And he said, hey, I noticed that you could use some marketing materials for your business. Why don't I make you this like 3D cool, 16. explaining what the David Green team is, and he made it for me. He spent 200 hours doing this thing, and it came out awesome, right? Do you think I'm more likely to send him deals that come my way or

mentor him or give him advice? Like, of course I am, right? He made it very easy for me. And everyone who's listening can stop and ask themselves, what am I good at? We're all good at something. You're an analyzer. You're a creative person. You have experience in something or other things. You're a handy person. If you know what you're good at, then that's what you should be telling people this is where I can help you. Hey, I'm really handy. If you ever need any work on one of your rentals done, give me a call. I can come help you out and maybe show you how to do it or something like that. Much better approach than just, hey, what do you need?

Yep, totally agreed. I love that. Absolutely. All right, so let's walk into your first deal. I mean, like, the very first thing you did, do you remember what, what was that flip? Well, the very first deal I did was a struggle. So when I finally decided to take the leap and start marketing in North Carolina, I was out of state and I was doing pretty much everything myself, right?

I had a partner who once we got the deal, we were going to do some work on it and find a way to really monetize that. But up front, I started sending some direct mail and I wasn't getting a ton back because it takes some time with direct mail. But I had gone on Craigslist. I went every place that you might be able to find people that you can just dial a number. And I got this woman on the phone and we ended up getting that property under contract. And for about two months, we sat trying to find a buyer for it.

So it was a wholesale. We were looking to make some quick money so we could roll that right back into marketing and keep growing. And about two months later, after a lot of work, I made $4,500. And I've made a lot more on wholesale since then. But it was some of the best money that I ever made because it finally came together. And it proved that, hey, I can really do this and I could make a living doing this. I can really build a team around that income. Yeah.

I love that. You know, one thing that, I mean, I did a ton of research, and I've been doing a ton of research on, like, goal setting. In fact, we just did a podcast a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what episode number this is compared to that one, but we did know a few weeks ago on, like, you know, what actually makes people succeed in their goals. And one of the things we talked about is, like, one of the most important thing you is get little wins.

Like, the more little, the faster you can achieve a little win, the better, even if it's not a, you know, a home run, even if it's not something significant, that's what separates people who stick with their goals versus those who don't. So I love that. You said that like even, you know, like, that's the best, some of the best money you can make because it's something, right? Even if it's not a big deal, it got you motivated then. It got you a little bit of money to dump back into it.

So I think that's fantastic. Do you have any advice for people who are in the same shoes right now that they're looking to get started? They don't have a lot of money. And they're like, all right, so I just need to get that first little win. I need to figure out how to get that first deal, even if it's only $4,500 bucks. How do I do that? I think first you have to take a step back and ask yourself, why do you want any of this stuff

and get really clear on, on what you're going after. and why you want that and make that really real. Make it as real as possible because most of the reason why people don't succeed is because they never push through and persevere. And if you take a hard look at why you really want something and make that real and ask yourself questions like how is this going to make my wife or my daughter or my son or my mom or my dad or my friend or someone else around you, how is that going to make them feel if you succeed or how is that going to make them feel if they don't succeed and really get some leverage so that you're willing to push forward. Because when you start to look at how great your life is going to be if this does

work out, you're going to push through those really, really hard times of not making any income that eventually you're going to hit. The first thing that I would do from a real estate perspective is I would figure out what is going to be your strategy. Right. So there's a lot of different flavors of real estate, a lot of different things that you can choose to go. with. And I'm a big believer in focus. Gary Keller is the one thing is really a fantastic book. All of the great people talk about focus. And so pick one way that you're going to push forward into real estate and stick with it. Make a commitment that you're going to do that for two or three or four months at the very least. And don't change. Just continue to do the same thing over and over again

unless you really realize that, oh, I'm doing the wrong things here to get to my end goal. Yeah. Yeah, that's a hard topic and we can, you know, we can touch on it if we want to, but the idea of when to grit and when to quit, right? I like that phrase of like, when do you just stick through when it's not working? When, like, if you work for four or five months trying to market and you're sending lots of direct mail, you spent thousands of dollars on direct mail marketing, when do you say, all right, that's enough and when do you say, I'm just going to keep pushing through and sending more? Do you have any advice for people on that? I know, that's a super hard question, like, because there's no good answer for it. So I think for myself at least,

you have to know it goes back to that outcome. And for my outcome, it's a pretty huge thing. I want to live a great life. I want to have some passive income in the future. I want to be able to travel the world and do all these amazing things. And it's a really clear outcome of what I'm going after. And for me, there was no way that I was going to give up. The way that I went into it was I fired all of my clients and I had no other way to

make an income other than Airbnb being my house one week out of the month to pay my rent. So there was no way that I was going to quit, no matter what, I was going to succeed in this real estate thing. And I think personally, that's the way I would encourage people to go about it. The other thing is I also went in with this mindset of if I went back to school and got an MBA or went and get a graduate program, how much money am I going to spend to get that experience? And so I went into this not thinking, hey, how am I going to get rich? It's how am I going to learn everything that I possibly can. And so in the last two years, we've spent a lot of money on marketing. And I've learned a lot about running a business.

And we've made some money, but we haven't made, I haven't gotten rich quickly. But at the end of the day, what you can't ever take away is that experience and that learning. And you're learning the most from failure. So I would just say, persist no matter what. And maybe you decide you want to pivot and go another direction. And that's okay. But at least do it long enough that you have some data and some information to be able to say, hey, well, this is what I learned from it.

And this is why that's actually a good. good thing. So what are some ways, Stephen, that someone can know, hey, it's time for me to take that leap. I need, I've been thinking about this. I'm interested in it. I've been kind of kicking the can around a little bit. How does someone know when it's time to get serious? The way that somebody knows it's time to get serious is when there's no other option. When that when that want turns into a must, there's nothing that you're going to do except figure out a way to succeed. And so that's why everything goes back to setting some goals and setting some really clear intentions, getting your mindset right, because otherwise your mind is going to eat you alive if you have all these

negative limiting beliefs. And we all have them. I still have them to this day. And I know I'm going to have them for the rest of my life, but I'm going to continue to try to figure out where those are and pick those out, pick those weeds out, and then push forward. So the answer is start now. If you really want to go after this, don't hold back. I wish I would have started this back when I was 16 or 17 when I first read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. But it took me 10 years before I finally took action, but everything that led up to that point gave me the ability to be a better business owner when I actually did start down this real estate path.

Yeah. All right. So I want to shift gears a little bit here and talk more about the marketing, about getting deals, getting leads. Because we're in a competitive market right now. It's hard to find them sometimes. But you're 75 in your first year, 75 or next year, like that's some serious, that's some serious marketing. So what did you start doing and did you do that all the way through? I mean,

what does your marketing machine look like during those first two years? So to get started, what we started doing was we did direct mail. And that first mailing was right around 5,000 mail pieces that first month. I think the next month we went up to 7,500. The next month, we went to like 12,000 mail pieces. And we stayed there consistently until we, you know, we had a nice little repetitive process going on. Since then, we've scaled up. We send between 50 and 75,000 mail pieces per month. And the reason why we do that is because it works.

And so we started small, but we started big enough to know that what we were doing was working or not working. And if you only send a thousand mail pieces, unless it's a very specific niche list, it's hard to know whether or not what you're doing is because of the mail or if you just didn't hit enough people. So we started out with direct mail. and it's still a huge piece of our business. There's really no secret there.

We happen to be pretty fortunate in the real estate business. And Brandon, as a marketer, you know, we're very far behind where internet marketers are today. And so we can take advantage of that. The other ways that we market for properties is pay-per-click, SEO, a lot of those kind of things. For the most part, we're doing paid marketing. And the reason for that is because we're building a systematized business.

And for us to be able to do things at scale, spending money is one of the best ways to do that. And so in the next year, we're actually hoping that we can lean more into some of the network-based marketing and relationship-based marketing and getting deals sent to us. But everything that we've done so far

has been we put a dollar in and we get $3 back. That's awesome. All right, so let's dig into your direct mail a little bit. What kind of letters do you send? Is it a postcard letter? And then what's kind of your message on there? What have you found that works well?

We're a big believer in the postcard. We think the postcard is one of the best ways because it's the most affordable way. And our ideology pretty much says, we want to be in front of that seller when they have that decision, when they have that motivational event that they might want to sell their house to an investor. And so that means we need to be in front of that person every single month, month in and month out, because one month, they might call us and say, take us off your list. I wish you wouldn't send us this. We have no interest. And three months later, they might have

an incident that happens that makes it make sense for them to sell the non-traditional route. And so we send a postcard. Typically, that postcard is, you know, some kind of bright color, pink or blue or yellow, just like everyone else. We're not special here. We're just modeling what it works for other people. And it just says, we buy houses, fast for cash. We close in a day of your choice. It has some other small little things.

But for the most part, that's what the message is. And the idea is that it doesn't matter as much about what the message is. it just matters that you're there when they're ready to pick up the phone and give you a call. And so for us, we just want them to get on the phone. So we have a chance to talk to them and maybe see if they're the right fit for what we have to offer. Now, wait a second, Stephen. What you're saying here is that there is no magic bullet, this magic phrase or this magic postcard or having the right puppy or kitty or baby on the picture.

What matters is consistency in doing it? Like, is that what you're saying? That's it. But you can't package that and sell that for $900. $97,000 in a training course. So, you know, I'm confused. I wish I could. I'd be in a different industry right now.

So that's, I mean, that's, I love hearing that. Like it's nothing, like you said, we're not doing anything special. We're just doing it. Right? Like, we're not doing anything special. We're just doing it. And so many people out there are so worried about what does the exact postcard have to say?

And can I get the, you know, like, what if I say the wrong thing? And you're saying it sounds like, just do it. Just get out there and start sending some, you know, if you're going to go that route. Start doing it. That's the biggest takeaway I'd want anyone who's listening to this to have is that two years ago I was sitting on a boat in Minnesota on a fishing trip, listening to Bigger Pockets podcast, soaking up everything I could. And I didn't know anything about this industry.

And now I've done 150 deals. And most people will never do that in their whole life. And I'm not special. I just ended up working with some great people, found out a system that worked on how to grow a business. And every day I'm out there learning. And so anyone can do this. it's not rocket science. It's actually a very simple business. It's just not always easy.

Yeah, I actually say that a lot. It's not, it's not, I mean, it's a simple business. It's not, yeah, it's not always like fast. It's not get rich quick, but it's fairly simple. You know, you get leads and you have to, you figure out how you're going to get leads. And then you run the numbers on those leads that come in and you decide if you're going to pursue them. And if you do pursue them, you pursue them. You make an offer. And if it works out, great. And if not, if not, you move on the next one. It's a fairly simple model. It just most people don't do it. Right? Like how many people do we talk to on a daily basis who are like, you know, I really want to get into real estate? I've been trying for months. Okay, well, how many offers you've made? Oh, you know, I haven't, I haven't, I haven't done that. How many deals have you analyzed? I'm not really sure. Okay, well, how many leads have you got? And what are doing for leads? Oh, I don't, right? So do you really want to invest in real estate or you just want to talk about investing in real estate? Like, that's the difference. But some people do it and some people do it. I would challenge everybody who's listening to this. If they're sitting at home and they're thinking about taking some action to get really clear on why you're going after. it and do everything you can to not be those people, right? I go to a lot of real estate investor

events. That's where I've met my business partners. That's where I've met my lenders. That's where I've met a ton of people I work with and learn from. And the difference is between those people myself and the people who never take action is I've met people who have been going to real estate investor meetups for five or 10 years. And they've still never done anything. And so if you can just take that a way that it's a fun environment to be around other people, but just ask yourself, what do you really want? Just go after it because you can totally do it. Yeah, I love that. Now, you, you like took off like a rocket, right? Your first couple years, you know, 75 deals each, do you think that's good advice for everybody? Like, what type of person should go like a rocket like that? Or do you think most

people should actually start slower? Maybe start with one deal the first year. What are your thoughts on that? I don't think everyone should start off the way that I started, mainly because not everyone's going have the personality profile to take the kind of risk that I'm willing to take, right? So spending everything that you have and a lot that you don't into growing a business from the beginning is a pretty tough pill to swallow for a lot of people. And so I'm not going to recommend that to everybody. But if you have that kind of personality where you're just like, I need it, I need it now, I need to learn everything that I possibly can. And you're the kind of person who gets completely obsessed about whatever you're working on, then that's the method.

because you're going to learn so much, so fast, drinking from a fire hose, it doesn't have to be perfect, especially like me where my goal wasn't to become a millionaire. My goal was to learn everything I possibly can about real estate investing and become an expert in this space. And then from there, I can decide, well, is this something I want to continue doing forever? And I can make money at that point, right? I've learned the reason why we've only done 75 deals this year is because we've increased our margin dramatically. We focused on, hey, how can we run a better business versus in the first. year, everything was just about, hey, how can we learn, right? We still made money. It was still

successful, but it wasn't as good as we wanted to be. And so we just learned from that. We kept going. But, you know, probably would have saved a lot of heartache and a lot of stress if I would have just done one deal at a time, but it just doesn't match who I am. Yeah. David, what do you think? I mean, like, what's your opinion on? Like, when should people go slow and when should they speed up? And what have you seen works? I had an epiphany about this when I was in police training. And we would get this like every two years we'd have to go train in how to manipulate and maneuver emergency vehicle. And they'd set this course up for us with all these cones and you'd have to drive the course as fast as you could and you had to be able to do it under a certain

amount of time and you could not hit even one cone. You couldn't hit it at all. So what would happen is guys would go in there and one of two things would happen. They would go super slow so they never hit a cone and they wouldn't make the time or they would go bad out of hell, do a really good time and run over half the cones. And it was very difficult to get the right balance of both, right? And what I figured out is the best way was to start the day really slow and learn the course and learn the car and learn the conditions. Was it raining or was it not? When I come out of a turn and I step on the gas, how quickly before, how much of a delay is there before the acceleration kicks in and the car goes? And when I need to go fast and break,

how quickly can I stop without losing control? So you're kind of learning all the pieces of how this thing works. And once you're comfortable, you can really start to push the envelope and you should be pushing the envelope because that's how your skills grow. And I feel like business works the same way. When you first get into real estate, you should do exactly like Steven said. You should be learning everything there is to learn. That's your goal. It's not to be a millionaire. It's to learn. You're learning how to drive a car. You're learning how the course works. You're learning the fundamentals of vehicular manipulation, right? And then as you start to get better, what you notice is that your brain starts to anticipate what is likely to come next when you're still in your

current step. So I come out of one turn and I'm already knowing the next turn's really sharp. So I to break a little bit and I got to get on the gas later in this turn, right? Or, okay, the straightaway's coming. I want to keep as much speed as I can because when I come out of this last turn, I'm going to be in the straightaway. I want to be going to be going fast. When you start to see that, I just sent out the mail. I'm going to be getting a lot of calls.

What should I say when the people call? I'm really good at knowing what to say. I know I'm going to get more deals and I'm going to be able to handle myself. How am I going to wholesale it? That's when you know you should step on the gas. That's when you need to expand, to leverage, to scale up, to get more people, to spend more money on your marketing when you're feeling like I know what's coming next. And that's the best way I found to describe to people who are stuck between like, I don't know, should I jump all into both

feet or should I keep going at this pace? When your mind knows, okay, I just did this, this thing's coming. And you're already preparing for it. That's when you know you're ready. That's a good analogy. Look at that. I think it's a, it's a great analogy. I totally agree with that. The one thing is either way you do it, you have to get the reps in the gym. You have to be able to take the phone calls and have those conversations. And if you're taking 100 phone calls a week, you're going to learn really fast about what to say and what not to say, right? So you probably don't want to go right into it with 100 or 200 phone calls a week. That would be crazy. But, you know, you start out with 20 and you get pretty good at 20 and you think about you really listen to those

phone calls, what could have I said better? What did I miss? How did I put my foot in my mouth there? And then you scale it up a little bit more. And you can do all this without. actually doing it yourself. You can go work for somebody who's got a business like this. You can go partner with somebody or volunteer for them. While I was building this business in North Carolina, I ended up partnering with somebody out of Minnesota. And the partnership was literally, he just traded me some training that he had paid for, that had some systems that we could essentially rip off. And I took his phone calls for free because he had a W-2 job and I had plenty of time. And I thought, well, I'd really love to learn this thing, but I'm not going to spend the money

on it. I, you know, nor do I have it or do I want to. And, you know, he shared all of that coaching and training that he had paid for, which was super valuable to us. And I took all the phone calls. And so I got better at my job, which was handling sellers. And he had somebody who took over. And we ended up partnering and scaling that business after that. So ended up turning into a much better relationship than just trading for skills. So let me just call something out here as well. You know, like for me, if I, like, so first of all, I love that you said, like, you can go and work with somebody, partner with someone, get employed by someone, whatever you got to do, you can go, like, you don't have to do this all on your own, right?

But then the second thing I want to point out is like, for me, if it was like answering phone calls for motivated sellers, like, that just terrifies me, right? Like, that's, that freaks me out. But other people might actually enjoy that. So if you're somebody who likes doing that, find somebody like me and answer their phone calls, right? Like, do their marketing. Or if you're somebody that has no job or a flexible job, you can be the boots on the ground.

or if you're somebody who has a job and you're working all the time, but maybe you have, you know, contacts, you can raise funding or whatever, like figure out a way to make a work if you don't want to do it all yourself or if you can't do it all yourself. So there you go. That's, I mean, that's the biggest takeaway is that if you're going to build a business

and not just be one person doing one investment deal at a time, which is absolutely 100% fine, if you're going to build a business and you look at the people who are very successful business owners, they hire smarter people than themselves. and those people end up working and you really rely on each other. And so there's always going to be somebody who is going to be better at raising funds or taking phone calls or making sales.

There's going to be somebody who's better at running the numbers. Those people should be working together. And there's no problem whether it's a partnership or you're just volunteering for somebody. So real quick, Stephen, can you give us an idea what somebody should look for in a potential good partner if they want to copy your model? Yeah, I think the biggest thing that somebody should look for in a partner is shared values. and a similar direction that they want to go in. And I think, right, if you really know what goals you're after and why you're after them

and you find somebody who also wants to build something that's exactly that, and is going to allow you both to live the life that you want to live, then that really works perfect. You want to find somebody typically who has a different skill set than you. You know, two sales guys working together is great. But in the beginning, you really need some different skills. And so if you're working with somebody who's got the exact same personality profile as you, that's probably something that maybe isn't the best

partnership unless you're going to be able to hire the right people in. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Very good. All right. I want to move to funding next. I mean, doing 75 deals in your first year, you had to have some source of funding. So what have you been doing for that?

Yeah. So like I mentioned, when I started, I didn't have any money. And so I did what I wouldn't recommend anyone else. I floated everything on credit cards. I took the bet. And it worked out, right? $30,000 or $40,000 in marketing on credit cards over a few months, paid that off. And now it's working out great for me.

But from an actual deal perspective, we found private lenders, hard money lenders, essentially, that fund all of our deals and they fund 100% of them. And we, because we're going out and we're finding such great deals that they're happy to take the risk. And that's the way that we've been able to do the volume that we have is just by working with other people. our lenders made as much, if not more money than us last year. And that's great because they allowed us to employ all these people and build this business. Yep. Yeah, it's actually a really good point.

Like, I mean, the lenders, they're going to make a lot of money, but that's okay. Because if they're making money, hopefully you're making money. Hopefully everyone's making money and they'll keep working with you. And, you know, over time, you can get maybe cheaper money and maybe you can find better sources. But in the beginning, like, again, you just got to get it done. No matter how you get it done, get it done. So I love that.

Let's see. by the way, if anybody's interested, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash hard money lenders. There's a, it's a site on bigger pockets. It's totally free to go and check it out. But it's just the web's largest directory of potential hard money lenders. So go on there, searching your estate, find the ones on there, and you'll find some cool stuff there. So, all right. Well, that's, that's awesome.

I love that. I think it's time to go to the deal deep died. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage. wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC-held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims.

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Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. All right. It's time for the deal deep dive. This is the part of the show where we dive deep into one particular deal that you've done. So Stephen, you got one in mind, correct? Yeah, I have one. in mind. All right. First of all, what kind of property is, I mean? What are we talking about here? So this was actually our first flip that we completed. And it was a condo. Okay. It was a condo. And it was originally a rental property that the owner had owned for about 10 years. Okay. So it was a rental condo. That's kind of unique, actually, the first flip being a condo. That's cool. All right. So,

and we can talk about the pros and cons of that if we want to later. But how did you find the deal specifically? So we found the deal through direct marketing, right? We sent him a postcard in the mail, and he had gotten tons and tons of postcards in the past. But when he talked to our people, we seemed really personal because we are. And that's the reason why he decided to meet with us and sell us the property. Okay. How much was it? So we ended up paying $85,000, but we ended up putting this together in a pretty interesting way. So a little backstory about us finding that property. I was hiring a new acquisition manager and maybe at some point we can talk a little bit about the team that we've built here. But our acquisition managers go on sales appointments and they're the ones who meet with sellers and put together great deals for the seller and for us. And I was going out there to train him because I don't live in Minnesota. And this was a deal that was in Minnesota. And we went back and forth on price and he was pretty stuck at, you know, $85,000. And I was like, well, I don't know.

It doesn't really work if we buy it with cash. and he was open to seller financing. And so we floated out this idea of seller financing at $85,000, 0%, no money down, $85,000. And we kept talking about a cash price of about $75. And so we went back and forth, and he really wanted to think about the seller financing. And for me, I'm not really a big fan of think about it because usually when people want to think about it, they're probably not going to call you back. They're going to go back to not taking action.

And so what I decided to do in that case was to sign it up. We actually agreed to $82,000. We agreed to $82,000 cash contingent on the inspection. And so within about three or four or five days after signing it up, we got back on the phone with the seller, we kind of talked about that seller financing idea again. And he decided he wanted to go with that because we were going to have to reduce the price a little bit. And it ended up being win-win because he didn't have a mortgage on it.

and he didn't have anywhere to put the money. And so for us to hold onto the property for three or four months while doing the renovation without having to put any dollars on the table was, that was a big win for us. We were happy to buy it with cash, but it ended up being a big win for him as well. That's awesome. That's a really great negotiation story and funding story. So what did you end up doing with it? So we ended up doing a full renovation on it.

And we thought about keeping it as a rental, but we were early on in our career and we really wanted to make sure that we had more money coming into the company. So we decided to list it. And we ended up selling that property for $157,000 and some change. And so it was a great, it was a great sale price a little bit more than we expected. And what was interesting about it was a cash buyer actually bought that property. And they wanted to hold onto it as a vacation rental. So they bought it with cash. They closed within a few days. And they were the highest offer, even higher than a lot of the traditional mortgage offers that we got. And so we put about 20,000 into that property. and all set and done after paying everybody and paying our team and all the people,

we made about $34,000. That's awesome. I love that story. That's cool. So what lessons did you learn overall from this experience? Well, I learned that you might as well ask for what you really want. And it's okay if they say no.

And it's okay if it's not going to be the right fit. But in this case, seller financing ended up working out really well for us. And so I'm really glad that we decided to take the leap because it's something that seems kind of weird. If you don't really understand it, why would the seller want to hold on to the note? But in the end, he ended up making a little bit more money than he would have. And we ended up saving money on the financing side instead of paying our lender. We decided to pay the seller that money. Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that. Well, normally, this is the point where we, you know, end the deal, deep dive and move on to the next segment. But I actually do want to cover something

and you mentioned that that's your team. And I know, David, you had a note here to talk about that as well. Actually, you know, David, I have been hogging the mic for the last little while. Why don't you ask a question about that team? Nobody minds when you hog the mic. It's like when Scarlett Johansson hogs the camera, right? No one's complaining about that, Brandon. But thank you for blessing me as like your ugly friend or something like to get a little bit in here.

Okay. Steven, I'm very fascinated about your team because A, it takes a lot of humility to say, I need to be on a team. I can't do it all myself. B, it takes a lot of courage to say, I'm going to split up the money and still trust that I'm going to make more in the end because we're following these principles that everybody is different together, right? And C, it makes everything a little more complicated because it's easy when it's just you that does everything. When there's more moving pieces, there's more complications. It's my opinion that human beings are like the most difficult part of any form of business that

you like, you know, your software, your computers, they're all going to do what they do, but people are unpredictable. So I think what holds back. a lot of investors, in my just personal opinion, is that they know that they're weak in certain areas and they focus on that rather than their strength. And so they never get started because they're like, well, what happens if I start and A, B, or C happens? So tell us, how did you start? What was like your first hire? And how did you kind of grow the team at an overview that the listeners who hear this think like, oh, okay, I could do that. Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, to get started, I was taking all the phone calls. That was something I had the time. I was living in Southern California at the time when

I started the company. I'm not in North Carolina, so I couldn't be the one on the ground doing the in-person sales appointments, even though I probably would have loved to do that. I feel like I'm very good face-to-face. So the first hire that we had to make was our acquisition manager. We call that person a home-buying manager when they're talking with the seller, just a little cleaner title. But that person, pretty much what they do is they're, they go and they meet with the sellers face-to-face. They run comparables on the property. They understand the value. And they walk through. And they really build rapport and get to know the seller. They get to know their situation. They understand what challenges they're dealing with. And what we really are is problem solvers. So they're

essentially offering a solution to their problem. And for the most part, that's typically buying the house and making it so they don't have to do all the work. And so that acquisition manager is the first hire. And we've been through a number of acquisition managers because for us, our whole team is 100%. They work for us. They're not working for other companies. Typically, we might have a property manager or a real estate agent or some other folks like that who might do some work for us, but they also work for a lot of other clients. So acquisition manager was first. And then the the next person, once we actually started, we essentially had scaled up to a point where I could hire myself off of the phones, found a really amazing team member. She is like the lynch pin that

holds the company together. And she's our lead manager. So she's an inside sales agent. She handles all the inbound phone calls. She does all the follow-ups. And her job at the end of the day is to vet all of the potential opportunities that come in and schedule appointments. So she's really just focused on how can I fill that outside salesperson, that acquisition manager's calendar so that they can go out on appointments. And that person's paid an hourly wage. And they also get a little bonus on every deal that's signed up. The acquisition manager, typically they're paid 100% commission or they're on a small base plus commission depending on what they need where they feel the most comfortable. Then the next person we hired was a disposition manager that also did transaction management.

So we ended up kind of putting these two roles together. Now they're two separate roles. But the disposition manager is responsible for networking with all the investors. They're the ones who are going out and building the relationships. And they're the ones who are going to the property when they're going to show each other investors, when we're going to sell that property to another investor or sell the contract to another investor if we're not going to flip it ourselves. Because we do a little bit of wholesaling, that helps keep our machine running because sometimes there's deals that don't make sense for us

to flip, but makes sense for somebody else. And, you know, it's kind of the ecosystem just works better if they have an opportunity to find the deal. Then on the transaction management side, this person works with all of our buyers and our sellers and our title company or our closing attorney, depending on what state we're in. And they make sure that everything goes really smoothly. Their jobs to make sure that there's no uncertainty, that the seller doesn't have any questions that aren't answered because there's nothing worse when when selling your house to not know what's going on. You quickly start to feel like, oh, is this a scam? Is this really going to happen? And so the transaction manager is super organized and really focused on making sure that

that everybody knows where to be. And the final team member is a project manager. And so when we're doing a full renovation or a flip, they're the ones who are going out and putting together the scope of work, the other ones who are managing the contractors and making sure that we're on budget and doing all the repairs after we've sold, you know, after we've sold the property. Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. Really good. So what, before I go to the fire on, what is your like, like, what do you see yourself headed? Do you want to keep doing flipping wholesaling? You added rentals. Where are you headed? Yeah. So, you know, as the market changes, our company is going to change with it. And as we keep learning more. So, you know, a dream of mine has always

to own a lot of rental units, whether those are apartment buildings or single family, it seems to make the most sense to go bigger because you get the economies of scale. And the more that I learned, the more that's the direction, I think of the long term, I'd like to go. But in the short term, what we're going to do is we're going to keep flipping some properties. We're going to keep wholesaling. But we're going to start doing the burr method on a lot of the flips that we have and starting to hold on to some of those for the long term. Because most of the mentors that I know that that have, you know, pretty big net worths and are living a really great life, they didn't build it all at once. They bought a long time ago and they waited 10 or 20 or 30 years and they sold and

they got all the benefit down the road. So we're going to look at holding onto a lot more. Even though the markets, some people think it's getting to the top. If you buy right and you hold for the long term, you know, it smooths out a lot of those ups and downs in the market. Yeah, that's a really great point. Well, cool. All right. Well, let's, shift gears here and head over to the world famous fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, it's time for the fire round. These are the questions we pulled direct from the Bigger Pockets forums and we fire them at

you in a nice quick back and forth question answer time. So number one, a friend of a friend asked me to partner with him and another guy on a house to flip. They flip several properties. This is my first. They found a deal. They've done the inspections. I'm going to be putting up the cash for the down payment and the rehab, which is like 30K out of pocket.

They are proposing a 40, 40, 20 split where I get the 20. I think it probably should be split evenly because 20% for just the money, it seems like, you know, excessive. What do you think? Brandon, would you mind just saying that once more because it's a bunch of numbers? It is. Yeah. Basically they're saying there's three people total. One person is putting up the money, like the down payment, not all the money, but the down payment and the rehab costs.

and they're going to give him 20% for doing that. Do you think that's a good idea or a bad idea? Or how would you value that? I think that it depends. How much experience do you have doing this? What are you going to end up getting out of it beyond the monetary piece of it? And what experience to those other people bring? If all three of you guys are brand new to real estate, you've never done a deal together.

And one guy found the deal and one guy's going to manage the deal. And another guy's going to bring the money that I don't think, you know, that might not be that. that might not be the greatest deal, but it also might not be a bad deal. But if those other guys have a lot of experience and they've been doing that for a while and you're going to bring the 20% to the table, that's 20% that you wouldn't be making if you didn't bring the money to the table. And the other thing that I would take away from it is that you're going to learn a lot from it. So I think the situation matters, but I would go into it with a little bit different of a mindset

thinking to myself, well, hey, what am I going to learn from this versus what am I going to make if you're new to the game? I love that. That it's fantastic. I would also pose that if you're thinking, is this fair? There's really no way to come up with an answer for that because it's a subjective way of looking at it. I mean, I probably wouldn't even give you 20% if you were just giving the money because what if I could go to a hard money lender and get it much cheaper, right? Exactly. I would be asking, is this better for me to do than not to do?

That's a way better question, right? If I'm putting in $30,000 and I'm getting 20% of the profit and that ends up being $30,000, and I get 100% return on my money. The question is, do I want to get 100% return on my money or can I get a better return somewhere else as opposed to, is it fair? Because you just get stuck in this endless loop that has no answer when you're asking if it's fair. Yeah, that's great. All right. Okay. Next question. Next question. I am about to start my first flip and I'm having problems approaching banks for a rehab loan. Do you tend to go in armed with sketches and blueprints? What kind of presentation do you use when trying to get funding for your flips? So I typically don't

work with banks. I just bought a house in Denver that I'm in a house hack, and I did buy that with a bank loan. It's the first time I ever had to go through that process, and it's a lot easier to work with a private lender. I'll just put it that way. So the way I'd go about is I'd go find a hard money lender or a private lender. You can find these people on bigger pockets, or you can find them at your local or real estate investor club or association. And I just go out and I'd say, hey, here's the deal that I have. And if it's a good deal, those people are going to tell you, because they don't want to lose their money and they want you to succeed so that you come back time and time again. So that's the way I'd go about it.

I wouldn't necessarily go to the bank because they're going to have a lot more requirements and they're going to be a lot tougher to work with. So if the deal can afford to pay the points in interest, that's the direction I'd go. I love that. And you know, I want to tie this back to something you said earlier because I think that's important. A lot of people wonder, or a lot of people, I guess, stress about the money with a deal, right? I mean, like, we know that's like the number one issue people have if they don't have the money. And when we talk about hard money lenders or private money lenders, I want to point. point out, I guess two quick things. Number one, those people have a business and they need you

in order to put food on their table, right? I mean, like, lenders, that's how they make their money is off lending money. So first of all, understand that you're not asking for a favor when you're trying to get a loan from these people. But secondly, like, these lenders are making good money. I mean, this is like, I guess it's this way. Like you said earlier, how your lenders made just as much probably as you did in your flipping business. And they didn't have to get their hands dirty. They didn't have to go out there and spend money on direct mail marketing. So like, Why would people fund a deal when they, people always ask me that. Why would people go fund a deal for me when they can just go do it themselves?

Because they don't want to do it themselves. They have more money than they have time. Right. So once you get that mindset shift, I guess, about funding, like you realize people's like, it's breaks through this barrier that people have in their head of like funding is hard and I'm going to have a hard time getting it. And really, it's a tool. It's out there. And there's people who do it.

There's people who need it. Well, here's also the dirty little secret about lenders people don't realize. if they're letting you borrow money at 10%, they're probably not just using their own money. They're probably using other people's money too, and they're going and borrowing it from someone else at 5% to lend it to you at 10, right? So that's why they don't want to go do it themselves

because their job isn't to wield a hammer. It's to go find someone else that will let them borrow money at 5% to lend it to you at 10%. And the whole thing only works with the investor who actually finds a way to take that money and turn it into profit somehow. So very well said, Brandon. Well, thank you.

All right. next question of the fire round. I understand it's, this is a great question, by the way. I understand it's common to underestimate the amount of funding I'm going to need to flip a rehab. In other words, I'm going to go over my budget. Do you have any tips or tricks on to ensure that you won't go over budget during your rehab? Well, we've definitely, we've definitely learned the hard way on this. And I think anybody is going to, you're going to run into this at some point. You're going to go way over budget. I just went way over budget on this house in Denver. And I know what I'm doing. But frankly, it just happens.

And so I would always plan at least a 10 or 15% buffer. And that buffer can come from a lot of different places. That can come from your profit. You can try to build that into the deal. The challenge is that if you build too big of a buffer, you might not be able to get a deal because other people who really know the game are going to not build that buffer because they're going to build it over 10 or 15 properties over the year. So you want to be conservative and make sure you have enough money to afford it.

But you don't want to be too conservative where you, take yourself out of the running. Yeah, that's great. Do you have any, do you have any tips for just people who are just getting started and they're like, well, I don't even know what flooring costs. I don't know what it costs to put in a water heater. Like, they're just completely new to the idea of estimating rehab costs. Do you have any just quick tips for them or places that you think they should check out to know more? Yeah, I mean, I would, I would go and talk to some other investors in your area and find out kind of what they're paying. But what I learned was, you know, for paint, it can be anywhere between a dollar to $3 per square foot depending on the area.

In Southern California, you could pay $1, $1.50 per square foot. In North Carolina, we're paying $3 a square foot. Now we found more affordable options, but every market is different because of the kind of talent pool that you get a poll from. So that's a big thing. But reach out, go to the bigger pocket forums. People are going to be willing to share that information on there. But the big thing is you just need to be able to ballpark what that's going to be.

And then you go and get a contract. to actually put together a bid. And if you talk to enough of them or people are willing to work with you, they'll usually be willing to go the extra mile for an itemized bid. So even if you have to pay a little bit upfront because they don't really believe that you got the experience to get the stuff done, pay them for itemized bid and then go back and look at that. And now you'll be able to use that in the future and say, well, hey, okay, well, it looks

like in my area, it's about, you know, $2 a square foot for flooring. and I can build that into my model for the future. Yeah, I love that. And by the way, you know, Bigger Pocket's like, what, four or five years ago released that book from Jay Scott, the book on Estimony Rehab Costs. That actually, we are re-I don't think we've even mentioned on the show. We actually, Jay re-updated it, made a new version,

you know, all updated numbers and methodology and figures and all that. Anyway, that comes out, I believe it's in January. So this show comes out sometime right around them too, I think. I'm not sure what episode this is. But yeah, we're like, we're pretty darn close. So anyway, check that out. Biggerpockets.com. It's a store.

You can check out the updated version of the book on Estimine Rehab costs there. So, all right, last question of the fire round, David. Last question. I lost my job over a year ago, went through my savings, and in the process, my credit started dropping drastically. I'm a hard worker and have all the time in the world. How do I qualify for a loan to fix and flip houses without savings or good credit? Well, you're in lock here because 99% of the hard money.

money lenders out there, they don't care what your credit looks like. They care about the deal. So you go and you find a really good deal. You do that through, you know, direct marketing. You do that through door knocking. You do that through a realtor. You go and find a really good deal and you bring that to the hard money lender. And sure, they're going to have some requirements related to credit. They're going to look and make sure that you're going to actually be the kind of guy who's going to pay it back. They're going to look for bankruptcies or other issues like that. But even those things can be overlooked by a lender if you have a good reason or a good situation that you're able to share with them. So I wouldn't let credit bring you down. It's more about if you go out there

and hustle and find a good opportunity, everyone's going to want to jump in on that because, you know, a good deal says a lot. Perfect. Perfect answer. All right. Let's head over to Famous four. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. Question number one, what is your favorite real estate related book? So this was a tough question because I listen or I read a lot of books. But the book that has been the biggest impact on me personally and for my business this year has probably been Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. That book is unbelievably incredible for two reasons.

One, it teaches you a lot about negotiation. But the other big takeaway is that you're going to learn about how to talk to people and how to listen. And so that affects everything from your personal relationships all the way down to when you're sitting with a seller, putting a deal together and making sure that they feel really good about it. And they feel like they won as well. Awesome. What is your favorite business book? Favorite business book, again, there's so many to choose from. But one that made a huge impact on me was Awaken the Giant Within from Tony Robbins.

It's a really old book, but it's a classic. I think what it will do for people if you want to go check it out. It's going to teach you a lot about mindset and motivation. about understanding why you're going to the direction you're going and how you're going to get there. And it's a good just introduction to some of his content. There's so much out there that if you end up liking it, I mean, you could spend hours, days, weeks, years soaking in some good knowledge from him. Yeah, I listened to like a five hour thing on YouTube. It was called like Time of Your Life or something like that.

It was only basically productivity from Tony Robbins. It was fantastic. Anyway, yeah, I love Tony Robbins stuff. Have you been to any of his events? I went to unleash the power within earlier, and I'm actually going to date with Destiny next week. So I'm going to be there for six days, which is exciting. That's awesome. That's on my list of things to do sometime.

Cool. All right. Well, all right. Next question. What are some of your hobbies? Yeah, so I definitely love personal development and reading and it's kind of soaking in new information. So I'm always kind of working on that. I spent a lot of time snowboarding, hiking.

I took up salsa dancing when I moved back to Denver. So I like getting out and doing that. little body weight exercise, some gymnastics, some handstands, just anything where I can stay active and get away from the computer for a little bit. That's awesome. Good, good stuff. Gymnastics. I don't think we've had anybody to answer that as a hobby.

I don't know if anyone's ever said the Tony Robbins book either. Is that a first, Brandon? That might have been a first. Well, you can the gym with in, yeah. All right. Last question for me. And the last of the famous four. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail or never

get started. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is you just got to take action and you just have to do it. I think you just have to, when you learn something, you have to put it into practice right away so that you actually learn that and learn what actually works. So I think you just got to get up and go after it. That's the biggest takeaway. All right. I like it. All right. Last question. This has been great, Stephen. Where can people find out more about you? You can find me in all the social media sites, Stephen Pesavento, just search me on there. You can also find me on BP or you can head to my website Modelingmastery.com. I learned so much from all these other people that I'm just essentially putting out all the stuff that I learn for free to other people trying to give back. I need to get a little bit

of that karma that I've been taken from stealing all these ideas from people. So I love it. I love it. Do you get a lot a crossover of people thinking you're a model and that's why you've named your site modeling mastery. Like, do you have the blue steel look as like the cover? He's a good looking. He's a good looking dude. So it's a, I can see that getting confused. I love that. I love modeling. Say modeling mastery.com? Modeling mastery.com. Perfect. All right, dude. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah. Thank you. And that was our interview with Stephen Pesivento. I love that dude. He was awesome. What do you think, David? I was an inspirational podcast, man. I love when you hear about

somebody who's not afraid to share what they're doing, who stepped in the game, took action, crushed it, figured stuff out, and now they can share what they did with the rest of us who have a much easier job following that path once we've seen the way someone else has already walked it. Yeah. And I love that. Like, it's not like it to be super wicked smart or well connected. He's like, he's like, I just like learned what other people were doing and I just went and did it. And he's like, I just did took like the, you can summarize the entire. our last hour show into like the word action you know like he just he just took action on what everyone knows we should be doing anyway you know we sent postcards and he negotiated and he analyzed deals it just

did everything that we constantly are telling people to do so if you are listening to this show and you're like man i want to be more like stephen do me a favor and come to next week's bigger pockets webinar go to bigger pockets.com slash webinar where we're going to walk through the analysis of a real life deal together to figure out how much we can pay for it so again biggerpockets.com says webinar i hope to see you there and with that The last thing I will say is this. David, you are amazing. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you, Brandon. You want to take us out? Yeah. This is David for Brandon kind of cheesy Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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