BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 394: Making a 25 Deal/Year Business (and Marriage) Work... Together! with Elliot and Chrissy Smith

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Ever considered partnering up with your spouse or another family member? Today's guests Elliot and Chrissy Smith did just that when they left stable careers to flip, wholesale, and buy rental properties together in Washington state. Running the business together wasn't easy on their marriage. In fact, they almost got divorced. Fast forward to today... they're happy, doing 25 deals/year, and building long-term wealth by steadily buying rental properties. So, what adjustments did they make? In this episode Elliot and Chrissy share what they've learned about defining roles, managing cashflow, and finding work-life balance as young parents who happen to be business partners. It's a rare inside look at the ups and downs – and risks and rewards – of running a true family business. As die-hard fans right remember from his appearance on Show #255, Elliot is a skilled negotiator... and today he shares a surprisingly simple negotiating tip for those nerve-wracking kitchen table conversations with homeowners. Look: you gotta love a couple who hires a babysitter just so they can drive around looking for distressed properties (a move which led to today's Deal Deep Dive). So check out this episode, and share it with your spouse, friend, or family member who you think might enjoy it! In This Episode We Cover: How Elliot and Chrissy divided their business into "lanes" Their first taste of success with direct mail Leaving full-time jobs to pursue their dreams in real estate Dangers to be aware of when teaming up with your spouse Showing a seller the math behind your offer Plowing the cash from their flips into buy-and-hold rentals Using the same exact same materials on every flip Incentivizing a contractor by offering a profit share Why they've slowed down their marketing in recent months Elliot's cold call center for real estate investors And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Podcast 255: Six-Figure Real Estate Investing in Just 20 Hours a Week with Elliot Smith Jason Drees BiggerPockets Webinars Tarl Yarber Audible BiggerPockets Podcast 125: The Key to Business Success with Bestselling Author of The E-Myth Michael Gerber Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show394 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 394. I don't tell her what decision to make. She gets to make those on her own, and when she makes a decision, that's the decision. There are certain things we come together, and when I make decisions, she doesn't question me. So we have those lanes, and it really takes a lot of the friction out of the partnership because we just trust each other to know that they're making the right decision and the best interest of our family. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors,

large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, of course, here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. David, welcome to the show again, man. How you been? I've been fantastic, Probably not Maui Fantastic, but Northern California Fantastic is pretty close. Northern California Fantastic is pretty good. What do you've been up to?

I mean, I know you're writing a book, a couple books, right? Yeah, writing a series for bigger pockets on how to be a top producing agent. I just put, I think I have now 29 houses in contract over the after the weekend. So it's going really, really good. If someone wants to buy or sell a house, this is a strong market right now in California. And other than that, just like, you know, constantly. educating people talking about real estate, hanging out with you. And today's show is, I think, a very easy listen as we talked to a couple who's had to learn how to navigate the waters of

real estate investing and building a business and having completely different skill sets while making it all work. And I was just entertained the entire time. Yeah, I feel like this one of those shows that just like a fine wine, like the longer it went, the better it got and the deeper it got. Like we know the whole thing was good, but like, I think towards the end of the show, we talk about a couple things I want to just point out right now to listen to. into where Elliott talks about like how he actually does the math at the table

with the sellers. I thought that was just a phenomenal tip for being able to like negotiate. If you're somebody who's nervous about negotiation or making lowball offers, you're going to love that. How he actually cuts in his contractors on the profits from a recent flip. And then probably my favorite thing. Well, I know there's a lot of favorites in here. But one of my favorite things about today's episode was when he

goes in, Elliot, like, just dives into like, if you're a new investor looking for a deal, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. It gives you a very simple plan to follow that's pretty much guaranteed to get you a deal. And like he's very, very practical with it. So it's really good. We talk a lot about Chris. He talks a lot about like kind of the organization of how she gets the business, like manages the cash flow, manages the budget, making sure they have the money to do it. And just between the two of them,

just like how to work together as a relationship, as a married couple, whether or not you are married or you are either going to be at some point married or have a significant other or have a business partner or have employees. So if any of those four things apply to you, this show's going to change your life. And I want to get to it right away. So let's get to today's quick tip. Today's quick tip. Did you know you can listen to the shows on different podcast apps at double the speed or one and a half speed? So what I like to do is I listen to a podcast, I'll double the speed and then take it down to like one and a half. So I'll listen for like a minute at double and then go down to a minute and a half and then a minute and a half feels normal.

It like resets my normal. So just FYI, you can cram in more podcasts in less time by doing that. And we will not totally sound like chipmunks, but we will sound like we tell. exceptionally fast. So that's today's quick tip. That was a very good quick tip. I wanted it to be a quick tip. I think we should quickly get to today's guess. We should. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking.

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This is going to be a very fun and entertaining show. All right. Let's bring in Elliot and Chrissy Smith. All right, Elliot and Chrissy. welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. It is awesome to have you guys here today. Elliot, happy to have you back. Chrissy, glad to have you here for the first time.

Thank you. Happy to be here. Elliot, you're not happy to be here? I'm happy to be here. I just, yeah, yeah. We told Elliot before the show, I said, Elliot's going to dominate the conversation because, you know, me and Elliot have a, have a bromance that rivals David and I's.

So we're going to attempt to not overwhelm Chrissy today. Does that sound good? Exactly. That's my plan. Let Chrissy talk. She's an important one in this relationship anyway. There we go. All right.

So, Elliot, you were on episode, ooh, a long time ago. What was it? Episode 255. Yeah, sounds right. Feels like we were just babies then. And that honestly is one of my, like, I know I say this a lot, but like looking back in the last 400 shows, I would put that in the top 10 of my all-time favorite shows, maybe even top five.

Yeah, because I really, really liked your story. And so people should go back and listen to it episode 255 and we learn all about your story. And basically, in a nutshell, can you give us a synopsis? or overall, what did you talk about last time? Kind of like, what was your background? And then I'm going to move to Christy and have her talk about hers. Yeah, so last time we talked about just kind of how we got started in the real estate business.

We were working, I was working a job at 70 hours a week for a bakery and sales. And then part time, on the side, we were doing real estate. But then I just, I talked a lot how we got there, our systems, our processes, but then really how, you know, I've struggled with some depression, bipolar issues, addiction. I was in rehab at 20 or 21 a week after I turned 21. and I had just started dating Chrissy right before I went to rehab. Funny story. We were dating talking for about a month and a half.

And then I call her and say, hey, I'm going to rehab. And she's like, oh, it all makes sense now, why you were like talking to me and then you would go away for like four days and say, you lost your phone. So, but we dove into that. And yeah, I thought it was good show. Yeah, it was awesome. All right. So, Chrissy, obviously people can go back and listen to that.

But Chrissy, what about you? Where did you get started from and what was your background? How did you get into this whole world of real estate? Yeah, so I started out really young. I bought my first house at 20. And I've always been a very, very frugal person. And it's probably growing up poor. I grew up far under the poverty line. And it's one of those things that I've always wanted some sort of security. And I gravitated towards real estate because it made sense to me. I understood it. And so it's one of those things that I happen to be in a very good. situation when the first-time home buyer credit became available. So I had a down payment ready. I was

scared to death. I remember not being able to sleep. Like I would go out house shopping. I hadn't even made an offer yet. And I would stay up all night long thinking about what if this happened, what if that happened? But because I was frugal, I decided that I was going to buy a house and I was going to house hack and I was looking at the numbers. And I was paying rent at the time. I'm like, I'm literally going to be able to buy a house and pay less every single month with house hacking versus sitting here in this tiny apartment. So that's kind of where I got started. And then after Ellie and I started dating, we started talking about real estate and the things

that we wanted to do. And we both had kind of the same mindset and goals. I was basically adopted when I was in high school. and part of that family invest in real estate. So when I bought my first house, you know, somebody just mentioned, hey, you know, this might be a great rental someday. And just that thought in my head, my mind kind of went crazy with the possibilities. And so we ended up moving down to Vancouver because of Elliott's work.

And at that time, we had to decide, are we going to sell this house? Are we going to rent it? I was scared to death to take on a rental. and buy a new house and like, you know, what if, what if something were to happen? What if we had a crazy tenant and it's going to cost $20,000 to clean up the property later? But having good mentors guide me and guide us in a way. We decided to take the leap, went ahead and rented out the property. And we did, you know, tenant screening and tried to do everything correctly.

And I just remember it's so funny thinking back on it. We were cash flowing like maybe $250 a month. We were so excited about it. It's like $150. It's the best. Oh my gosh. It's so funny. And then we're like, oh my gosh, how do we do this again?

Like, how do we repeat this? And from there, we just both got on board with just being really frugal. We didn't even know anything about Burr or like any of these strategies for getting properties at a discounted price yet. And so we were just going to do it like the hard way of just working hard and saving up our money and saving up down payments. and we were going to move from house to house to house and just rent out each one. And then Elliott found bigger pockets probably a year after we rented out our first house.

And he's like, hey, I've got this crazy idea. I think we should send out letters to people to try to find rentals and try to save some money on at least the realtor costs, all that stuff. And I'm like, okay, let's give it a shot. And we would come home from work and sit down and just hand right out. can address envelopes. And we, I feel like we got kind of lucky in the sense that, because we personally wanted to buy duplexes. So we chose to mail out to duplexes, which at the time, I feel like everybody was really bypassing. They were looking for just absentee and they weren't looking at

like multifamily kind of stuff. And so we actually got a really good response, right? And a lot of tire kickers and we were just kind of getting used to working with people that they're ready to list it on the market and running our numbers and having that uncomfortable conversation of this is what we could actually pay for it. So that was a big mindset shift. And then, you know, one day, I remember Elliot was answering the phone calls. He's definitely the salesman. But he was napping and we got a call from a lady that she was actually a realtor and she owned a Dube that she was just tired of having and she said, hey, I can't remember that. It's, I think it was like 170. No, 120, 120. 120. Gosh, man, I can't even imagine. Every duplex we ever wholesale. I'm like,

nah, we should have kept it. I know. And so we, we were working with another guy that was kind of helping us out in the process because they're like, okay, how do we do this? How do we get it under contract. And so we show up and walk around and take a look at the property. And it was already such a good deal. And he's like, well, you got to try to negotiate a little bit. You can't just say, oh, this is great and snag it up because she's going to be freaked out. So Elliot, he's like, hey, you know, we could do 115 for the property. And she kind of just sat there and thought about it for only a few seconds, really. And she's like, okay, I could do that. And then our partner that we were working with, he's like, oh, we could do this. We could, you know, just advanced strategies where he's like,

we could buy it, we can refi it, where he could take this cash and we could spend it to this other thing. And it freaked us out. And we're like, no, we're not ready for this kind of stuff yet. And so we ended up basically wholesaling it to him. So, you know, a small fee. And I remember afterwards, we sat down and had like a, you know, celebration, a little lunch. And we were just high on life. Just I think it was a $5,000. Yeah, easiest five grand we ever made. We're like, how do we do this again?

This is great. So that's where I want to jump in and ask you guys, because there's a lot of people listening that say, $5,000, I wouldn't say no to it, but I wouldn't necessarily get addicted to this whole thing about real estate. But that $5,000 meant so much to you guys that you went and built an entire business and then built your life around that business, and now you're here on the podcast. Do you have any insight you can share as to why that $5,000 meant so much to you,

too, that you could see the value in redirecting and pivoting, like, your whole life to around getting more of it? Yeah, I think it meant freedom because I was working, you know, Chrissy, we had moved to Vancouver, and as Brandon knows, the west side of Washington States is not fun. It rains all the time. Yeah, Chrissy was depressed. She wasn't out of fun.

You know, she wasn't liking it there. She had a job that she really loved back in Trace Cities. And so then all of a sudden, it's like five grand. It almost meant freedom. And we're like, okay. So we had spent like $250 on letters and stuff at the time. And so we're like, well, let's do this. See if we can do this again.

Maybe we just got lucky. And then the next month we made like $8,800 on a wholesale on a duplex. And we're like, this actually works. And so it meant freedom. So we just kept going. And we didn't take any of the money that we made. put it all back into the business because I was making at the time like $85,000 a year. I had Oregon taxes, but we were comfortable. We had a house. We could manage everything.

We had paid for cars and all that stuff. So we're like, let's see, let's just see if we can save up enough money so maybe we can do this full time at some point. And it just meant freedom. How about you, Chrissy? What did it mean to you? It did mean freedom. I'm a, I'm an efficiency person for sure. And I saw how much time it took to make that five grand versus, how much we had to work. You know, you have to, you had to work a full month basically to make the same amount of money. Like, okay, even if we just did this on the side and it helped us build up money, because we still have the mindset that we were going to build up for down payments. It's like, even if we can use this to build up for down payments so we can buy rentals, that's going to

accelerate our growth so much more than just working our jobs and saving up whatever we can. I agree that I look at life too, like from what's efficient a lot of the time. And then the other thing that a lot of people on the outside looking in don't think about is that the way you make money can either be fun or it can suck. And you actually should factor that into also where you spend your time. Because like Brandon and I talk about we have fun doing this podcast. We have fun putting deals together where we get to help other people. Like I'm selling a lot of houses for other clients because helping other people build their wealth feels so good that I'd rather do that than just get more houses for myself. And when if you've never experienced that,

that making money can be fun and enjoyable or at least suck less than what you're doing right now, it's hard to relate. But man, like, there's certain things that you can do for three hours that feel like 10 and other things you can do for 10 hours that feel like three. Absolutely. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I was thinking you mentioned, you know, I know a little bit of your story, like your background. You know, had a rough teenage years, you know, and obviously, like you emerged from a background

that was a little more rough. And you can, you know, spend as much as or a little as you want of that. And Elliot, I know you already mentioned, like, you struggle with a lot of stuff as well early on. And now, David, you went through some stuff when you were younger. I know I went through some stuff when I was younger. Like, it's just interesting how, like, though, I guess where my head goes is like a lot of times with kids especially, like, you know, we have kids. I know you guys have a kid. Right.

So like, we want to like remove all these obstacles and bad things away from them, which obviously it's our job as parents to do. But it's funny, like, how much of our success today is built on. and because of the crap we went through in a younger ages. Like how much of my success today is probably made, because I got made fun of for being the fat kid in middle school. Like almost everything I have today is probably because of that. You know, like it's just interesting. And I'm curious.

If you guys, if you guys, if you noticed any additional drive because of your backgrounds that led you where you are today? Yes, absolutely. I would, so just to dive into a little bit, you know, my parents, they, struggle with alcoholism. I would call them working alcoholics. So it's almost worse in the sense that they're able to kind of keep their lives together, but continue to drink.

So it's one of those things that they did, I did have a roof over my head. You know, I had it better than some people out there. But the same sense, you know, it was one of those things that any extra money basically went to liquor. And so it was one of those things growing up. I've heard you, Brandon, talk about how, like, a luxury in life is not really having to look at the thermostat, right? Not having to, yeah. And so it's one of those things that I grew up with, you know, using the one ply toilet paper and like just, you know, stuff like that. And my parents not ever having any extra money.

And you just doing like every single thing to scrimp and save. And there was never really any security. And so it was one of those things that I started working really young. because I wanted to have my own money. I wanted to be able to do my own thing. So I started picking raspberries and selling raspberries. And then I had a couple paper routes. And it's just one of those things that I do feel like growing up a little bit disadvantaged.

It did give me that motivation to get out and hustle and to make something of myself. Because I knew I couldn't sit back and, you know, my parents were going to send me off to some summer camp or something. So I think it gave me, I do believe it gave me a work ethic. And I think it gave me kind of a mindset where even now I still stop and I look at the budget. I look at how we're spending our finances. And I always try to make sure that we're moving in a good direction. And yeah, it's one of those things that having a kid now, it is so hard because I'm like, man, how am I going to make sure that he cares about these things? And that we don't spoil a crap out of him where he's just like out like, oh, he doesn't know the value of a dollar or whatever. So, yeah. Great story about Chrissy is so when we were. I'm sure she loved every time you say that. Great story about Chris.

This embodies Christy and her budgeting and how she is with money. So when we were dating, she was making way less money, but owned a house. And I was living in Vancouver. And I was running a room from a lady for like 400 bucks a month. I had a truck payment from when I was before. and I was making like 45, taking home like 4,500 bucks a month. And at the end of the month, I had nothing to show for it. It was just gone.

She's like, where's all your money going? And I'm like, I don't know. So as soon as we got engaged, I called her and said, hey, how about you put me on a budget and you take over my money? So she gave me $150 a week for food and fun. And took all my money, gave me my rent money so I could pay that. She had my truck that I owed like $12,000 or $13,000 paid off in three and a half months. And I'm like, yep.

she's the one. And so even to this day, I still have a budget. I still get a budget every month on what I can spend on dumb Elliott stuff, because I like to spend money on just stupid stuff. And so, like, literally, her growing up disadvantage and being so frugal and doing that has really helped not only her, but it's helped me as well and helped our life in so many ways that we would definitely not be here if it wasn't for her. And I remember my dad saying when we were dating, he says, you better marry that girl because

she'll make you a millionaire before you're 30. And sure enough, she did. She made us both. And so it's just, yeah, she's fantastic in that. That's cool. There's so many cool things to your guys' dynamic that I'm noticing where I would say both of you individually, if you just looked at your own lives, you'd say this is going to be an uphill battle for me with some of the things that we're, that we all as kids from what

we went through made it tough. but then when you found the right person, not only did you balance each other out, but you also brought out each other's strength. So my understanding, Elliot, is that you're the guy who goes and you're like the driver. You make things happen. You push things forward. You get deals in contract. You get letters out there.

You create this big, like mess for lack of a better phrase, with opportunity in it. And then Chrissy comes and organizes that mess. She takes all the little pieces that you put in contract, puts them in their right box, and helps keep everything moving. and neither of you theoretically would be able to do this nearly as well without the other person. That's very similar to what I found. I play more of an Elliott role in my business and I have people that then come along behind me and they smooth out the mess and they love me because they don't want to get in the front

and go into what looks to them like the scary situation of having to make people mad and confront people and face rejection and all the stuff that comes from driving things forward that personalize don't like. And guys like me and Elliot, we're like, oh, I just want to get out there. do it. I don't want to look behind me and see what I just did. I never know how much money I'm making. I don't look at my own books. I don't like we wouldn't even pay our taxes as someone wasn't telling us. We have to go pay these taxes. Right. And when you get the right fit with the right person, not only are the things that used to hold you back, not holding you back, but it allows you

to go do the things like that you're good at are a benefit to them, that they need somebody like you. And Brandon and I talk about this all the time because we're very interested in how to help people get into real estate investing that have things that stop them. There's always a person that says, I want to do it, but I can't because of this reason. I can't do this or I can't do that. But you two are a wonderful example of how to be massively successful with flaws and how to actually take those flaws and turn them into something that's a positive. They're no longer flaws anymore. Chrissy, you were mentioning how you didn't really have much stability and you were drawn to real estate because it could provide stability, right? That rent's going to be coming in and

you don't have to work 40 hours a week to get it. That made you want to go to do this. And Elliot, you're in a position where, like, you mentioned that you really, you're like up and down, for lack of better phrase. You have moments where you want to get in there and get stuff done. And then you have other times you're like that drives gone. But Chrissy can cover for you when the drive's gone. And when the drives up, there's plenty of area for you to go playing. Now that becomes a strength for you. Like, this is a beautiful picture of how partnership should work. Yeah, that's, I would say that's absolutely right. I mean, I think part of it is just knowing your strengths and weaknesses and being humble enough to say like, hey,

I'm not good at this. I need somebody else to help me with this and handing it over. Like I think back on how much maturity and how much trust Elliott gave me in the sense that he's like, hey, this is where I struggle. I see that you're good at this and just handed it over. But it wasn't, it didn't happen overnight. I mean, when we first started this business, at first it was like, this is awesome. We're great. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I hate my job. Let's go faster. So Chrissy quit her job. And then so she was working on the business at home and I'm working 70 hours a week. So I'm like, you need to do this, this, this. And I'm all of a sudden, you know, I'm a manager at work. So I'm like trying to

manage her. And so at some points that always worked well. Yeah, it would work terrible. And so we would butt heads because then we, we didn't realize that each other's strength was the same as our weakness. And so like literally after the first year, like we were doing so well. But like, we basically almost got divorced. Like we were super close to getting divorced. Like divorce. Like divorce papers were out. And it's just like because we didn't realize what we had. in each other. Like we, we would so, be so worried about attacking another person for what they're not doing instead of focusing on how we could work better together. And it took a long time for us to actually get there. After we moved back to Tri-Cities, we said, okay, we're going to try to work this out.

And today, I mean, we are just a true story of victory, I think. And it's a struggle every day, but it's in certain ways. I mean, you still got to work at it every day. But, yeah, I mean, I couldn't do life without Chrissy. Like, like David said, I couldn't, I wouldn't know how to pay my taxes. Like literally I have one account that I have to manage, just my fund money account. And I get like so many $100 every month. Literally every month that account is overdrawn. Because he's like, you have to take that overdrawn protection of like literally one

account. And there's like maybe $800 that goes in there a mother something. And I literally overdraw it every month. That's funny. Well, what I love about that principle, I talk about this in one of the books I read. I think it's how to invest in real estate where you guys ever see that fantastic beast movie, fantastic. be some where to find them. It's like one of the Harry Potter knockoff for spinoff. Right. Okay. So in there

there there's this creature. I can't remember what's called the Akami or Kami or something like that. It's also called Akami because I don't know how to pronounce Harry Potter words. So this creature would expand to whatever size you get it, whatever size you put it in. So if you put it in a teacup, it shrinks to the side of a teacup, you put it into a bus that makes the side of a bus, right? It just expands, whatever. So I like to say like our finances is the same way. So I love the fact that you do that. You give yourself a budget of like, hey, this, whatever, 800 bucks. This is what I have for the month. Like that's, even though you might go a little, over it, if that had two grand in it, you'd probably spend two grand.

I've had 10 grand in it. You'd spend 10 grand because I'm the same way. Rather than relying on willpower to try to live within a budget, you instead just confine that to a certain size container and then you will only like naturally spend about what's in the container maybe a little bit more because of the pain of having to deal with, you know, overdraft and all that annoying stuff. So I think that's a fantastic tip just for anybody trying to save more money in life is that use that power of the Akami.

Yeah, it's hard, though. I mean, even like you said, I still go over. And Christy, luckily, when we first got married, she was like, you know, super strict. Like, you're over by $3. But, you know, she's loosened up more a lot. And I think we've rubbed off on each other quite a bit. Like, I've started spending less and she started spending a little bit more, but we've balanced each other out really well to just like have a really good balance in life of like, like we were going to buy a new car. And then we had it on order. And then we're like, yeah, maybe we don't need this right now, especially with Corona and everything going on. And so, like, we've kind of balanced each other out really well in that sense now. Yeah, that's, that's neat. So let's walk through,

I want to go first of all, get an idea of where are you guys at right now in your business, real estate business? How many units do you have? Are you still wholesaling mostly? Are you flipping? Are you, like, what are you doing in your business and what do you have? Yeah. So right now, we haven't been wholesaling for a couple years. We have a partner in one of our markets that we kind of, we find the deals and we work together on them and then 50-50 on that. And then in our other market that we actually live in, we do the flips there. So right now we're adding rentals. We've added a single family, two duplexes.

And we just bought a 24 unit like three weeks ago with some partners. Last year we bought a commercial building. So we have like 33 units roughly. If you count, you know, the 24 unit, we're a quarter owner. So but so we have that. And then we have a 17,000 square foot commercial building that we are going to be, I'm redoing the upstairs and putting apartments in there. It's in a downtown area where we live.

I, we bought some land to do some development. We were trying to transition our company into a development company this year, but then kind of Corona put a made everybody scared. So right now, we're just working what we got. We got another service business that we started that I'm kind of more working on. Christy's kind of let me have my passion project with that to see if I can make that work. But yeah, just adding kind of add cash flow at, you know, that's really our goal is to get out of the rat race by cash flow. That's cool. And what about like on those on the deals that you have, You said you have the partner that you get deals and you flip, you're the flipping locally and was that wholesaling?

Yeah, so we don't wholesale it to our partner. We basically are 50-50 partners. So we'll pay for half. He pays for half. And then he puts them back. We find them. He puts them back together.

And so it's kind of a good deal. And that's in one of our markets. And then in tri-cities, we actually just flip them ourselves. Okay. And tri-cities, by the way, for those that don't know,

it's kind of like, I don't know. We'd just call it smackdad in the middle of Washington state on the east. Southeast Washington. Is it southeast? Yeah. So it's like 30 minutes from Oregon. border. Okay. Yeah. So it's not, when you're thinking Washington, it's not Seattle. We're not talking,

it's like desert Washington, which is very different than rainy Washington. And then what kind of volume you guys do on a typical year now? Like where are you at volume was the last few years? So we've been buying roughly 20 to 25 deals a year for like the last three years. This year, our numbers are down. We had we had seven tied up in quarter one. We ended up closing on six of them. But then Corona hit, we stopped marketing. We didn't want to be seen as opportunistic. Like, the calls were actually a lot more angry, you know, in March and April. So we kind of shut that down.

And so I think our deal volume is going to be smaller, but we're also adding some rentals and we've done some bigger deals. So it's kind of a decent mixture. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And then let's go through how, I mean, you're doing mailers, obviously. You mentioned that. So is that the only strategy you're doing to find deals today?

Or what else do you guys do to find deals, Chrissy? So yeah, we do mailers. And then we're also doing cold calling and a little bit of text messaging. We were messing around with SEO a little bit, but that's something that I don't know. Maybe that's, we haven't had really any success for it with it. And it's, you know, one of those 80, 20 rules that's like, okay, well, that's not really working, but these things are working for us. So let's focus on those.

So primarily cold calling and direct mail. Okay. That's cool. All right. And then finally, I do want to go into some more specifics, and we'll get to a deal deep diving a little bit. But I want to know a little bit more about working with a spouse. And so the first question I have, and I want to start with you, Chrissy,

even though it sounds like, you were on the real estate train before Elliott was. But who, because you had a house, right? So who, but who first was like, I want to make this a living and had to convince the other person, like that real estate investing was going to be your future? Which one of you started and had to convince the other person? I don't think we had to convince the other person. I don't, I really don't think we had to convince each other, which is, that's not so helpful. Because I've actually had a ton of guys come up to me during conferences. Like, how do I get my

wife on board? Yeah, I get that question constantly. Yes. Yeah. I would say to answer that question, I would say that showing how stable real estate can't be. I feel like a lot of people think having a regular job is very stable. But in my opinion, I don't think it's any more stable than building a solid rental portfolio, really. If you're screening the tenants properly, if you make sure that you've got enough in your bank for cap X, if you're doing your due diligence, then I find it way more secure than holding down a job at a company where you don't really get to control your future. So I think that that is something that it's just a mindset shift and doing it in a way that it doesn't feel forceful and maybe putting on some bigger pocket podcasts in the background or something

when you're driving around. A lot of it is just knowing that's possible. Seeing other people doing it and doing it well for a long period of time, I think that that can really help people change their mindset. But for Ellie and I, we, yeah, we were both kind of excited about the opportunity for real estate. Yeah, that's really good. Ellie, anything you want to add on that? Yeah, I think the biggest difference that we had,

was since I'm the spender, I like fast money. So I like, look at these checks. Look at how big these checks are, you know, spin. And Chrissy's like, look at this boring rental that we can do. And I'm like, no, we can make like 40 grand. She's like, no, but it cash flows $300 a month. And I'm like, what makes no sense? And so like that's our personality type, totally to a T. I think the biggest part was like, I'm push, push, push, you know, I'm the machine gun out there shooting a million bullets. And she's a sniper like, no, this is the one. I'm taking this guy. And that's probably why we actually have been such a good team. It's because we both like, I'm the, you know, go, go, go, go.

And she's like, yeah, let's go, but let's also protect our backside and buy rentals and buy long-term assets. Yeah. It goes to show that different mindsets and different strategies can all be successful, that it doesn't have to be a way of doing it, that there's many ways of looking at this. And honestly, if you just buy real estate in a decent area and hold it for a long time, you all end up looking like a genius. You know, like you, Brandon and I have talked about you could buy a place that doesn't

cash flow if you can afford it. And if you hold it for a long enough time, at some point, it does cash flow. Do you look at it from a 30-year perspective if it doesn't cash flow the first five years and it does for the next 25? It won't even matter that it didn't cash flow right off the bat, you know, or it didn't have a ton of equity in it. Inflation makes real estate, makes everyone look really smart for owning real estate for a long time. So I like that whether you're a machine gunner or a sniper, there's a way that you can make this work for everybody. Right. Absolutely. I really, for me too, it's about the tax advantages versus like, you know, the wholesale fees and the flipping and stuff. I'm the one paying the taxes.

And I'm like, look at how much for giving away when we're doing this. You know what? That's a great point. That whole concept, what you focus on expands. And Brandon talks about this to the man or the woman with a hammer, everything is a nail. When all you're looking at is just like, okay, I need to make money. And you're only looking at the gross money you're making because like Elliot said, sometimes we don't even look at our taxes at all. When I finally do stop and look at the numbers, I'm like, why am I even doing this? This is horrible. I'm losing 50% of that to tax. and I'm taking all the risk and all the work. But when you're going, going, going, you don't even stop to think about that. You're just thinking in your head, I just made 20 grand. Boom,

what's next? Where's my next targets to go take down? And then Christy's left to clean up the mess, like, well, I hope you're happy. You just risked all of this and gave up, you know, 40 years of $300 a month and then $350 and then $450 and $500 and $500 as it goes up. And all we did was make Uncle Sam some money. Yeah. Yeah, that $20,000 is really more like $10,000. Plus, you probably have to have more employees to cover all that. down to like five grand and you're like, plus your marketing expenses. Yeah, marketing.

Yeah. So then there is sometimes where I'm like, well, you don't make very much on this deal. We should. But then you don't want to keep. The hardest balance that we're finding right now is because we like to use a bunch of our own cash to do deals. We have some private lenders, but we don't do. We've never done hard money.

And we, you know, people are always like leverage, leverage, leverage, you know, just keep, you know, put as little in the deal as you can, but we don't like that. Yeah. So our biggest problem now is we're putting money into rentals, which then takes out of our flipping bucket. And then so it's like, so all of a sudden, you buy a few too many rentals, and then all of a sudden you got to build your flipping bucket back up. And then it's so it's like, that's the hardest. Like I think where most people fail and I hear people failing all the time is their cash flow management is not, it's really where they fail. And I think where if you can get a

Chrissy on your team, like it would be your, that's, that would help you so much to like have manage your cash flow. What do you mean by manager cash flow? Explain that. So like we have money coming in from our flips all the time. And then we have money going out from Mark. But so then we built this bucket of capital that then we're like, okay, we have extra capital. So let's go buy a rental. So like we bought one duplex. We just bought it from a guy, but we did a 30 year conventional 20% down. So we had to put 50 grand down on this duplex.

And so that takes out of you, it goes into the property. So it's still there, but it takes out of your flipping bucket because it's coming out of the, you know, that bucket. Then we have another duplex that we just bought that we're, we're going to keep. And then we're refined. And we had to put, you know, money down. And then we also had to put rehab money. money in there. So then there's some more money out of our flipping bucket. And then we bought the 24

unit, which we had to put money out of our bucket there. So that's a, you know, is a six figure check for that. And so then all of a sudden, our flipping bucket is a lot smaller. So then all of a sudden you're like, oh, shoot, I still need to flip houses to make income, you know. And so kind of like, you know, David, it's like great. You can get a commission check right now, but I'm actually working today for my money for six months from now. And so you have to manage your money to make sure you have enough to actually make that money six months from now if you're doing flipping and putting money in flips. Yeah, that's such a good point. I mean, just that whole idea of like, you know, flipping houses or wholesaling, but like make it, you have to have a way of making money that

you can then dump into rental properties. A lot of people want to get into rentals and they want to do it maybe like, you know, maybe they don't have any cash whatsoever. So now they're trying to figure out some creative way to do it. But like no matter what, you have to have some sort of money to be able to buy rentals with, even if you're bringing in a partner or you're going to do the birth strategy, it helps to have some money. So flipping, like you guys are doing to be able to generate profits is a great way to do it but that only works if you're managing your cash flow correctly and you're setting aside money the right amount and you're you're making sure you have enough to pay for the marketing continually and that whole that whole thing

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Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Hey, I want to know about like working together then as a married couple. Because you went from jumping into this game to wanting to get a divorce, like having the papers there, like to get a divorce. But now you guys, I mean, I've hung out with you. You've stayed with me at my house here in Maui. So like I've seen you guys. You guys are, you know, in love and cute.

And so like you're still, how do you do that? What are those like guidelines or rules or principles that you guys have found that have worked so well in your business? that have allowed you to be able to work together and still, you know, come home and like each other. So I would say first off, get your ego and check because once you start having some success in this business, you can just think that you are the hottest thing, like, since sliced bread. So I think that's one thing. It's like you need to be humble about whatever you're doing. Because like David said, like you, especially like during a hot market.

it, everybody looks like a genius. So it's being humble about things. And I think also trust is a big one as well. You know, you've got to, you've got to trust your other partner to do some things that maybe you don't think are going to be successful, that you, maybe you think it's a crazy idea. But you've also got to trust that they have, you know, your best interest at heart too, that you guys are, you're working towards the same goals. And you have the conversation. And if they still see it as something that is going to be beneficial in the long run, you know, you've got to trust them that they are going to make the right choices. You know, sometimes it doesn't work out. And it's, it's having that grace as well. And I think that's where it comes down to like, almost like marriage

counseling where it's like you've got to, when you're married, you've got to have that grace for the other person as well. Yeah. You know, on my team, we actually pay a performance psychologist to meet with all of us every week. And then individual people as well. And they function like a relationship. psychologist for the members on the team. They pull out the things they can see where resentment's starting to build. They facilitate difficult conversations between team members. They can help say, hey, you're not pulling your weight. Why is that as opposed to someone just pointing the finger and then people get defensive? When you get to a certain point of success, that is a really, really a crucial important stage and how you continue to go there. I'm sure Brandon's going to hit that step

if he hasn't already with Open Door Capital, where it's very difficult to get in someone else's head and see what they're seeing. And then we all have a filter that we look at the world from that was shaped by the experiences we had in life. So like I'm thinking of a team member I have right now where we'll get someone that comes to us and wants to buy a million dollar house and they have a $200,000 budget. And I'll say, look, we have to have a difficult conversation where I explain that's not going to happen. Don't fill them up with hope that they're never going to get this. And that team member looks at it and says, this is their dream. We have to find some way to help them accomplish their dream. Like because they went through something in life where

no one cared about their dream. So now they're projecting that onto the claim. And that's, to them, that seems like the right business decision to make. To the other 80% of us, we're like, no way, this is a terrible business decision. But if we just tell them that, we look calloused, uncaring, cold, like pure, evil, capitalistic business people. Whereas from my perspective, I'm like, no, don't give me hope if it's not going to happen. Tell me right off the bat and give me another option. So there's one example. I'm sure you guys have thousands of them where it really helps to have some of the confessions. facilitate those difficult conversations. Yeah, I actually, throughout our marriage,

Chrissy spoke on the ego and that was probably our, my downfall was the ego. You know, I got on these podcasts, I got all this stuff. We were making all this money. I quit my job. And I'm like, look at how great I am and all these things. And that's really what was our downfall was my ego to a certain extent. And then so I read this book, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, super great book. And that kind of helped a ton. But, you know, throughout our career, I've always been searching for like I would go see a counselor. I had counselors. I had all these people and I would talk to to try to figure it out. And the funny thing is I've been doing so great the last like nine months. And I hired Brandon's business coach, life coach. And it just like has changed like my perspective and

helped me so much. Yeah, Jason Jerez. Yeah, Jason. And I think then, but he, it's funny because he, he helps you and not only on business, but life and marriage and all these things. And it's just a good sounding board. But one of the other things that really helps that we've really had to focus on is knowing our lanes. Like so when we would butt heads all the time is because we were trying to make every decision together. And so now, then what we had to figure out was what are our lanes, what are our defined lanes? And so then I make decisions for these lanes, which usually tend to be the sales and people side of things. Chrissy makes decisions for these lanes, which are financial accounting, design, things like that. And then we come together on what we're going to keep.

But I don't tell her what decision to make. She gets to make those on her own. And when she makes a decision, that's the decision. There are certain things we come together. And when I make decisions, she doesn't question me. It doesn't question me when I say, hey, we're buying this house and we're flipping it. Or we're buying this house and partnering with this person. Or this is where I'm coming with the financing from our private lender or whatever.

Then, you know, so we have those converse, those lanes. And it really takes a lot of the friction out of the partnership because we just trust each other to know that they're making the right decision and the best interest. of our family. That's really good. So how do you deal with the fact that like, I mean, like, Chrissy, what do you do when Elliott's like, I want to buy this property and you're like, that's a terrible idea? Or on the other hand, like, what if like, you know, Chrissy wants to do something? Like, I think we should do this. And Elliot's like, no, like, how do you deal with when like you're just opposed to what the other person's doing? But it's their lane. So like,

how do you deal with those conflicts? Typically, so we've got a lot of great people in our lives that are very wise. And sometimes what I'll just do is be like, hey, what do you think? So-and-so thinks about this, you know, have you talked to them about it? What would they, what they say about it, you know, just to get some other opinions in his head as well. Yeah. Go to the third party because then it's not like if it is a bad, I mean, because if it's a bad idea, then the other party should back you up. And if it's, if you're the one wrong, if it actually is a good idea, then the other party will back them up in either way bringing that third party. That's really good.

Yeah, usually mine's about ADD stuff because I'm all over the board. I'm like, let's go here. Let's buy developments. Let's do commercial. Let's do apartments. Let's do a call center. Let's do all these things. Chris is like, you should talk to somebody about getting focused. Yeah, that's funny. I get the exact same thing. Well, I've never been married, but I've heard many married couples say when they go to therapy, it's easier to hear from the other person, the therapist, that they're wrong than when their spouse is telling them that they're wrong. And that's kind of what that third person can function as, is they can portray it in a way that's easier for you yourself when we're in the wrong

to take in as opposed to you just always say no you just want to crush my dreams with everything it's always a no and then when you hear from someone else you go oh that actually makes a ton of sense yeah thank god i didn't do it and the other part i mentioned when you're saying staying in lanes is there's certain points in business where you have to cross lanes there's no way around it and i was thinking when you said that just like when you're driving on the freeway it's really important that you signal I'm about to change lanes, that you look around to make sure I'm not running into anybody else who's already in this lane, that you give everybody else time to make space for you to get in there, and then you go. You don't just change lanes in the middle of everything that's going on and cause a crash.

And I was realizing, like, okay, I need to start doing that. When I need to go into someone else's lane on the team, that I don't just jump in there like I like to do and do it really quickly. I let them know, we're going to have a conversation. Here's my blinker, right? Let me know when a good time is to come over. I let them make allowances for me. was a really insightful piece I thought you shared. Yeah, it's funny.

Chrissy always yells at me for not using my blanket when I'm driving. So I'm not very good at that process. You're great though. It's all about communication. So key. All right, so we got check your ego. You said know your lanes. What all the tips do you have for people working with their spouses?

We always tell each other, like, if we're arguing about stuff, even if it's about the baby or our business or we're getting to it, we just look at each other and we say, we're on the same team. We're after the same goals. We're on the same team. So if you look at pro sports, pro basketball, those guys still have turnovers all the time. They still make mistakes all the time. But they're still at the end of the day. They're still on the same team. And so how do we build each other up and not tear each other's ideas down and know that we're after the same goals? It's just we just had a little bit different ways of how we think we get there. But if we can blend them together and, you know,

one guy's a seven footer and one guy's a good shooting guard, you need both of them. You can't have both seven footers on the, you know, team and still win a basketball game. Yeah, that's a good point. Really good. Ellie, you mentioned a minute ago that you were starting like a service-based business. I wonder, what is that? Is that the reason why? It gives you something unplug and go and try to build something new.

And what is that? So I had this buddy of mine, I think, uh, Colru Johnson out of Seattle. Yeah, he's awesome. So we had, uh, he had a, like a small, call center just for some buddies of his. And I started using it. And I'm like, hey, I think you could do this, this and this. He's like, hey, why don't you partner with me? Because he's like, Chrissy, I'm really good at Bill.

systems and backend stuff. And he's like, why don't you go sell it? And so then we ended up working on that. And so then we partnered with another buddy, Tucker Merrihew last week. But it's just going to be a cold call center. And so we're going to be, you know, providing leads to people, you know, you pay by the, either by the month or whatever. So we're trying to build this service based business for real estate investors. And so that's something cool because I think, you know, we're talking earlier in the show about cash flow. And so rentals, you know, take a while to get there. You could build your cash flow. But I think we're, we can build this is a cash flow business. And for like the last year, I've been talking,

you know, with Jason about I need a cash flow business, something that doesn't really require a ton of me, but generate revenue every month. And so I was looking at doing a painting company, a roofing company. I mean, we had all this going, all a landscaping company because she's like, no, those are all going to like take so much of your time. And so then all of a sudden, this kind of like materialized because I was looking for something like it. And so we're starting to do that. So, you know, if it works, I, I mean, the service is great. It works for my campaign.

It works for, you know, everybody that's using it. But it's still fun to do something different because, like, I'm the guy that gets bored, like with flipping houses. They're doing the same thing. I want something new and exciting that challenges me. And so, and Chrissy's kind of said, that's a great business. You do it. And so, like, it's kind of my deal, not Chrissy's deal, but it's still for our benefit, right?

And so, yeah, we're pretty excited. I think we're calling it call magic. And so it's going to be called magicleads.com. I think it's going to be cool. I think it's going to be really good. Everybody that's using it likes it. So I don't know. So the idea is you just give me the synopsis.

Like people call, they answer the phone and send it to the investor. So basically somebody comes to us, says, hey, I want to use your service. So they'll give us a list of people they want in their area. We'll help them build lists in their area. Then they skip trace those lists. And then our outbound callers will actually sit there and make calls all day.

That's cool calling. And then when they get a lead that somebody says they're interested, we'll run them through some quick questions. There's like five questions. Do you have a, is this your house? Is it a rental or owner occupied? Does it need work and what kind of price you want? And then if it's kind of a lead, they'll push it over to the people that are paying us and then they would follow up with those leads. So the nice thing is it is like it works really well for people to have a good sales teams in place and and newer as well. We're going to have some options to help newer people. But it really just provides a good constant source of leads. And so and at a lower cost marketing dollar. But, just like anything else, just like direct mail or anything else you're doing this business. It takes time to build your pipeline and work those leads and, you know, work that system. That's cool, man.

Well, one thing that I'm a huge fan of you, Elliot, and probably Christy's actually a big backing of this, but you guys are just fantastic and like knowing like the funnel that comes in, like getting leads. Like how do you get leads coming in? How do you run the numbers? How do you make the offer and negotiate and get it to closing and tracking those numbers and make it all work? I actually, I don't even remember this, Elliot, but a couple years ago, a year ago, a year and a half ago. Anyway, I interviewed you in my C-Shed, remember, my office out here? Yeah. Yeah.

About this thing. And so we actually put it together as one of like the bonuses when you become a pro member on a webinar that I give that I do every week. You get this like how to find great deals masterclass. Anyway, yours is on there. It's like an hour of you and I just going through everything you do in your business. So just FYI, if you're currently a bigger pockets pro member or if you become a pro member, that is something that you can get. If you go up to like the little perks in the corner of your, I think it's like, I think it's like member perks if you're on bigger pockets. You can find that there.

Really good stuff. If you can't find it, I'll put a link more information on the show notes for this show on how to get that. Biggerpockets.com slash show 394. But yeah, very cool. I love the idea that you're thinking like how do I bring a more cashful, regular cash flow. And this is something that David and I talk a lot about is that it's not like real estate is amazing. We love real estate. But you also have to have a source of making income.

You have to have money coming in consistently. He said cash flow. And so if there's whether you become a real estate agent, whether you get a raise at your work, whether you can build a side business that's in real estate or related or maybe something totally different. It's really good to have that a good source of revenue coming in. So just something for people to consider as well in their life is how can they build something like that or be a part of something that generates some good income that's not reliant

upon the hours that you put in. Or like your book, right? Like that's, you write your books. and then it's paying off on the road. You know, you get your high spikes, but then it slowly produces revenue every, you know, every month. And so it's just the little things like that where now you can go out and do flips and take a little bit of risks because you know you have this income.

You know, it's the same of like having a bunch of redos. You know you can take a couple more risk because, man, if for some reason that I lose this, then I can come back. I have the capsule that I can build that back up really quickly or whatever. So it's just as another level of security to the business. And that's really what you're looking for is just multi. streams to add security, I think. Yeah, yeah, it's really, really important stuff.

Now, the downside of that, of course, is that people tend to, you know, we talk a lot about building bridges, right? You live on reality island. You want to get to Millionaire Island. You got to build a bridge. So people start building 10 bridges, right? So, like, well, I really want to build this Amazon business and this call center and this whatever, because they want the, you know, whatever, they want passive income.

And they also want to buy real estate. They want to burr, they want to flip. And so there's this, there's this fine line. And I'm curious, and then we'll move on to deal deep dive. I'm curious, where do you guys, and I'll start with you, Chrissy. How do you balance, and I'll go through all three of you, though, how do you balance between generating more revenue with new ideas, but also just being consistent with the thing that actually matters long term?

So I would say that you definitely don't want to be jumping from thing to thing before you have a solid base. So for us, like you were saying, we've got our systems basically down for generating leads. and then we can decide to do what we want with those leads for sure. But finish a bridge before you start your next bridge. And then you can start looking, you know, find a way that you're not putting too much time. You're not spending all of your time on that first bridge. And then you can go on to the next bridge.

And you can, you know, really think about is this bridge, this next bridge, is it going to be time consuming? You know, is it where you're just creating a job for yourself or are you actually creating a business? Yeah. And is it a bridge that you can link to one you already have? Is it just an off-ramp or an on-ramp you're creating onto a bridge you've got? Or is this a completely new project unrelated to your current bridge? Yes, absolutely. And I would say that I think it's very like,

Brandon, you always talk about being very focused on one thing and so you don't like to commit. And I think it's the same that you don't just say yes to everything. You find something that you truly believe in. And if you truly believe in it, you're going to see it. real. That's such a good point. Elliot, you want anything on that? Yeah, so I'm the master at building and starting bridges and not finishing them. I remember we were talking at like 11 o'clock at night on your porch about this stuff. But again, it comes back to, I have a Chrissy, so I can talk to her about these things, and she can be like, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think this is a good

idea. And then I'm like, hey, what do you think of a call seller? And she's like, that's a great idea. She was like super pumped for it because I think we have all the systems in place to do it. And I have the right team to put it together and do it, and it doesn't require more time from her. But, like, I am very ADD, and I go all over the board. And so I really lean on Chrissy to say, Elliot, slow down, think about what you're doing.

Let's not maybe do that. Because there will be so many times where I'd be like, let's do SEO, let's do pay-per-click, let's do Facebook ads, let's do all these things. And she's like, Elliot, look at how much money you're spending. Like, we have to come back and go to our focus. Yeah, that's really good. David, what about you?

Man, I think that when it comes to this, part of it is you have to recognize and respect that certain brains are designed like Elliot's to do a million different things at once. You can't just shame yourself and say, bad, bad, bad, you shouldn't do this. Because as Elliot was talking, I was like thinking, I wonder if you looked at Leonardo DeVincy's scrapbook. How many amazing ideas he was writing down before he picked the one he was actually going to try to push all the way to completion. It's a part of what makes Elliott successful is that his mind and Brandon, you're like this too.

They fire off with a ton of different ideas. And then another part is your environment. When you're in an environment like Brandon or I'm in, the amount of opportunity you have increases exponentially. And there's a lot more to look at. And there's a lot more that naturally, like that shiny object syndrome, there's a lot of shiny objects. You can go do a lot. Whereas when I was just a cop buying real estate, there wasn't a whole lot to look at. It was just see what's right in front of me and go get it.

So you got to respect that too. And I think that it's a balance between knowing I'm always going to be looking for opportunity and getting that filter in your life to help understand you and know what we're going to allow to pass through and when we're going to allow it to pass through. So I know there's a part of myself that I've understood is I like to teach. It's why I'm here on the podcast. It's why I work with real estate clients is they come to me and I teach them. This is what we're doing when we're buying a house and people like that.

That's who I draw. So I'm always going to learn a new thing and then write a book about how to do it. That's just a part of my life. It's always going to be that way. Every time I learn how to build a new bridge, I'm going to write a book that says, this is how I built it. But when I write that book is really important. It's not just do it or don't do it.

It's don't do it when I'm building the bridge. Do it after the bridge has been built. And I don't have other opportunities. So I think knowing there's a season for everything, there's a time for everything, be patient. You know, one of the mistakes I make on my team is that I want to go get 25 buyers to help them buy a house and I've got two agents to help me do it. I've loaded myself up and I don't.

don't have any way to actually service those kind of people. So like understanding, I want to build this bridge. I've got the plans. Well, I have to order the concrete. It doesn't do any good to get all these people together to start building. We have no concrete to use. And that's what makes this tough, but that's also why Brandon and I are always talking about real estate investing is business. It's business skills that you have to develop to do it. Elliot and Chrissy have developed a way of splitting apart the business where they each have a lane to operate in. And that's why they're successful. Let's move this over to the next segment of the show and take it back to real estate specifically, it's time for our deal deep dive.

All right, the deal deep dive is part of the show where we dive down deep into one particular property or investment you guys have made recently and or at any point in your career. And you get some dirty details on it. You guys ready? Do you have something in mind together? Have you guys pre-talked about this? Yeah. Okay.

All right, good. Number question number one. What kind of property are we talking about today? This was a single family. fix and flip. Very standard fix and flip. Okay. How did you find it? Yeah, so it's actually in a town about 40 minutes south of us. And so Christy and I are like, let's expand to this town. I think there's some opportunity there. So we went and we went driving for dollars one day. We got a babysitter and went driving for dollars. Driving so we could figure out the town. And that's the one key is people

are always like, I don't want to drive for dollars, but it actually helps you learn the town. Like some sides are bad. Some sides were good. So anyway, so we're driving this area. And so we go and we get about 900 or sell leads. And then we sent out a direct mail campaign to that. And then we filtered through some calls and then this one came off the direct mail campaign. All right. Very cool. And number three. How much was it, Elliot? Yeah. So we paid $61,000 for it, which is actually was pretty pretty cheap. So we paid $61,000 for it. And it was just like a three, two little ranch. That was like $1,100 square feet. All right. And how did you negotiate that price? I met with them. And it's funny because I was at the gym and they're like, hey, can you meet now?

So I had to drive down there and I show up and the lady's like, man, I was expecting me to be like in a suit or tie or something. And I'm like in my gym clothes. I'm like, I'm just a normal guy just like you. Like, you know, I'm just here solving problems. And so we talked to them. I went down there, talked to them, figured out kind of what they're looking to get. They were like four years behind on their back on their taxes. He had inherited the property and they just needed to get some money out of there. And so I do what I kind of normally do. I'm like, okay, what do you think this property is. is worth fixed up. And so they agree, we all agreed the time that it was like 145 is what it was worth. And that's what I truly thought it was probably worth. And I'm like, okay, well, how much work do you guys think it needs? And so then we subtract the work. And I'm like, okay, we need to make about 30 grand

because that's, you know, for our time. We don't make, that's not all our money. That's government's money and all this stuff and our marketing. And I'm like, what do you think that's fair? And they're like, yeah, that's fair. And so then we get back down to the number and came to like 57, and so I'm like, offer 57,000. You know, I just do the math with them right there at the table. And so they thought about it, thought about it. And we ended up agreeing at like, like 61 is what we ended up agreeing. And so then gave them time to move out. I had an escrow let them move out. And then, yeah, and then then we got it. Do you typically do that is actually just do the math with them like right at the table? Like that kind of your. Yeah. A lot of times if they're reasonable people like, I'm just like, hey,

I'm just going to break the numbers down with you of like how this, what this costs us from the very from the very beginning because if they say their property, I think there's properties like worth 300 fixed up and I'm trying to offer them 100A. They'd be like there's 120 grand. You're going to make 120 grand. And that's like all these flipping, you know, shows that always show they made this much money. But they actually, then you see the net math and it's like, no, they didn't make that much money because they didn't include this, this, this and this.

So I just sit there and say, okay, it's going to cost us 8% to sell it because we have excise tax in Washington. So we're down to X numbers. Then it's going to cost us $50,000 to fix it. Mr. Seller, would you agree that that's a fair number? the, and they would say, yeah, I agree, that's a fair number. And I'm like, and then we got to make some money. And would you agree that it's okay for us to make money?

And they're like, yeah, I agree. And so then you get back to the number and here's your number. Does this work for you, Mr. Seller? So, yeah, that's phenomenal. I really, really liked it a lot. All right. Next one, how did you fund that deal? So we used all our own cash.

So, I mean, it wasn't a, that was a super low purchase price for us. So we used all our own cash. We put about 30, 30K rehab into it. And so we were all in it like 90. 90,000 somewhere in there. All right. And you mentioned this was a flip. So what was the outcome on the deal?

The outcome on the deal was fantastic. So I have a good contracting career. We have some in our both towns. But I said, hey, if you, it was a little bit of a drive every day. So I said, hey, I'll cut you in a little bit of the profit. If you guys can stay under budget and on timeline. And so we came in like perfect on everything. And then I showed the agent down there.

And she's like, she went and walked. She's like, man, the market's gone up. I think you can get like 180 for this property. So we ended up listing it like right during Christmas time and it ended up selling it for 185. And so like it ended up being a really good deal. If you look at the ROI on that deal, the deal was really good.

And that's not like always how our deals go. But it just, I think the reason I pick this deal for our deal deep dive is one, Christy didn't have to do anything because we had systems in place already. We always do the same thing in all our houses. It's always the same for Micah. It's the same cabinets. It's the same carpet. it's the same flooring, it's the same everything. So our contractors already knew what to put in here.

So they just got to go down there. I negotiate it off our driving for dollars and off our mail. And then our contractor, I only had to go see the property like three times after we bought it. And so like, and I probably didn't even need to do that because our contractors just take care of it. It's always the same every time. You know, that is so under talked about in real estate spaces. But like, I want to just bring that up. When you watch the flipping shows, it would be really boring if they did those shows the way that most flippers actually flip houses, which is the same stuff. Like, we talked about this last week getting on the show or maybe a couple weeks ago, but how real estate's actually pretty boring. Like, it's pretty simple for most people. We tend

to complicate it, and that's usually when I get myself into trouble is when I complicate it. But when you can systematize, now you know your cost. You know what it takes to put down this type of floor and you know where you can get it. You can get bigger discounts on it because you buy a lot of it. That's how almost every successful, really successful flipper I know does it? They don't do it like they do on TV, which is walk through every time with a brand new clipboard and be like, oh my gosh, this would be so cute with this special tile on the back splash. Oh, yeah. Like, let's look at this tile on this tile. No. We stay in entry level houses. It's the same for like, I mean, literally it's the same. I had to, we had to talk to our partner

this year. It'd be like, hey, we've been using this color of the house for like four years. It might, it might be time to change. We update that. You know what I mean? Maybe we updated just a touch, but like, no, it just works. And then then your cruise on board, they know what's going on. They don't have to call you. They did. And it takes a lot of like we were talking, about I've been making decisions all day. If you have everybody on the same page and it's always the same, that's one, more decisions I don't have to make every day. Now all I have to do is make, hey, there's a plumbing issue or there's an electrical

issue or there's this issue, but they don't have to ask me, what do we put in here? What kind of lights? We always do the same two-pack lights. We always do the same flooring. We actually buy flooring in bulk. And so, yeah. Yeah, it's one thing I learned from Tarle Yarber and, you know, Nate Robbins has got, Nate, they walk me through, like, they have like this design packet, like this

Like, you know, it has the actual, like, right, the codes from Home Depot and Lowe's for every product that they buy. And like, they just know, this is the color. This is the way. And I was just blown away. I was just blown away because I'd never done that. I was like, why have I not done that? Every time I do a flip, I go. Okay, yeah, exactly.

So we're really good friends with Tarle and Grace and Nate as well. And so we were just at their house last week doing his ropes course. Yeah, I thought you were up on a rope thing with them. Yeah. He's got that crazy backyard. He's an amazing investor. He's really good at building systems. Serena's done a good job about building those books.

Ours are probably even more simplified than that because they're still doing granite and moving some walls here and there and doing big rehabs. But that's one of his greatest things that he's done is building those systems. Yeah, systematizing your business. Because with systems requires less decisions that have to be made. And if you can get less of your RAM and your brain being used for making decisions, you can use it for more dollar productive things. Right.

Go build other bridges. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. All right. Last question. What lessons did you learn or can, Can you pull out from this deal that apply to our audience?

I think the lessons in this deal were that if you build the processes, this is probably one of the deals that went the smoothest that we've done. And it really showed that the four years that it took building these systems and processes really paid off. And you can do this business really easily if you build those systems. But if you don't start there and don't take the time to build those systems and build all the work Christy's put in to do those design packets, to do those material lists and all stuff, then it's going to be hard every time you flip a house and you feel like you're fighting

an uphill battle. But this one to show that once you build those, it's just as smooth. It works. The system, if you trust the process, it works. You know, even right now, we're not buying as many deals, but I know that if I trust the process, I go up and we go down on how many deals. I think you remember when we were at your house in Maui, I had Ryan running back and forth because I bought like four houses that week we were at your house. Because it's just once you get the momentum, it just starts working. And Ryan probably wanted to shoot me because I said, hey, can you print this out? Can you print this out? But we were just buying. So just trusting the process that you built over time. Oh my gosh. That is so, so good. We could do a whole show just on that one topic of like trusting the process.

Like you, if you have the right process and continue, I mean, a couple months ago, like three months ago, we had no deals under contract with Open Door Capital in my mobile home park business. Like, we're like getting a little stressed out. Like, is the market just changed completely? Is this going to be impossible? Like, what's going on? And I just kept saying like to Ryan, I'd be like, We just have to trust the process. We are getting leads. We are making offers. We are just getting rejected.

Let's just make more offers. Just keep trust. And today we have five properties under contract, like over 1,000 units. Because like we just kept with the process. We would have stopped him and like, no, let's go try something else fancy. We wouldn't have had that because we're always learning new things. But we just stick with the process. The same thing works if you're trying to buy your first property, your 10th property,

trying to flip houses, whatever. What's that process look like? How are you getting leads? Are you making offers? You know, like, what's that look like? Stick with it. I mean, this is true for every business. in the world.

Like, totally. And like if I'm brand new, what I'm, what I'm telling people, I always tell brand new people is, okay, go print out a Google map of area around you and then go drive every street in that certain area. Try to get 500 or 1,000 houses that look, you know, bad. Either they have radio antennas up on their older cars, they have moss on the roof or tarp on the roof or overgrown graphs. Go get a thousand of those.

And then you can go, you can either do it yourself and hire a VA or you can use it like driving for dollars app and it'll automatically. they give you their addresses, and then you can send letters out of those people. And then just consistently send letters for six months to those people and just answer the phones. And it's just very simple if you just break it down. You will find a deal out of those thousand, but you have to stick with it. You have to do the process. You have to trust the process every month.

You ever since you said that to me, you said this to me one time. I think we were interviewing for that Bigger Pockets Pro thing. And that's like my go-to advice now. Every time it says they can't find a deal or they ask me if I can mentor them, I'm like, get out of Google Map, go drive every single solitary. street, write down a list, come back with 500 names on that list, start mailing them for six months. After that, if you still don't have a deal, let's have a conversation. Prove that you did that first. And of course, nobody does.

No, yeah, that's the problem. I talk to people all the time. And anybody listening, like, thinking, man, man, these guys, they've made it or they had it so easy. Like, we've had it tough. We've had a tough road to get here. But, like, we've stuck with each other and stuck with the process. Anybody can do this. When I went to college, a community college, I tested into at like math 90, all high school classes. Because I barely graduated high school with like a 2.2. I mean, Christy's the smart one. So it's like, anybody can do this.

And so you just have to find the person that you need to help you or you learn the skills you need, but just stick to it. You're going to find deals. You're going to be successful. But like you just have to get started and go and stick with it. It's like chopping down a tree and you start chopping on it. And after four or five swings, you're like, this is stupid. It doesn't work.

The tree didn't go down. All you did was give yourself blisters and waste. your time and you got half of a tree chopped down, which is worth exactly zero dollars to do. And then you go try to drop down another tree and another tree. You just got a bunch of dense and trees. Unless you're Brandon and you're so strong, you just one swing with the masculine arms. Well, there's an argument for that, right? When you get good enough at doing something, maybe you can go in there and chop it down with one or two swing. Or you have a chainsaw. Like you start learning and then all of a sudden you're trying to chop this tree down with an axe. Then all of a sudden

you get a chainsaw. That's like a system. Yep. You build a system. And then the it goes way faster. Yeah. And then you give somebody else to chainsaw and they go cut it down and you get to sit in Maui and hang out with Elliot. Yeah. And then you own a lumberjet company. That's exactly what we're talking about.

Buying your first house to building a big business. That's what it's like. Yes. That's really good. But I think you have to start chopping down that tree. I mean, too many people try to let go try to find that chainsaw. They can't find it. And they're like, well, how come David Green's chopping down trees in like three seconds?

So how come Elliot's buying all this stuff? But they want to go raise money from all their venture capitalist brands and just go start a business without understanding anything about forestry or chopping trees. That's exactly right. Totally. Yeah, they don't want to put the blisters in. They don't see the blisters and the actual effort. Or they want to go pay somebody to go get them to have a, that builds the business

for them and they don't actually learn anything. It's like you don't need to pay anybody to start this. Just go start it. Go find some properties and start making offers. Yep. So good. Man, we can write a book just on this analogy, like a entire book just on chopping on trees. All right, but we got to move on and head to the last segment of our show.

But before we do, I do have one more question. What do you guys need in your business right now that our audience could help you with? That they could bring value to you. Anything you guys need or are looking for in your world? We're looking to expand into multifamily, more multifamily stuff. So, you know, we'll look at multifamily deals in Washington. Really just maybe supporting us with the call center, I think would be a great thing. You know, if you're out there trying to find deals and trying to support us with that,

I think that would be really helpful and giving us feedback on how well that's working and just trying to build that. But yeah, just we're good. I mean, at the end of the day, Chris and I got, we're very blessed, very blessed to have just, just such an amazing life

and such amazing friends and mentors around us. So we're, but we're always looking to meet new people. That's cool, man. All right. Well, with that, let's get over to the last segment of the show.

It is time for our famous four. Time for the famous four, the same four questions we ask every guest, every single week. But before we get there, here's something you should be listening to right after this show is over. Hey guys, it's Felipe from the Real Estate Rookie Show. Last week, we had Sarah on the show, and she talks about how she's having to rehab a property, build out the basement, being a single mother, and what products she used to get through all of this mayhem that's going on.

Make sure that you go back and listen to Sarah's story. It's a great one. All right. Make sure you go listen to the episode. And now it is time for The Famous Four. Chrisie Elliott, you guys ready? I know you know it's coming. Number one, current favorite real estate book.

Let's start with Chrissy. Do you have a favorite real estate book in your life? So I don't know if this is really considered a real estate book, but I really, really like it. It does tie into realtor life. So the compound effect by Darren Hardy. It's not a new book, but I really like that one. That one's one that I go back to a lot. Yeah, I remember that probably 10 times.

And every time it's just as good as it was the first. So good. Elliot, what do you think? I would say similar line as Christy, pitch anything by Orrin Klaff. I listen to that book like 10 times. I've talked to him a little bit. Man, that book was freaking good.

Like if you're looking at how to like frame things and get people's MB in sales, like that was probably one of the best. And actually if you listen to on audio, it's so fun to listen to him because he tells stories. I love books that tell stories that are teaching a lesson. Like I don't like just facts like, do this and do this.

So it was really enjoyable to listen to. Yeah. Amazing book. One of my all-time favorites. I never read it because the title rubbed me the wrong way. Pitching something just, it feels gross. But it's such good content in that book. I talk about that with my team literally every day and I was just listening to an interview with Orrin Clough talking about how he uses the strategies in that book to get his ideas from his head into somebody else's head. Yeah. So good. Really good. Okay. I'm probably going to screw you guys up, but I'm going to ask you about your favorite business books. I really like. the good to great and built to last series. I think that is just a very good, that guy tells a really good story as well on Audible and talking about how to build lasting businesses. And I think those are some really good business books. And I'm going to go with the E-Mith. Yeah. We had Michael Gerber on the show before I should say we is before I was on there. BP had him on there. And he was a very interesting guy. But that's a very popular book. A lot of people like the E-Met. And I'm sure a lot of what we talked about today is covered.

that book. Okay. So when you guys are not setting the, setting the bar for how couples should operate in a real estate business, tell us what are some of your hobbies? I love to hike. I love to get out and just go explore. And when we don't have a pandemic, I love to travel. Yeah, I love golfing. I'm really enjoying Monty right now. He's 19 months and I'm just, he's at that stage where he's just so much fun. I take him golfing with me in the evening. means and he's just dad dad this you know dad dad he's all over he's running around he's to learn how to run so he's running and he's got his arms up and he's screaming and yeah and he's just so or like he's starting to like kind of push back a little bit now too like yesterday we're telling him like hey

he pulls some clothes out of a hamper we're like pick him up pick him up and he's not listening we're like Monty and then all of a sudden he looks at me and starts dancing like woohoo dancing like with this huge grid and i just we can't help but laugh like he's just so so my son he's using he's using frame control techniques or pitch anything on you to take the power in that relationship away. That's right. I actually told L.A., I'm like, you deal with it. This is your side of the personality.

Take care of it. Yeah. Or he's just, you know, he goes to everybody's like, we'll be in the store and be like, hi, hi, hi. And then they look at him and he's shy. But as they're walking away, he's like, bye, bye.

So I really, I'm really enjoying him. And then just enjoying Christy right now. we've been in such a good space. And there's always going to be bumps and ups and downs. And we know that, but it's just life's been really good to us right now, even through the pandemic. That's cool, man.

Have you guys read the book, How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen? There's another one called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, but Little Kids will listen. It is the most phenomenal, like, parenting book I've ever read for people with young kids. Yeah, they learn massive. Writing right now.

Yeah, right down. It's so good. Like that book literally, like I actually told my wife this, I'm going to take a thing of note cards, like, you know, all three or five note cards. Like a stack of like two,

I'm going to go through the whole book and just write because it's just like tip after tip after tip after tip after tip of how to get your kids to do things and there's probably like a thousand tips in that book. That's what I have no credit. And then every day just flipped through a few of them. Like, oh yeah, I forgot about this one. I'm going to try that today. So it's a I feel like it just changed the game with how we're raising Rosie. I think you guys like it. All right.

Yeah, last question from me. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or just never get started? Either you can answer or both. I want to put it in one thing, but it's kind of, I feel like it's a combo of persistence, but mindset. So I just feel like you're going to hit so many different roadbox. And being, you know, an entrepreneur, being self-employed, you're the one that has to figure them out. So you either reach out to somebody and, you know, network or you dive into Google, bigger pockets, whatever, you have to be the one to figure it out. You can't just let it go at the wayside.

And I think a lot of people, they hit roadblocks and they just stop. And if you never stop, if you keep on continuing to figure it out, that's how you become successful. I don't think I can say any better than that. YouTube and podcasts and bigger podcasts are powerful tools. If people, you know, people always talk about wanting to go to college to learn, you can learn anything you want on the internet. You can learn to be anybody you want, build anything you want on the internet if you just really care and want it that bad you can find out anything awesome it's true all right you guys it's been awesome amazing i'd love hanging out with you guys we're actually going to hang out next week in person which is kind of cool to wear masks and stay six

feet apart but we'll have a good time on that boat but yeah we'll have a good time david do you want to take us out and ask the last question well yeah last question for people who want to know more where can they find out more about you um we're both on facebook and instagram Elliot Smith and Chris Christy Smith. I think hers is Chris C.L. Smith on Instagram. That's about it. Yeah, you could email me at Chrissy Smith at windermere.com. All right.

All right, cool. Brandon, anything you want to say before we get out of here? Well, I was hoping Elliot was on TikTok. I was looking forward to. No, I refuse to download that. Yeah, you should. I'll tell you why. I'm going to show.

Okay. It is a time wasting just suck of my life that I delete ever so often. and then I'll reinstall it, then I'll delete it again, like a day later. Like, why did I do that? That's just like, yeah. It's funny, Jason Dree is our coach. He's like, Elliot, do that detox thing

where you don't actually like look at anything, like anything for like a week. I made it four hours. Yeah, I'm sure most people can relate to that. All right, guys. Thank you so much. David. Thank you, guys.

Great job tonight. It was great getting to meet you. This is David Green for Brandon. Keep on chopping. Lumberjack Turner, signing up. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing,

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