BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 31: Building a Professional Wholesaling Business with Lamar Cannon

Episode Date: August 15, 2013

On today’s show, we want to introduce you to a relatively new investor who is building a really awesome wholesaling business through the use of smart marketing, savvy business skills, and persistence. Lamar Cannon, from the Austin, TX area, shares with us his story of how he got started with wholesaling and uses the sales skills from his previous job to close more deals. No matter what kind of investor you are, Lamar’s story is going to inspire you, motivate you, and help take your own business to a new level. In This Show, We Cover Lamar’s first “accidental deal“ Negotiating directly with a bank How to avoid jumping from shiny object to shiny object Finding cash buyers Dealing with bad neighborhoods The right way to answer phone calls as a wholesaler How to determine your wholesaling “law of averages“ Tips for wholesaling with no money Plus a lot more! Links from the Show: BiggerPockets G+ Account Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing How to Create an Awesome Lead Generating Website in Under an Hour with No Technical Abilities Books Mentioned in the Show The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Good to Great by Jim Collins Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Tweetable Topics: In business, be consistent with your strategy and focus on one thing at a time. (Tweet This!) Be solution-oriented. (Tweet This!) Connect with Lamar Lamar’s BiggerPockets Profile Lamar’s Website: We Buy Houses in San Antonio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 31. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, here with my go-ho. Mr. Brandon Turner. Hey, Brandon.

Hey, Josh. Knock, knock. Who's there? Yeah. Yeah. You sure are excited to see me. I am indeed. I am indeed. That was not Jewish at all. That was awesome. How's it going?

It's going good, man. It's going good. Things are going great with the fam, with the site. You and I had a powwow. into the depths of the night last night, which was a lot of fun. And, yeah, things are great, man. How about yourself? Things are good. I didn't sleep much because we were Skyping until like three in the morning. Okay, it was at midnight, but it was actually like 1130 years back. After my time. And I was awoken by a screaming infant at four in the morning. So, you know, I'll have you know I was woken by a cat walking on my face at three in the morning. You know what? You cannot comply. You know, you have nothing.

to complain about. And you know, the worst part about that kind of wake-up crawl, though, is the fact that, frankly, and we're going to lose some listeners here, I think cats are gross. A cat that crawls in its own stuff and scratches and buries it and then goes and walks on your face. Trust me, your new baby does worse. So you love your baby. I love my cat. Crazy cat lady, man. Well, yeah, things are going well, man. Things are good. But let's jump into it because we've got a very fun and interesting show. And I'm excited about it.

So why don't we jump right into our quick tip to you? Today's quick tip is don't let your cat in a box and scratch you in the face of 4 in the morning. Good quick tip. You like that? All right, cool. So now today's quick tip is. is Gplus, Google Plus, if you're not already on Google Plus, it is definitely a great network, great place to be, lots of cool interaction. And of course, we are present on Google Plus.

Bigger Pockets can be followed at Gplus slash Google Plus slash Bigger Pockets. Actually, that's not true at all. Google Plus has the most complicated URLs ever. So just look us up. Go on Google Plus and look up Bigger Pockets and be sure to follow us there. Or we'll link to it in the show notes, which are at BiggerPockets.com slash show 31 because this is the 31st show of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Very exciting, yes. So today on the show, we're talking with a fairly new real estate investor, but somebody who's really smart and successful already.

He's a wholesaler from the Austin, Texas area, Lamar Cannon. Lamar was a sales professional who used this skills in business to create what is really starting to become an impressive wholesaling business. And he's going to share all his innermost secrets with us today. He's going to share some great advice and tips. And you should definitely tune in because there's some good stuff. Even if you're not a wholesaler, definitely pay attention. Of course, like all our shows, definitely make sure. sure, if you've got any questions to post them in the show notes at biggerpockets.com

slash show 31. Lamar will be happy to jump in and answer any and all your questions. So certainly do that. Running your real estate business doesn't have to feel like juggling five different tools, and the tools are blades or flaming torches. With ReSimple, you can pull motivated seller lists, skip trace them instantly, for free, and reach out with calls or texts, all from one streamlined platform. The real magic? AI agents that answer inbound calls, follow up with prospects, and even grade your conversations

so you know where you stand. That means less time on busy work and more time closing deals. Start your free trial and lock in 50% off your first month at re-simple.com slash bigger pockets. That's R-E-S-I-M-P-L-I dot com slash bigger pockets. Real estate investors, the April 15th tax deadline is coming fast. If you own rental property and haven't visited costsegregation.com yet, you can be handing thousands of dollars to the IRS that you don't have to. Costsegregation.com is self-guided software that helps you write off up to 25% of your building to generate huge tax deductions. With pricing under 500 bucks and average tax savings of $25,000, cost segregation.com is fast and affordable,

making it perfect for single-family rental properties, condos, townhomes, and even ADUs. What's more, audit defense is included in the price and backed by KBKKK. the number one cost segregation company in the U.S. Costsegregation.com was launched over 10 years ago and has a 100% success rate under IRS audit. You heard that right. A 100% success rate, and that's over 10,000 studies. Go to costsegregation.com and use code tax deadline to get 10% off your first report.

Don't overpay the IRS. Head to costsegregation.com before April 15th. If the new year means getting rentals back in order, listings are a good place to. start. Avail, part ofrealtor.com makes it simple to list a rental for free and get it in front of millions of renters. One listing, one click, post it across 24 top rental sites. Avail even helps generate listing titles and descriptions to save time. More visibility means fewer days sitting vacant and getting your property rented quickly. It's a fast, free way to find renters without the usual hassle. Get started at

Avail.co.com slash bigger pockets. That's A-V-A-I-L-L-C-O-Bigger pockets. So why do we just jump into this interview? All right, Lamar, welcome to the show, man. I appreciate you guys having me here. I'm pretty excited, excited to be here on the show. Oh, was that like the Nintendo? Yeah, that's my iPhone ringtone. That's awesome.

I'm going to change mine to be just like that. I'm being a kid. That's awesome. Well, very cool. Well, perfect timing. I'm glad that people are calling you during this show. It's muted now, so we're good. I just wanted you guys to hear it.

once. Thank you. You made my day. You made my day. All right, man. So let's let's hop into this and get to the beginning. How on earth did you get started? How did I get started? That's a, that's a good question. I started out growing up, my dad and my uncles, they had a real estate. They had construction companies. Ever since I was eight years old, I was always doing some kind of work on a house. And then so, you do realize that you just admitted that your, your dad and uncle had you on a job site, doing repairs, construction work on houses. Hopefully I didn't end up purchasing that house because there's a lot of problems.

Well, I was mostly handing out the tools at that age. I wasn't really hammering too many things. But that helped me associate real estate with hard work. And if anyone that knows me, they know that I like to get results. in the easiest way possible. So I decided to step away from real estate and go into business. And so that's what I studied in college. I got into investing in stocks and doing all kinds of different other things.

I became the vice president of a software development company shortly after I got done with college. And then I just saw that the returns in stocks and working for someone else weren't my favorite things in the world to do. So I just started digging into real estate a little bit. And then once I got deeper into that, I saw that we can make pretty good returns without doing too hard of manual labor. So it's tough work, but I mean, there's not too much manual labor unless you're working on the house yourself, which I don't do currently. Nice. Nice. That's awesome.

Yeah, I went into the market myself. I was like a prop trader for a little while after college. And prop trader, that sounds so far. Prop, proprietary trader, yeah. Don't worry about it. Fancy terminology. It's above your pay grade, brain. Lamar knows what I'm talking about.

Thanks. All right, awesome. So how did you end up making the switchover to real estate? Well, while I was still in college, I ended up doing a real estate deal. It was actually kind of an accident because I knew some people. I heard them talking, and they were talking about one of their houses that they didn't live in and it was it was rented out to a couple of their friends and then with that it didn't end working out the person that was renting the house out stopped paying the rent for about six months

and then the bank was about to foreclosed on the house so this was at the time that the bank was taking a lot the banks were taking a lot of houses back they didn't really want too many more houses on their inventory so I got the idea that I could the homeowners they just wanted to let it go they had other houses that they're building, other houses that they owned. They didn't really need credit too much anymore. So they're going to let the bank take it back. So I just decided that if they, I told them if they let me get the house sold for them, if they will let me get the profit. Because the house was worth about $80,000 in the current condition that I was in. And then we ended up, there's about $40,000 worth of equity on the house. So what I ended up doing is I told them to,

I'll sell it for them so that they don't have to pay the mortgage or they don't have to have a foreclosure on their record. I had no idea how I was going to make this happen, but I knew we had a good amount of room to make it happen. So what I ended up doing, I told them I would pay the mortgage until the house sells, as well as I would help them find a way to get it sold. So it was in a different state. So I called an agent in that state. I told them that we needed to sell this house at this price. and then I had to call the bank and tell the bank that we're going to get the house sold, and if they could move all the late payments to the end of the loan,

so that could be current, and then we keep paying the mortgage until the house sells. So we ended up doing that. I was in college at the time, so I guess everyone that's been in college knows that you don't have too big of a budget when you're in college. So I had to switch to the ramen noodle diet. Which is the typical diet of the college student anyway, right? And then I was paying that mortgage every month. So I did that for about four months until the house sold.

We ended up selling it to another investor. And so that's how I ended up getting excited about real estate. I wasn't too smart with the money because being in college, I ended up using that for a spring break trip. Hey, that's a good use of the money, I think, as a college kid. Why not? But that's how I got into real estate in terms of that's what excited me about it because I really didn't do too much.

I just found an opportunity. That's awesome. So do you do any like stocks anymore? Are you 100% real estate now? I'm 100% real estate. I took all my money out of stocks and put it into real estate. Because I just wasn't getting the returns that I wanted in stocks. So if I had millions of dollars to invest, getting a 5% to 10, 20% return a year, that would be pretty awesome.

But I'm not there yet. So what I decided to do is get a return on my money quicker in terms of making it grow. So all the stocks that I was investing in in 2008, right now most of them are about double. So that means about four or five years past and the stocks doubled. So if I had $10,000, I'd turn that into $20,000, which isn't too exciting when you start getting into real estate and you're doing wholesaling or whatever kind of deals that someone's doing, you can get a much higher. return on that in a couple years. Nice. Nice.

Hey, so I get a question on that first deal. You said you called the bank. How did that go? Tell us about that conversation and what was the response? Because I think that's something that, you know, I don't think we've actually talked to anybody in the first 30 shows so far about, you know, their actual calls and conversations with the bank. So we'd love to get a little insight into that. Okay.

Well, I called the bank for them. And I told them where the house was at. I mean, they knew where the house was at. it was passed on the mortgage and they're about to foreclose on it pretty soon. So I just had the thought in my mind that they didn't want to get another house back that was going to sit on there and their books for a good amount of time. So I just called them and I told them that we're going to end up selling the house. It should sell within the next six months.

We're going to make the mortgage current. It's going to get paid every single month, one time, not a day late. And then it took them a little bit to respond. Banks aren't the fastest at responding. So it took them a little bit to respond. But once they did, they said that's okay. I start paying the mortgage and then three months later the house sold. So who do you talk to at the bank?

Is there a specific person, you know, role player at the bank that you want to talk to? The person in charge of mortgages? I mean, who is that? It was just, that was the only time I ever had to call a bank and negotiated that way. So I just called the mortgage department and they put me in touch with the person that does it. I don't remember exactly what their position was. That's fine. But I was just trying to be solution oriented and make it happen, and that's what we end up doing.

That's great. And there was no back and forth on that. It was just the one call. Here's my pitch and let us think about it for a couple days, and then they got back to you. Absolutely. It was actually a pretty quick response. Now, did you actually have, you didn't have title of that, right? The sellers still own the house, right?

Correct. And so you just then, like, how did you make money then off? I mean, like, did you make, did you call it a finder? fee or how did you actually make the money? Oh, you're talking at close, Brandon? Yeah, like, I closed. Did you a whole set? I mean, like, exactly. I'm just confused. It was, it was, it was, it was my first one. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the best structured. It was all dependent on trust. And I trusted the people I was working with pretty, pretty well. So, uh, once they got paid by the bank, they ended up giving, given the extra, uh, that they got paid. They ended up giving that to me.

Okay. Yeah. And, you know, I'm going to go back to my question. On, uh, I'm not, I'm going to go back to my question on the bank thing because I know when I call the bank and they ask me questions, the first question they ask her, what will ask for your social? And if it's my wife calling on my behalf, they say, well, we can't talk to you about this loan. We have to talk to the person of record, of course. Well, my wife could, but my mom or somebody else wouldn't be able to call. So how are you able to actually get through being that you weren't the overall? of the note. Well, I was able to get through with the help of the current owners. So they did most of the talking. And then as well as once they told the bank that they're going to let me

handle it from there, they had to sign some paperwork to let that be possible to make that official. And then I was able to communicate with them from there. Got it. Okay. Perfect. Yeah, no, that's great. That definitely makes a lot of sense. Awesome. You know what I like about your story, Lamar, is that like that first deal is it's something I always say like I think it's important for people to go out and just kind of I mean not be like reckless but you know move forward and just start doing something and you're going to figure a lot of things out just as you go and like that deal definitely was something that you just kind of kept pushing forward and figured out as you went and it made you who you are today so I think that's awesome yeah absolutely because there's there's one thing

um that I always see a lot of new people do I'm the opposite of this um because I used to do it in the pass with a lot of things, but there's steps. Like to accomplish something, there's a certain amount of steps. So if there's 30 steps, some people want to know all 30 steps before they take one action. So with me, I try to figure out what step one is, start doing step one and try to figure out step two before I'm finished with step one. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. That's awesome. So wholesaling, you kind of wholesale that first deal, even though technically, you know, was kind of a weird way to doing it. But so how did you actually get into wholesaling then, like, as a business. Yeah. So once I did that, I was thinking that it was pretty, in my mind,

I was thinking it was pretty impossible to do that on a regular basis. So, because I was thinking of it structuring it the exact same way. So it was pretty impossible to continue to do that on a regular basis. So I kind of took a, took a big break off real estate. And I was wanting to try to figure out a way to continue to do that. But what I end up doing is I just kept researching and researching and researching and then I was just like well maybe I can find these deals for people and then just pass it off to someone and then once I was doing decided to go down that path then I figured out what wholesaling was through YouTube and all over the internet especially looking on bigger pockets and I found out that you can make more than just a couple hundred

dollars on a deal and so we try to do that as frequently as possible awesome that's great that's great. And I think part of what the impetus to that was, I'm guessing you probably didn't want to trust people to just give you the money after the deal's close. Like, hey, we had a deal, man. Come on, where's my cash? Yeah, everything's cool until someone gets the money in their hands and then the decisions change a little bit. So you got to get everything down on paper. Exactly. Exactly. Nice. Okay, so you get into wholesaling and, you know, did you, now that you've kind of learned it and studied it, did you just jump right in and start doing it again?

Or what was kind of the process at that point now that you realize, hey, I want to be a wholesaler? Okay. Well, my transition into it was pretty, I'd say kind of slow because at the time I was planning on opening a direct sales business. And so that's what I did. I had a time period for about three years where I did 100% commission door-to-door sales, business to business or door-to-door, which I think that helped me develop a lot of the business

acumen that I have now because you meet a lot of business people doing that as well as they're pretty excited that you're out there working hard. So I learned a lot from them as well as people I was working for. And you weren't selling phone books, right? I wasn't selling phone books, but I could, though. Nice, nice. And so from there, I just, I decided once I decided once I got into wholesaling, I just, it was kind of a slow transition because I was doing the normal mistake that most new people make is every time you find a strategy and then you hear about a different one and you think that can make you more money. So you kind of bounce from strategy to strategy to strategy.

and next thing you know, instead of being good at one thing, you're really below mediocre at everything. And so I had to go through that, take some bumps in the road. I was wholesaling here and there on accident. But once I got consistent with my strategy and I decided to focus on one thing at a time, then that's when we started to get it rolling. That's an awesome bit of feedback because I think so many people, especially many who are probably listening to the show right now, are going through that, right?

And the next best shiny object that stands out and they jump around. And clearly, that's not a good strategy. Yeah, absolutely. And it's kind of hard not to do that because there's so much good marketing on the internet about different programs and different things. And so once you read that, then you read it and you're like, wow, this strategy is better than what I'm using now. That's probably why I'm not making money.

And then switch. And then two months later do the same thing. Well, I know I'm guilty. I mean, every week on the podcast here, we interview a guest who's got a little bit different, you know, way of making money in real estate. And every week, like, we hang out from the call. And me and Josh go, man, that sounds so cool. We should totally do that. Like, you know, every week, it's like that every, the grass is always greener on the other side.

But, you know, kind of like, yeah, in our, in the ultimate beginner's guide, the to real estate investing that we have on the site, one chapters in there is about finding your niche and your strategy. It's basically, yeah, find one strategy that works and then find a niche within that. So like, yeah, wholesaling and wholesaling houses, you know, that's a niche in a strategy. And then just focus on that and get really good at it. Exactly like you said. So. Yeah, I think the thing that helped me the most is one of the really awesome business women that I know. She told me it's better to be great at one thing than mediocre it a lot.

And so instead of focusing on being average at 10 things, find one thing and be great at it and then move on to the next thing. Yeah. So I think that's really good advice for starting out. I think that helped me out tremendously because otherwise I would have been just spreading myself thin trying to get good at every single type of thing. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Now, was she a mentor or just a friend of yours who had some good pearls of wisdom? Pretty much both.

Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. So what neighborhoods are you focused on? Speaking of niches and finding your place, what are you looking for when you wholesale a deal nowadays? What I'm looking for is I'm looking for whatever. my buyers are looking for. And then I think, I think that's, that's a thing that a lot of new wholesalers, they just look for properties everywhere. So when I first started out, I was finding properties

what they're like in the country where not too many people that I knew wanted to buy there. So I think my strategy right now is I'm focusing on properties that are really close to the center of the city, which is where most of the cash transactions are happening. And a lot of the investors are pretty excited about because Austin is a really competitive market in terms of real estate in terms of finding the deals. So most people that are that are looking for deals, if they can find anything within 10 to 12 miles from downtown, then they're doing a really good job. Okay. So, you know, a lot of people find that wholesaling is this chicken and an egg problem, right? So some strategies, some people will strategize, hey, I'm going to go and find buyers. And once I have the buyers,

they're going to tell me what they want, and I'm going to go out and find them. A lot of other people will say, listen, no, that's crazy. Go find good deals, and the buyers will come. And I tend to agree both work, but I prefer the latter. Which was your strategy? My strategy was to do both at the same time.

Okay. So I think a lot of people will stop themselves and they hinder their progress a little bit when they only look for buyers first and then have buyers and then look for deals. Because if you get a deal, most people that are going to flip houses or most people that are looking to invest in houses, they're looking for a house that the final value of that house, the after repair value, the price that they buy it at is 70% of that minus the repairs. So if you find a deal like that, it doesn't matter where, I mean, it doesn't matter too much about if you have buyers or not. you're going to have five people banging on your door within the first 10 minutes of you posting that.

Right. Yeah. So basically, you find a good deal. You're going to find buyers is really the bottom line. Yeah, that's the bottom line. The thing about finding buyers, the more different types of buyers you have, the more properties you can wholesale. Because in my mind, I kind of categorize buyers into all different categories. Nice, nice. All right. So let's chat a tiny bit about that. the buyers here. How many buyers do you need? I mean, yeah, I mean, a lot of people will say, hey, I need a buyer's list. I want 10,000 people on a buyer's list. And frankly, I think that's crazy. I think, you know, you need 5, 10 good buyers and, and you're set. But what's your theory on that and what's worked for you? I agree. You don't need a ton of buyers. You just need all the different

types of buyers is what I think. Because there's different types of people that do different things with properties. Some people are more aggressive than others. Some people take more risk than other people. So a lot of times, I'll be able to find a deal and then get the house under contract. And then once I do that, I can figure out which buyer is going to buy it. So while I'm negotiating, I'm thinking about which type of buyer is going to buy it. So in my mind, there's a couple different types of buyers. The kind that I, so there's, there's a couple of different types of buyers. the kind that I so there's a normal buyer that wants to fix and flip so they're going to want 70% they want to buy it out 70% minus the repairs that the house needs there's other buyers that do what jason groat talked about on the on the call that he was on which is called hoteling so basically that buyer they'll buy the property from you they'll get the property in a condition that it can be financed by a bank so that's someone that wants a fix their upper can get a bank loan and purchase that property so that's strong strategy is a strategy that'll get a buyer in and out a little bit quicker in terms of the return

on their investment. There's also buyers that fix the property and then rent it out. They'll purchase at a certain price. There's buyers who buy it and then hold it for three months because they know the market's going to go up and then don't even do anything to it and then resell it because they're able to get more comp. So there's some of those strategies that are a little bit a little bit riskier, but it's just like invested in the stock market, there's all different types of investors. And so if there's only one type of investor, then most of the stocks would be at dramatically lower prices. But there's people that day trade, there's value investors, there's people that are going to hold the stock for a year. There's people that are going to

hold it for 30 years. So it's the same kind of thing with the real estate is the people that are buying the properties from you. You have to have all different types with all different strategies because that way, whenever you're negotiating with someone that really wants to sell their property and there's a certain amount owed on the property that you can't go below, then you are still able to find a solution for that person as well as find a deal for someone. That's pretty much a home run deal for them as well. That's awesome. Cool.

So, hey, how are you finding these buyers? Like, how should people start out finding them? Well, I think the easiest way to start out is, I mean, you can do some Craigslist posts, posting that I'm a wholesaler. I buy properties. The best way is for the people to actually meet you and know you. So I think I met a lot of people that buy properties from me through a bigger pockets meetup that we had here in Austin. Nice. Oh, yeah. That was pretty awesome. I feel like most of the people that I know I met them through bigger pockets, which is pretty awesome. And I met a couple really people that I would call geniuses through bigger pockets. And it's good to learn from those people as well.

And then I have another tip for some people that are starting out. If you're starting out in wholesaling, a good thing that I do is I have a certain price on the property that I want to sell it at. And then when a person wants to buy the property from me, if I respect that person and I've seen that person's work and I want to learn from them, I'll lower the price a little bit if they allow me to come look at the property and learn from them as the price. is going on so that I can learn what they're doing and then I can apply that if I ever decide to do that same thing. That's awesome. And it also helps to know that right now I can see a house and I know exactly what a couple of my buyers are going to do to it and how much that's going to cost them so I can say the

repairs in terms of their language what they would do the repairs at. That's great. That's really, really great. So can I pop in here? I want to ask a question and a lot of times on the on the podcast, you know, on the podcast podcast here and just in general we talk a lot about theories and what's good and stuff i want to get really really specific here and be a little selfish i want to ask you about a specific deal that i'm considering working on and i want to know your take on it so all right so a lady called me from a

website i set up actually i did made this tutorial on the site on how to use uh how to build a website in under an hour and i'll link to that in the show notes that's uh biggerpockets.com slash show 31 but so So this lady calls me, and I actually didn't even know she called for three weeks because I didn't have my Google voice hooked up right, but that's another story. So anyway, I get the message three weeks later. I call her back, and she's very motivated to sell. She doesn't owe anything on the house. It's in a bad neighborhood, though. Not the worst neighborhood, but definitely, it's like I'm not going to get shot there, but there's definitely, you know, drugs in that neighborhood.

she said she needs she started at 30,000, well, 29, and just in the five-minute conversation, she dropped her price to 18. So what I'm wondering is, should I pursue this in a bad neighborhood? I don't have any cash buyers that I know of yet that buy in that neighborhood. Like, what would you do in that case? I would say after repair value, after repair value probably 40 or 50. 40 or 50. Yeah, and it doesn't mean.

How much work does it mean? Maybe 10 grand. Probably paint and carpet. maybe a little more depending on who does the work. But what would you do? I pursued. I had a deal like that pretty recently. And I pursued and then just add in there a discount because of the neighborhood.

So if it was in a different neighborhood, of course, you could probably sell that property for quite a bit more. But in a bad neighborhood, you have to take into account. I mean, especially if it's not the worst neighborhood and it's not like really, really bad. It's just not the best place that you want to be. then you're just discounting it based on the neighborhood as well. So I pursue it and then find the buyers that buy in that area. A lot of times if I'm going to do something like that, then I'll drive around.

And if I see any we buy houses signs in that area, I'll call that person and then see what they're looking for. And then next thing you know, I might have a buyer. So I'm not going to tell them the exact deal and where it's at just in case because I never met them. And you never know if someone wants to fill a deal. from you. But I probably take a little bit of a look at it and see if I needed to discount it even more to make it work or go forward. Because there was one property I just had actually

talked to the guy for the last time yesterday and I needed him to discount it about 20,000 to make it work just because it was on a certain side of the street. If it was on the other side, then it would have been perfectly fine. Interesting. Yeah, that's great. Do you mind if I jump back a second here to something and it's a little selfish on my end. So you said, you know, you went to the Austin meet up and met a lot of people. That's great. You said you also found people on the site itself. For anyone listening, how would one go about finding folks on the site? Are you finding potential buyers just by engaging, interacting? What are you doing? Yeah, I mean, I'm just engaging and interacting. You're going to find people that do fix and flips. You're going to find people on the site. Because if you just

search for what you're like because basically i was doing a search for to gain knowledge so if i'm searching and then i find people that are are fixing and flipping houses and they live in my same area then i'll meet up when i'm for coffee so my goal isn't to add the person to my buyers list my goal is to get to know them and figure out what their strategy is and learn from them and then a byproduct once they figure out that i wholesale properties is uh they're going to want to be added to my buyers list. So I don't feel like I really ask too many people to be on my buyers list. It's such a competitive market right now in most markets. It's really tough to find deals. And a lot of people that depended on MLS deals, they're not able to find them there. So they have to look for another

source, and that source is really good wholesalers. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. It's a competitive market. Obviously, Austin's hot right now. You're saying, what are your tips for doing that? Like how do people handle it when everything's flying off the shelves? Well, I think, do you mean in terms of get in the property? Yeah, yeah, yeah, in terms of like just wholesaling and finding good properties when there's so much competition. It was easy when the MLS, you know, you could find anything you wanted there. It was a lot easier. Yeah, when the market's not as hot, MLS is a little bit easier to find deals.

But when it's hot, there's a ton of competition. So you have to be creative and you have to have to have really good. great marketing. So with me, I have all different types of marketing. I started out with just direct mail. I use an expert that I met on the site, and he does really awesome work. That's Jerry Puckett. So I feel like someone that's just sending out the copy on the letters that they decide to make up out of their brain, I feel like I have a competitive advantage over them because Jerry is an excellent, I mean, he's done it himself, as well as he's applying that. and then he's tweaking it and I have ideas and he'll have ideas and we'll merge those together.

And next thing you know, we have a really great product. And I feel like the other thing that you need to do in a competitive market is you have to act fast. If you hesitate at all, you're most likely going to lose a deal. So what I do is I'm able to, if someone called me right now, right as soon as we finish this call, I'd be able to look up the comps and do everything on my phone within five minutes and let them know the price that I can purchase that. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So you're setting out this direct mail marketing, which sounds like kind of your primary method for finding folks. Who are you marketing to? Are you marketing? Obviously, I'm assuming some form of distressed property owner, yes?

Yes. I mean, we have we market to inheritance, people that just inherited property. We market to people that don't live in the property and they're absentee owners. We have a different, We have a pretty big list of different types of people that we market to, and we're growing that list as time goes on. But the main thing is just getting the letters out there, decide which list you want to mel to and continue to mel to those people. Because a lot of times what I did when I started out and what a lot of other new people do is they'll try one list. They'll mail to those people, and then they won't get as big of a response, or they won't make a deal, so they'll switch to a different list. without continuing to repetitively hit those people. And how long does it take to hit somebody?

I think they say the average is seven. Are you noticing that it takes maybe four, five, six, seven touches before somebody will get in touch with you? Well, we have a pretty good response from the first milling. I mean, our first milling, we did two deals off that milling. Nice. How many letters was that? That was about a thousand.

Wow, that's not bad at all. Yeah, so we got a good amount of calls. We got about 30 or 40 calls coming in from that. And then we just had to be persistent and follow up to make the deals happen. So from there, it's just all about being persistent and being solution-oriented and figuring out if there's any way possible, you can make a deal. So what happens? You sent out a mailing, and presumably you're directing people to call you, right,

not to respond by email or go to your website. Is that right? Correct. Okay. So they call, do you answer every phone call? Do you send them to a voicemail system? Do you have a virtual assistant? What do you do?

Well, we do a combination of both. One of my types of letters are going to a recording answering service where they're actually talking to a live person. Another one goes straight to a voicemail that I directly return the calls to. I used to answer them live, but when I answer them live, I don't know anything about the property. They expect me to know everything about it. So I spend like two minutes getting a, once I hear that voicemail, I get a brief overview

of the property, know how much I want to pay for it. And then I'll call them back and then we'll be familiar with it. Nice. So what do you do then when you say you look on your phone to try to figure out what you could offer them? What, yeah, what are you doing to look on your phone? How do you figure out the comps and all that? Well, there's all different types of apps that you can use. And luckily in my market, we have redfin, which is pretty similar to MLS for people that haven't used it.

It has the sold houses, the available houses, and the pending houses. So I can, first I go check on my Zillow app so I can figure out the exact square footage of the property, how many bathrooms it has. Sometimes there's missing information, but if there's missing information, then I'll go to the county website, find out more about the property. and then I can take that information and then run the comps in Redfin and then it'll pull up what the max of the properties are selling for. So are you finding that Redfin's comp data

is a little more accurate than some of these other guys? Well, it's not, I wouldn't say, yeah, I'd say yes because it's the actual sold. So they're not giving you an estimate of what they think it's worth like Zillow does is just showing you which properties have sold and I'm finding similar properties to the one that I have that have been remodeled that have sold in the last three to six months.

So you're doing the comps yourself, but you're just using that as the tool set. Yeah, that's my quick way to do it. And then I have a real estate partner that I use and a name Udiel. So I just send it over to him. That gives me like a rough estimate just in case the person needs an offer right then and there. And then do you have any tips for knowing like how much repairs are going to cost? I mean, I know you have a construction background. But for those who don't, how do people know what to offer based on the repairs?

That's kind of, it's a little tough starting out. I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can read in terms of determining the repairs. But I think the best thing for me is I look, I talk to people that have done the deals, and I see the projects that they've done and see how much money they put into it. And I'm looking at those before and after pictures, and then that helps me understand. That's like the quick, quick answer to it, but that's like one of those things where you can get really detailed and that kind of thing. But every single person that's going to do something with the house, they're going to have a different number on how much the repairs are going to meet. So you just need to be somewhere around there.

But the main thing you want to make sure you don't do is underestimate the repairs so you can sell a deal. Nice. Nice. And as a selfish plug here, I think Jay Scott's book onestimating rehab costs is a pretty very very. valuable tool that's a bigger pockets book you can find it at bigger pockets.com slash flipping book yet you got to buy it with our book on flipping houses that way but if you just go to amazon you could actually pick it up on amazon and it kind of breaks down every different kind of rehab cost and and kind of gives you ranges for different markets so it's it's

kind of a helpful tool i i was going to ask you you had talked about answering service i just was going to ask who that was that you're using what what what's the answering service that you that you use it's it's a lot so it uh it uh they when they answer the phone it's uh pretty it's it seems like you're calling into office oh nice that's that's great and then and then when when somebody calls the other line and they get the voicemail is that like a google voice or what is that yeah i'm using google voice for it it's nice and simple easy to set up and then i can uh forward it straight to my cell phone and call them back from that same number. That's great. That's great.

What if your CRM actually did the hard work for you? I know, crazy. ReSimply lets you pull seller lists, skip trace them at no cost, and contact your leads by caller text without bouncing between apps. Then it's AI agents takeover. Answering calls, following up automatically, even grading your conversations so you can focus on the deals that matter. Everything's under one roof. Designed to simplify your day and scale your business. Start your free trial today and lock in 50% off your first month at re-simply.com slash bigger pockets. That's R-E-S-I-M-P-L-I dot com slash bigger pockets.

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. 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 a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. If you think property management is expensive, try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early. that's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead.

Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses. And that matters more than ever in this economy. That's why I like Mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line.

Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. And they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way. 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-compliant strategy that lets you accelerate depreciation on your properties, which means you're paying less in taxes this year and keeping more cash in your pocket for your next deal.

Cost segregation guys is the good. go-to firm, having done over 12,000 of these studies with 500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to Costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. So let's talk about wholesaling. Yeah, I really want to dig in here because, well, first, I don't think we actually talked about, you know, your deals, right?

So I don't know if you're comfortable, but about how many deals have you done so far as a wholesaler? We're getting close to 10 in this last since April. So I'm kicking it up a little bit. We're doing a little bit more marketing. We're getting a really good return on our marketing. We're figuring out exactly the niche that we want to continue to go at. And we're solving a lot of problems for the sellers, as well as we're solving problems for the people that are buying properties from us because they need property.

and it's hard to find, so we're helping them solve one of their problems in terms of getting them more properties. And I think it's important, you know, that you haven't, you don't have 100 deals under your belt. You don't have a thousand deals. And I think one of the coolest things about this podcast is, you know, bringing folks like you on who, you know, you've been at it for a little bit now and you're really starting to pick it up. And I think it tends to be inspiring. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely not an expert by any means at all. I just feel like I have a little. little bit of momentum and I've, I've hit some bumps in the road, and I feel like people can learn from those mistakes that I've made, and that would help them be a little bit more successful than me. Come on, Lamar, you've done 10 deals. I mean, where's your coaching program, man?

Come on. I thought about making one of those guru courses. But I just, I'd rather make feels like. Awesome. Awesome. Hey, so in terms of like the marketing. You know, you really talked about being consistent and sticking with it. Do you think that's one of the big flaws that a lot of people have is, you know, they give up and, you know, ultimately they try one mailing, they stop, they move to something else.

Maybe they get a lead or two and suddenly they're like, I'm done. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think a lot of people, they have expectations. and then when those expectations aren't met, and they just end up slowly giving up. So it's kind of like working out, like you start a new workout program, you're pretty excited when you first started, then you lift some weights, you get a little sore. Then the next day going into it, you know you're going to get sore, so you're not as excited. And then I think that excitement diminishes because you're not seeing the results immediately.

So I think that's the same thing with whole selling and any type of real estate. if you're not seeing the results immediately, you just have to know why you're not getting the results. And then once you know why you're not getting the results, then you can tweak things to make the results come. So I think a lot of people, the main thing that I had to learn was that I had to learn what my law of averages was. So I had to learn that I need this many leads to equal one deal. I need this many people to call me to equal one deal. And once I figured out what that was, it's between 20 to 30 people I needed to call me. So if I want to do two deals a month, that means I need 60 people to call me a month.

But if I'm giving up after only five people called me in three months, then that's my fault because I don't know my law of averages. I'm basing everything off time rather than the amount of leads. So if I'm getting 60 leads in a week, then that's awesome because I'm doing one deal or two deals a week. But if I'm getting 60 leads in a year, then I have a much different amount of deals that I'm doing. So I think that's one thing that helped me out was understanding how many people need to call me before I'm able to buy a house and sell. So what do you have to do to do 60 people to call you? How many letters do you have to send out or how much marketing? And if you're willing to share it, what does that cost you?

Well, I mean, so we've been focusing on a lot of direct mail, but we do all different types. We do bandit signs. We do online. We do pretty much everything. But direct mill is the one that we like the most. because you can control your whole funnel. Because with Bendett signs, you can't really control how many people are going to call you because you just putting the signs out and hoping people call.

But with direct mail, you can send out a certain amount of letters, and then that's going to get you people calling. So we're getting about a 10% call, not about, it ranges from about 8% to 10% response rate on our letters. And then from there, we're able to make deals and go forward. from there. So I'm sending to sending out anywhere from it it it ranges, but we're sending out anywhere from a thousand to five thousand millers. And then I think one tip that I will give everyone is whenever you're doing direct mail, you have to know how many calls you can handle per day

or per week because when I first, one time I send out about 700 millers at the same time. and then about 60 people called me in a week, and I was only able to return like 12 phone calls within a two-day span, and by the third day, most of those other leads didn't even call me back. So I just wasted probably a couple deals there because I didn't have everything set up correctly. That's awesome advice. That's really good.

So, you know, it sounds like you can directly affect the number of deals you're going to get by applying more or less budget, right? So, you know, obviously as one guy, you can't handle 60 phone calls, but if you had a partner or two partners or, you know, folks working for you potentially, and you say wanted to spend three, four, five thousand bucks on mailers and increase the number that you're putting out, you're going to see a lot more deals come through the funnel. Correct. So I think that the reason I chose wholesaling is not so that I can do a couple deals and go chasing deals around. But the reason I chose wholesaling is because no matter what I'm going to do. which strategy I choose in real estate, I need to be really great at finding a deals. So if I have a systemized business that can find deals for me, then I can delegate that to other people. And then

next thing you know, we're finding deals. We have our own funnel and it's not MLS. What's your theory on being a wholesaler with who's broke? Like, you know, hey, I want to be a wholesaler. I'm broke. I got no money. I got no nothing. Is it feasible? Is it possible? Yeah, I think it's possible. I mean, you can either save your money for a couple months and then do some marketing. You can start with bandit signs and save some money there. You can, I mean, there's all different types of ways that you can make it happen. And I think the thing that helped me make it happen is I didn't really, I had money to invest,

but I really wasn't sure that what I was going to do was going to work, which is not usually how I am because I'm usually pretty confident. But I, so I applied as little as my money as possible to get started. And next thing you know, once I hit that first deal, I just reinvested all that, most of that. And then we just kept rolling it through. So I think you can do it. And I heard a wise lady told me one time, we put a man on the moon, so you should be able to do this. It's easy.

So I feel like, I mean, if we have someone, if we can go to the moon or do some crazy things that people do, then, I mean, It doesn't matter how much money I have. I feel like I can be successful. So I feel like if someone applies that same mentality to it and they don't use that as an excuse, they can make it happen. Well, you know the saying about excuses, right? Really quick, I'm going to jump in. I know you mentioned bandit signs.

It's a particular pet peeve of mine. In many cases, the use of bandit signs. And I will disclaim that we definitely recommend people only use them where they're allowed. Putting up signs illegally is a quick way to get yourself into some trouble. So don't do it. Yeah, definitely. There's certain ways you can do it and you just have to make sure you're doing it the right way

and you're following the city ordinances and those different types of things. Yeah, good idea. I'm wondering about talking with sellers. I want to go back to my selfish question. So when I talk to this... What about my deal, Amar? Well, I need help. I need help here.

I need, I need some encouragement. You guys, after the phone call are going to talk. You're going to split the deal. Marr's going to walk you through it. No, I got, all right. So when I go to talk to this lady, I talk to her. And I'm wondering, how do you get, like, I mean, what do you do to talk to people? How do you get people on your side to like you to want to sell to you?

He's nice. That's why nobody likes you, Brat. Well, I think she liked me, but I don't know. I wonder what can I do better? Well, I don't know what you can do better. We haven't really hung out too much. But I would say that a lot of times I'll get deals because the person that talked to them before me, for some reason or another, the person didn't like them. And nine times out of ten, it's just because the person came in and they got straight to business.

Like with me, I'm genuinely excited to meet new people and I genuinely care about them. And then I always make it a goal to never ask them a question that I don't care about the answer to. So that makes it, that forces me to genuinely build relationships with people. And then when we're building relationships, and next thing you know, someone's going to give them a $5,000 higher offer than me, but they'll still sell me the property because they like me better. And like, when someone likes you, they trust you a little bit more. And it's just all about building that relationship.

So when you build that relationship, then I think that makes everything easier. So my goal is to build the relationship as fast as possible and then be able to do business as well. So I had one seller. He ended up selling me as property. But at the end of our first meeting, he told me he feels like we're best friends and we've been knowing each other forever. And so it was kind of a good compliment to me. Do you have any ice breakers or any tips for folks who are afraid of that phone call? Because that could be really intimidating.

Somebody calls, you get the voicemail, and you're like, okay, I don't know how to, how do I do it? What do I say? You know, any advice on that? I think I used to always try to come up with like these crazy icebreakers and different things like that, but a lot of times they end up sounding corny. So I know some people are really good at it, but I'm not. So I just, my easiest icebreaker is I'm just really excited when I call them back and they answer the phone. and I ask them how their day is going. And based on how they respond to that,

lets me know what they want to talk about. Like if they're like, yeah, my day is awesome. I hung out with my kids today, blah, blah, blah. Then I can keep talking to them about that for a little bit. And then now we like each other a little bit more. Or then that same person, if they say the day has been awesome and all that stuff, and I just go straight into business, they're going to dislike me a little bit. So my goal is just to make sure that I'm building great relationships.

Sometimes people want to get straight to business, and that's our way to build a relationship is getting straight to business. So I think your tone of voice and how excited you are when you're talking to them makes the most sound. Oh, right. That's awesome. No, that's very good. That would creep me out, Josh. That would creep me out. Hey, Brandon, how are you? I got your postcard.

Yes, thanks. Creepy. All right. All right, so what do you typically aim for in a wholesale deal? Like how much minimum profit do you want to make? I don't think I've done one for less than $5,000. But as well as you don't want to try to get greedy. But I just try to get the max that I can to make the deal work.

So maybe my goal is to make $10,000, but then the person that's interested, they can only pay $7,000. So we'll see if that'll make it work. And then if it can, we'll do it. So I'm not trying to be greedy. My goal is more for volume rather than hitting home runs every time. Because I know if I just keep hitting those base hits, eventually I'll hit a couple home runs and that'll be pretty awesome.

But I just need to develop that reputation of being a really good wholesaler with great integrity that brings people good deals depending on what their strategy is. I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that. Integrity is something that, that, you know, it's a shame because this business, one of the reasons I started Bigger Pockets was

I felt like the business was just real crappy. I mean, there were so many bad people with bad reputations who kind of dominated the space. And, you know, my goal was, let's try and, you know, change this business. Let's try and bring a little more integrity. investors don't have to be the bad guy. And I love it when we, you know, more and more we talk to people.

And that's what it's about. It's like, hey, we're not trying to screw people. This is like, you know, let's be, you know, let's have integrity. And, yeah, it's going to drive us. And it works. Yeah, because my goal is to be in a business for a long time. Anyone can make a deal and trick someone and make a couple thousand dollars once. But if you want to be, have a long-lasting business.

it's all about the integrity. So that's the reason I focus on that. That's not the main reason, but it's because it's the right thing to do. But that's a byproduct of it. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. Hey, really quick. So you talked about what you aim for. Have you had any home runs? And if so, you know, what did those look like? And maybe you could afterwards tell us, you know, have you had any terrible deals? And what were those like? Well, home runs. I mean, I haven't had any crazy home runs. recently, but I mean, we made 15,000 here on one of these properties in Austin. It was actually a deal that I almost gave up one because the guy caught me and we're about to, we're about to make

the deal. And then he called me the next day when we're supposed to meet about an hour before we're supposed to meet. And he told me, hey, I don't think I want to sell my property. And I was like, why not? And he was like, because I think I'll waste the money too fast. I was, I kind of, I was like, okay, I didn't know what to say. So I was like, all right, no problem. Maybe in the future, whatever you're supposed to say, I guess. And then, so we hung up. And then in my mind, I was thinking, well, that can't be the real reason.

Because, I mean, if he owns eight properties, he has to be good at managing money. So I called him back. And I was like, hey, I was just trying to figure out, like, I mean, I know, I know you're good at managing money. So I don't know, I don't really think that's the real reason that you don't, You called him out. Yeah. I mean, we had a good relationship, so it allows for you to say different things. And then so he was just like, yeah, I mean, I just don't know what my taxes are going to be like and all that different kind of stuff.

And then he was planning on buying some more properties. So basically, I came up with a solution for him so that we could do a 1031 exchange so that he could use the money from that property to put it into another property, which was actually way bigger. And he could get him a higher rent. and he got that deal from knowing an agent that he bought another property from. So it ended up working out, but we ended up making about $15,000 off that one. I wouldn't call that too much of a home run, but I feel like it's pretty good for doing about six hours of work. Yeah, that's awesome.

Nice, nice. And in terms of like bad deals, did you have any ghost hour that you just couldn't close or any just terrible experiences? No, I think one of my bad deals that didn't become a deal was I built a pretty good relationship with a guy. He was like, hey, you're my guy, you're my guy. I'm going to sell it to you. And we're just waiting for him to become the executor of the property because he inherited it. So becoming the executor allows him to sell the property.

So he was going through that process. And we had such a good relationship that he was showing me the contracts from other people that were sending them to him. was giving me all the direct mail that he was getting. Because I asked him for it so I can know what my competition is doing. And then he still gives me that mail to this day. But what happened is he called me on a Friday. He's like, hey, I'm the executor now. I'm ready to sell. You're my guy. I'm ready to sign the contract. And I was like, okay, cool. It was a Friday afternoon. And so I was like, yeah, I'll be there in the morning. He was like, okay. So I go there on the morning. seven o'clock in the morning he told me he wakes up at five i get there i knock on the door he's not

that excited as he normally is and then uh he's like hey yeah sit down i i signed the contract with someone else yesterday oh so so and it was like one thousand dollars more and it was the contract that i already seen but uh they showed up and and they ended up convincing them to get the deal so uh i mean that was a i'll say that was about a 10 000 learning lesson and uh so i i'll never make that mistake again so the key is don't wait just do it yeah correct act as fast as possible yeah yeah cool all right well we're starting to run out of time here so we're going to jump right into our fire fire round fire round what is the fire round brandon turner fire round our questions chosen from the bigger pockets forums

that people have asked recently and we're going to ask you to chime in quickly and first one is how old is too old for a house to wholesale is there such thing I don't think there's such a thing. So you'll go like any age? That it's not standing, you can just tear it down and build something else. All right. Nice. All right.

Yellow letter or white letter? Whatever you test and gets the best response. Because usually what your competition is not doing works better. Nice. What are you using right now? I use a combination of stationary and yellow letters. Okay. Gotcha.

Gotcha, gotcha. What do you do? Yeah. What do you do when you go to talk to a seller and you find out they owe more than what the property is worth? Do you do anything? I refer to a real estate agent that does short sales. Okay. There you go.

And are you licensed? I'm not licensed. Okay. Right on. If you were, that would be an opportunity to get some, you know, fees there, potential. Yeah. Definitely. What do you do when you have a really heavy call volume, but you're working a full-time job?

So what should somebody do if they're working and how do they handle all the calls? I'd say the best thing to do is figure out how many calls you can handle per day, and then only mail the amount of mail that will get you that many calls or less. Okay, there you go. And wholesaling long distance, do you do it, why or why not? I do not do it because I know the market better here and I don't have too much of a shortage on deals here but eventually in my long-term plans that might be a strategy. Okay and I think that's important to kind of know the market at least so even if you

are going to wholesale long distance make sure make sure you know the the market that you're wholesaling in. So good idea. All right, next one Josh. Web presence is it necessary? Do you have one and is it required? I think it's like any other type of marketing. It's not necessary or required, but if you have it, it's better.

And do you have a web presence? I do. Okay, perfect. And we will point to that website from the show notes. Okay, awesome. Yes. All right. Last question, Lamar.

Do you use pay-per-click ads like Google or Facebook? And why or why not? Yes, I do. You'll get a really good response rate if you do it the right way. Cool. That sounds like a whole other show. right there. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a leading question. What's the right way, Lamar? Well, I just say find someone that's an expert on it and get them to do it for you.

That's actually great advice. That's great advice. It is. It is. All right. Well, listen, that's that's fantastic. We're coming to the close here. Of course, of show 31 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 31. Let's finally jump into the big, fat, famous for. Good. All right. Favorite real estate book, Lamar? My favorite real estate book is it has to be, I know everyone says this, but rich that,

we're that, and the main reason is because it changes your mentality from being an employee and having that employee mindset they would get taught in school to being more of a business owner and an investor. So I think that's the book I read that changed my mentality. You know, I'm thinking anybody who listens to our podcast on a regular basis, if they haven't read Rich Dead Poor Dad, they really should. I mean, some people don't even like it. I mean, a lot of people don't like the book, but the fact that almost every single person says it, it says something about the book. So anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's not the best book in the world, but it changes the mentality and it's really good for that.

Yeah, I agree on that. I agree on that. All right, famous, famous, favorite business book. Any, any business books that stand out to you? I have two of them. One is good to great. That's probably my favorite business book. And the other one is four-hour work week. Because when I read that book, it helped me, I learned what, I mean, I learned what outsourcing was. And I found out that I've been doing that my whole life, outsourcing to my little brother. there. Josh makes fun of me because I like the four-hour work week so much. So you can back me up there. It's a great book. Now, did your little brother realize that he was being outsourced to?

I'd probably realize if he ever hears his coach. Nice, nice. How about any hobbies? What do you do for fun outside of real estate? My favorite thing is to play basketball. Any real estate investors in Austin, not play basketball. If you ever want to get dunked on,

and just, I'm all the channels. How tall are you, Lamar? I'm about 6'4, 6.3. Okay, I'm 6.5, but I'm terrible at basketball. Okay. You're a little taller than me.

You can probably block my shot or something. I want to see a one-on-one right here. I want to see it. Brandon. I think it'll be ugly, but it will be ugly on my part. All right. Last question of the day.

Final question. What do you believe? sets apart the wholesalers who succeed and take off and those who just don't. Persistence. It's a plan is simple. You just have to be persistent. When that book, Think and Grow Rich, one of my favorite books as well, there's a story about a guy that he was searching for gold. He stopped right before he hit it.

He was three feet away from hitting one of the biggest gold vans in history. And then a junk dealer ended up finding it and became one of the richest people. So I think you just got to make sure you don't stop because you might be three feet away from gold. Nice. That's fantastic. And, you know, I'll say that along similar lines, you know, many, many, many years ago, I, you know, with bigger pockets as a perfect example, you know, this site, you know, I've, I had lots of people tell me, you know, what the hell are you doing? This, the site's not going anywhere. you're not going to, you know, this isn't going to be a legitimate business. You're not going to

succeed. And I said, listen, you know, I'm, if I stick it out, I know that there's a passion here. I know that this is something I'm excited about and I know how to do it. It may take me a little bit longer, but I'm going to work through it and work through the challenges and difficulties. And I did. And lo and behold, you know, we've got this community that's second to none. And, you know, I see it so many times in my life with people who, who just work through it. You got to work through the hard times. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, awesome, awesome.

All right, Lamar, well, listen, man, it's been an absolute pleasure. Really, really excited to have you on the show. Anybody listening, again, remember, if you've got questions for Lamar, jump in on the show notes. He'll be there to answer your questions, or you could check out his profile and connect with him. He's definitely a good guy to know. So jump in, ask questions, and Lamar, we definitely appreciate having you. Thanks for having me. This is pretty awesome.

Thank you, Lamar. All right, guys. So that was our show. Thanks again to Lamar for jumping in and putting up with Brandon's absolute nonsense. Hey, Josh, knock, knock. Seriously? Knock, knock. Seriously?

Knock, knock. Okay. Who's there? Etch. Bless you. Get it. I got it. I thought that was funny. Yeah, that was not funny at all.

So as I was saying, now listen, thank you guys for checking out the show. We certainly appreciate it. As we always say, if you're not already following us on Facebook, definitely jump in and check us out at facebook.com slash bigger pockets. Check us out on YouTube at YouTube.com slash bigger pockets. Check us out on Bigger Pockets at BiggerPockets.com. Jump in, hang out with us, participate. You know, get involved.

You'll meet guys like Lamar, who that's, you know, we literally just talked about him doing that and building up these business leads. So definitely be sure to do that. Otherwise, as, you know, things go, we definitely appreciate everybody who's taking the time to share this podcast, to let people know about it. It really does mean a lot to us. The more people that you guys can help us spread the word to, the more people we're going to have interacting with us and potentially doing business with us on the site.

So please do that. On iTunes, we're up to 357 five-star reviews, which is awesome. We continue to be the top-rated show on iTunes. And we now have 237 awesome, awesome written reviews. So if you haven't done that, please, you know, take a couple minutes and let us know what you thought about the show. And by doing so, you're going to let other people who are curious find out what the Bigger Pockets podcast is all about. So that's it.

No more jokes, no more nonsense. This is Josh Dorkin, 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 hike, you're in the right place. Here to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

Hey, are you still here? Okay, good. Let's have a little fun. If you're on Twitter, go over to Twitter.com slash J.R. Dorkin And leave Josh a tweet with two words. Knock, knock. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.

You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.