BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 346: 34 Units & Six-Figure Wholesale Fees (at 20 Years Old!) with Josiah Pott

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

Attention: this is a must-listen show! Whatever you’re doing, stop and download today’s episode! Brandon and David sit down with Josiah Pott, a real estate investor/wholesaler who is doing six-figure deals at 20 years old, using nothing but old fashioned cold calling. Josiah shares just how he puts houses under contract and wholesales them for big profits—then converts that money into cash-flowing rental property. You will love hearing how he found his first mentor (and got paid $20K to do so), why he dropped out of college to invest in real estate, and what his five tools are for finding off-market property owner info. You’ll also love hearing how the power of compound interest changed his life, how he uses a calendar to manage his lead follow-up, and how he handles questions regarding his young age. Josiah has done several deals where he’s made well over six figures and will tell you exactly how he did so. Don’t miss out on this game-changing info. Download this show today! In This Episode We Cover: His five tools for finding off-market property owner info How he wholesales and turns that into rentals Why he won’t miss out on seller financing in the future Why he wants things to be “hard” How he found a mentor (and got paid $20K by them) Why he dropped out of college to invest in real estate How the power of compound interest changed his life, mindset, and approach to building wealth How he’s accumulated a very impressive portfolio at 20 years old Why he uses cold calling to build wealth How he made $127K on one deal How he made $355K on a deal with his partner How he organizes his business so he doesn’t lose deals Why he keeps a personal touch in his business How he handles questions about his young age How he and his wife work together on their business And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Brandon's Instagram David's Instagram Podio PipeDrive Trello Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show346 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 346. Like I'm going to make them money before I try to make myself money. You know, like I've gone as far as saying I'll bring someone to deal and we'll run the numbers and they'll say, man, it doesn't work.

And I'll say, okay, does it work without my fee? And they'll say, yeah, I guess we can make a work. And I've just said, okay, go ahead, take it, you know? Because for me, it's long term is just so much more important. You know, relationships are more important than any amount of money. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype,

you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? My name is Brennan, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. What's up, buddy? What's up, Brandon?

I am doing great. I just got back from Austin, Texas. I was there for Kellerins Mega Camp at one of our Go-Bundance event. So got a bunch of sun, had a bunch of fun, got to hang out with real estate people. I'm all pumped up. Did you throw axes again? I saw some pictures of axe throwing. No, I didn't do that because I went out there in about two hours of sleep.

And I didn't think it was a good idea to be that sleep deprived with weapons throwing them around. So that was the one thing that I skipped. That's funny. That's like one of the things I remember last year. I had a ton of time in Austin. A ton of fun doing was axe throwing. If you, if you're listening to this show and you've not done axe throwing, you should probably do some axe throwing. So anyway, cool.

All right. Well, before we get any further into the. today's show, which is an amazing show with an amazing guest who's just 20 years old, but it's like clear on six figure wholesale fees on stuff that you. We've never really even talked about on the show before. He's got a bunch of rental properties at this point, just crushing life at a young age. He's going to totally inspire you to do a lot of cool stuff as well, everybody listening. But before we get there, let's get to today's quick tip.

All right, today's quick tip is very simple. Check out a new book. Readers are leaders, right? I'm just a big fan of reading. I just like reading an awful lot. And I thought me and David would both take a chance here real quick for our quick tip to recommend a book that we've been into lately. So I'll go first since I don't know if David, you have a book in mind yet. But I'm reading one called Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy right now.

And I really like that. We saw him speak at Go Abundance thing actually a few years ago or a year ago. And I kind of like read it quickly through it. But I'm going more deeply now through it now, now that it's like, I don't know, I'm like underlining. And like there's just like so much in there that I'm just like blown away by. just a lot of like studies and things about like what makes people successful. And kind of the point of it is if you're just relying on willpower to to change anything in your life, it's not enough. You've got to change your environment.

Environment is what matters more than anything, which is everything from how, like where you're working every day, where you're getting your stuff done, who's around you, who you associate yourself with, all that stuff. So willpower doesn't work. Great book. Awesome book. I love it. I'm reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It's kind of a book about how to make very quick snap second kind of decisions, learning. how to read your gut, trust your gut.

Like a lot of people you and I know that are on bigger pockets, they get caught up in analysis paralysis. And there's this point of diminishing returns where you just keep thinking about something and you're not moving. And if you can prevent yourself from ever getting into that state at all, you're going to have a lot more success.

So that's why I'm reading that book. Nice. I'm sad to admit, Malcolm Gladwell is like the most famous business author, like, ever. And I've not read a single Malcolm Gladwell book. I think it's because like, like, I'm sure they're great. And it's one of those like everyone tells me need to read them. And then I'm like, no, I'm not going to.

That's actually really, that's totally you, Brandon. I know. I'm a rebel. What can I say? All right. Well, speaking of great books, uh, if you haven't yet picked a copy of the intention journal from Bigger Pockets that we launched a couple weeks ago, I go pick up a copy at BiggerPockets.com slash journal. All right, y'all. And now I think that's all we got. So today's guest is Josiah pot. Josiah is a real estate investor out of South Carolina, who is like I said, just 20 years old. And the guy is just crazy. rushing it. I mean, he's got such good advice. Like, for example, he goes through five ways to

get the phone number and to get the contact address for motivated sellers, like really, like, in-depth goes to five really, really good ways to do that. He goes through this idea of like, not necessarily starting with why or starting with how, but starting with who. And you'll see what he means by that in a second. And then he tells a story later about making like over 300 grand on a wholesale fee on a huge deal. It's super inspiring. But his entire story is inspiring. and you're going to love this today. So without further ado, let's get to our interview with Josiah Pot. What's going on, Josiah?

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. Good to have you here. Man, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so let's get into this. I want to cover the elephant in the room first and unveil the elephant. You are going on your 70th birthday, is that right? 75th. Yeah, something like that.

Okay, how old are you? I'm 20, so I'll be 21 in November. All right. And before we get into your story, let's just get an idea of where are you at? What do you do? Where are you at today with your real estate? Like what's that look like? What kind of real estate do you do?

And what kind of like levels are you investing at? So I invest all in residential. And I don't have anything against, you know, any other areas of real estate. But I love residential because I feel like it's, you know, an absolute need for everyone to have a roof over their head. Where I'm at right now is I'm doing a lot of development here in Greenville, South Carolina. and we I have a group and I kind of act as the acquisitions manager I guess if you want to say that and so I make a lot of fees from finding property and setting it up to be developed but I don't usually stay in the deal so that's kind of how I've made my money and and then I you know I use it to

invest so yeah that's awesome so we're going to we're going to unpack all that so while we begin at the very beginning how did you get into real estate okay so I know we didn't talk about this before but my start in real estate was very, very young. I had a dad who, I have a dad, who is really into real estate and who was, you know, really into real estate. He was never the biggest mover or shaker, you know, but he was huge on compound interest and stuff. And so the earliest memories that I have, I was homeschooled.

And so I spent a lot of time with my family. And, you know, most of the time I learned from, you know, my mom or other teachers. But I, sometimes I had the chance to sit with my dad. I remember specifically long car trips where we would be, you know, driving 12 hours or 14 hours. And my mom would take a seat in the back and I would get in the front. And my dad and I would just do big like Excel sheets, you know, of like amortization and compound interest. And, you know, he'd be like, okay, so if you invest $2,000 for this many years at this interest rate, you know, what do you have? And like I would just sit there with my eyes wide.

And so I got, I became really obsessed with compound interest, I think, is what it started at all. and, you know, he had used real estate as a tool to realize interest. And so I kind of saw that as my first go-to. And so basically, by the time I came around to high school, I had kind of lost sight of the whole real estate thing. I mean, it just didn't seem realistic for me because I was a high schooler. And so, of course, I did the normal thing. I went and applied at, you know, local restaurant,

and then I applied another one. I didn't make either job. And so my dad being very kind and generous, he owned a commercial property and allowed me to be the landscaper. And so I got this little gig making probably in profit. I made $500 or $600 a month doing landscaping. And it was just enough to kind of get me by, I guess, with the car payment and everything. Basically, after I did that for a little while, I went to college and my dad started, he actually retired for half of the year. served for half halfway retired, I guess. And we were able to start dabbling in real estate with some of his

retirement. And so, gosh, we did a ton of stuff. We did contract for deeds, lease to own kind of deals. Did a flip, which completely failed. We did, we invested in tax liens. We did foreclosures. And it was all kind of, I mean, I didn't, I didn't never really make money doing it. But it was more like I knew that I wanted to do real estate. I was at Clemson. And I had my, minor in like a real estate emphasis area of finance. And so I just wanted to kind of get out there and try stuff. And so we worked together to kind of, I don't know, dabble. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you, you started by kind of working for your dad, I guess, almost in a way. Is that kind of yours like, yeah, the landscaping and then working in some of his deals. Yeah, exactly. So I always like

acted as some sort of acquisitions kind of manager. So he said, I want to do contract for D. You know, here are the parameters and here's what I want to find. And so I would, you know, put out bandit signs and do, you know, little advertising things here and there to, you know, to try to find him deals. And then, you know, we did a house flip together. He paid me two grand for it. And then we ended up, he asked for it back because we realized later that we lost money after accounting for interest.

And so we did a lot of failed things. I mean, it's kind of sad for me to even think about talking about all of them. but we did tax liens. We invested like $1.2 million in tax liens. And we ended up with like four properties. And three of them we paid more than we should have, like more than they're even worth. And I mean, it's just one of them took eight months to evict the people. I mean, it's just, it's been crazy.

I mean, so we, not everything has been fun. And that's how I came across like land development and wholesaling is because, you know, things sucked. Like everything that I touched, you know, was terrible. I just completely failed. And so, you know, once I finally got some traction with learning how these guys were making half a million or a million dollars a year, just setting up these developments to be taken with pretty much a zero risk, I knew that that was something I wanted to be a part of.

So when did all this, I mean, you went from landscaping for your dad and then in college kind of doing work for him to eventually at some point, like now you're doing deals on your own, it sounds like, is that right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, how did that transition happen? I'm wondering, one, how did that transition happen? How did that, like, is he like, all right, I'm kicking you out of the nest, go fly?

Like, how did that work? What's the story behind this, like, going from there to where you are today? Yeah, that's a good question. So without getting, like, into personal stuff too much, like, my wife and I, we started dating in September of 2017. And we decided to get married pretty shortly after. and we got married in April of 2018. It was awesome, but it was also really difficult.

And one of the biggest things that I was facing, you know, in that decision-making process, of course, was how in the world am I going to, you know, make money and support a wife? So we got married. We moved in with my aunt. She had a guest room. And so we had, you know, a little room to ourselves. And she was amazing and let us stay there for probably about two months. And then, you know, we actually moved into my grandma's,

trailer and all this time, you know, we had, you know, I'm not going to lie, we had received some generous gifts for getting married, which is kind of funny how that goes. But, you know, we, we were able to save up about $10,000 between, we both had some money saved. I had planned to put it towards college, but it ended up not. And then we received some gifts from getting married. And we were able to kind of use that $10,000 and say, okay, this buys us about six months. And so we knew if we could either live with my aunt or at my grandma's trailer and have a roof over our heads that we didn't necessarily have to pay for, that we could live on canned fruit and chicken and rice for six months. And so that's kind of how we set ourselves up to have the freedom to either massively succeed or massively

fail. So we dedicated all of our time to pursuing real estate and development. And so I actually, when we got married, I sold the landscaping business. I dropped out of college. It was April and the day after we got married, I was supposed to, it was a Monday, I was supposed to go to class and I just told her I couldn't, you know, so I was like, I got to do something. She was a server. And, you know, one thing I want to do, I want to make sure that everyone knows, like, we did not have it. Like, it sounds like looking back, it sounds like it was a plan, you know, like, oh, we give ourselves six months and it was like all planned out. It was totally not. I mean, we, we got married and I could not stand leaving her at home and knowing that I'm going to college spending money on

my education, which is, by the way, is not a bad thing. But I just personally couldn't handle that. That was, it was really difficult for me to know that she was making, you know, two or three hundred bucks a week, you know, serving at a pizza restaurant. And I wasn't bringing anything to the table except spending her money. So, so that was really hard for me. And the only way I could really handle it is by, you know, trying to, trying to do something to provide, I guess. So. Yeah. Yeah. It's just in story. I like that. I mean, I like that you looked at you and you're like, hey, like, just because the script, like the script for life is get it, you know, go to high school, graduate high school, go to college,

get $50,000 or $100,000 in student loan debt, then you don't get the job. You're like, you know, that might be fine for some people, but it's not right for me. Yeah, exactly. Well, and my wife always, like, whenever I talk about like our story, like, she always has to remind me, you know, this wasn't always your plan because, you know, of course, I would love to sit here and say that this was my plan to be 20 and not have to go to work and, you know, like, be where we are now. But for me, I mean, I was in college when we were dating.

My plan was to get an MBA. So not just four years, but actually six years in college and then get a decent job and buy a house a year, because I had been listening to you guys for a long time. But like I wanted to get a house a year and then retire by the time I was, you know, 50 or 55. And then she was the one, to be honest with you, she was definitely the one who kind of switched that up and said, you know, why, why wait, you know? And so we started investigating ways to get started earlier. So very cool. All right. Well, walk us through that. So you got, you got 10 grand. You're like, all right, well, that's going to last me a few months. What did you do? Like, how'd you get your very

first deal on your own then? Okay. So we used, we used the first couple months to, well, let me start, let me start by saying, we always start with who. And, you know, of course you start with why, because like that's, you know, I'm not to say that's obvious, but I feel like it is like you definitely need to have meaning behind what you do. But when we're actually going after a deal, like if we're, you know, we want to make $100,000 fee, we start with who. We don't start with what or when, you know, we start with who are we going to serve, you know? And so nowadays, you know, that might be a big national builder or a small local builder or we have these these clients now who we know want specific things. But back then, we only had really one contact who was a friend, I think, from church. And they were a builder, a really good guy, Christian dude.

And we just said like, hey, what are you looking for? And he happened to be a custom home builder. You know, custom home builders are a little bit more comfortable paying higher prices for lots. And so we went after certain areas that we knew they wanted to be in because they don't make phone calls. They don't do cold calling. And so, you know, we're like, hey, we'll do it for you. And if we find you something, we'll sell it to you. And so Christiana actually, my wife, she was calling on this on this little, it was probably a little group of like 20 houses, 20 or 30 houses.

And she found two lots because they had said we're, you know, we're interested in either houses or lots, but in these certain areas. And so she started calling and she came across two lots. And the guy, you know, said, no, no, no. And you didn't want to sell. And long story short, it took her like three months and probably a dozen phone calls to finally get a meeting with them. And, you know, and so we went over to the property and we met him. And it was, you know, it was a long process. But that's how we ended up wholesaling our first deal and making, you know, $20,000,

which got us off of, you know, I mean, maybe out of my, my grandma's trailer. So that was kind of our first, first baby step. And then we started, you know, we used that to start buying rentals and, you know, buy herself into more financial freedom. So you know what I like about what you said is rather than saying, how do I find a mentor? How do I find someone that will be my mentor? You went to a potential mentor and said, what do you need? And they said, well, I need lots to build on.

And you said, okay, I'll go find that for you. And you made yourself $20,000. And I'll bet you learned a ton from that person like a mentor. That is the perfect example of how like the right way to approach somebody is, is you went and made that person money, made yourself money in the process and still got the education you were looking for. There's not a businessman that's successful in the world who's going to say, oh, I don't want your help helping me find the piece that I need to be able to make my business run.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I strongly believe that. I mean, I know you guys talk a lot about like givers, you know, givers and getters and how like the most successful people are actually givers, not the geters, you know. And so one thing that I always try to do, it's almost like a pact that we've made with ourselves. I mean, Christiana is that, you know, if we're going to do business with someone, we want to,

you know, serve them before we ask for anything in return. So, like, I'm going to make them money before I, try to make myself money. You know, like I want, I want them. I mean, I've, I've gone as far as saying, I'll bring someone to deal and we'll run the numbers and they'll say, man, it doesn't work. And I'll say, okay, does it work without my fee? And they'll say, yeah, I guess we can make a work. And I've just said, okay, go ahead, take it, you know, because for me, it's like, it's long term is just so much more important. You know, relationships are more important than any amount of money. So yeah, that's easier to say that now. But, yeah, that's a really good point.

Because really, if they didn't buy it at all, it doesn't benefit you. So whether you let it go without a fee or you don't sell it at all, it's the same result. You might as well get something out of it, even if you're not getting money, which is, you know, appreciation. And the law of reciprocity would say they're going to come back. And at least this person now cares about you and your business because you showed that you cared about theirs. Because the alternative would be, well, I'm just fine. I won't just sell it. I have no deal.

And you did all that work for nothing. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So tell us a little bit about what do you have now. What's your portfolio look like today? I guess I can start by saying like once we made that $20,000 fee, we didn't go on a buying spree. We went pretty slow and steady. And I think that was due to me still kind of having my, my thoughts of, you know, a house a year kind of thing. And so we went and we, I cold called a guy. It's always cold calling for us. But we, I cold called a guy and we found a duplex near downtown Greenville. We bought it.

We probably bought it a little bit high. We bought it for $115,000. One side, me and Cristiana actually personally gutted and replaced the cabinets, and we did a lot of the work ourselves, just kind of looking on YouTube. And so that was our first rental. And I don't know how far you want me to go into that, you know. But, I mean, that kind of was what started for us the rental experience, I guess. Well, we'll ask you about each individual deal,

but I'm trying to get an idea for your overall. portfolio. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Okay, I got it. What we have now is we have two duplexes near downtown Greenville. We have a couple single family homes standing around Greenville. We have an eight unit that we recently bought in April. We have a 16 unit down in Macon, Georgia, which is kind of like our cash flow property and most of the rest are like appreciation based mostly. And then we have a duplex in Greenville, North Carolina. And then we have the home that we we currently live in. And so, and then we, of course, we have, you know, a handful of other properties that we have under contract. But that's kind of where we are right now. And honestly, I did

not add up exactly how many units we have, but I think it's like like 34, which is, this is actually a funny story. I was listening to the podcast and it was the first time that I had heard about the 90 day, I guess you called it a B-Hag or, you know, like the big, erie audacious school. That was about like 30 days ago, maybe 45 at this point. And we had a, and we had, you had, we had 16 apartments. And I said, I want to get to 32 before, you know, before 90 days from now. And now we're at, you know, like 34. We've already. That's awesome. So it's been a really fun experience. And now was kind of something that I got from you all. So that's cool, dude. Yeah, I find that when you, when you have that like, like, so many people like don't achieve their

goals because they don't have the clarity on what they does they want. So when you just define your goal, like, I want to get 16 more units. I'm going to buy another apartment building. I'm going to buy whatever. I'm going to flip this many houses, wholesale this many. deals and you have that clarity and then you put a deadline on it that's shorter than people think I mean everyone like likes to do like annual goals but I'm a big believer in the 90 day goal because you can accomplish anything in 90 days like oh yeah you're like a thousand mobile home units I think we're like 500 right now but yeah the goal was 50 the goal was the goal was 50 pads oh my gosh and we end up getting 500 because like why not because once you have that clarity

like you can move so much faster so I would just encourage you I encourage everyone out there is trying to get some of that clarity and speaking of that the journal we are really launching the intention journal. A new edition comes out. I'm not sure what day this episode comes out, but it's either just before or just after this episode that new journal comes out. So make sure you pick up that at biggerpockets.com slash journal. And all right.

So what it sounds like is you are basically wholesaling vacant land to developers and then using the cash to both live and then invest in rental properties. Is that a good overall arching view? All right. So the wholesaling vacant land, that's a cool thing. You kind of talked about your first time you got into it, how you found that deal from. Can we spend a few minutes talking about that?

Because we've never really, I don't think, in 300 and some episodes, can we talk about like, what does that even mean? Like, what does it mean to wholesale vacant land? How do you make money off that? And then we'll go into how to your finding those and stuff like that. Okay. So vacant land, I've always liked it. But, you know, the main reason that I started with vacant land was because I had people who

knew how to do it. I knew people who knew how to do it. I knew developers, you know, just. kind of mainly from from church and mutual relationships and stuff but uh i always asked my you know i always we did our first wholesale deal we did you know the lots on trachsler street and uh we made 20 grand and that was great you know but it was honestly it was a terrible process i mean it was long it was annoying it was hard to get in touch with them it was the closing was difficult you know i said you know if i'm going to do this you rather than doing this deal 10 times why not do you know a million

dollar deal and make one fee for $200,000 and go vacationer for the rest of the year. I mean, not really. But, you know, like, that was, that was the thing that started the idea of doing land. Because I don't know, I mean, maybe not in Maui. But like here, there are, there's actually a pretty good amount of vacant land. I mean, if you go on the outskirts of Greenville, you know, there's a, there's a lot of land. Yeah. And we're not landlocked.

So that kind of helps. But there's an unlimited amount of land out there. Yeah, we're limited. but sell. So, I mean, that's, that's kind of how I got started is that I just, I started calling on land and I started getting an idea. It was a long process and a lot of failed attempts, but I started working with a lot of builders who could tell me what they were looking for and how much they would pay per acre, you know, and then I started looking for land and trying to find things that worked for them. And the issue, I think the issue is that it does, it does require a skill set, you know, I mean, wholesaling a house. Like, as long as you can get it under contract, like, you don't even need to know what you have to wholesale. I mean, And really all it takes is someone who's knowledgeable to come in and say, oh, wow, that is worth what you're asking. I'm going to buy it. But when you're talking about land, I mean, builders don't want to see stuff until it's been vetted, you know. And so what that entails is a process that I call like the entitlement process.

It's almost like title work, but just on a little bit bigger of a level. So, I mean, there's a lot of things that have to do with the developability of a property that I could run through if you want me to. Sure. I love that. Okay. So it depends on the type of property. If it's custom homes, like big lots, of course, you can do like septic, but most of the time you're looking for, you know, sewer accessibility and capacity,

which means that, you know, there's sewer lines in or around the property. You're looking for water lines, you know, obviously you've got to make sure all the utilities are there. That's huge. But then probably the next biggest thing is going to be zoning. So you can go find a huge 100-acre piece of property. You can do all your math and run your numbers and say, man, we can do, 500 houses here. But if the county won't let you or the city won't let you, you know, it's, you know, it's just a pipe dream. So you have to actually go take some steps and spend some

money to get an engineer to look at the property and even go to some zoning hearings. And so it can be longer process. I mean, when you wholesale a house, you know, you can get it under contract and say, hey, I need to close in 15 days. And the right person with the cash, he was willing to do it is, you know, can do it. But with the entitlement process with land, you're looking at a couple months. I mean, even on the smaller projects, you still have to make sure that everything lines up with, you know, zoning and utilities. And, you know, there's some other issues that you can run into like wetlands, flood zones and all that fun stuff. So it does take a little bit longer. But on the flip side, you know, landowners are willing to give you a lot more time.

So you'll get something under contract. And rather than them giving you 30 days to close the deal, they'll give you 180 or 240 days. Wow. And so it gives you more flexibility and a lot more time to market it to people. You know, here's what I like about that. And it's similar to what I've said recently about why I'm really digging mobile home parks right now is because it's hard. Like basically what you're saying is like, this is hard. Like it's a lot of work.

And 99% of the competition out there, let's be honest, like doesn't want to work hard. 99% of people out there, they want to, they love those stories. And I mean, I love them too, right? But they love the stories of like, yeah, I was driving by this house. It looked vacant. I sent a postcard to the owner. And I said I can close in 10 days. So we closed in 10 days.

I flipped it and made 40 grand. Yay. Like it's like easy money. Like the whole time I was actually sitting on the beach getting my, you know, toes waxed. Like that's what people like want to hear. And that's what everyone envisions. But you're like, you know what?

I like, you went into land development wholesaling or you want to call that. Because you're like, this is hard work. I mean, like I, we've interviewed 350 people, whatever it is on the show. And I don't know anybody else who does. does like what you're doing, which means it's hard and you got to learn it. And there's all these steps. And so people are listening going like, you know, well, that sounds too complicated. Like, yeah, that's why very few people do it. Yeah. But those who do it, you figure it out. You just ask questions and you figure it out, right? Yeah. And all it takes is meeting one guy who can

kind of run you through it. I mean, for me, that's all it took is meeting one guy, a friend of my name Doug who's just like an absolute saying. I love him. And he is like one of the most caring and generous people in the world, very generous with his time as well. And so he was able to, he was also, you know, mutual friends through church and some other things. And he, he was able to kind of walk me along. I mean, honestly, just say no to a lot of opportunities that I brought to him and tell me why. You know, not just say no, but actually tell me, here's why this one doesn't work. And then help me kind of along the way. And I think, you know, at the foundation of why I chose this path is because I knew that I wanted to make money, you know, I wanted to make a lot of money,

so that I can invest in a lot of properties, but I wanted to have time to do both. What land development offers is, you know, I could work two hours a day on that stuff and just make sure that my emails are checked and, you know, that our approvals are in place and whatever, our permits are pending. And, and then I'm fine, you know, and then that gives me time to know that I have $100,000, $500,000 in the pipeline and go ahead and now start looking for properties to invest that money in. One thing I love about your business, Josiah, is you didn't say, do I want a wholesale, or do I want to be a single family investor or a multifamily investor?

You said, yeah, I want a wholesale, I want to own multifamily, I want to own single family, I want to own small multifamily. And what you've done is you've taken skills that you've used to earn money to wholesale, converted that into properties wherever you find them. And you probably, I would bet when you chose what properties to buy, it was based on contacts that you made through your wholesaling business with these other investors and agents and brokers and the kind of people that you're Rebels with. So you immerse yourself into this world. You make yourself valuable to all these people in it.

And then you get the benefit of all their collective wisdom and knowledge as they guide you towards what you should buy. Here's a deal. You should go buy it. And you have the capital to do it. I think it's brilliant, especially at 20 years old that you're able to do all this. But it all starts with you earning capital through wholesaling so that you can buy it. And I think a lot of people just, they try to skip that step. They say, how do I get into real estate without having to save money or work harder earn money and they just make it really hard on themselves. Where for you, you do the hard work to earn the money and then the investing part probably comes easier.

Really, that all comes back, goes back to like what I started with saying is that I've always been obsessed with compound interest and you can't experience compound interest unless you have capital to invest. And so I'm not going to, I'm not trying to like be the next Bezos or just create a new product. Like I'm all into modeling like you guys always talk about. And so for me, I know that other people are doing this, but I'm doing it too. and like and I you know I'm just huge on getting my money to work you know for me and so that's what this all started back or started with is just the idea of compound interest and so I'm very traditional

in that sense you know I'm not I'm not the guy in fact I you know actually have a story about how I turned down seller financing you know one of our first deals because I just didn't know what it was and I wasn't comfortable with it and I'd rather invest my own money and I realize looking back that's that's dumb you know and it was dumb at the time but so I won't hide the fact that I am more of a traditional investor, but for me, it's just what I'm comfortable with. Well, Brandon's really into modeling, too. He's actually hitting the gym every day. He's working on the new Abercrummy and Fish Catalog.

Keep an eye out. You know, that's what I do. Bringing back the beard. Okay, so because the whole thing starts for you with earning income, tell us how you're finding the owners of these lots that you're contacting to wholesale. How are you getting their contact info? Okay. So one thing I like to tell people about is, well, okay, in the history of making cold,

calls. There is one guy in all of Greenville County that I cannot get in touch with. I know where he lives, but it's too far to drive. So I don't want to drive to him. But I haven't been able to get in touch with them. But everyone else I have been able to reach out to, whether it's by text or phone or email or calling their office and tracking them down. So I'm really good at it. And I will say that. Like there's not many things that I think that I'm really good at, but I know that I'm good at tracking people down. And so what I use, I use five main tools. Number one, it's, and you guys might be familiar with some or all of these, but is the GIS systems for counties and for cities. Most counties and cities, if, you know, they're bigger than a couple thousand people. They're going to have something

called a GIS system, which is short for something. And it just, it's just a mapping, you know, it's just a mapping system that has a ton of information on there. And you can track, you can look at a property. You should be able, if it's a good system, you should be able to, look at a property and see where it is and who owns it and when they bought it and how much. And you can even look at deeds and mortgages and all this fun stuff. And so that's what I've used. And, you know, honestly, I'm going to run through these five and I'm not going to tell anyone how to find these things.

You really just got to dig. Yeah. But if you have, if you live in, you know, any sizable city, you should have all of these things accessible to you. So the second thing is the Secretary of State website. So when I find LLCs or entities, you know, In every state, there should be a secretary of state website. So for South Carolina, it's s-s-o-s-os.com.

And that's where I can, you know, and by the way, almost all of these, I think all but one, is free. So that one, you can look up any entity and it'll show you the member's name and their address. And, you know, if the member has changed throughout the years, it'll show you that, when it was created, all that fun stuff. And so you can use that to track names, you know, actual names of people who own the entities because a lot of people get to the point where they see an entity and they see a PO box

and they're like crap like this is I'm never going to get to them but I actually go the extra mile and spend five minutes to find the person's name and where they live the third thing is the register of deeds so a lot of times if something's really difficult if it like if I if I can't find it just by doing those two things the GIS and the secretary of state then I'll use the register of deeds which is also a website most of the time sometimes in really small places it's you know you actually have to go to the office and look at all the deeds. But most of the time, people are required to put their actual mailing address on a deed. And a lot of people feel uncomfortable doing a PO box and stuff. And so you can almost 99% of the time, unless it's a huge corporation,

you will find someone's actual mailing address on the deed. And typically it's very easy to find. You're on the deed. It's four or five pages long. You scroll until you see grantee. And it'll just have a little colon and there'll be a blank. And typically they handwrite their address. And And sometimes even if I don't know their name, I'll search their address and I'll just call the names that are associated with the address. And most of the time, I'll end up, you know, it'll be one of them. The last thing, or the fourth thing is white pages. So, and there are a ton of these out there, you know, the number finding, you know, websites. But I typically use white pages.

It's just what I've always done. And it's, I think it's premium is 20 bucks a month or something. And I can look up as many people as I want and just find numbers and find addresses and relatives and all that fun stuff. And then the last thing, if like all else fails and I like cannot find anything on anyone, I don't know. I think I found this out in like high school. But I, this is weird. I mean, if you don't know about it, it can be life-changing.

But there's something like you can do on Google where if you search something and you put quotation marks on it, like around it, that it like it will only bring up things. I mean, because you search some stuff, even if it's like a paragraph long, it'll pull up, you know, a million things. But if you do quotation marks around, you know, one word or one. phrase, you know, it'll pull up only those things that, like, have that, those words in them. And so that can be super helpful because they might be doing business in another state or another county or maybe they even got an award for something that they did. And you can just find out,

you know, oh, you know, John Smith, you know, a member of this LLC got an award for being a good steward of whatever. And, you know, and then you have his name. So those are the five things that I use, the GIS Secretary of State, Register of Deeds, White Pages, and the Google quotation marks. That's cool. Now, you're doing a lot of reaching out, which is great.

We call that lead generation, but most successful people don't just excel lead generation, they excel lead to follow up. How are you keeping track of all these people, the notes, the conversations you've had, reminding yourself to follow up. Yeah.

So growing up, I mentioned I was homeschooled. Shout out to my mom. She's amazing and had a lot of patience with me. but one of the things I really learned and excelled in, you know, as a homeschooler, was just scheduling and planning. You know, I mean, you're pretty much start out and you're like already in college because you have to do your own thing or else nothing gets done, you know. And so you're not in a classroom of people and you're kind of just following along.

And so because of that, I've always been really good at scheduling. And so when, you know, after we got married, I remember, actually like I remember like yesterday, We went to Barnes & Noble and Christiana had to like beg me to buy this thing because it was like $20 in the time that was like our life savings. But I bought a schedule. It was just a normal, you know, like college schedule. And every single time I called someone, I would count the pages. Oh my gosh, that was so annoying. I would count the pages and, you know, and say, okay, I'm going to call them back in exactly four weeks.

And so I would write it on the schedule. And, you know, I would look through that even two or three months in advance. I would, you know, flip 20 or 30 pages and I would have two or three people. to call back every single day. And that's how I, you know, manage follow-ups, basically. Wow. Is that still how you're doing it? No, honestly, that is not so I'm doing it. I have become, I think I've just changed how I do things a little bit more

because at this point, I'm doing a lot bigger deals. And so, you know, most of the time, if it's a mom and a pop, you know, if they say no, you know, you have no idea if they're going to change their mind. But most of the time with these larger corporations, they'll pretty much tell you, like, hey, when we just refinanced, you know, we're not. looking to sell for another 18 months. And then you got, you know, you got your follow up. But no, I use, you know, apps at this point, like calendar and I use a ton of alarms.

In fact, I'm surprised none of them have gone off yet. I have probably, like legitimately, you could scroll on my alarms for maybe like 30 seconds or a minute. Like I have so many alarms every day. That's funny. So I don't know why that works for me, but it's kind of morphed and changed over, over time. But, I mean, I've always followed up with people. all of the deals that I've done, I mean, literally like, I mean, all of the deals that I've done to make fees, I'll say this.

I don't think we succeeded in getting a contract signed without at least, at least half a dozen calls. I mean, at the very, very, you know, bare minimum. So like I said, I'm, you know, I'm not trying to be the next, you know, I'm innovator in this space. Like, I am traditional in that sense, too. And I'm not scared to say, like, I know a lot of people don't want to make phone calls because they had, they have these, like, hey, just I, don't you know? Like I've had people say like there's this program where you can like dial 200 people's phone numbers at once and like when they answer it like does this automated thing. And I'm like yeah, that's cool. But like I want to actually be able to like have a personal touch and you know, I can't do that.

Like if I'm calling, you know, saying hello, I am interested in your property, you know, like in Greenville. You know, then it's like you might as well just send a letter. And for me, I like calling because I've had people thank me for calling them rather than sending them a letter. Like they've literally said, I really honestly am not interested, but I just wanted to say thank you. And if I'm ever interested in selling, I will call you first because you called me. Like, you know, you put in the extra effort. And so that's, to me, that's, you know, worth the world to me. And so that's why I've always done cold calling.

Well, here's all point out there. I think, I mean, there's a lot of stuff I can pull out there. But one is that a lot of people think they have to know, they have to build this massive system. You know, they hear a guy or a lady on the podcast and they hear somebody say, yeah, I've got this system and this. I use Podio that interacts with this thing and it automates this email that goes out to this thing. And people are like, oh, man, I don't have any of that. I don't understand it. So then they turn on the TV and they watch their dancing with the stars every night, right?

Because they don't know, they don't have that big thing. But I love that you just said, you went to Barnes & Noble. You got a planner, like a calendar thing and you just flip forward 90 days or 50 days or 40. Like who cares what you use? Just use something that works for you and you can get better over time. Like now you found that alarms work better. Some people love the podium stuff. Like I just cannot figure out podium.

I've tried it 100 times. That's like one of the more common, really complicated things. My brain just is not smart enough to handle it. So instead, I use pipe drive today. I found that I have a lot of success with pipe drive because it's a little more simple. And I also use Trello, which I love Trello because it's very, anyway, it doesn't matter what you use as long as you're using it. And as long as you feel like you're having success with it. So start somewhere and stop thinking you got to get to the, you know, the guy who's doing 400 deals a month level.

We literally just heard someone say, I use a note. pad calendar that I write on and notifications on my phone. And he did a six-figure wholesale fee with that system. Right? So if it just goes to show the CRM doesn't matter. It's whatever your brain likes. Brandon, I think that's so well said. I'm the same with Podio.

I look at it and it just doesn't make any sense. And I put so much effort into figuring out Podio that I don't actually do my business that I was supposed to do. You guys are making me feel as old as you are. Wait a second. All right. That's the first time anyone's ever called us old on this podcast. I know.

Well, I know. I know. Very well. Okay, you said bigger deals. And so I want to know, what does that look like?

What does a good deal look like you today? Like, what do you get it under contract for? What do you sell it for? What kind of profit are you making? Do you have any examples? No, that's a great question.

And I do have an example. One that's upcoming. It's a property right down the street from my house. And it really didn't start as anything big. It was a guy with five acres. And five acres, by the way is kind of on the lower end of what you want to be doing. If you're very, in fact, it's probably too small.

If you're looking to do a deal with like a big builder, you know, they're looking at probably anywhere between 10 and 20 is their sweet spot. Anything bigger you have to do in like these big phases, anything smaller, they just don't want to touch. So I started out by calling him. It's just this old rundown house. I didn't even know, but it's actually, you know, it's only 150 feet of frontage, but it actually goes back like 2,000 feet or something crazy.

And so it's five acres. And so I called them, you know, one of those times he said no he said no he said no and he finally got a price out of him and and he we got that under contract and i was in the process of going around to people asking for sewer easements which is a whole other conversation but basically you have to buy you know access as part of someone's property just to run the sewer through their property and while i was doing that i actually came across this family it was like they have this commune it's kind of interesting and they they own the street and so it's right next to it and you would never know because they all

different last names, but they're all a family. And I talked to the guy I was asking about the sewer easement, and he's like, you know what if we just sold it to you? And so they threw in, long story short, they threw in another 10 acres. And so we had, we now had a, you know, a 15 acre property that, by the way, is like in super, super central Greenville. Like, I mean, there's no 10 or 15 acre tracks around me. And then we just pieced it together. And that wasn't, that wasn't anything on my part. It was, I mean, I was totally a blessing. So we got that one at a contract. We have it under contract. I have it under contract for 100,000 an acre, which is a pretty high price. But we found a local builder who recently signed a contract with us to buy it for

$125,000 an acre. And so we're making, I think it's 14.9 something acres. And so it'll be, it'll end up being, I think it's like 355,000. And so I'm splitting that with my friend Doug. You know, he's awesome and he's helped me through the process. And like, I, I don't want to come across as someone who knows everything because like before I did that deal, which by the way, it was only a couple months ago that I really started on that. I had no idea what a sewer easement was. I mean, I didn't know what wetlands were. Now, I had no idea what I was doing. But I got it under contract and I made, you know, like you guys always talk about, like I made the first, I took the first action to get something done. And it could have totally fallen off the face of the

earth, just like the 10 other deals that I had under contract at the time. But it's just the one that's kind of been, you know, really successful. So I'll walk away with 165, 170,000. That's not a good endorsement for taking action. I mean, you literally just said, this is awesome. I didn't know what a sewer easement was and turned that into a $355,000 deal just because you went out there and did the hard thing. Like, I guess, Brandon, the point you made, which is we should circle back to it. This is only available for Josiah to do because other people aren't doing it. and the only reason other people aren't doing it is specifically because it's hard. If it was really easy and you could automate this and you could just blast out a phone number

or a text message to everyone that own that land and they would just reply, that opportunity to be available for about two months before Google figured it out. And then none of us would ever have a chance to do something like that. It's because of the barrier to entry that makes that possible. And that is so encouraging that you don't need to even really know very much about what you're doing. You just got to go find a person who wants to sell that's motivated. find a person who wants to buy, figure out a way to bring those two people together and make your money.

Well, and I'll be the first one to say also that, like, I'm, you know, I mean, I've said this, this is the third time I've said this, but I'm like very traditional and I'm also like just, I don't like change, you know, it took a long time. I got even comfortable in my grandma's trailer. I didn't even want to move from there. Like, I'm very comfortable wherever I'm at. And so for, you know, for me and for Christiana and for our business,

that's actually been hard because I don't want to do. different things, you know, but, um, and so I just, I say that because, you know, there are a lot of people who say, I just don't, I'm just not like that. Like, I don't, I don't like doing different things. I'll just do what I do and, and I'll be successful. And that's fine. It's totally fine to do what you do and be successful and a lot of people do that. But, you know, what really got me from making 20,000, 30,000, you know, like in these little deals to now making six figures on pretty much every deal that I make, or that I do was just doing something like extremely uncomfortable. So I know that sounds cliche, but no, it's so good.

It's so good. And because that's where that's where success is usually found, like big success. You can get little success with luck and one-off stuff, but big success is doing the hard things and doing the things that you're uncomfortable with. So I, you know, kudos to you for doing that. Now, you're doing this at 20 years old. So I'm wondering, there's people listen to this show who might be 20, 25, 30. Everyone's young compared to somebody, right?

But have you found your age to be a benefit or a hurdle in your investing? I have a story about that. When people ask me how old I am, I always say something. I don't have a one-liner necessarily, but I always say something along the lines of like, I'm old enough to buy your land or I'm old enough to develop it. Or, you know, I'm old enough to sign this contract. And then I'll tell them later, you know, like I'll tell them I'm 20.

or if they really push me, I'll say I'm early 20s. But I mean, yeah, I do find it to be, and not that it is, but it definitely for me, like, I'm thinking, dang, if I was a 50-year-old or a 60-year-old or something, I would probably not want to sell my land to this 20-year-old kid who just dropped out of college, you know, and so for me, it's more of like a projection upon them, and maybe they really don't care, but I care. And so I kind of keep it a little bit of a secret, but it really hasn't been too big of an issue. I mean, you know, I don't shave very often.

And I try to keep it that way. You know, and I try to look older when I can. But, you know, thankfully, you know, I haven't run into too many, you know, issues with the whole age thing. And I would have expected more, honestly. Well, what I think is interesting is, I mean, yeah, you might, there might be some people out there who doesn't want to, they don't want to sell to a 20 year old, right? That is very well possible. But what I think you probably are getting, and you probably know this or maybe you haven't realized it, but the fact that you attract these mentors and your life that want to help you.

Like if you mentioned a couple of them, you've given shoutouts to them on the show already. That's awesome, right? They want to help you. That's not because you're 50 years old. It's because largely you're 20 and you're excited and you're taking action. And so if you're young, like listen to this show right now.

Like know that like, yeah, you might have some hurdles. There might be a little bit of difficulty somewhere because somebody might have a problem with it. But if you can solve their problem, they'll get over it. But the real benefit is the fact that other people want to help you when you're young.

And they're excited to see it. I mean, have you found that in your life or just people like helping you? Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I found, you know, a lot of, in fact, we just recently bought a duplex near downtown Greenville from a guy. And, you know, I mean, he was really, really nice guy. He was actually like a financial consultant. And he would go on and on when we would get together and talk, you know, he would go on and

on about how he just wished that he would have gotten started as young as we did, you know. And so I think, to be honest, at least in that case, that definitely helped the deal along. I mean, because he was excited that someone like me would. you know, was getting started as young as, you know, me and Christiana have. So, yeah, I think in some cases it definitely helps. And, you know, if you ever, you know, at first, I'll be honest, it was hard when I hadn't done any deals, you know, but, you know, if you associate yourself or if you get someone to just allow you to drop their name, like whenever you want, like if you're just like, hey, for me, it's always been like Doug, you know, hey, Doug, can I just drop your name whenever? And so

if it ever becomes really difficult, I'll just say, well, you know, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm, you know, 20, but I work with a guy who's done this since he was 20 and he's now, you know, 55. And so I'm really just kind of a liaison for him. And then it feels more like, oh, this is just an employee and they don't have to know I'm, you know, getting a 50% cut. Like they can just feel like I'm just a little paper pusher and it doesn't matter to me, you know. So you can always kind of use people's names if you want to as well, if you get their permission. I've learned that the hard way. Yeah. Is there, is there a story there? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I want to. talking about that.

You don't have to. You don't have to. I mean, I can, I'll go ahead and say, I mean, basically there's this gentleman who, I'm sure he's a great guy. He's a, you know, pretty renowned developer. And we were at one time associates and, you know, not working together necessarily. But, you know, I was trying to find him stuff. And then, you know, and I called on a property.

It was very close to one of his. And I mentioned, yeah, you know, I actually know the guy. and I, you know, I don't, I said, I know the guy who, you know, does, who's doing this stuff down the road. And I ended up, you know, that deal actually fell through. And I guess he, he followed up with them a couple months later. And they were like, oh, you're that guy. No, we're not dealing with you because your friend, you know, or a coworker, I guess, like, he didn't, he didn't close the deal. So we're not working with anyone associated with him. So that, yes, definitely, it's definitely backfired sometimes. And I got a lot of flack from the guy who I, who I, who I named. dropped, you know, of course, because he lost a deal because I just felt like mentioning his name because I didn't feel like I could get the deal on my own. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, well, you win somebody to

listen to them, but it's good that you recognize like what works and what doesn't. So where do you see your business headed in the next few years? Like, are you sticking with the whole set in land development deals? Are you growing the rental portfolio larger and larger? Where do you want to go? So I had a goal to double our units, you know, like I mentioned. And I, you know, again, I'm very like step by step. So once I get one place, I just want to kind of hang out there for a while. And so once we got to, you know, past 32 or whatever the number was for doubling our units,

I just said, you know, why don't we just hold off and stuff? And oh my gosh, you know, Christiana, she's crazy. She, I wish she was here. But she's always pushing me maybe a little bit too hard. And she, you know, she's like, no, 200 units in two years. And I'm like, what are you talking about? woman. She's talking about 100% ownership, by the way. Like, she's not talking about like, let's syndicate a deal, you know?

Like, I mean, she's amazing. And the only reason that I'm here is, you know, that we're here is because of her. And I can get to that later when we talk about the deep dive. But she's always pushing me. And I think that sometime, you know, in the next couple years, we want to get to 200 units. And for me, you know, I mean, I like nice stuff. You know, I like nice cars. and I like the idea of a cool house, but, you know, like, it doesn't really go past that for me.

Like, I've always thought being a billionaire or something, but for me right now, it's kind of just sticking to what I, what I do. And I'm sure if we have another conversation in a couple months or a year that will have completely changed and I'll be doing something different and making a million dollars a year, you know, seven figures, you know, now six isn't good enough. And so, you know, I mean, it'll get there. But for now, you know, to be honest with you, the properties that I have under contract, it's five units here, six units there, 10 units in making. And I'm just kind of growing organically

and I don't want to push it too hard and max myself out. But I do, I really enjoy the land development stuff. And more than I even enjoy the deals, I just enjoy the guys that I do it with. And I mean, I could just hang out with Doug and my dad and our other investors like, you know, just all day. And it would be a blast. So for me, I love where I'm at right now. And I'm excited. to grow. My ultimate goal is being a billionaire by the time I'm 65. And that's just based on like, you know, the whole compound interest thing. I always said, like, if I can invest $100,000, you know, from the time I'm 20 to the time I'm 65, if I can invest $100,000 a year at 17.8% interest, then I'll be worth a billion dollars. And so, like, yeah, yeah. So, so that was always

kind of the goal. But it's, you know, I mean, it's a pipe dream. Who knows? Maybe, I mean, by the time I'm 65, a billion dollars will be like being, you know, a millionaire. I don't know, but that's still going to be a lot of money. That's cool, though. I mean, that's interesting and about the investing 100 grand a year. That's cool. It's amazing, the company interest. I honestly wish, I wish that I could tell you that I had like a step-by-step plan

to be worth X, Y, Z dollars in, you know, in this many years and all that stuff. But to be honest, like, at this point, I'm still like kind of reeling from the, just the massive blessings that we've experienced so far. And, you know, so I'm always kind of reminding Christiana, like, hey, let's, you know, let's just be like let's be okay with what we have i mean and she's you know always trying to push me and so i i i guess i kind of take that that place in the ring you know and so i'm i'm always kind of pushing back you know like hey let's just let's just chill out and relax and so i'm sure that i'll i'll sit down and i'll read another one of your books and i'll be all pumped up on a vacation

and i'll be like i need to make another goal you know and i'll do it but for now i'm kind of just enjoying where we're at so i hope that's not the not the answer you were looking for no that's great And by the way, I just ran a calculation. If you were to put, I said you were 18 to 65, if you started with 100 grand, or what you could say, you know, 18, you put the 100 grand in and did 100 grand a year. And I did a little bit higher out up to 18%. Yeah, it works out to $1.75 billion. Yeah.

Exactly. I mean, I ran it. Like I've spent, you know, my wife lasted this, but I downloaded a compound interest app. And I don't know. I was obsessed with it for a while. made me delete it, but I would just, I would be on the toilet or, you know, just like hanging out. And that would be, you know, like on my little compound interest app. And she, she laughed one time because we, on the weekend, you know, your phone shows you like,

here's how much time you spend on each app. And like 20 or 30% of my time was on this compound interest app. It was like, you know, eight hours for that week. I was just like doing my little numbers, you know, like so. That's hilarious. It helps to keep the goal in mind, I guess. There you go. Dude, that's awesome.

All right. Well, let's shift gears here. you mentioned the deal deep dive, so why don't we head there now? All right, time for the deal deep dive. This is the part of the show where we dive deep into one particular deal that you've recently done. And let's see what you got. Josiah, what we got like seven questions I think it is here about that. So first of all, what kind of property are we going to be talking about here on the deal deep dive?

Okay, so this one is a multifamily wholesale deal, I guess you could say. All right, multi-house deal. All right, number two. How did you find this multifamily wholesale deal? sale deal. Funny you ask, just like everything else. I called, yeah. And it did take me many.

I mean, this is probably the longest one. I think I called her the first time back in the summer of 2018. And the deal didn't close until the beginning of June of this year. Wow. All right. That takes time. How did you get, by the way, let me back, even go deeper on the cold on the cold call. How did you get even the, like, how did you know about this property?

You pulled public data list, you just drive by it or like, what's your kind of go to for getting the lead initially? Okay. So, I mean, I don't want to like repeat myself, but like pretty much, I mean, the same five things that I said earlier, like I used the GIS. They had a corporation. This, when I went on Greenville County and I searched all the multifamily property and I sorted it by when the last time it was sold was. Like this was like the second property. The last time it had been sold, they actually built it back in like the 50s. And so this one was actually interesting. This was, so I mentioned I only have one guy who I can't get in touch with in Greenville. This was the second person. So like I wasn't. I was not. I was. I was not able to get in touch with them, but for whatever reason, you know, every month, I would get this little reminder. And it was just long enough to where I would be like, okay, I can do it this time. I can find something new, you know? And so I would always get in touch with their daughter or their son-in-law or, you know, like, and, you know, it never really went anywhere. But I kept doing it every month. I would call someone and just see if I could get in touch with someone. And by the time, they actually were interested. They actually called me on their personal phone just because

I was bothering their family so much. That's cool. No, I've never thought of that before about the idea of like just finding all the properties. Like you get the date of all the properties and then sort by last sold and go to the oldest ones. Like I don't know. That's never occurred to me before.

That's kind of a really cool idea. Just like start hitting them from the back of that list. Yeah. And so, yeah. All right. Very cool. All right. Well, number three.

How much was it? Okay. So the deal was, it was, well, I got it under contract for like $28,000 a unit. And so it was 62 units. So I think that's 1.736 million. Wow. And that took a lot of negotiation. I know there's not really a part in the deep dive where I can like tell the story.

But I don't know. I mean, that was the next question is like what about how did you negotiate it? So it's kind of tell us the story. So pretty much I mean, I told you Christiana's a rock star and she she'll be, you know, like dormant. She's like a volcano. She'll be dormant and she'll be like, you know, just kind of wait for her opportunity.

and then all of a sudden, you know, prime time and she's there telling me exactly what to do. And so, like I said, I had been calling and calling and calling. And to be honest with you, this is just another thing I want to point out. This was my least favorite call of the month. Literally, this lady was not nice. You know, even once I got her number, you know, and she said, I might be interested. It was another like six months because she just went back and forth and went back and forth. And, you know, she wasn't the nicest person in the world.

Sometimes I would just leave a message. It was their home phone, which is terrible. and like it was it was definitely my least favorite call but I still called them back every month and um and around December of 2018 I remember it was right before Christmas she finally said I might be getting ready you know I might be there soon and so it was months and months so to be honest this is again this is you know stupid but like I I knew what people were paying you know because like I said I had the list and I knew that people were paying in my area people are for for these they were all one bedrooms except for like six apartments which was really interesting but

They were originally like university housing, almost like dorms, but they all have their own bathrooms and kitchen. So they were just your standard one-bedroom apartment. And I knew that people were buying these things for 50 or 60, you know. And so I just did the stupid thing and I threw out a number. And so I said, I will offer you $24,000 a unit. And she was like, I don't know what they're worth. I don't even know if that's a good price. And so, you know, and then I said, well, you know, I talked to my partners.

And I did the classic thing. And I can go up to 26. And then, you know, a month later, well, I talk to them again. and maybe if we squeeze it, you know, we can really, we can do 28. And so we finally agreed on 28. And basically, you know, what happened is we were planning on meeting like the next week. And she said, you know, well, you know, before we meet and sign this thing, I really want to have an appraiser look at it. And for me, that was like, oh, it's over.

You know, it's totally done. Like an appraiser is an appraiser. So they're going to come out and look at it. And by just the absolute grace of God, she was not, she had the appraiser set a date to come out and look at it. It was days before, and she kept on calling him and calling him, and he never responded. And so she just never got back in touch with them. And she was like, you know, I'm tired of this. I'm just going to do it.

And so, you know, we set a date for that next week to go and sign the contract. We were that weekend, we were at Lowe's. We were doing something, picking up something. And this is where I'm talking about, like, my wife coming in, you know, and doing her thing. And I get a call from this lady. And she's, you know, she's like, you know what? I just, I'm not ready. You know, I'm going to do it.

You know, I'm going to do it. You know, I'm going to do a layer. I'm just going to be a couple of years. And, you know, my heart sinks and I'm like, you know, crap because I had already thought, you know, I could make easily six figures on this one. And so, and at the time, I remember this was like the only one I really felt like I had in the pipeline. And so, you know, we were in Lowe's and she said, you know, I'm not going to do it. And I hung up. And I was just, you know, I mean, I wasn't crying, but I was like, oh, this sucks.

And, you know, I was in such a bad mood. And, you know, Christiana just, she just, you know, held my arms. She's like, she's like, hey, you know, you can do this. call her back, you know? And so I was like, you know, what am I going to say? Like, I have nothing to tell her. Like, I want it. Like, I really, really want it. Please, you know, like, I mean, so I mean, basically I told her, you know, hey, I feel a responsibility to these investors who I've already told about the deal. You know, we're getting ready. We've already invested some money and time into the due diligence. And she said, let's meet tomorrow and let's sign it. And so it was all because

of Christiana shaking me up a little bit and just saying, hey, let's, you know, try one more time. And and we were able to, you know, kind of get it under contract and go from there. Dude, that's awesome. I love that story. I mean, I tell people often, like, on, like, webinars when I'm teaching on the Bigger Pockets webinar every week, which, by the way, you can sign up at biggerpockets.com slash webinar. But when I talk about, like, the power of the follow-up, like, when you get a no, that oftentimes that all that means is no for now.

So, like, set a reminder. And there's a way to actually do this in the Bigger Pockets calculator, like the actual, like, the calculators we have. But even if you have to, like, set a reminder on your phone. phone with every time you make an offer like follow back up later and I love your story like you follow back up five minutes later or whatever at all inside of a loz and and you were able to get it but just that follow up is because a no doesn't always mean no sometimes people say no because they're scared because they need to think about it because of you know a hundred different reasons so follow

up again and it's the follow up that really can help you get a lot more deals every year so all right so once you sign this thing actually david i'm taking your question well normally we'd ask how you fund it but i'm assuming you hold the sell this to someone else so you didn't fund it correct Correct. Yeah, the time it was a little bit big for me. So I think it still would be. And that explains what you did with it too. So tell me what was the outcome from this deal. Okay. So it's frustrating, but it was good. So I told the guy, I got a broker without really looking at it. I sent him some stuff and I said, and he's a friend. And so I said, hey, what do you think this would go for like pretty quickly?

I'm like, you know, what's a conservative price? And he was like, you know, 38, 40 a unit. And so I was like, oh my Lord. I had like money balls in my eyes. And so I told, I had some gentlemen who had been asking me about apartments, which was why this came up in the first place. And we had met like two weeks. We'd officially all had, you know, met in the conference room and just like, I was telling them what I was looking into. And they were like, I got pretty much the verbal from them,

yes, we want to do something very soon. And that was two weeks before this. And so that just, just a side note, that goes to show like it's really important to be doing these things simultaneously because, you know, I have had deals where I get, a great property under the contract, and I haven't had the right people to close it. So we were doing that all this simultaneously, and I told these guys, hey, next to you all I find, you're going to get it. And there were a great group of Christian guys.

They're all doctors here in Greenville. And, you know, I brought it to him, and I said, hey, I have this email from a broker, and he says it's worth 40. And so here's what I'll do. I will, I basically, if you do the calculation, it's 28, I think is 75% of 40, 70% I think, yeah, 70% of 40. So I said, I have it under contract with 30% under market value. I will sell it to you for 85% under market value.

And you guys can realize that extra fun stuff. Because for me, like wholesaling means giving someone a good deal. I hate, oh, my gosh, all these wholesalers around here who are like, you know, I'm wholesaling this $200,000 house for $199,000. And you're like, great, thank you. So I was like, I'm going to give these people a deal. And, you know, and so I stuck by, you know, my word. I said, you know what, I know I'm losing out on, you know, literally $360,000 or something.

But I ended up, you know, doing pretty well. And I walked away from that deal with $372,000 fee. Wow. Yeah, they got an offer the next week for somewhere in the 50s per unit. And so that's the frustrating part. So, you know, I was actually off. And so was, you know, the guy asked about it. I was, I should have hold that wholesale that thing for, you know, low 40s, you know,

and I could have made closer to a million bucks. But I mean, for me, you know, like I said, relationships is everything. And I have more than enough. And so I'm not, you know, I'm not going to try to nickel and dime people, you know, for a couple extra bucks. But it was, I mean, it was a great deal. So that's awesome, dude. So I guess that kind of sounds up my last question.

But if you have anything else to add, what lessons did you learn from this deal? Yeah. I mean, I guess I would just restate the, like, like, I think it's just be, you know, be good, be good for your word. You know, I mean, there are way too many cut through people in this business, especially the land development business to be specific. And a lot of snakes and smooth talkers. And, you know, a lot of times it's not a fun business to be in. And so I love to be the one guy who people look to and say, man, it was fun doing that deal with that guy, you know, because I gave him a great deal. And like,

sometimes people honestly look at me and they're like, what are you talking about? Like, you realize is how much this is worth. Like, did you say the wrong number when you told me how much you'll sell it to me for? Like, and, and I'm just like, no, no. I mean, I, I, you know, built in profit for myself when I'm good. You know, like, that's, that's fine. So I like being, I like being the one true wholesaler who's still around in Greenville, who gives people a good deal.

Yeah. And that's a great reputation, uh, to have. So, yeah, super cool good, dude. All right. Let's move on. I was looking at the fire round. I think, I think we should skip the fire round. I think we're going to move right on because this has been a long show and I don't want to

go too much. No, no, this is really good. So let's just move right past it. Well, I'm looking at the questions that I had originally pulled and like every one of them you have already answered today. It's like how it's the best way to get in touch with people. How do you, you know, how do you find, you know, how do you find this? So it's all the stuff I had already like planning to ask. We also just, we'll skip it and we'll move right on.

All right. So let's just head over the next segment of the show, which we lovingly call our Famous for. This is the part of the show where we ask you the same four questions that we've asked to every guest, every week forever now. But before we get there, let's hear. But what's going on this week over on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast? Hey there, Brandon. This week on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast, we have someone you and your listeners know very, very well, the guy sitting right across from you, Mr. David Green.

David comes on our show to talk all about his business life outside of real estate investing. A lot of people don't know it, but David has built and runs a tremendously successful real estate sales business. And on our show, he gives a ton of great advice about hiring, growing a team, and focusing your attention on those things that are most important to your business. So thanks for joining us on the show, David. And now, back to your famous four. All right, with that, let's get to the famous four. Question number one, what is your current favorite real estate related book, Josiah? My favorite real estate book is probably the art of the deal.

Because I think that, and I don't mean this in like a self, or not a selfish way, like a, like a, I don't know, self-righteous way or something. But I think that like Trump kind of reminds me of myself a little bit in that like back when he started, like it was a lot of boots on the ground, you know, like, you know, every time he, he went to a meeting, he went to a meeting. Like it was not, you know, most of time it wasn't like a phone call or a text, you know. so I like him in some areas. Like I like,

he's very careful how you say that. Yeah. He's very successful business man. Yep. All right. Awesome. The art of the deal, which I actually have not read that of all.

I don't think I've actually read it. I got a couple of other ones. On finding a book Brandon hasn't read. Not easy to say. Cool. What's your favorite business book? My favorite business book I read before I was in college is, well,

I actually, Is it okay if I do too? Please. Okay. Number one is how to win friends and influence people by Dale O'Karnege. That one is just like, you know, I mean, hugely. That's phenomenal. Yeah, it's definitely amazing book.

The second one is the richest man in Babylon. And I think the thing you'll see between all these books is that like I like storytellers, you know, so I like seeing, that's why I love the podcast because like I love how people's stories teach a lesson. And so I like the richest man in Babylon because it's, It's all one big story. That's great. Me too. Love those.

Okay. When you're not making six figures on a deal or crying in a grocery store with your wife, pulling you through it, what are some of your favorite hobbies? Loose. Okay. So I actually, I made a note to say I did like take a break from hobbies for like the first year of like doing the business stuff because I mean, we were just like we had no time. And like I gained a lot of weight and like, man, it was bad.

I started, you know, started eating badly. and everything. But I'm back into it now. And so I used to do a lot of working out. And I did, I don't know if you guys know what parkour and free running is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like the videos on YouTube, people jumping over, you know, stuff. I just can't not think of Dwight Shrewd on the office every time. That's one of the best openings for that. Yeah, best scenes of that show. Yeah. They definitely were the ones who made the famous, unlike who actually do it. You're actually doing. Yeah. I stopped. I stopped doing stuff on grass and concrete and stuff. if it was too dangerous.

But there's a local trampoline park that I have a... Oh, cool. And so I do that for my workouts. I go pretty much every day. So that's fun. That's awesome. I've always wanted to go to one of those trampoline parks. I've not yet done it, but I'm going to...

They have one in Maui? They do not. Maybe we'll have to open one. Let's do it, Josiah. Come on. You got a lot of free time. All right, number four, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up,

fail, or never get started? Okay, so this one is also kind of like two-fold. I feel like are, is that okay? Yeah. Okay. There are no rules here. Okay. So, and I feel like I already mentioned these things, but I did want to say.

So number one, I think is, you know, surrounding yourself with people who have bigger goals than you, you know, and honestly, the stupider you feel when you're around people, you should probably keep, like, hanging out with them. Like, all the developers who I hang out with, I mean, they can talk way over my head. And they're making millions of dollars a year. And those are the people you need to be hanging out with, in my opinion. And their goals are so much bigger than mine. So the second part of that is, and I feel like anything I say to this question,

it feels so cliche. So I feel like 100 people have already said it. You know, like I'm like, this was the question that I was like thinking about the most. I'm like, I don't want to be cliche. But I, you know, I guess the one thing I kept on coming, I kept on coming back to was, you know, just trying like one more time. And I know it sounds cliche, but like it really does come down to that because I, you know, I can't, I can't even explain how many times I was thinking about not calling that lady that month and just saying, I'm just not going to do it, you know, like I just, I'll just skip this month, you know, but I tried just one more time and you just really never know. I mean, it's also another cliche thing to say, but you really never know, like when you're that, you know, minor is an inch away from gold or whatever that, you know, I actually like cliches. I think cliches are cliches for a reason because there is a lot of truth and wisdom in them. So, but, you know, but.

No, I think those are great answers. Those are fantastic. I love that I did too of like, you know, the get around people whose goals are way bigger than yours. I think that's a powerful statement right there. So awesome, dude. All right. Well, last question of the day. Tell us where can people find out more about you. I guess the only place where we have a real presence is on Instagram. We're in the process of building a website and stuff like that. But Christian on his Instagram is Christian. It's spelled like Christian with an A underscore pot, P-O-T-T-T-T, and mine is, you know, Josiah underscore pot. So that's us.

You can check us out. Honestly, if you really want to know more about our business, she probably posts more than I do. Nice. But she does, you know, house flipping and stuff like that. So that's kind of fun. Cool. Awesome, dude. Well, thank you for coming on today.

I mean, I love your story. I love what you've done just in the few years. You've been involved with this. And I think people like, you know, stories like this give a lot of people who are, you know, at home right now listening. They're in the car listening. They give people a lot of hope. on like, oh, man, well, if you can do it at 20 years old, like I can do this. I have no excuses.

So, yeah, thank you for coming on and just kind of like burying your soul today. Ah, thank you. Incredible show. Thank you, Josiah. I am David Green 24 on Instagram. Brandon is Beardy Brandon on Instagram. And you were Josiah Pot. Is that correct?

Yeah, just underscore. I don't think you have an underscore. I just looked you up and you were talking. That might have been just your wife. That's okay. You're too busy making money. I think it was just Josiah Pot. Anyways, though, thank you very much.

was a great show. It was awesome having you on. I am David Green for Brandon. 90 days of Intention Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all. for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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