BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 355: From Small-time Landlord to 1000+ Units Under Contract with Ryan "The Mercenary" Murdock
Episode Date: November 7, 2019From Bangor, Maine to Maui... by providing massive value! If you’re looking for a mentor, partner, or lender, this episode is for you. You’ll learn how Ryan Murdock went from small-time landlord/p...roperty manager to major player in Brandon’s growing mobile home park empire; how he’s the perfect complement to Brandon’s DISC profile; and how they find, underwrite, and finance multi-million dollar deals. Ryan is a modest, down-to-earth guy with a keen awareness of his own strengths and weaknesses, and this episode will show you how you can develop that quality to find the right partner and level up your business (and life!). Don’t miss this one, and subscribe to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast so you won’t miss out next week! In This Episode We Cover: How Brandon and Ryan met What Ryan did that caused Brandon to pump his brakes and start paying attention How they slowly formed what became one of the most dynamic duos in real estate The attitude Ryan embraces that makes him so valuable How he earned an equity stake in a huge company How they’ve hired additional members to help grow the business Learn how to create the “vivid vision” Brandon came up with How they joined forces to create “rocket fuel” and scale their syndication model And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Events BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Podcast 234: Tenants, Evictions, & The Dark Side of No Money Down with Ryan Murdock Dave Van Horn – MidWest Real Estate Networking Summit Darren Sager's BiggerPockets Profile BiggerPockets Money Mindy Jensen's BiggerPockets Profile BiggerPockets Business Podcast 16: Mastering Cash Flow and Finding Riches in “Headache” Jobs with 3Point Cleaning CEO Jesse McCue Meet Property Management Extraordinaire, RE Investor & Hotel Owner Jesse McCue BiggerPockets Business Podcast 18: How to “Have It All” by Living with Intention with Brandon Turner BiggerPockets Podcast 126: From 0 to 400+ Units Through Value-Add Investing with Brian Murray BiggerPockets Podcast 212: Buying a 115-Unit Apartment Complex for No Cash Out of Pocket with Brian Murray Brandon's Instagram David's Instagram Listen on BiggerPockets: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show355 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 355.
You look at what I had done in my business prior to that, like outraking leaves in the yard was presumably a step back,
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Otherwise, without that opportunity.
So yeah, just be the absolute best that you can be at whatever task is at hand.
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What's going on, everyone?
This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host and our guests today.
We have two people, Mr. David Green on the camera here, and Mr. Ryan Murdoch live in the sea shed.
What's going on, fellas?
Morning, guys.
Yeah, hello.
What's up, David?
Not much, dude.
I have been traveling all over the place.
I just got back from Nashville and then Long Beach and then Philadelphia for Dave
Van Horn's Investor Summit.
I'm finally sleeping in my own bed.
Welcome back home.
Now I get on a plane and come out here and hang out with Ryan and I.
We could have done this in person, but you're like, no, I don't want to go to Hawaii.
I don't know.
I've never said that before.
All right.
So today's show, the reason we're doing this is we're actually interviewing Ryan Murdoch.
Now, we talk about Ryan a lot on the Bigger Pocket's podcast because Ryan
lives here in Maui. He's part of my team. We're partners on a bunch of stuff.
And we thought it would be fun to actually interview Ryan and tell the story of where
that came from and all the lessons we've learned from doing little, like him doing little
deals on his own, me doing little deals and powering together. So that's kind of the plan today.
Thoroughly entrenched myself in your existence. Yes, that's great. We're grafted together.
But before we get to that, let's get to today's quick tip. David, quick tip, go.
Today's quick tip is
Be like Ryan.
On today's show, you are going to hear
what a perfect example,
a case study in being a good employee
and being rewarded for it looks like.
Ryan masters several things,
including getting stuff done,
humbling himself, taking action,
approaching Brandon the right way,
helping make Brandon a bunch of money
and himself money in the process.
If you are frustrated that you are not getting
where you want to go,
look at what Ryan did,
do what Ryan did,
and you should get what Ryan has.
Wow, very good.
Look at that. Be like Ryan.
That's awesome.
All right.
All right. So by the way, guys, you may hear the noise right now.
We've got like landscapers working around my property right now as we're recording today.
So don't mind them.
We actually bring them up later and there's a point to why the landscapers are here.
No, we didn't do that on purpose.
But it brought up a good conversation point.
So if you hear the noise, forgive us.
This is a live show right now.
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And without further ado,
let's get to our interview
with Mr. Ryan Murdoch.
All right, Ryan Murdoch.
Welcome back to the Bigger Pockes podcast.
This is cool.
Yeah, it is truly a pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me back.
Any time, man.
All right, well, today is going to be
kind of a different episode, obviously,
because we've got you and me here
in the studio in the sea shed.
Seashed.
Seashore.
The Seashed by the seashore.
And David here is on the screen in front of us, which is kind of cool.
His head's a little smaller than normal.
That's okay.
That's because my shoulders are getting bigger.
It just looks that way.
There we go.
All right.
So this will be a little bit different show.
So David is going to be more of interviewing a little bit more of us in that, well,
we'll still be interviewing together, but we'll make it happen.
We're going to wing it.
We will see how much mic time I actually take from Brandon.
I know.
I usually take quite a bit of it.
So in fact, I'm going to let you, David, start the line of questioning.
Well, that's amazing.
Hopefully I get to keep going after that.
So we've got a power couple on here today.
Brandon Turner and Ryan Murdoch, two very good friends of mine who are currently crushing it in real estate.
And I would like to start by asking how you two lovebirds met.
Podcasts, right?
Yeah, the podcast originally.
What, three or four years ago, I had applied to be on the Bigger Pockets podcast, got accepted.
Did that show.
It was fantastic.
Try to reach out to Brandon afterwards, but he completely ignored me as most superstar do.
But I didn't give up there.
It was, I don't know, three or four months after the podcast.
To decide of the email with, will you be my mentor?
I think that's what I did.
Yeah, I see that was like for sure.
Like, what can I do for you?
You know.
No, I think you were.
Yeah, but no, it was like three or four months after that.
Darren Seger was hosting a meetup in New York like he does.
And being fresh off the four hour work week and having some other changes in my life,
like I just felt that it was right to randomly book a flight to New York on a Wednesday afternoon
to go fanboy over Brandon at this meetup, which I did.
So you were there.
I met you briefly.
I think we spoke for 30 seconds.
I said something awkward and weird and then just disappeared to the back of the room like I typically do.
That's Brandon's love language.
Yeah.
But it was a great meetup.
You gave your presentation.
And one of the things that you spoke about, which is something that you had been talking about on the podcast,
that was your search for a mobile home park.
You had a 1031 deal going on.
You had just sold your first property.
The clock was ticking.
You had to find another property.
And you wanted a mobile home park.
and you kept saying 50 lots, public water, public sewer.
Like, and standing in that room, it was a great presentation, but to myself, I'm thinking,
okay, yeah, yeah, no, we've, you know, we've heard the mobile home park thing a thousand
times.
I know he's looking, like, didn't register that I would actually play any part of that at all.
So I flew home, and like the next week, we had a local meetup in Bangor, Maine, where I was
living at the time.
And one of the guys there mentioned offhand that he had a mobile home park that he's
looking to sell.
And he's, and the words clicked.
He said, it's 50 lots, public water, public sewer.
And I'm like, so I'm thinking of myself, like, there's no way that Brandon Turner is going to want to buy a mobile home park in Bangor, Maine.
But like, I can't pass up that opportunity.
How would you describe Bangor, Maine?
Like, probably about like Grace Harbor, Washington.
Like, just small podunk, blue collar, like, not a whole lot going on.
Usually 10 or 15 years behind like the rest of the country on trends and other things.
I mean, it's a great little community.
It is.
It's a great place to invest in real estate.
But it's, you know, it's a small and cold area.
Yeah, it's, I think we get, I know, seven months out of the year is just cold and miserable.
The summers and fall are beautiful, but the rest of it is just cold and awful.
So, uh, so this guy to meet up who had the mobile home park.
I said, Ed, you know, his name's Ed.
I said, send me the numbers to that park.
I got to at least see if I can pursue this a little bit.
So he did.
I looked at the numbers.
And I remember sitting in my computer for an extended period of time with the email type to
Brandon with like, you know, hey, this is probably not something you're interested in.
But I just at least wanted to send it to you.
you and it wasn't really that I expected that he would be interested in this park.
It was more like I just wanted to stay engaged with Brandon Turner.
Like just stay in communication with him.
And it was a way for me just to send something other than, hey, buddy, how you doing?
Like I had a thing that I can send him.
So I sent the email and it was, I don't know, a half hour later, whatever, you sent me in text.
I'm pulling out the email right now.
Yeah, you sent me a text.
And it was something effective.
Like, hey, dude, thanks for sending me that.
I'm about to get on a flight.
I'll analyze it on the plane.
And right there, I'm like, yeah, victory.
Like he responded like, you know, I maybe added some value even if it doesn't go anywhere, but here it was.
So that, like, to me was a win.
It got better like six or seven hours later.
I got an email and a text message from you to something of the effect.
Dude, I've analyzed hundreds of mobile home parks over the past couple of years.
I like this one better than any of them.
Would you like to partner on it?
And I almost fell out of my chair.
And like, so one of my initial thoughts was.
Well, I was like, there's no way I'm going to buy a property 3,000 miles away from me.
Yeah.
But market, I don't know.
But my initial reaction was, oh, my God, I've oversold this.
thing. He doesn't know like Bangor Mania.
He doesn't know. This is a C class park. Like it was a pretty depressed park. It was a serious
value ad project. So I think my next email to you was like screenshots of the Google Street
View and said, make sure you note the overturn shopping carts and the exposed belly fat.
Like this is a rough park.
Yeah, you're wrong. I found the emails here. The park is rough.
Which equals management intensive, but the numbers may work. Yeah. That's funny.
So long story, a little less long. You agreed to come out to my house and hang out for a couple
days. We were going to do due diligence on this park. It was like, I don't know, 400 degrees below zero.
It was just absolutely cold, miserable. We went out there. We marched through, I don't know,
a dozen vacant, blown out, burned out mobile homes, did our due diligence. We did a meet up that night,
which is pretty cool. Yeah. The local meet up.
At that night, I remember if he was there. I think he was out of town. Yeah, I think he was out
out of town. Yeah, we didn't, we didn't meet him then. But by the way, so you invited me to your house.
Yeah. Oh, no, no, you didn't, you invited me to a hotel. Yeah, no, this is great. Yeah, because
you said you were going to come out. And I'm thinking, okay, Brandon doesn't know me at all.
Like he's not going to want to stay at my house, but I'll least offer it up.
So I emailed there.
I said, look, you're welcome to stay in my house.
I've got an extra bedroom.
But you probably don't want to do that.
It's two nights.
Like, here's the hotels I recommend.
And you responded back like, oh, yeah, no problem.
I'll stay your house.
And I'm like, holy crap.
I remember at the time thinking, like, if I'm going to go into business with a person,
I've got to be able to spend the night at his house.
Like, that was my actual line of thought was like.
Yeah, that was a bold move because you had no idea.
Well, like he could murder me.
Yes.
And then I shouldn't go in business with him.
That was my, that was my thing.
like one of my side hustles forever when I was doing real estate was doing eBay.
So I was dragging home like junk from yard sales and like old jeeps and part in the
mountain.
My spare bedroom was my inventory warehouse.
So I had like industrial shelving and just the walls are trash and the trims beat up and the room was just beat to death after five years of inventory store.
And Brandon, I think you were coming like, I don't know, like five or six days later.
So it was like my own little episode of HG like home makeover where I took all the crap out of that room, repainted the whole thing, fixed the trim.
repaired the blinds i didn't have any furniture i went out i had to buy a bedroom set like a bed a nightstand a
lamp a rug like all that stuff and right before i picked you up at the airport i even had like a
painting that i bought it loosed and hung that on the wall like this whole thing to like get ready for
a brand and turn uh so you came you had no idea that the room hadn't been like that for years pulled it off
conned you into partnering me on that mark and i was like that's the normal guy yeah so we closed
i don't know what a month or so later and uh off to the races so this is a case study in the right way to
approach somebody. I mean, I know we're joking around a lot, but you were able to cut through the
noise and get a hold of Brandon Turner, get him to sleep in your house on your first date. I mean,
that's impressive, impressive from many different angles, eventually, like, get him married to you in
business. So I'm fascinated. I think there's a lot of people that can pull out of Ryan's story to
be completely genuine, the right way to approach somebody and how to add value, because we say all the
time add value, but that doesn't always do you any good if you don't know how. So tell me, like,
what happened next? How did you guys pursue this park together? How did you partner on it?
what ended up happening?
Do you want to go over the partnership, partnership structure?
So, well, we brought in, we brought in Mindy.
Yeah, which I think we mentioned.
So Mindy hosted the Bigger Pockets.
Money podcast.
I want to say business podcast.
Money podcast.
So Mindy's been a good friend for a number of years.
We've done some money like stuff that she's lent money, private money in the past.
So we brought in Mindy and we just said, hey, you want a partner on a mobile home park?
Because I had some of the money, not all the money.
And so Ryan put in a little bit of money.
I put in my 1031 money.
And then Mindy put in her.
And normally just a caveat, normally you cannot put 1031 money.
into a partnership or syndication.
So it is not a partnership.
So that way we can do a 1031.
There's a couple ways to do that.
There's a DST or a TIC.
Those are the two ways to take 1030 on money into a group.
So we each own part of the mobile home park is not a partnership.
Yeah, TIC is basically just a way to hold title.
There's several different ways to hold title.
That's one of the ways to do it.
All right.
So here's something interesting I can add to this.
While all of this was going on,
I was hanging out with Brandon at his house in Washington.
Yeah.
I believe right when the long distance book was getting,
getting ready to launch.
And we were talking about the insane stress he was under trying to find something to put 1031 money into.
Does that sound familiar, Brandon?
Yes.
Yes.
And I'm hearing about this awesome dude, Ryan Murdoch, who's like clutch when you really need him and he found this deal.
And like Brandon, it was like it literally came down to like the last minute.
Yeah, it was a last day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That doesn't describe what it's like to be Brandon's friend.
I don't know what does.
Everything goes down to the last day, just like that.
Okay, so you guys buy this deal.
Now tell me, how did you split up the work that was going to be done?
because if that had gone bad, you guys wouldn't still be partners today.
So what was it like once you guys had to actually operate it?
Yeah, it worked out pretty well.
Initially, I was going to self-manage the entire thing.
I got a chunk of equity.
I did put money in, but I got an additional chunk of equity just for being kind of the boots on the ground guy,
which is a great angle for anybody that doesn't have the money and has the hustle.
Like those opportunities do exist.
But at the last minute, I decided that managing the day-to-day operations of that park,
while I was qualified to do it, wasn't the best use of my time.
So I went back and hired the property management company that I had worked for for about five years.
A great operation, main real estate management.
They run a very tight ship, and I knew they could do a good job with the park, and it would save me.
They would do probably a better job than I would, and it would save me the hassle of having to deal with a 50-lot mobile home park that really was in pretty rough shape at the time.
So they dealt with the day-to-day, the rent collections, the maintenance calls, the day-to-day headaches.
But what I took on was more of an asset manager role where I,
I was overseeing.
There were some lots that needed some infill.
We had, I don't know, 10 or 12 homes that needed to be renovated.
So I was meeting with the contractors.
I was kind of doing the bigger picture stuff that typically the management companies struggle
with a little more.
Like they're very good at the day-to-day, but sometimes they're just out of their comfort
zone on doing renovation-type stuff.
I did some other work with getting permits for the park.
I had to go in front of the planning board to get some zoning things change.
And it's all stuff like outside of the scope of day-to-day management.
So I took on that role, which I think I did very well with.
Meanwhile, the management company dealt with the day to day, so I didn't have to worry about that.
And Ryan, where did you learn those skills that you implemented when you were managing the project?
Well, I've been managing property for, I don't know, 10 years.
When I first started out buying my own small multifamilies, I started a property management company at about the same time.
And I grew that to roughly 200 managed units.
I did that for about five years, which then led to the opportunity to join forces with that bigger management company.
I went to work for them, brought my business with me, and I worked for them for another five years or
So I knew property management and specifically I knew that management company inside and out.
So if there were any issues, like I knew all the people there, knew who to go to for the right answers and to get things done.
So it was a great arrangement.
I like working with them.
They like working with me.
And it was a great fit.
Which we had Jesse who, Jesse McHugh.
So he was on the Bigger Pockets podcast and he's been on the Bigger Pockets business podcast.
Anyway, Jesse's awesome.
He runs that company.
Yeah.
He's an rock star.
Yeah.
He's a rock star.
One thing just to point out there, I thought was interesting.
You brought it up.
I don't want to leave it until we at least mention it.
Like the fact that you brought value to the deal.
I mean, you did bring some money, but you wouldn't have had to.
It's more like you just put like, I think the money you put in was like the money that you paid out for random things in the process.
Yeah, originally I wasn't going to be required.
Yeah, you weren't going to be any money at all.
You had worked it out so that I didn't have to put any cash in.
But I kind of felt compelled and excited to throw some money in just so I could have some sort of skin in the game.
Yeah.
And for that, I got additional equity.
So.
Yeah.
So, but what was cool is like this applies to anybody, especially if you are somebody who lives,
in a market that there are deals, if you can be the person that finds the deal, you can bring
somebody who brings the money.
I talk about that all the time.
David talks about all the time.
It's like, there are a lot of people who live in the middle of the country or in these
side pocket areas like where I lived in Graz Harbor, you lived in Bangor.
Like, there are deals there.
So networking, connecting people on bigger pockets, such a great way to, I guess, just, I don't
make magic happen there.
Yeah, it was a perfect example of what you talk about all the time is, you know, you got to
have, what is it, the deal?
Yeah, the deal.
triangle triangle yeah yeah you got to have the deal you got to have the hustle and you got to have the
no the hustle the knowledge and the money you don't need all of them you need two of the three
well i like that ryan had the knowledge because he didn't just sit around and say i want to invest in
real estate i need to find a deal he said i'm going to go work for a property management company
and learn the fundamentals of being good at this so when his opportunity came he was prepared
and i know that there's some quote that probably how elrod said about preparation meeting hard work
Probably. I think it was like Ben Franklin, but, you know, we'll give it to how.
Well, whoever you want to credit to, because that's what you do.
Ryan was ready when his moment came. So I think that that's awesome.
Now, you two are both hanging out there in Brandon C-Shed in Hawaii. How did that come to pass?
So it was about, what, nine months after we bought the mobile home park, you had hired me to go out to one of your other apartment complexes in Ohio to do a little bit of work there.
But I think the real relationship.
You were the mercenary.
I was the mercenary.
Yeah.
So, yeah, a gun for hire just flying around wreaking havoc everywhere.
But I think the real relationship was formed or Brandon's trust in me was just seeing like how we worked together through the mobile home park.
Like there was a lot of work that had to be done there.
And we were able to, you know, collectively do way more in a shorter period of time than we thought we were going to be able to.
And we just work well together.
So I was coming back from some like consulting gig.
I was doing somewhere.
I can't even remember where now on the mainland.
But I got a text from Brandon saying, hey, I just bought this house in Maui.
Can you come out for a week just to help me get settled?
I got a bunch of stuff to do.
Like my, I get my truck and my shipping container and all the stuff.
But you just come on and help me.
So, yeah, I booked my flight before you had a chance to change your mind.
Came out for a week and pretty much just never left.
I think I was here about five seconds before I decided that Maui was fantastic.
How do I make it work that we can move out here?
Yeah.
The landlord 10-0 laws are very strict here.
and so I can't get him out.
So now he just, he won't leave.
Yeah, he's got at least another six months before our court date.
And then I get to the technicalities, I'm going to nail them on me too.
So I'm good here for at least another two years without paying me.
Ryan would know he worked for a property manager company.
Yeah, I got it down, man.
I got it down.
Like when a prosecution attorney goes to the defense side.
Yes, precisely.
So I want to ask you, Brandon, from your perspective,
why did you ask Ryan to move out with you?
When did you know this is somebody that I want to partner with on a bigger scale?
How did that develop?
Yeah.
So this actually goes into a lot.
I think it's actually really important for everybody who are thinking about bringing in partners or employees or just anybody in your business that you're going to be working with.
Like Ryan and I built it slowly.
Right.
Like I, it's like what I think people oftentimes make the mistake.
It was like, oh, hey, you and me are like the same person.
We should partner together.
And like that we naturally like people who are like us.
Ryan and I are exactly opposites.
Like when we go to disc profile, like we have exactly the opposite disc profile.
Exactly.
Like, and so I think that's one of the reasons that we tend to work really well together.
at first, like, I went and hung out with you for a little while.
Then we did a deal together, a specific deal.
And it worked out well.
Then I hired you to help me with another one of my properties.
That worked out well.
Then I asked you to come out just for like a week to come to Hawaii.
I trade you a, basically, I just traded him a plane ticket in exchange for helping me.
And so like at every step, we're filling each other out.
Like, do we like working together and how does that work?
So that's kind of how I like approached it.
And every time I needed something done, Ryan was just really good at getting things done.
And so like that's what we call them the mercenary.
it just worked.
And so that's how we kind of move from there to let's do a little bit more.
Let's do a little bit more.
And that led us to where we are today by and, you know, like crazy.
So they answer that question?
Okay.
No, not really.
Not at all.
I wanted to know, like, what feeling did you have when you were like, this is the guy?
I want him to move here and start a business with him.
Yeah.
I will.
I mean, I can tell you the moment that I thought it was.
Yeah, like when did you know you were in love?
That's what I'm getting at here.
Sunset on the beach.
Very much.
Exactly. It was a couple things. But no, one particular thing is I had a shipping container from Washington State with all my crap loaded in it had been dropped off at the port here in Maui and I had no way of getting it from there to my house. And like the next day it was parked in front of my house being unloaded. And it was just like you was just like you was just done. And I was just thinking like how cool is that just to have that done, which was a fairly complicated thing, which actually goes to my point I make a lot now is nothing's hard. It's just like steps that you haven't defined yet. And so it wasn't like it was.
hard. I didn't know the steps to figure it out. So Ryan figured it. And I remember thinking that
day, like, this would be amazing to have more of this in my life. Plus, it's not like Ryan's
like, like, so when I bought this property, I live out here in Hawaii, it has a, what we call an
Ohana. So there's an extra house on the property. It's like there's the main house. Then there's
actually downstairs, which we use for family and friends and maybe someday Airbnb. And then there's
the back house, which is completely separate. I don't know, probably 50 feet off of the back of my
house. It's almost like a separate little lot. And in fact, in Hawaii, I could separate it someday.
and they call it CPR in it.
But anyway, so I was like, well, I think you were the one to ask.
You're like, what would it look like?
Yeah, that was one of my task was to, you tasked me with finding a tenant.
A tenant, yeah.
I was here.
And I did.
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
So he's like, well, what if I just moved him back there?
And I was like, yeah, because at the time you were looking for an assistant,
you had some other tasks that needed to be done.
I was certainly looking for a change of physical location because I had had enough in Maine.
And I was at a point with my own portfolio and my business there that I could start
to look for something. My wife and I were actively looking for, you know, places in the
southern U.S. and warmer climbers somewhere to escape in the winter. So I just took those
things and said, look, you've got a need for an assistant and for some help. I got a desire to
get the heck out of a cold climate and into a warm one. Certainly partnering with you and being
exposed to, you know, your world and the bigger pockets world and the guests. And like David
Green, you were out here that first night. I showed up that first week. So like just being immersed,
like in that like super surreal world was like. I think I set the,
a plate for you, bro. I think that it was me telling Brandon, like, you need an assistant, man.
Like, it's all we talked about for like a week is how great it is when you have an assistant.
And what I'm noticing that hasn't been mentioned here, Ryan, is that, and this is, I've noticed
this by you too. You are the guy that gets stuff done. GSD. Like, if you didn't already,
if you weren't the mercenary, that's what we would call you. You are so good at that.
When something needs to get done, Ryan steps in and he does it. He doesn't make excuses. He doesn't
say, I don't know how. It's this amazing feeling you get when you're like, hey, can you help me?
he just does it and he does it quickly.
And if that's something that somebody learns how to do,
you become incredibly valuable no matter what you do.
And most of the time we get in our own way,
the stuff that stops us from getting stuff done
is not our own intelligence,
it's not our resources,
it's our own emotions that are like,
I don't want to feel stupid,
I don't want to make a mistake,
that type of stuff.
And Ryan just doesn't care.
He will just get in there and do it.
And Brandon recognized from what I'm hearing,
I need a little bit more of that of that in my life.
And so, you know,
you invite you to live with them in Maui now.
Now you guys have an awesome business going together.
So I kind of want to get into that.
Can you guys share what Ryan's current role is within the business that you are building?
Sure.
Let me,
so I'll take that for a second.
What's funny is,
yeah,
originally,
like I was like,
I don't know what you're going to do,
but let's just call like executive assistant.
Even though you're not an executive assistant,
I was like,
I don't know what better name to give for everything.
Yeah,
we had to get really creative with a job.
Like you could justify and that I could do.
So I was executive assistant.
I was a landscaper.
I was the pool boy.
I was like the driver,
like whatever.
Yeah,
whatever needed to be done.
Yeah.
Because like,
we're just like,
how do we keep Ryan out here and make it justified to be able to do that?
What's funny is he's moved completely from executive assistant to something very different.
Like today, your title is VP of acquisitions.
Like, you're basically running pretty much the entire side of the business that involves
finding mobile home parks and other properties, getting it through closing,
dealing with all that stuff.
So he's running all of that.
And then from there, Brian Murray, who wrote the book called Crushin and Commercial Real estate.
He's been on a show a couple of times.
Brian is our asset manager.
Ryan, Brian runs everything from that point on.
So it's kind of the two halves is Ryan running pre-purchase,
Brian running everything after.
And we got Mike and Walker in there as well right now.
Ironically, I brought in another, because now I lost Ryan as my executive assistant.
I brought in Mike.
That lasted a week before Mike.
He was promoted.
Promoted.
And now Mike is basically investor relations.
Like that's what he does.
And he's amazing at it.
And so he's running all investor relations.
So it's just interesting how like, like, you, I don't know, how that works.
Like, and it's great.
Again, every step, you're trying little things and giving people more and more based on what they're doing, which is why like, I mean, David, I know this is something that you harp on all the time is like this idea of like doing good in your job.
Why like so many people are like, it's just my job.
Like, it's just my day job.
I don't need to do good at this.
Like I'm just going to do the bare minimum.
I'm going to get by.
I'm just a waiter, whatever.
I don't need to, you know, I don't need to do extra work.
I'm just a waiter.
So I'm going to do the bare minimum not to get fired.
But Ryan's like, how do I do the best job possible?
And then going from living in Bangor, or Maine to.
running a multi-million dollar, you know, the fastest growing mobile home park business in the
country. I don't know if that's true, but it's got to probably.
I think it is. Yeah. Zero to 1,300 units under contract in, you know, three months, whatever
it is. Yeah. Crazy. Like very fast. How do we get there? Because at every step, he just excelled.
So good job. Thanks. Yeah. Brian, do you have advice you can share on how you were able to excel?
It's funny because I remember, like, in the first couple of weeks, I was bored, like,
looking for things to do to stay valuable. And I was out raking leaves in the,
the yard. And David, it was your voice in my head that says, like, if I've got to be a landscaper,
I'm going to be the best landscaper I can be. Like, just keep doing it and keep pushing. And I mean,
that was, if you look at what I had done in my business prior to that, like, outraking leaves in the yard
was presumably a step back. Yeah. But I knew it was worth the sacrifice to, to move forward,
uh, light years ahead of where I would have gone otherwise without that opportunity. So yeah,
just be the, the absolute best that you can be at whatever task is at hand.
one thing I've noticed about you, Ryan, is that even if you're the one raking leaves
while Brandon and I are like drinking tea or something, not like watching you as the hired hand,
there's never a feeling like we're better than you, right?
You miss a spot over there.
Throwing stuff at me and ridiculing me.
Could you keep it down?
Could you tell the hired help to be a little bit?
That's never the case.
Like when we hang out, it's like we're all three buddies and we're the same.
And I just noticed that there's a lot of people that would object to that and say, I'm not going to go rake leaves.
I was an executive at whatever.
And I know that Ryan didn't have that pride.
He was very humble about it.
And I don't think there was ever a point where I ever felt like Ryan's any different
than me.
He just has a different role than what I'm playing.
And in a different world, I could be the guy who ends up breaking those leaves.
I mean, life changes very, very quickly.
And I think that's something else that we should commend you for that people should hear
is having the humility to do what needs to be done,
not taking the place of honor, not getting all the attention,
which you're now getting because you did do that.
But you just executed that perfectly.
Like they could probably make a movie about,
the assumption of right.
The mercenary.
Yeah.
And yours is good-looking enough
you can play yourself in the movie,
which is even better.
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Okay.
So now you guys mentioned that your business is growing extremely fast, often because you
have the right, or sorry, not often, but obviously because you have the right people in place.
You've got Ryan there and Brandon, two very talented people who both understand.
Brandon, you're kind of the visionary.
You see what needs to happen.
Ryan, you're the executor.
You go carry out that plan.
And the two of you work very good together.
Can you share how your business started, what the vision is for it, what troubles you had, how it grew where you're at now?
I'm very interested to hear about this growing mobile home part business.
I go with the vision.
I mean, I mentioned that a few weeks ago on the Bigger Pockets podcast, the episode that Jane Carroll Scott interview on the business podcast.
But just the quick answer was like, so we had this thing called the vivid.
It's actually on my wall up there on the wall here.
But it's basically the idea of like I knew I wanted a thousand units in three years.
That was basically, and it was I wanted to own $50 million of real estate, a thousand units in three years.
And the way I got that was working backwards from what I actually wanted, which was a team of fun people doing meaningful work.
I worked backwards from that goal, from that outcome and said, what do I need to justify a team of four or five fun people in Maui hanging out, working hard and having a good time?
And then from there I built the vision.
And then, you know, obviously a thousand units in three years, we're going to need a bigger goal because like, like, we're under, yeah, 1300 years under contract.
No, we haven't closed on them all.
We may not close on them all.
As of the date this comes out, we should have just closed on the 168 unit.
We've got a, what of the 260 coming up here in a few weeks, probably to close.
Yeah.
And then another.
Yeah, it'll be 1,300 total if everything closes within the next like three months from now.
Yeah.
So it's been a pretty meteoric rise.
Yeah.
And Ryan really is running almost everything.
I mean, like, because we're in acquisition.
So everything from he's managing the team of a deal analysis guys we brought in.
And including we actually just brought in a gentleman named Walker.
What's the last name?
Meadows.
Yeah, of course, Waco Meadows.
So we just brought in Walker Meadows to be kind of our lead like, you know, everything finance, underwriting related.
He's awesome.
So Ryan runs all that now.
Yeah.
And that's kind of the fun thing about bootstrapping a business is it's fun and challenging at the same time as trying to figure out when and how to pull the
trigger on help. I mean, you take it back to the landscaping thing. That was one of the first
things that got removed from my plate, right? As soon as I got busy enough, we had to rake
leaves. I couldn't rake leaves anymore. It wasn't the highest and best use of my time,
mercifully. We were able to hire a landscaper and get that off my plate.
Which is why right now there's landscapers working like all around as you're going to hear
the buzzing in the background. Yeah, but so you follow that through the natural progression of
building a business where at first it was just kind of me and you and you know, we're looking
for deals. We're underwriting all the deals. We, like we would sit in the shed for hours and
underwrite deals.
But it got to the point of, okay, we need help doing that because it's keeping us from doing other things.
So we brought in a team of underwriters.
We brought in a team of acquisitions people.
And like even giving, even watching their roles evolve.
Because when you start on, you bootstrap, you only have one or two people.
Every additional person you bring in is a just dynamic change to like the roles and responsibilities where unlike you have a company where 200 people and you hire one or two more, they don't have that big of an impact.
But when you start out with one or two people and every time you add, you know, that second,
third, fourth person, like you've got to pretty much reevaluate everybody's roles and responsibilities
because you're delegating a lot of this stuff out. And it's absolutely key that you have the right
people to do what it is that you need them to do. So from a from a skill set level,
which I was always more like, we got a hire for skill, we got a hire for skill. Brandon was always
more of a we got to hire for personality. And I'm definitely leaning your way now because we've
had people that were skilled that just weren't a good fit. And I'm now seeing that like personality
plays way more into it than I thought because the people on our team now, I absolutely love
working with them. They do a great job. They exceed expectations every time. And like every time
we've added one of those team members, it was like, it's like pulling the drain out of a sink.
You just, like, all the stress and like the million things that I would have to do or that you would have to do,
it's like, that's just gone because now you're delegating to other people. Yeah.
You know, Brandon, I heard you one time quote Mark Cuban and you actually gave him credit for it,
which I will give you credit for doing, that business is a sport. And that,
That's why you like it.
And as you were talking, Ryan, what I was thinking is that most of us, when we're new,
we tend to only focus on the skill aspect of business.
Are you good at your job?
But there's actually an entire new dimension to it that is, can you hire other people to do it?
Which is very, very tricky.
To me, it's like four or five times harder than even just being good at the job.
And it's very similar to an athlete who's mastered one part of their sport.
But if they can't do something else, then there's a weakness and they can't win.
The defense can stop them.
and that's what it made me think about.
And the other thing I thought about is how with a new business,
like what you guys are describing,
the growth is a lot like the process of mitosis in a cell.
You have one person that does everything.
Then you bring in a Ryan,
and now that splits into two people that do everything.
And then Ryan's job becomes overwhelming,
and he splits into two more as you leverage off landscaping and other things.
And as long as every split is a good hire,
you can continue to grow and you can even grow rapidly.
But one bad hire stops everything,
because then you've got to stop, get rid of that person,
fix all the mistakes that they made, put a new person in there, let them get up to speed.
I mean, when you're in the process of trying to grow a business, all you think about is why do people
suck? Why can't people just not suck? Because it's so much easier if they wouldn't.
And like, that's why I'm commending you, Ryan, because you were the guy that didn't suck
and look how quickly things shot off for you. Can you share some of the struggles that you
have had as far as you're scaling? Because you don't really sound like your stress or overwhelmed.
I would imagine with the pace that you're growing up, there's got to be a lot of worry.
Yeah, if we had done this podcast maybe six or eight weeks ago, it would have been a very different me.
I think sitting in this share, but we've been able to, you know, to bring out some quality help and get some systems in place that we were lacking.
And I think part of that is just not knowing what we wanted.
I mean, our initial focus on the mobile home parks, our net was way too wide.
Yeah.
We just didn't know.
Like, we weren't sure what to expect and what we could find for deals.
But what we found quickly is that we were just overrun because we were casting too wide of a net.
So we had to continue to refine those criteria to the point where it was almost,
it was just much easier to make an automatic yes or no,
this is a deal we want to pursue or not.
Where before there was just way too much ambiguity.
Like, do we get some specifics?
Like what we were originally looking for?
Yeah.
Yeah, no.
We were looking at, yeah, because again, we really didn't know how hard it was going to be
to find a deal.
So we're looking at everything.
So like some of the things that we have now that we used to be kind of negotiable,
maybe we'll pursue this park.
Maybe we won't are now like a hard yes and a hard no.
initially we were looking at parks with private utility.
So wells and septics, we weren't crazy about them.
Preferred not to have them, but we were still underwriting those and going through.
We've gone to the point now where if, like, if there's private utilities,
we don't even want to take a look at it's an automatic no.
Do we perhaps pass up some good deals?
Yeah, maybe we're going to miss one or two, but like the amount of time that it took
analyzing and underwriting bad deals, it just wasn't worth anymore.
We had to cut those things loose.
So stuff like private utilities are an automatic no.
we're looking at specific population criteria in the MSA.
So we want what, 100-something thousand people within 10 miles.
Minimum percentage of park on homes.
We want some vacant lots, but no more than like 30%,
because that causes complications with financing and infill.
So we really tighten our criteria from like just we'll look at anything to now
there's like five or six hard stops on something that we will just cast aside.
And that's so hard to not, it's so hard to like reject a deal that might be good.
Like we're looking at these deals.
I'm like, oh, it's only got 48 units.
But man, the numbers look, like, we just, what I learned is like the opportunity cost of even looking at those deals is not worth the fact that we probably would get a deal occasionally.
So it's better to have that really strict criteria and know exactly what we want.
Because we've talked about this on other shows too.
Like now that like every major broker in the country on mobile home parks, like we want them all to know.
Oh, yeah, that's an open door capital deal because it's got 125 units.
It's got it's in this MSA.
it's got this vacancy.
That's perfect for Open Door Capital.
And so they're going to shove it to us because we're just known as that type.
And we're like, oh, we'll take anything.
And then we're rejecting it like all over the place.
All over the place.
Yeah.
Well, let's look at like the foreshadowing of how you two even met.
It was because Brandon was very specific about what he wants.
50 units.
Public city.
Public city, public water, public store, whatever it was, right?
And that is what stuck in Ryan's mind.
And I think that there's a lesson to be learned from that is that fomo, the fear of missing out that if I turn away a deal,
and I don't look at it.
I can miss the deal of the century.
It's almost like having a lack of faith.
And it will always come back to bite you.
You have to have the faith that I know what I'm looking for.
There's plenty to go around.
I need a smaller filter and the right one will come to me.
Yeah.
All right.
So can you guys break down who's in charge of what as far as your company right now?
What are the different roles people are playing?
I don't know.
Brandon's role is to come up with all kinds of ideas.
My role is to pretty much say no to all of them.
Yes.
So that's that's it.
Oh, man.
in a broad sense.
It's like,
you were one brand in it.
All over again.
It's like I come up with the ideas
and Josh is like no.
Yeah.
I come up with the idea.
Josh says no.
Which by the way is I actually,
I spoke on this at the bigger pockets conference to BP con 2019 that we were at.
I mentioned like the skill of say no is such a valuable skill.
Because most people say yes on default.
Say no on default is actually a better option.
So like the other day we were looking at this property like a block from my house.
It's a vacant lot with a little house attached to it.
And it's a perfect development.
I mean,
it's a potentially $200,000.
profit development deal. And I'm like, Ryan, let's just do it. And his answer was no.
Like, no. I'm like, but look, there would be no work at all. We just bring in a general
contractor that they handle the whole thing. He's just like, no. Yeah. See, that's the other key.
So it's a very strange dynamic is Brandi, you just heard him say it. It'll be no work at all.
Yeah. No work at all. This will take five minutes. No big yes. And I'm in my mind thinking,
this is like an eight month full time project for three guys. So the truth is somewhere in the
middle there likely but brandon's like oh no time this will cost like five bucks five minutes and i'm
like no we no this is not even close to that this is going to drag on forever so like like it like
said it's it's a very interesting dynamic of like the balance of you firing off idea after idea after
idea some of which are actually brilliant a lot of are not and i like i don't have any of those ideas
like i am not good at coming up with those ideas but i think i'm good at filtering those and putting on
some sort of like real estate can can we do this or can we not i think you guys have
talked about on the show before. Was it Steve Jobs or whatever? Like, he would say no to. Yeah,
everything. Like, great ideas, but you just can't do everything. You've got to pick your path and
like stay focused on that or else you just gather it all over the place. Yeah. And to go into the
company structure a little bit, so there's a book called traction. I don't know, David,
are you a traction yet? Yeah. Okay. So traction talks a lot about this idea of
defining every role in your company. And this is not like just traction. I mean, a lot of people
talk about this, but define the role, not the people. So when I made my vivid vision thing on the wall,
Like I actually at the bottom of it, I didn't actually print it on the thing, but like I actually defined what the company would look like.
So there would be a CEO.
Like that would be me.
That's my role.
It's visionary.
There would be an asset manager.
They're in charge of managing the asset.
They would be a finance person in charge of all like basically a CFO kind of character.
There would be an acquisitions person.
Under the acquisitions person, there would be an analysis person because that's part of that.
They would also be a salesperson that's in charge of like cold calling.
So I had all these roles specified and now we're just plugging people into them.
And we're changing a little bit.
but I'm pretty much.
Yeah, we're trying to get some real structure.
So you obviously is the CEO.
I'm beneath that.
And then I oversee Walker Meadows and Mike, who are our underwriters and investor-relations
people.
And then we've got Brian Murray as our other asset manager.
So, I mean, my goal is to keep as much off Brandon's plate at this point as possible.
For a variety of reasons, most of them good.
But so I'll try to deal with anything I can internally with our team with Brian, Walker,
and Mike, and only bring you the higher-level stuff that we really need.
your input on. So I try to insulate Brandon from as much as possible because he's got a million
other things he's doing. He's doing podcasts. He's raising money. Like he has his role. He doesn't need
to get bogged down in the minutia of the day-to-day business. And my job right now is raising money.
I mean, to pre-pernish, that's what I like, even though like Mike is our investor, Mike Williams,
by the way, shout out to Mike Williams. Mike is awesome, but he's our investor relations.
So he takes it from there. But it's my job with my Instagram, with, you know, going to speak
places. Like my job is to talk about the business so I can raise money from accredited
investors. So that's what I do. Yeah. And if I've got any problems that I just can't overcome for a variety
reasons or, you know, it's a, it's a super high level decision that, yeah, only then will I,
will I bring it to Brandon for some input? And hopefully that's a quick, quick conversation. This is
where we're at yes or no. And on where we go. Ryan, I'm telling you, if you had a twin brother,
if you could clone yourself, I would pay you so much money. I mean, I would never steal you from Brandon,
but like just what you're describing is literally what we dream about having in our lives as someone that
has that mindset. I want to take as much off the plate of the CEO as I can. And if I have to go
to him, it will only be, I will have everything lined up. It will be a very quick conversation. I just
need to know this or that. And then I'm going to go execute it. What we find as business owners is that
most people say, tell me what to do. What should I do? And they run to the CEO to say, or, you know,
whoever, no way about the CEO, but the decision maker with every single thing because they don't want to
stop and Google something. They don't want to make a phone call to someone else and say, what would
you do in this situation, right? What you want to be is the guy that goes to the CEO and says,
hey, I've talked to these three people. This is the common theme that comes up with all of them.
Are you okay with us making this decision? Rather than what should I do? And the CEO says,
go call these three people. You come back. Here's what they said. That's the problem. And if people
could adopt the mindset that Ryan has, they become very wealthy very quickly because there's just
not a lot of that in the world. I mean, I'm definitely looking for my own Ryan Murdoch. I'm looking
all the time. I've been struggling trying to find that. But you see when the two of you get
together like that magic happens, boom, you guys are doing really good.
They call that rocket.
They call it Rocket Fuel, right?
When the integrator and the visionary line together, there's a phrase,
the guys who are attraction road book called Rocket Fuel.
And that's what it is.
Like, when Josh Dorkin and I got together bigger pockets, it was Rocket Fuel.
Like when, because I, at that time, Josh was a visionary, I was Integrator.
And when you bring those two parts together, it's Rocket Fuel.
And when you bring us together, I have shifted roles now to more visionary.
But yeah, very interesting.
That's absolutely.
No, no.
I think that's a great point.
That that's what, like, because when people are picking a partner, like you said,
they usually pick somebody who's just like them.
Or they're doing it for emotional reasons.
I'm scared.
I don't want to do this on my own.
You're going to give away 50% to someone you don't know why because it's easier to just
not.
Nobody likes to take the jump alone.
My buddy Daniel D'Rille real says that all the time.
All that, no, we should not to lead the conversation that you're leading,
but we should talk about Brian Murray.
Yeah, we need to.
That's a good segue from that point.
Yeah.
Like, well, when we do that?
Tell me, like, what role is Brian playing and how is that helping your business?
I mean, officially, he's an asset manager.
Yeah.
But really he's like rocket fuel squared.
Yeah.
And that's,
yeah,
that's an interesting story because there was some hesitation on your part and my part
to bring in another partner, right?
I mean, equity's valuable.
So you don't want to give away any more than you absolutely have to.
But there does come a point and this has proven itself clearly.
Yeah.
That the sacrifice and equity to bring Brian Murray on as a partner is paying off, you know,
tenfold already in overall deal experience.
It's like the skills that he has and his strengths are ones that still Brandon and I are lacking.
So he's that third piece of the puzzle that, you know, he brings just a wealth of experience
in this sort of syndication and these sort of deals at this, that this magnitude that neither
you or I have.
We understand, you know, how it works.
But he brings a certain level of credibility, expertise, and experience that I know I've
certainly leaned on a ton.
You know, you've had many conversations with him.
Many ideas back and forth.
And he's just been solid.
And there's no way that we would be where we are right now today.
Yeah, no chance.
The volume of parks without his input and influence, no chance.
And this is that whole idea of like you are the average of the people you associate with.
Like when we got around Brian, like Brian does big deals.
He owns tens of millions of dollars in real estate.
Like I don't know.
Like he wrote the book on crushing, crushing in commercial real estate,
one of the biggest real estate books out there.
He was on episode, by the way, those people looking,
episode number 126 of the Bigger Pockets podcast and episode 212.
But we met him out here.
like I invited him out because I just knew him, he was a cool guy.
We invited him out for this mastermind thing that we did last year.
A lot of you guys heard about it.
It was like the most incredible, like four days we've ever done.
It was unbelievable.
But anyway, we invited like 20 people out here, had like a few days of just unbelievable
mastermining and like fun stuff.
And Brian was part of that.
And David decided to go to Atlanta instead of coming to my, you know, he wanted to be on CNN instead.
Whatever.
So Brian comes out here.
And like, here's a great example.
I'll tell a quick story.
And I might have mentioned this.
in the other episode that I did with the vivid vision,
but if not, I'll say it again here.
This idea of, or Brian asked a simple question during that time.
So are you going to put a waterfall into your,
into your syndication?
And I didn't know what a waterfall.
I mean, I knew what it was, but I didn't, it basically.
Never given any thought.
I never give any thought because I was like, this is hard.
This is complicated.
I'm not going to do it.
And in a five minute conversation with Brian,
he's like, well, you know, like,
and he kind of explained like a waterfall is basically a way of,
of when you split a deal with like limited parts.
when you're raising money from limited partners,
that it changes.
The equity split changes, the better the investment does.
So the better the deal goes,
the more money that the general partners make.
And so that's why, you know,
in a five-minute conversation with Brian,
we decided to add a waterfall in.
It actually incentivizes us to do a better deal into the thing.
But I would never have done that had Brian not pushed me on that.
And those happened over and over and over and over.
I'm pretty sure that conversation happened on surfboards soon.
I think so.
Yeah.
We probably were on a surfboard.
when we talked about this.
But that whole idea is just like further evidence why like you need to get around people.
Obviously,
that are just like way higher level, even if it means like going to work for them.
You know, like, I mean, I won't, Brian will probably hear this.
But like if Brian like asked me to like work for them, like I probably would have been like,
I'm not sure I would have done it necessarily.
But like that would have been a smart move.
So like if you're listening to this podcast and you're brand new to real estate, like go
find somebody to work with or work for intern for get their dry cleaning for.
It doesn't matter.
Get around people who are going to push you.
it's like you can you can walk your way to the next level and try to get to the next level by
yourself or you can just get around somebody who's already there and they just they just pull you
to that level like they'll pull you up there just naturally yeah yeah the other big part of that too
is just staying engaged like yeah you know for me to get from where I was to sitting here now in
Maui I didn't do anything magnificent like there was no like it wasn't smart it wasn't
it wasn't anything anybody else couldn't do but I stayed engaged so like I got on that plane
and I flew to New York randomly to go hang out at a real estate meetup as you were there.
I sent you that email or I went to the meet up back in Bangor to meet the guy who had the mobile home park that was for sale.
I sent you that email with that park in it.
So all those little pieces, like none of those are difficult or something that anybody else can do, but just staying engaged.
So like keep your name out there.
Don't be annoying and like send fan boy emails all the time.
But like try to add value to people's lives and keep yourself in front of as many people that you think that could positively influence.
your life as possible. And anybody can do that. I mean, anybody, get off your couch, go to a meetup.
Like, stay engaged on the forums. Like, just, just stay engaged.
Get off the couch and go to a meetup. Yeah. Ryan Murdoch. Yeah, that's it. That's a quote. That's a
quote. And you gave credit to Ryan. You are coming along so well, Brandon. Those,
those meetings that you've been going to have really helped. Thank you. I'm progressing through
life here. I'm going to get a quote. I'll get a picture on my wall just as, you know, that quote.
And then, you know, Ryan Murdoch, Brandon Turner. It'll be great.
All right. Well, I've got great advice. And I think this is a good time to move along to the deal deep dive.
What's going on, everyone? It's Brandon. I want to take a quick break from this podcast to invite you to this week's webinar, how a newbie, meaning a new real estate investor, can start building wealth through real estate.
Because look, when you're beginning to invest in real estate, it can feel overwhelming, right? Where do you go? What should you do? What should you buy? I don't want to make any mistakes, right? That's why this is a must attend event.
Look, if you have fewer than five properties, do not miss this.
You're going to learn the different strategies and niches you can take,
some of the common mistakes that investors make,
some of the best and worst strategies for new investors,
and a whole lot more.
We're even going to be looking for a real-life deal on the market together.
We're going to run the numbers and find out how much we should pay for it
and how much we'll make if we buy it.
It's going to be a ton of fun, super helpful.
Again, if you have less than five properties, you better be there.
BiggerPockets.com slash newbie webinar.
Again, biggerpockets.com slash newbie, N-E-W-B-I-E,
webinar. I'll see you there.
All right. So it is
time for that part of the show where we will dive deep
into one specific deal with our guest
slash guests. So, Ryan,
do you have what in mind? Yeah, I think we'll keep going
with that mobile home park. All right. We'll do that one
the one of me? The handle one. Yeah, so we've already
talked about kind of how we found it, but I guess we can go over some of
the numbers. Sure. Do you want
to do this alone? David, you want me to ask
the normal questions that I ask.
I want you to go in it with me. All right. We'll do it together.
We're going to deal deep dive together.
Hey Ryan, what kind of property is this?
This is a mobile home park.
And how many units were when we bought it?
It was, it's on for 50 lots, but I think there were 46 functional lots.
A lot of those were vacant or contained homes that needed to be destroyed, but 46 functional lots.
Yeah.
And I think there was like 42 that were like good homes.
And then there were what 12 vacancies?
You remember that?
Yeah, there were 12 vacant ones.
I think there was like 30-ish.
Yes.
That were actually functioning.
Yeah, out of like 50 zone, there were 30 that were like actually rented or sold at
on. Okay. And you found this at a meetup you were at, right? Ryan, you heard someone talking about it.
Yep. Yep. So that was a local meetup that an investor had put on. And this investor, this is another good
tidbit for somebody is like this investor had, he didn't even own any property. So he wasn't really
technically an investor. He was just a, he was a guy who wanted to get into investing, didn't know what to do.
There wasn't a local meetup in our town. So he hosted one in his living room. Like that's fine.
Yeah. And like all of us, other investors in town had kind of been like kicking around the idea of doing a meetup and,
you know, should we do it? How should we do it? Like analysis.
paralysis on the meetup.
Like, where is it, who do we have speak?
How do we put this together where this guy just comes out of the blue and just has a
meetup in his living room?
And it was a great meetup and it's still going on.
That was, what, a year and a half, almost two years ago.
And it's still a monthly meetup that's grown.
He doesn't have in his living room anymore.
He doesn't have a public place.
He has a speaker come every time.
But it was great.
So I found the mobile home park there.
And I also found a seven unit that I ended up closing on a few months afterwards.
So just in that one meetup and that guy's living room, I got two great deals out of it.
That's cool.
All right.
How much was the property?
I think it was what, 1.1 million, I think it was.
Thereabouts.
I think he was asking originally more than that, right?
1.2.
Yeah, 1.2.
We settled on one point, just under 1.1.
And then during due diligence, when that day you and I walked through, we found a lot of,
a lot more homes that were vacant and in much worse repair than we had anticipated.
So we were able to go back and negotiate a seller credit at closing to deal with some of those
vacant homes. Yeah, and it was like a hundred and something, thousand thousand.
It was 140 or 160,000 dollar credit in the closing to deal with, I think we're 12
mobile homes that either need to be destroyed or completely renovated. They're bad. Yeah.
Yeah. Cool. Okay. And then how did you negotiate that?
Back and forth and Brandon really kind of took the lead on coming up with the different negotiations.
You used your, your patented three option plan. The three option offer. Yeah. And I don't remember
what the different things were, but they were presented three options to the seller,
which I know was like right out of your playbook.
It's all Grande Ventilla.
Yeah,
no,
but not to make somebody feel like they either need to take it or leave it.
Here's three options that work for us,
which one of those three works for you.
It gets people thinking which one versus yes or no.
Yeah,
because you don't always know,
like somebody's complete situation where like one of those may be way more
advantageous to them than another one and they're all good for us, right?
I mean,
we offered all and all three of them.
We made all three offers.
So he picked one and we went with it.
And it turned out being he was going to sell or finance 80% of the purchase for
what,
five years.
Yep.
They're pretty attractive fixed interest rate.
So we didn't have to involve a bank, which is great, especially in the mobile home
park space, especially in a value ad, mobile home park with a lot of park on homes.
Those are typically tough to finance through a bank.
So we were able to avoid that all together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shout out to Ed.
Yeah.
Young guy.
Young Ed.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Apparently once I said old guy, we bought a mobile home park from an older guy.
I think it said older guy.
Yeah.
What I meant was older than me.
But anyway, he gives me a hard time every time I thought to know.
Young Buck.
Young Buck.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Oh,
it's my question.
How did you fund it?
How did we fund this, Ryan?
I guess we kind of went over that already.
Seller financing on 80% of it.
And then the down payment and the reserves and the renovation costs were raised among a little bit from me, but mostly from you and a bigger part.
Mindy and Carl, yeah, who were using what self-directed IRA or something along those lines.
Yeah, their retirement account did it.
Yeah.
Cool.
All right.
What did you guys end up doing with this part?
So we renovated, I think, eight of the homes.
We trashed three or four of them.
Like they were just beyond repair.
So we had to smash them up.
And then...
Yeah.
Ryan literally went over there and hulmash.
Yeah, smashed them with heavy equipment,
stuffed them into a dumpster and got them out of there.
So that was kind of my job while I was there in Maine on site for the first year or so.
But when I moved to Maui, that posed a bit of a problem that I was no longer the, like,
the asset manager for that park.
So we ended up hiring another guy to take that role.
as a guy I met on Bigger Pockets.
His name is Tristan Thomas,
a super good guy who specializes primarily in mobile homes.
So he's got,
I think he has a mobile home park of his own,
but he does a lot of just fixing and flipping mobile homes.
So he was like the perfect guy who was already plugged into like that area's network
of wheeling and dealing mobile home.
So we tapped him and his expertise to fill out the remaining vacant lots in that park.
And it was just two weeks ago that he finally purchased the last mobile home that we needed
it's to fill the last vacant lot in in that park,
which I thought was incredible,
especially with the short seasons in Maine.
Like you only have the summertime to actually move these things.
You're not doing it in the winter.
I think there were eight to fill this year.
And I was thinking to myself,
there's no way that he's going to be able to pull that off.
And once in a summer.
This is going to be two years at least.
And he did it.
He got all the last eight vacant lots filled.
And we're at capacity now.
So, yeah, it was a huge accomplishment.
All right.
Outcome.
So let's talk about like,
we, I mean, NOI went from what, 12K,
to yeah i remember i don't have the exact numbers in front of me but the gross income when we bought
the park i think was right around 10 or 12 grand a month and now it's at about 25 000 a month so i don't know
what that boils down to for n oi but substantially better than it was when we took all yeah with not
many more like the cool thing about mobile home parks i think one of the things that attracted me and
you to them is that when you infill these these properties you can add all this income but there's
no real additional expense yeah very minimal additional expense to that the management costs a little
bit. But like the water bill, they're paying their own water at this place. They're paying their
own garbage, right? Or we pay garbage? We pay garbage. Okay, but they're paying water.
It's negligible. Yeah, but they're paying their own utilities aside from garbage. So the water
submetered, they're paying their own electric. They're paying their own heating fuel. Yeah, all of that.
They're taking care of their own lawns and shoveling their own driveways. So we don't have to deal
with any of that. Yeah. There's a term when I was out there, like, raising money for the fund
that we just closed on. Like, we call it a cash growth fund because like what mobile home parks can
do is it can provide really good cash flow because of the,
like one, they're just like they provide good cash flow just because they're mobile home parks.
But they also have the ability to grow even in spite of a recession.
If we hit a recession, like we can still add more units in and the people will still want to live in mobile home parks.
So it's the lowest, the cheapest housing you have in America pretty much other than homeless.
And so people still want to live there.
So it's cash flow now, growth later, but it's not growth dependent upon the market.
So like the cash growth is the new term.
So it's very recession.
It's very recession.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
All right.
last question what lessons did you guys learn from this deal i don't know how many times i have to go through
this to learn this lesson but always always budget more than you think you're going to need for
improvements so like repairs overhauls renovation it always costs more than you think it's going to
and we've certainly gotten better with that but every time i mean i don't care what size of project is
there's always a surprise so you've got to make sure you you adequately account for that whether
it's going through your numbers and just tacking on an extra 20% or whatever it's going to be but you want to
you want to have an extra slush fund above and beyond what you think you're going to need because you will need it.
Yep.
Luckily, we had that.
We were very well funded and we're able to, you know, handle those surprises without any serious little effect.
But if we weren't well funded, we would have had a problem.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that was the deal, deep dive.
Now let's head over to the fire round.
It's time for the fire round.
This is a part of the show where we firemen,
questions from the Bigger Pockets forums at you freely.
Number one.
This scares me.
Dan, whenever someone asks you, Dan from Charlotte, North Carolina, when someone asks you,
what are you doing real estate?
What's your elevator pitch?
I don't have one.
And that's something I've been trying to work on.
Like, I can't explain what I do because it's so many different things.
And I've said to myself so many times, like, I need to come up with a 10 second thing.
And I usually just stare blankly and say, I'm in real estate, you know?
Like, no, it depends on the day.
I mean, right now it's like we're investing in mobile home parks all across the
country and doing value ad.
But yeah, I don't know.
I actually like saying the, not that you ask me, but I'll answer the question.
I like saying, I actually buy trailer parks.
And I like to say the word trailer park because it's not a mobile home part.
When I'm using with investors, whatever I say mobile home parks.
Depends on the audience.
But a random person.
I say actually by trailer parks.
It's a great conversation.
Everyone goes, wait, what?
Yeah.
You've seen trailer park boys.
That's exactly what we do.
Yes.
So no, it depends on the other.
That explains the beard.
Yes, exactly.
But it's a great conversation.
And because like every conversation like for me anyway leads to how can we like potentially, you know,
can this person, we work with them someday.
They work with us someday.
Can we help them?
Can they help us?
Like everything's like it.
So like when I think we buy trailer parks, like it gives the opportunity for what does that mean?
Well, here's why we do it.
And then I can, you know, maybe there's a way they can help me.
Maybe they want to invest in my fun.
Maybe I want to, you know, hire them someday down the road to do something.
Who knows?
Yeah.
And it's surprising when you tell people that like the initial chuckle and like trailer parks.
But then within a very short period of time, they're usually quite.
fascinated how it works and what you're doing.
All you have to explain is, we just own land.
Yeah.
And people who own their own houses live on our land and pay us money and they do their
own repairs and maintenance.
You see their wheels turning and I'm like three or four more questions.
Yeah, it's funny.
It's always a fun conversation.
Yeah.
Which is not really quite a easy.
It's just we own land, obviously.
But there's a little bit of work involved there.
All right.
All right.
Question number two.
This is from Herm in Northern California.
Do you prefer Home Depot or Lowe's?
Any tips on getting supplies at either of them?
Lowe's hands down.
I just like blue more than orange.
As simple as that.
No, I don't know.
I've just always been a Lowe's guy.
It's always like wherever I had been working,
Lowe's just was closer than Home Depot.
So I always just went there and just got accustomed to it.
I'm a creature of habit.
If I have any big ticket items, I will shop, usually both stores.
But I've always just had a commercial account with Lowe's and better discounts
and just a better relationship with those people.
But either or, I mean, I wouldn't fault anybody one way or the other.
Yeah.
I have always been a Home Depot person because we didn't have a Lowe's in Grace Harbor.
Now that we have a Lowe's here, Lowe's is a newer property and easier to get in and out of.
So I go to Lowe's more often.
It's not even like sometimes I find better stuff at one versus the other because they do have different stuff.
But Lowe's is just a lot easier to get in their parking lot than the Home Depot is.
So I go to Lose.
It's actually a good lesson for anybody in retail.
Through the Lumberyard.
Yeah, and you can drive inside the lumber yard and stay out of the, well, that's not.
It rains up there a little bit.
But yeah.
Yeah, nobody's asking me, but I'll say I hate both of them.
I really.
Brandon and I joke about this when I visit him in Hawaii.
He always wants to go walk through Home Depot.
And I hate that place.
I hate the smell of fertilizer.
I hate that there's nowhere to sit down.
I hate the wide open aisles full of just nothing that I'm interested in at all.
I hate that you can ever find someone when you need something.
I mean,
there's a lot of places about those stores I don't like.
But Brandon is like a kid in a candy store.
I love that place.
I will just walk through when I'm bored and just walk through it.
You do.
And you're a weirdo, man.
I don't get that.
Never know when you might stumble on a deal, David.
You never know.
Those clearance things at the end cap.
Yeah, we just buy all seven of these sinks because you never know we're going to use them.
Yeah.
All right.
Jessica Todd asked,
Hey,
all in my four place I read a tenant with two large flags draped over a second floor balcony,
both very clearly expressing his viewpoint on certain topics.
I've received two complaints regarding one of the flags.
They feel the large size makes it seem his viewpoints represent the entire building.
While they don't bother me,
I want all my tenants to feel comfortable in their home.
I don't have anything expressly written in my lease against that.
And I worry if I ask him to remove one or both,
it'll be a violation of the tenant's freedom of speech.
Yeah. Any recommendations?
Yeah, it's time to update your lease. I always had in my leases no signage or political flags of any kind.
I think we'd allow like an American flag, but no other signage because it just opens a can of worms.
It has nothing to do with like, do I believe your political stance over somebody else's?
It always causes problems. So it's just a good blanket statement. No signage of any sort in your apartment at all.
Yeah, we have like no sheets in the windows, no like signs outside your deal.
Yep. So yeah, easy way to do it. So ride out the rest of your lease. If you're in a lease with somebody,
and then your next lease when you update it,
make sure that's in there.
Nice.
Yeah,
by seeing that,
we should probably get your flag down from,
my Bernie sign.
He's got a 40-foot picture of Bernie Sanders hanging out on the back,
but.
Yeah,
I have a Trump sign and a Bernie sign.
Just keep everybody gets.
Keep them on their toes, right?
Yeah.
All right.
Last question from Tim Swedberg.
I'm in a bit of a ret.
So my question is this.
What motivates you to stick with real estate investing?
How do you push through the credit part?
Great question.
Yeah, because there's no shortage of cruddy parts.
I just don't know what else I would do that would afford me this kind of lifestyle.
I'm not college educated.
I'm not super intelligent.
I'm not very creative.
Ryan's very.
So, yeah, but I don't know what I would, I don't know what I would do that would allow me to have the lifestyle and the freedom that I have now.
So that, like, keeps me motivated and can be motivated for, you know, the 10 years of hell in building my business and down in the trenches of just.
you know, bottom of the barrel property management, just misery, was that, okay, this is still
my best opportunity to get to the life I want. And it's finally now paying off. So just set the bar
extremely low and then the cruddy parts don't seem so cruddy. Welcome to my life days.
That's probably good dating advice as well if you think about it. My friend always worked there at 2 a.m.
My friend, I would just say, if you can't reach your goal, just lower your standards. That was the
That's exactly right. Lower your standard and raise your average.
I had a buddy that used to say that all the time.
Yeah. Drink another beer. You'll be good.
Brendan, any advice from you that isn't horrible like what we're saying right now?
I don't know. I mean, I think it's just you have to hear the stories of people who have got through the muck.
And I think that helps a lot. So I think people, like, I think it's seeing people, having people see us.
I mean, like sometimes I feel like I'm showing off. Like, hey, I'm in Maui here and I got this cool like, you know, we surf and we, you know, bodyboard and all that stuff.
But like, I hope people look at that not as Brennan and Ryan are showing off their cool stuff.
like this is what's possible if you can get through the muck.
Motivational.
Yeah, if you can get through it, this is what's possible.
It's not that we don't work.
It's just that we also like haven't been able to do the lifestyle that we want now
because of the real estate.
So it's worth it.
Stick through with people.
Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan,
anything you want to add to that, David?
That's a good question.
I would say that's why I'm a systems guy because every time something goes wrong,
I go in and I change a system so that either it won't go wrong the next time
or we prepare for that to happen.
So we try to cut it off before it comes.
And that's why I'm so encouraged because every time you get that,
this sucks.
You then go back and say,
where could I have prepared for this to prevent it from happening,
tweak your system, you don't have to worry about it anymore.
And then the next time you go through it,
you're not as worried about it.
That's why David's so smart.
That's why he's hosting this thing today.
Exactly.
He gets it.
Yeah, but it doesn't matter how smart you're if you don't have that rocket fuel.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, somebody come be the rocket fuel to David.
All right, moving on to the next segment of the show.
It's time for our.
Famous for the part of the show where we ask every guest,
every week the same four questions.
We asked you this last time.
We're going to fire imagine you again.
Before we do,
Let's hear from Jay Scott and what's going on this week on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast.
Hey there, Brandon and podcast listeners.
This is Jay Scott, your host of the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast.
This week on the business podcast, we've got entrepreneur Andy Seth.
We have a great conversation talking about everything from using your business to improve the social good to 90s hip-hop and everything in between.
We also talk about meditation, mindfulness, and how we can overcome our ego to improve.
improve our entrepreneurial success.
So tune in this week on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast,
and now back to your famous four.
All right.
Listen to the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast.
Make sure you can you guys,
you can all subscribe their show.
All right.
Favorite real estate related book, Ryan.
Favorite book?
I'm going to exclude present company
because you guys books are great.
But what I just read was,
actually, I'll give another shout out to Brian Murray.
I just read his book,
crushing it in apartments and commercial real estate.
That's what they're being.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I truly is a fantastic book if you're interested in commercial real estate because it's a, it's just a, I don't know, I tend to gravitate more towards no nonsense, like no fluff.
Like I want.
Yeah.
If somebody just write an instruction manual for me to do stuff, that's what I want.
But so Brian's book is similar to that, but he does have stories in there that are not just like tangent stories, but they're great examples of the point that he's trying to make.
So I listen to that.
It was funny because I listen to that on my trek across northern Minnesota where it's like just five hours of straight.
and it was like on no sleep.
So listening to that book,
it was enough to keep me awake and keep me engaged.
But it was,
I found it funny because the only time I had to hit pause on that
was when I was taking calls from Brian Murray.
So it was pretty funny to like,
oh wait,
you got to stop Brian Murray to talk to Brian Murray.
So David,
I haven't read your book yet,
but if you would agree to check in with me
after like every three chapters of some guys
just call it personal input,
I would love to.
I think if you just hang out.
I don't know if you'll hear.
Another road trip.
But yeah,
no, Brian's book is fantastic.
I recommend it to everybody.
Yeah, that's cool.
Can you explain real quick why you were driving through Minnesota on a, like, that whole story is kind of cool.
Yeah, it was a whirlwind.
So that was after I left BPCon.
That was kind of a last minute deviation in my flight home, which was originally going to be with you.
But we decided to ship me up north to go on a couple of scouting trips for two mobile home parks that we were going to, they were in the midst of making an offer on.
And for a couple of reasons, we decided it was good for somebody on the team to go there.
Number one, so that we can lay eyes on it and make sure, because you never really know.
Like, you can read the OM and you can do Google Street View and you do all that stuff.
But until you actually set foot and walk the park, you don't know for sure, like the real feel of it and if you're going to like it.
So it was important for us.
And it's also important, I think, for the seller to see that somebody from our team had actually set foot on the property.
I mean, I remember back in doing property management, I wouldn't even rent an apartment to a prospective tenant site unseen because you never know.
For good or bad, like they have certain expectations and that they, they,
they see from the pictures that they just they think about in their mind.
But when they show up, it's not what they want.
Like, that doesn't help anybody because then they're trying to get out of it.
You've already, you know, committed to them and turn other people away.
So it's the same thing we're looking at properties.
And on a bigger scale, these mobile home parks we're looking at even more critical that
we have a good handle on what we're offering on.
And the seller knows that we've got a good handle on what we're offering on.
I think it makes the offer more competitive when we submit it.
Yeah, just going that extra mile when you're going to make an offer for somebody.
Like how, like whether it's a huge commercial deal, you're trying to buy your first duplex.
Like, how can you add something that makes,
the seller go, oh, that person's legit or that person I like them or they're, they're serious about
this. I'm not going to waste my time with someone else. Yeah, if I had three offers in front of me
as a seller and, you know, two of those people hadn't been to the property. One of them had and the
offers were even close or maybe he was even a little less than the other two. I would go with the guy
that's actually, yep, same here. Put his hands on it. See it. Yeah. Absolutely. Beautiful.
Okay. That was a lot for your favorite real estate book. We got a ton of value out of that question.
Teach you never asked that question again. How about your favorite business book?
This book, I think I mentioned this one last time, but four-hour work week. And I know it's a little cliche, but nothing changed my life more than reading that book at the time that I read it. Just it just changed my entire perspective when you don't need to be physically attached to your business at all time. If you are, then work towards, if this is one of your goals and it was for me to like travel and see the world, work in your business so that you can get to the point where you've got systems in place where you don't need to physically be there all the time where you can manage that thing from anywhere in the world. So that's a, that's a perfect kind of.
model to what we're doing here where the business that Brandon and I are in now,
we can be based on it anywhere, really, right?
So why not Maui?
Yeah, for our work week all the way.
All right.
How about, you know, I know what the hobby I want you to talk about is,
and it's you rescuing everybody's lives in the Hawaiian Ocean.
But is there any hobbies other than that?
And then please do touch on your Baywatch ways.
Yeah, I mean, I don't like to throw the term hero.
or loosely or anything, but I mean, you brought it up.
So, I mean, if that's, if that's what you're alluding to, then I guess I have no choice
but to take that.
No.
No, I like to, I like to spend a lot of time to beach.
Brandon likes to surf.
I take the easy way out and do bodyboarding.
It requires, like, way less paddling and actual physical work.
So I do that.
But no, there's been a couple incidents in the past year or so where there were some people
in distress, the stress swimmers, mostly tourists who don't understand the local water conditions
and how dangerous it can be.
So I do freelance as a lifeguard
with lifeguards and have dragged people
from the brink of death up onto the beach.
Yeah.
I mean, the rip currents are right.
They're pretty crazy.
They're pretty crazy.
They're nasty.
It's scary.
Yeah.
And so people just get sucked out and Ryan's out there with his boogie board out there.
And it's for the point now on this one particular beach.
I can see it happening because it's the same spot on that same beach when the
conditions are right and you see swimmers and they just get sucked out there.
And I just sit and wait at this point.
I know that like they're going to be in trouble.
And sure enough, like a head will go underwater or they,
they'll start waving their arms and then I know that we've got to go get them.
So I'm not the only one.
It's like a pretty common thing there where surfers and bodyboards have to rescue people.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Isn't it funny how it's like a small little innocuous sign that says, hey, be careful.
There could be a rip curl.
And then you're watching people almost dying in front of you.
Yeah.
People don't take it seriously.
And I think that's an issue like all over the island everywhere now because it's
signs for everything.
Like danger, look out.
Danger lookout.
So at this point you don't know what's what to believe or not.
Like because they've got to gear everything to like the most frail and weak person in the world.
So how do you really know what's,
dangerous and what is. And I know I was surprised, only having been here a year now, like the power
of the water. There were a couple times where I got caught off guard. And I could have easily been
one of those people that got swept away. And maybe someday I will be because of, you know, some
stupid thing that I did. So I can only hope that, you know, if I'm in trouble, somebody's there to
drag me up on the beach. Well, I promise you, I've gone out with Brandon snorkeling before.
And I was using a mask that they call the Widowmaker, which I was informed kills people all the time.
And it was all only one we had. And so I'm like, okay, Brandon, I'm going to use it anyway. Just stay
really close to me and if you see me start floating
without moving, like come get me out
of this carbon monoxide hell that I've fallen
into. And Brandon stayed at least
50 feet away from me at all times.
Never looked back even once the entire
time. So don't rely on him
to save your life. Like that's the advice I'm going to
give you that maybe will save your life.
I know. You want to invite me next time too much.
I get you back. Ryan was standing on the shore watching
you. He was good. I'm all over the place. I'm everywhere.
He was there. Yeah. The whittle maker
for those who don't know what you're talking about the, it's those
full like mask,
snorkels.
You had to have like the one monocle that goes above top.
I don't you call that one mona oracle.
Yeah.
Monoicle.
Anyway,
it's like they sell my Costco and they like so that can't be that bad.
They're so great.
I risk my life.
It was worth it.
I mean,
they work so good.
Yeah,
it's really nice.
And you can see like a whole lot more and like your whole faces in it.
It's so much more fun when you're lightheaded and dizzy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's great.
What they say is that like people die snorkeling with them because I don't know.
They think it's carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.
builds up in there.
Builds up and people pass out or they get close and then you can't pull the mask off.
It's all anecdotal.
I don't know if there's anything.
Yeah, I don't know if it's actually a science.
Yeah, well, we know Brandon doesn't believe it because he was way out there, not anywhere close to me.
Yeah, you'll be fine.
The odds of dying in the car on the way out there were far greater than you dying with your little death mask.
That's a good point.
I was already a survivor.
You believe it.
I believe in you.
That's why you did it.
All right.
Tough enough.
There you go.
Number four.
Ryan, what do you think separates successful individuals, successful real estate
investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?
Persistence, for sure.
If you're persistent enough in anything, I think you can accomplish whatever it is that
you want.
You can be very smart and very savvy, but if you're extremely lazy and just have no
ambition or motivation to do anything, you're not going to do anything.
You can be an idiot with all the persistence in the world.
And like one of those little battery operated cars, it just keeps banging off the wall,
like you'll eventually turn around and hit your target.
So I think above all, persistence is where it's at.
Now, hopefully you don't like self-destruct while trying all the wrong things first.
So you still want to try to educate yourself and make intelligent decisions.
But if you just keep at it and you'll get there.
Cool.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that was good.
Well, we're going to get out of here.
David, you want to ask the last question and then we'll move on to our outro?
Yes, Ryan.
Tell me, where can people find out more about you?
Yeah, we didn't mention it, but I do work for BiggerPockets.
So you can hit me up there, Ryan at BiggerPockets.com, shoot me an email.
And I'm trying to build my Instagram.
I'm going to overtake Brandon at some point.
I think I'm only half a million followers behind him,
but Ryan.
Dot Murdoch 21 on Instagram.
You find me there.
Ryan.
Ryan dot Murdoch.
Ryan.
Ryan.
201.
Cool.
All right.
Well,
before we get out of here,
we do have,
because obviously we're in the same place now
so we don't have to like kick you out
and talk bad about you behind your back.
Like we normally do.
No,
you just do it right in front of me.
No,
but before we get out here,
first of all,
Ryan,
thank you very much.
You've been a rock star.
Thank you.
Let me take a time out because I want to thank you,
Brandon and your wife, Heather, you guys have been just extraordinarily generous to me and my
wife and facilitating this entire move and putting yourself out and your trust of me. So I do want
to make that on the record. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Classy move mercenary. All right. Before we get out here, I do want to read a pro shoutout.
Every week now, we're going to be talking about a pro member who's doing awesome stuff.
So today's pro shoutout is Jeremy Ellicox from Newport News, Virginia. He used a VA loan to buy
a live and flip right near his job. Purchase,
was like 189,000.
He's saving a bunch of cash
because he was paying
$1,500 a month in rent.
Like this is really like straight out
of like Scott Trench's book
like set for life,
lowering expenses,
getting as much income as you can,
building equity to property.
So anyway,
shout out to Jeremy.
And hey, remember,
if you want a chance
for a shoutout on the Bigger Pockets,
podcast emails at podcast at biggerpockets.com.
That's podcast at biggerpockets.com.
And put the words pro deal,
P-R-O-D-A-L in the subject line.
Again, podcast at biggerpockets.com.
subject line pro deal and share the details with us that's all we got so want to take us out david green
absolutely he is beardy brandon we have ryan dot murdock and i am david green 24 on instagram let us
know what you thought of this episode right now mardock 21 21 oh right now at ron 26thewan 21 thank
you kind of similar to my 24 we have a good little thing going on there beauty brand 20
anyways this is david green for ryan the mercenary murdock and brandon doesn't care of his
best friend dies turner signing off
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