BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 442: Taking "Bite-Sized Steps" to Go from Broke to $20,000/Month with Bryce Stewart
Episode Date: February 11, 2021Hearing Bryce Stewart’s story may sound familiar to long-time BiggerPockets Podcast listeners. That’s because Bryce was on Episode 276 where he gave the great metaphor “vacuuming out the truc...k” relating to real estate investments. Bryce is back to talk about being a great mentor/mentee, what every contractor needs before working on a rental, how to go from active to passive real estate ownership, and his new book House-Hacker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Bryce understands what it’s like to be a new investor. Every step seems hard, the end result seems almost impossible, so where do you even start? Simply, take a step forward, no matter how small it is. Even just starting to save a few hundred bucks a month can be your first step towards becoming a real estate investor. As time goes on, these small steps become giant leaps, and what seemed impossible at first, can now be doubled since you have the know-how. Bryce takes us back to a time where he didn’t know how to get his property taxes lowered, but through very incremental steps was able to make a case and save himself thousands of dollars in the long run. Looking for a mentor? Stick around to hear Bryce’s top piece of advice for any new real estate investor. This simple tactic can help beginner investors know more about what they’re getting into and also show the mentor they’re serious about their new interest. In This Episode We Cover: Why small steps can lead to massive leaps in real estate investing How to go from an active to a passive investor Why newbies should know what collateral is and how it affects their loans What every contractor needs to have before they work with Bryce A specialized and creative new BRRRR strategy What you can do to get your foot in the door as a real estate investor And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Podcast 276: Early Retirement ($10k/Month) by Age 35 with Bryce Stewart BiggerPockets Webinars Docusign Dotloop M1 Mastermind YNAB Zillow The Crown (Netflix) Young Life Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show442 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show, 4402.
I just tell myself every day, okay, there's something I can do today, whether it's just
print out a stupid little form and leave it on the printer for tomorrow, I'm just going to take
one stinking step today that benefits my portfolio that gets me headed towards my goals.
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.
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BiggerPockets.com.
Your home for real estate investing online.
What's going on in a morning?
It's Brendan Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here in the C-Shed with my buddy, David Green.
David, how's the book selling?
I know Sold came out a few weeks ago.
How's that doing?
Sold is selling.
It's actually really cool.
I talked to the publishing coordinators and they said this is the most orders they've ever had for a book
launch in the history of Bigger Pockets Publishing. And based on what I'm seeing from Amazon sales,
they're already ready to order another 5,000. It's only been out for like a week or two.
Oh, look at you. And I didn't think it would because it's written for agents.
I mean, it's like it's a book for real estate agents. But I thought like, well, our audience is
real estate investors. Are they going to buy them for the agents? And it looks like they are.
That's exactly the key. What you just said is Bigger Pockets audience is so awesome that they've
been buying this book to give to their real estate agents as a thank you when the house closes.
or, hey, I care about your career.
I just want to give you something that will help push you forward.
And it's done incredible because of that.
You know, in fact, I'm going to do a voice memo or a text on my phone right now to my assistant.
Text bell.
Hey, comma, let's order David's book and send it to Jason and Patrick.
There we go.
I'm going to order it later because.
That's awesome.
I got my agent in Washington and agent here in Maui.
So we just showed people how to buy a gift for someone to make them like you.
How to leverage a personal assistance.
to do your work for you.
All that stuff.
How to be productive
with three seconds
and during a podcast.
In the middle of a podcast.
All right.
Good stuff.
All right.
With that said,
let's talk about today's show.
Today's show is with a guest
that we've had on the show before,
but we went a different route with them today.
Really good stuff.
Bryce Stewart.
So Bryce was the guy,
if you remember back in the day,
who had the really cool analogy
that we talk about all the time,
about vacuuming your truck.
If you don't know what that means,
you'll hear about it in today's show.
But vacuuming the truck is that guy.
And we cover a lot of stuff today.
Like how he bought basically 21 units
for basically no money down.
He doubled his cash flow while actually reducing the geographic area of his portfolio.
Like he shrunk down to one specific spot.
Very, very cool.
And then he even, you guys are going to think it's hilarious.
Bryce is a funny dude.
He pulls out a guitar and he serenades us with a song on the podcast today.
You're going to love it.
It's about something every landlord should know.
He's super passionate about it.
So he wrote a song just for us today.
I think the first time that's ever happened on the podcast.
So stay tuned for all of that.
But before we get to it, let's get to see.
today's quick tip. Quick tip is buy books for people in your life. It doesn't have to be a bigger
pockets book, but books are such a great thing. Like if you, like, we talk about the importance of
like giving gifts to people. Books are cool because what you do is you buy the book and then you
write a note on the front cover or inside or on a post-it note. It's like, hey, I thought you
would like this book because A, B, and C. It just shows that you put thought into something that you
get for somebody. So the quick tip is start building relationships with people by buying them
books and then include a note with it. It's just a really, really good.
way to build relationships.
David Alexander bought me extreme ownership by Jocko Willink.
And it changed my life.
And then it changed my business's life because we started incorporating that.
It affected the way that I speak on the podcast.
And then it led to us getting Jocko Willick to be on the podcast.
Yeah, that's cool.
If he would have said, hey, you should check out this book.
I'd have said, okay.
Never would have done it again.
But he actually went out of his way to put it in my hands and it changed my life.
So now I think of him every single time I think of that thing.
It's an awesome way if you want to impact people's lives positively.
That's very cool.
Very cool. All right. Well, that's today's quick tip.
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All right, folks, that's it. Let's get into today's show. Again, I think you're going to love this.
So grab a pen and paper. Take some notes today. And make sure you listen for the song. You're going to love it.
This is our interview with Bryce Stewart. Bryce, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man.
It's been a long time coming. I'm excited to get you back and see what you've been up to.
What do you've been up to? Thanks so much. I'm really excited to be back on. I've had a lot going on in the last, I guess, two and a half,
three years since you guys had me on. So I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, well, let's let's get
into it. So maybe first you can, for those who didn't listen to your last episode, which,
what number was that again? I know I have it written here somewhere, but 276. So for those who
didn't listen to that, give us a quick, you know, two minute rundown on who you are, how you got
to real estate and what kind of your portfolio looked like when we last talked to you.
Sure. The brass tax are this. I had been a sixth grade teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
and I went from being essentially about $50,000 in debt with a wife and young kids at age 27
to being completely retired at age 35 and having a portfolio that was delivering me around
$10,000 in a monthly passive income.
So I was able to retire.
The big takeaway that seemed to hit most people hardest from our first episode was a story
I shared with you guys about vacuuming my truck.
as a sort of convenient and tidy parable for how to approach real estate investing.
Is that ringing any bells for the two of you?
It is definitely ringing bells for me.
I still actually give that analogy to people all the time.
I just tell them that I invented it and not you.
I'm just kidding.
I won't go through the entire story, but the point of it is this, that sell a truck,
and it was overly complicated, and I had to decide that the very first step in selling my truck
was to go and vacuum out the truck.
Instead of being intimidated by the entire process of getting rid of a truck that I had a loan on,
I just had to focus in on the first step being to go outside, get my shop back,
and vacuum the thing.
And then the next day after that, take it to the car wash.
And then the next day after that.
And eventually it got to the point where I was able to sell it,
but I never could have anticipated how it would go before I started taking those steps.
And I think that's a great, it's a good parable for investing in real estate because a lot of times for the listeners who are on here, you, you've got a watermelon in front of you that you have to eat and you keep telling yourself, my mouth is not big enough to swallow this entire watermelon.
And the answer is, well, you need a knife.
Nobody can swallow an entire watermelon.
You have to be able to cut it up into pieces that are bite sized or you'll never get it down.
And you shouldn't eat the rind.
Maybe that's a lesson in there too somewhere.
Probably.
You could try, but you might get some painful experiences out of it,
which also relates to real estate.
Sometimes you try stuff.
I love both those pictures because they just show that, like,
people oftentimes don't take action because they can't see the full picture.
I like to say, like, the analogy I use often is, like, driving through the fog.
You can't see the deer that's in the road two miles down the road,
so people pull over to the side of the road.
Like, that would be ridiculous, but we do it all the time in other areas of life.
But when you're driving, if long as you just keep,
moving down the road, you always can see a little bit further. And as long as you keep asking the
question, like, what is the next step? What's the next logical step in this process? You're always
going to get the answers that you want as you get through that. So I think I made a huge impact on me
and I mean, hundreds of thousands of other people. Well, the good part about it is that it actually
applies to every stage of your investing career, whether you're David Green, Brandon Turner,
Bryce Stewart or just starting out, that's something that everybody has some next step that's
bite-sized. And we've talked ourselves into not taking it because we think it's too big.
Or what often happens is this, I find you run into some barrier, which is like a lack of
knowledge barrier. You get to some point where you're like, I don't know what to do next,
and then you freeze. So whether it's starting a fund, whether it is, you know,
hiring an admin for a real estate business, whatever it is, you get to some point where you're like,
I just don't know what to do next. And then you stop. And the key in continuing to go forward is
finding out how to either get help or to break down what you do know into something that you can do
next. So for the listeners who are out there, and I want to look, I want to give value to everybody
who's listening to this podcast today. And whether you're a beginning investor or like a seasoned
investor, I'm hoping there's something from what we talk about today that you can really take away.
But in each case, it's going to be that you have to break it down and take the next step.
And when you're a real estate investor, there's a lot of those things that if you just
push the boulder up to the plateau, the effort ends and you get to reap the benefits of it
long time.
I, you know, I love this concept.
And I think when you were on the show the first time, I really started my mind working
toward this, like, idea that, and I say it now on the podcast all the time.
and I really think you were probably the origin of this,
is that every difficult thing in life is really just,
like there's nothing hard.
I always said there's nothing hard.
It's just steps that you haven't defined yet or practiced enough.
In other words,
and then I also say like everything could be broken up
into like five minute tasks.
Everything, like building a nuclear bomb is a series of five minute tasks.
It's like connect this wire there,
install this piece of plutonium there.
Like everything could be broken up into five minute or less tasks
that like a fourth grader could do in almost every way,
and almost everything.
And so like, yeah,
when you take that time,
to really ask, well, what is the most important next step?
What is that next thing?
What is the vacuum my truck moment in this thing?
All of a sudden, you realize, like, you could go and build a gigantic real estate fund,
or you could go and buy properties out of state, or you could go, you could do a number.
You could go, like, you go to the moon.
Like, there's just, it's so freeing to realize that it's not difficult.
It's just steps.
And so once you define what those steps are, you're going to figure it out.
And once you practice them, then it becomes easy.
then it becomes who you are.
And like, you know, you and I would go by a duplex tomorrow.
It wouldn't be a big deal because we've done the steps.
We've defined them.
Yeah.
And you stop telling yourself you have to eat the entire watermelon.
Yes.
Yeah.
You know, it's time to cut it up.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, the one difference is fourth, you said a fourth grader can do it.
I've taught fourth graders before.
Remember, I was a teacher.
Here's the difference.
Fourth graders will ask for help.
Yeah.
So one other thing I've done in the last three years since I was on your guys show is I
I mentored a 20-year-old who came to me after the show. Now, he was a friend of a friend. It wasn't
just some random thing, but he heard the podcast episode. And he came to me. He said, hey, we both know
this person. And now I know you. Will you mentor me to, I want to be a real estate investor?
20 years old, he opted not to go to college, which for him was the right choice. It wasn't the
right time to incur debt. And he wanted to start investing in real estate. But it was still at 20 years
old, a lot of it was still over his head and it wasn't dumbed down enough to the point where it was like,
hey, go and get this form in this particular county and go and do this.
So it's really helpful when you're starting out in real estate that you have somebody who you're
talking with or who you're with who can kind of define the parameters for you and give you
an ecosystem in which to be stupid and ask really stupid questions.
The second thing that I had him do, and this is something everybody who's listening should do right now.
If you've never done this, this is the first step. And I hereby, as King of the Universe,
I forbid you to reach out to a mentor until you've taken this step. Go on Google, search a blank
agreement of sale for your state. In Pennsylvania, it's about 19 pages long to get the Pennsylvania
Association of Realtors Agreement of Sale. I can print out all 19 pages, and I said,
this home, read it through seven to ten times. Don't you dare call me again until you've read
through this agreement of sale seven to ten times. And on the tenth time that you read through it,
take a highlighter and highlight each section of the agreement of sale that you do not,
that you still don't understand after your seventh time through. Because honestly, if you understand
an agreement of sale, that's like real estate 101. And that's a superior education that most people
never get because they don't take the time to understand what the tool that they're using. So with this kid,
he did exactly that. He was a great mentee. Is that the word mentee? Sure. He printed out an agreement of
sale. He marked it up. He brought it back to me a week later. And we went through together and looked at,
okay, here's the parts he still didn't understand. And then he understood how to analyze a deal,
like here's good numbers, here's good rents for what the price is. But he didn't understand how to make an
actual offer on a property. He understood this one would be good if I was able to rent it,
but how do I actually go and get it? So he and I just, we took a bunch of paper agreements
to sale and we plugged in dummy properties at first stuff that was never going to leave my office,
just him and I going through it. And we plugged in the amounts. We plugged in the sales data.
And here's the crowning irony. When he goes to a real estate agent, they're going to use DocuSign
or something similar, what's it called? Dot loop to do this.
It'll be done digitally, but he would never have been comfortable filling out a docu sign agreement of sale without me going through and doing the whole like highlighter and pen and writing into a normal agreement of sale to get him ready to make his first deal.
That was really key for him.
A lot of people will ask that question, Bryce, what do you do in an escrow?
What happens here?
What happens there?
And you're making a very good point because everything that occurs in an escrow is coming right out of the contract.
Exactly.
That's what spells out everything that you're going to do.
So if you go through there and you understand, okay, I have a 15-day inspection contingency.
What is that for?
Well, you want to make sure that the property you're buying is in the condition you want it to be in or the right neighborhood,
but you don't have time to do all that work before you're at an offer.
So there's a period that you have to do it where you can back out if you see something that you don't like.
Well, what kind of stuff do we get inspected?
Well, let's look for termites.
Let's look for a home inspection.
You can sort of really systematically break down everything that goes into buying real estate,
starting with that as your skeleton.
Absolutely.
And the problem is this.
Most people don't look at an agreement of sale until they have a like a time deadline deal
that they're trying to get.
And then all of a sudden they're trying to learn their way through an agreement of
sale all 19 pages of it.
And they're up against other offers or there's a highest and best due.
And now they're trying to educate themselves on an agreement of sale.
Because the realtor can't just tell you, here, sign here, initial here,
a sign here initially here. That's not the right thing for a real to do. You have to understand what
you're signing and how you're making an agreement before you do it. You don't want to learn when you
have a hot deal in front of you that you don't want anybody else to get ahead of, you need a hold of.
That's not the time to try to figure out an agreement of sale. Yeah. So for me, I had put in a bunch
of reps on all the properties that I already own and gone through it so much, but I realized this kid
needs to put in a bunch of reps, we'll call them dry reps without an actual deadline.
on the hook so that when we have one ready to go, he can do it quickly and know what numbers
and everything he's going to put into the agreement of sale.
Yeah, that makes a lot of stuff.
And that was a absolutely 100% free step. I don't know. It cost me 19 pages of paper
and however much printer ink I use to get it into his hands. But it was a really free step
that turned him into actually a much more sophisticated investor over a fairly short amount of time.
So that's how you'd recommend that new people trying to get started.
that's one of the ways to make your forward.
Like I said, if I'm king of the universe,
I'm going to forbid you to call Brandon or call David or call anybody else
until you've put in that level of work.
That's your test.
Will you do that?
Will you download an agreement of sale and do that part?
And then come to somebody with an AOS,
an agreement of sale that's marked up and say to them,
these are the remaining parts I don't understand.
Can you explain to me how this goes?
It's a lot easier for them to help you instead of them taking a toddler.
and trying to turn them into a real estate investor.
Yeah, that's cool.
It certainly shows more respect for the person you're going to talk to as well.
Absolutely.
You're trying to skip the learning process by going right to the source and saying,
just tell me what I'm supposed to do.
But then you've got to come back a million other times to ask a million other questions
as opposed to really having a grasp of understanding what goes on.
I think that's good advice.
Yeah, and then let me throw this out there too.
The deal that this guy ended up buying, the triplex that he bought,
I did not go to see it with him.
Yeah.
And I told him, I think this is a good deal from the outside,
but I don't know, and I'm not going to tell you whether you should go through with this or not,
because honestly, I don't want to be culpable if things go south after you buy and move into the
place. So I've given you all the knowledge. I know how to give you. I've prepared you with what I know,
but now you have to walk through the threshold of that investment property on your own, like a man.
So man up and do it. And I'm out of the picture. You know, call me if you have any questions or anything on
how to, you know, do whatever is next.
But this is you alone doing it.
Your name's going to be on the deed, not mine.
Yeah, that's good point.
So, you know, we walked him through it and he did it.
It was terrific.
And now he's a landlord at 20, now he's 21.
That's cool, man.
That's really cool.
So he's a landlord at 21 years old.
So let's great.
Let's go back to your story again a little bit.
I want to get more caught up on what you've done in the last year now.
So, or the last couple of years since being on the show.
So what have you done with you?
Where were you at?
What was your portfolio size before?
What have you done since?
And then let's kind of walk through that last couple years.
So I'm going to give this caveat.
Sometimes when I've listened to a bunch of your guys podcasts,
and sometimes you guys interview people that seems so incredibly accomplished
that I listen to the podcast.
And what I come away with is the same emotions of like scrolling Facebook and seeing
people's vacations.
Yeah.
Like their photos from their vacation.
And you come away and you're like, well, it must be nice to be them.
But I could never have that vacation or whatever.
So before I say this, I know the temptation is like it's on trying to flex or whatever and people are going to hear it and say, well, that must be nice to be him.
But there really are ways to do what I'm doing.
And hopefully we can spell some of those out.
So I basically doubled the revenues from my portfolio.
I went from 23 to 37 units.
Wow.
And I did that while simultaneously decreasing the geographical radius of my portfolio.
What do you mean?
Like you just like bought all in one area?
Yeah, I went, I was tired of driving.
I don't like driving a whole lot.
So I bought places that were adjacent to the places I already owned by 1031 exchanging
out of other places that I owned that were farther away.
Interesting.
You're going to think I'm a spoiled brat because a lot of investors that I talk to are like,
I would kill to have all of my properties in one city.
But for me, I wanted to control the block and the neighborhood that I already had invested in deeply.
So I can actually show you guys if I screen share.
here. This might be neat. Yeah, do it. My market is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For those of you who are just
listening and not looking, my market is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is essentially an hour and
change west of New York City. It is about an hour north of Philadelphia. Bethlehem, Allentown,
and Easton comprise what's called the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. It's the third largest metro area
in the state. It has about 850,000 residents. And for my money, it's a perfect area for a number of
reasons. One, it's growing. It's one of the only areas in the northeast that the population is growing like
gangbusters. And two, it is a gigantic logistics hub. FedEx and Amazon both have freight hubs in the
Lehigh Valley, which means they land freight here. And then the Lehigh Valley is essentially one legal
truckers day drive to half of the nation's population. Oh, wow. So that's key because it means it's a
great area for logistics. And also the land here is, I would say, as cheap as you can get,
as far east as you can get in the United States. So if you keep going east from where I am,
you're in New York or you're in New Jersey and prices tend to get a lot higher in those areas,
whereas the Lehigh Valley, by comparison, is still very well priced.
I will guide my screen here as it doesn't get too crazy. Sorry.
So it's a terrific downtown Bethlehem is.
This is another reason I've invested in this area.
The downtown is a historic downtown.
It's somewhere that a lot of young professionals want to live.
It has a lot of restaurants, which meant something before COVID,
and will mean something again briefly.
But it's somewhere where it's actually, it's fun to live here.
The Lehigh Valley is, it's a great place to invest.
And if you're like a remote investor like David from California or somebody like him,
this is an area that a lot of investors have moved into because the price ratio
to the kind of rent that you can charge is very good.
Yeah.
So this is Main Street, Bethlehem.
There are restaurants, there are shops, there's,
outdoor shopping and dining. And all of my properties are basically within a three to four block
radius of this hip hop happening downtown. Oh, wow. So what I'm talking about happened with this
as a context. I don't think it would work everywhere, but it worked in my market because there's a high
demand and I can rent my places very quickly. I have somewhere close to zero days vacancy every year
in all 37 of my units.
So the strategy that I utilized was I basically burred inside of a deal.
And I can explain what that means to all the listeners who do.
I mean, I'm assuming most of your listeners know what a burr is.
Yeah, buy rehab, rent, refinance, repeat.
But for those who don't know, yeah, it's like a flip that you hold on to.
Exactly.
Step one is I found an off-market deal because I went in and started talking to a 92-year-old
real estate investor who knew other.
92-year-olds. And they're looking to unload their portfolio without leaving their
airs with a gigantic mess to clean up. So I found an older gentleman who was trying to sell a 21
unit portfolio, and he wanted $1.6 million for those 21 units. Now, there's a five unit in there
that I did not want, and I also did not have $1.6 million, nor would I have gotten approved for a loan
to buy a $1.6 million portfolio.
So I talked to the guy and I convinced him to peel off the five unit and sell me 16 contiguous
units that were adjacent to mine.
Were these multifamily or single family?
Yeah, it was two duplexes and a 12 unit that were all completely contiguous.
So here's how I structured the deal.
We negotiated a price of $1,050,000 for those 16 units,
contiguous units. I still did not have $1,050,000. In fact, I was rubbing pennies together. I went to my
father-in-law whom I had borrowed money out of a helock from before. That was how I had kind of used
like hard money in the past was to utilize a helic from my father and my father-in-law and then
refinance out and pay them back. Sure. And this is my biggest ask ever. I borrowed $315,000
from my father-in-law. Now, when we brought the deal to the settlement,
an agent, they divided up these two purchases on separate huds. So the two duplexes were able to be
conveyed on one deed. That was four of the 16 units. And the 12 unit needed to be a standalone
transaction. I used the $315,000 to buy the two duplexes with cash for a purchase price of
$265,000. They appraised for $330,000, right.
away. Nice. And I went to a bank and said, I would like to get a refinance loan based on the $330,000 valuation.
Now, this is where it harkens back to what we were talking about before. Remember, banks want to loan
money based on the value of the collateral asset. So even though I had just purchased this property
for $200 and, what did I say, $65,000, it appraised for $330,000.
and the bank was willing to loan me 80% of the 330, not 80% of the original purchase price.
Now, not all banks are going to be willing to do that, but I found a local bank that was willing to do that.
So I immediately refied back out, what would that be, $267,000 of the $330,000 purchase price.
I still hadn't bought the 12 units.
but now I had $267,000 in cash still in my hand because I had refinanced it back out of these two
duplexes, which I now owned. And then I went to settlement on the 12 unit and used the $267,000
as the down payment for the remaining $785,000 purchase price for the 12 unit.
So I essentially, it was within a month.
I birded within the deal, bought those properties.
I still had a little bit of change left over.
I did some renovations.
And within a year, the value of the 16 units was $1.5 million.
Wow.
And I refinanced back out and paid back my father-in-law, his $315,000 and gave it back to him.
So that, and that was $0 of my own money.
I didn't hurt my father-in-law at all because I was willing to pay the ongoing interest on his
he lock every month. And I was able to grab property and make sure it cash flowed,
get a new valuation and pay everybody back out. And now the equity is all mine and the cash
flow that these properties throw off is all mine. That's cool. So when you're a real estate investor,
this kind of stuff crops up. When you can drive the value of the property up, you can bar,
more money against the increased value of the property. That's the Burm method.
Now, I want to throw out something here that's a lesson for every advanced real estate investor,
and that's this. I ran into some hard times when I was renovating the 12 unit. First of all,
it was filled with tenants who were not great. Within eight months, two of my tenants had died.
I was carrying naloxone or Narkin around because one of my tenants get, which by the way is how
you revive someone from a heroin overdose is naloxone or narkin.
And my tenant had said, if you ever find me unconscious, use this to revive me.
The day before settlement on a 12 unit.
Yeah, exactly.
Now I'm carrying around.
The day before settlement, the seller called me and said, hey, by the way, in the front
hallway, you're going to find a head hole in the drywall because two of the tenants got
into a fight in the front hallway and one of them put the other one's head through the
wall just so you know, that's waiting for you when you take ownership. So it wasn't all easy,
breezy. I walked into a really difficult situation. And my wife and I had to figure out everything
from tracking down next of kin for a deceased tenant to dealing with a funeral home who didn't
have next of kin to doing an estate clean out for an apartment with food on the table and in the
refrigerator and honestly drugs and other stuff up to your knees inside of the apartment.
It was not great.
And this place was in not great condition.
But over the course of the year, the reason that the value went up so much is I busted my
butt.
I managed contractors.
I did a lot of the work to add some sweat equity to the place.
And we turned around all 12 units to turn it into something that now is highly desirable.
It's clean.
It's neat.
It's trendy.
it's somewhere that my tenants now want to live, but it was not easy.
And it took a lot of a lot of hard work.
That's cool, man.
Something else I want to throw out to you guys, David and Brandon, this may help.
I also had a contractor who was working on that 12 unit.
Now, I didn't pull permits because the contractor was not doing work that required permits.
Sure.
He was replacing flooring and cabinets.
So there was no need for me to get a permit from the city.
he injured himself while he was working at my place, and I had simply taken his word that he was
adequately insured before he started doing work on my property.
Landlords out there, that's a no-no.
You want an additional insured certificate from your contractor's insurance agent before he even
darkens the threshold of the door, because if he's not adequately insured, that can come back
on you as the owner of the property.
And I'll throw this out there too.
If you're just doing side work, like you have, you hired a kid, a high school kid to
clean out your gutters or something like that.
And that kid falls off a ladder.
The first thing that they ask at intake at the ER is how did you injure yourself?
And they want to know whether it was a work related injury or just a normal injury.
And that triage is where the insurance claim goes to.
So even if you're a big wig real estate investor,
this point, you have, you need to protect yourself against potential stuff like this. Thankfully,
with, with this contractor who hurt himself, I was able to make the case that I was not his employer,
which that's the first thing they look for. And therefore, I was not obliged to carry workers' compensation
to have this guy working on my property because otherwise, I didn't have workers comp because I don't
have employees. There's actually no way for me to get it. And I had to go through a whole rigum
rule with my insurance agent of he's like, why did you?
not have this paper in hand. I'm like, you didn't tell me I needed to get it in hand from everybody.
So I don't know if you guys have ever run into that or if you've operated without ever having to
deal with a problem like that. But you've got to protect yourself when you have this kind of work done.
Even if you're a big wig or you have lots of units, that can come back and bite you.
And it's a precaution that you need to take. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
So it was trying and difficult. And the number one point I walked away with it was.
either you have to have somebody who has an insurance certificate that they're sending to you,
or if you're having somebody do side work on one of your properties and it's not,
they're not an insured contractor because the kind of work that they're doing is not something
that's insured. You want to have somebody and talk to your insurance agent about this.
You want somebody who has what's called a workers compensation waiver form.
It's them agreeing to not pursue a workers comp claim if they happen to be injured.
They're waiving their right to workers' compensation.
So talk to your insurance agent about a workers' comp waiver form.
There's probably some big investors out there right now who tomorrow are having people
doing work in their properties who do not have a certificate or it's somebody's cousin
helping them do demo because they're doing demolition on a unit and a person doesn't have
adequate medical insurance.
Guys, this is so important.
It's so important that I actually wrote a song that I'm going to play.
for you to drive this point home for all of your investors.
No, did you really?
About how there's a lot of really dumb things that you could do.
Bryce is grabbing his guitar right now for those who can't see this.
Yeah, if you can't, if you can't see it, you can hear it.
This is a first on the podcast.
Just, you know, this is called the have your workers sign a workers comp waiver
reform.
There's a lot of dumb things you could do, but this one is dumb to not have them do it.
Are we ready?
Here we go.
Let's hear it.
I hear it.
You can leave your sunroof.
open in the middle of a storm. But don't forget, all workers need a workers' comp waiver form.
You can lean up against the stove top while the burners are still warm. Just don't forget,
all workers need a workers' comp waiver form. You can run into the courthouse and pull the fire alarm.
just don't forget all workers need a workers' comp wave reform.
You can walk to the devil and you can grab him by the horn.
Just don't forget all workers need a workers' comp wave reform.
Remember it.
Even if you're a big investor, I hope that song plants in your brain.
Bryce, you have a way of making statements that people are going to remember
forever. So yeah, I hope so. That's funny. Yeah, I have, I have been there. Those are some big lessons
that I learned. That stuff comes to you one step at a time. It starts with perfecting the step that
you're on. It starts with doing those little steps that you have that are right in front of you.
It starts by asking for help from people who know how to define an ecosystem of answers for you,
like I did with that kid who was just starting out. He could really ask stupid questions.
and make mistakes on paper with me that I could tell him that's not going to work out.
And he was willing to do the work to get up to that point.
So for me, a few things have helped drive that home.
One is, again, I joined the M1 Mastermind.
I found a lot of great answers there from how to do a wholesale agreement.
I had never done a wholesale deal.
I did one of those in the last three years.
I made $40,000 off of it.
That was terrific.
And each step, you're going to be able to ask for help.
But you have to make sure you're not afraid of looking.
looking stupid, like asking how to go get a form on a website. So you can take yourself past the finish
line. The other thing I did in the last three years was I wrote a book on house hacking.
Nice. It took me a really long time. You guys have both written books, so you probably know how
this works. It takes a long time. It's like giving birth to a pine cone. It hurts and it's
slow and it's not always a fun process and it can get messy. But what's it called? Yeah, my book is
called House Hacker's Guide to the Galaxy. And essentially, it breaks down my journey in
house hacking one stupid little step at a time from the perspective of me and my wife going from
being, again, scared kids who had just gotten married and were in debt to being financially
free. And now we have four kids. We live in our dream house. It's been funded by house hacking
essentially. That's awesome. Hey, first of all, where do people get the book just so they can go and
check it out.
You can buy the book on Amazon.
The show producer said he'd put the hyperlink in the show notes so you can do that.
But it's on Amazon.
You can buy a paperback copy or get an e-copy for your Kindle or for any other e-reader
that you have.
If you just search HouseHackers Guide, it should be one of the first choices.
And I'd love it if you read it.
It's a, like I said, a stupidly simple perspective on how to take each step one at a time
in the process of house hacking.
That makes sense.
Cool, man.
Cool. Congrats. Yeah, writing a book is a, is a battle as a process. Yeah, I wrote,
I wrote when this year is coming out next year also. It is a, it's a journey. It's good for
clarifying your thoughts and all that just like mentoring people. But yeah, it's awesome. So
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All right, Bryce, I got a few more questions to throw at you before we get out of here
today.
First of all, if you had to sum up like the last three years, if you had to create a theme,
like the last, since you've been on the show last time, if like, what's the theme of the last
couple years?
If you had to sum it up, like, let's say you're going to write a book, a biography of the
last two years of your life.
What's the title of that book?
What are the lessons you, the biggest?
I say the theme is this. One, I know this is going to be long, but I'm not a disciplined person. I'm not self-disciplined. Type A people are a mystery to me. Even people who are able to get up early and knock it out of the park every day. That's a mystery to me too. The only thing I've got going for me is I've been willing to move, I'll put it like this. I've been willing to move the ball three yards on every down. I just tell myself every day, okay, there's something I can do today.
whether it's just print out a stupid little form and leave it on the printer for tomorrow,
I'm just going to take one stinking step today that benefits my portfolio that gets me headed towards my goals.
You have to have goals so you know where you're headed.
But once you have those goals in place and they're clear to you and you love the goals
and they look like something that you really want, then you just have to say, okay, today I'm going to call this person.
Today I'm going to do this Google search and download this form.
And then tomorrow, and you'll run into stuff where you're like, I don't know what's next.
Okay.
Call somebody who does know what's next.
So I would say the theme is move the football three yards tomorrow.
And then three yards the day after that.
And you'll keep getting first downs.
That's so good.
That's so good.
Love with this question.
What's one thing in school that should be taught that is not?
If you were the emperor of the galaxy, what would you force?
I was the rule of the galaxy.
Well, one thing I'll say is this.
Schools, in a lot of ways, a cruel setup for kids.
If you think about it, if you guys have a boss, if you had a boss anymore, and your boss gave you a project and you worked on that project for a month.
And then after a month, your boss came in and said, this is all wrong.
This is not how I wanted it.
You'd be like, I just spent one 12th of my year doing this.
It would have been really nice to know on day two that we were headed in the wrong direction.
and it's because humans really like a tight feedback loop.
They don't like futility.
They don't like their work to be squandered.
So they like to know quickly,
am I headed in the right direction with this
or am I headed in the wrong direction with this?
And the cruel thing that we do to kids
or we have historically is we teach them some concept in class.
They get homework that they take home
and they try it out that night.
And let's say they get it completely wrong.
they bring the homework back the next day.
The teacher, if they're a great teacher, collects it that day and then takes it home
again to grade it that night.
And by the time the kid gets the feedback loop, I did this wrong.
It's three days after they actually did the real assignment.
And it's impossible for them to quickly correct when the setup is like that.
The one, I'll say the one blessing of digital curriculum is that in some ways, if done right,
it can provide a much quicker feedback loop.
This is why kids like video games,
because video games have a very tight feedback loop.
Oh, I died.
Okay, reset, start it over again.
I got to try that all over again.
Okay, I died again.
I'll do that again.
And they can modify their behavior quickly
and start experiencing more and more success with each iteration.
That's why you need a mentor when you're first starting out
because they can give you that quick feedback loop
and say, that's not going to work.
The seller's never going to go for it.
Try again.
Start over.
instead of failing through bad deals,
you want somebody who can really provide you
with a tight feedback loop.
So if I could change anything about education,
it would be a tight feedback loop,
especially on money and financial education.
Yeah.
Agreed 100%.
By the way,
instead of finding out after you graduate college
that you're $100 grand in debt
and you didn't pick a major
that's going to pay that debt off very quickly.
That's not a very good feedback loop.
A thousand percent agreed.
All right.
Right.
So Bryce,
let's go, you know, we talked earlier about mentorships and mentoring people and talking to people.
And a lot of people listen to this show maybe are in that position that, like that 20 year old that
reached out to you or in.
So what I like to do is kind of a new segment of our show and I don't have a catch phrase or catchy title yet for this section.
But basically we're going to call it, I'm coming up right now.
I'm going to call it the, for those just getting started, how would you answer the following?
So in other words, if somebody, that's a lame, lame title for this section, but we're going to work on that one.
But imagine like there's people listening to show that are brand new.
And you're really good at explaining concepts.
I want to throw some of the most commonly asked questions from new investors at you
and see how you would advise people in these situations.
Not good.
Got it.
As long as I'm not taking on any moral culpability.
Yes, exactly.
All right.
Would you buy this exact property?
I'm just kidding.
First question is if somebody says I can't invest in real estate, I don't have the money.
How do you respond to that?
My first go to is where's all your money going? I'm going to say this. Real estate investing is not a
transactional thing. It's a long thing. Okay. So if you are saving up money to make towards a down payment,
the saving up of the money is part of real estate investing. Okay. So like if you have a car that's way
too expensive. By the way, the number one selling car in the United States is an F-150. If you have an
F-150 that you don't need and it cost you $40,000, the way to start investing in real estate is to
liquidate what you don't need and to start having more money so that you can make a down payment.
You can't just say I can't begin investing in real estate because there's no deal on your desk.
it starts with the choices that come before.
So my first piece of advice would be sign up for Wynab,
which is you need a budget.com.
Sign up for that.
Make sure you know where all your money is going.
And then we'll talk about you not having money to make a real estate investment.
If you have really bad financial habits and I walk you into a real estate investment,
guess where all the profit from that investment is going to go?
It's going to continue to go towards your bad spending.
habits. So in one sense, look, this sounds really bad, but you have to deserve to make profits
from real estate by tending the money that you already have well. And for some people, you're not
ready. You need to pay off your school debt or your car debt before you even think about investing in
real estate. And those steps are part of investing in real estate because once you dispose of them,
you're ready to actually buy a property. That's so good, man. That's so good. Yeah, it really does
begin with that financial foundation.
Like, people are like, well, I don't have any money.
I can't invest in real estate.
Well, like, are you at least willing to commit to live in on a budget?
And I love that you mentioned you need a budget, the YNAB.
They're actually a sponsor of this episode of the podcast earlier.
Like, I don't even think you knew that, right?
Like, they're just like, they're a legit company, though, like that I've, I've known about
and used for a long time.
Like, it's just where's your money going?
Like, live on a budget and make it easy and simple easy to follow.
So, yeah, great advice.
Well, let me throw this out there, too.
there's probably really experienced real estate investors out there who are making lots of money.
And then the minute it comes under their roof in the form of profits, they're not taking care of it.
So all this work that they've done out there going and landing a really great property,
they're still pulling their hair out in their home, but not budgeting correctly.
And let me say this, in Wynab's defense, it costs less than it costs for one session of marriage counseling.
okay and my wife and I went from our budget being it was always a retrospective
discussion where we looked at okay here's our bank ledger and we yelled at each other why did you
spend land money on this why is this on the credit card why did you do this it was all budgeting to
me was always guilt inducing and retrospective why nab is essentially the envelope system
digitally yep so that instead of budgeting being about looking back
backwards at what you spent, you are allocating all of your money going forwards and it helps you
know, okay, after everything is earmarked, here's how much disposable income I have left over to
actually go and do something with like invest in real estate. But it gives you a much better picture
of where your money can go in the future rather than, to me, budgeting was always looking
backwards and feeling bad. It's a key difference. Makes sense. That's really good. I like
it's empowering, basically. And it changes your whole mindset towards, oh, I'm excited. I'm allocating
$200 towards entertainment. How do you think we can stretch that $200 as far as it'll go? Where should we
go versus why did you go spend that money on entertainment? Right. Yeah. I'm telling you,
it changed our marriage. It really did. Okay. Next question for you here. For those just getting
started, how would you answer this? There are no good deals left. The market is too inflated.
I would say you're probably right. Let's watch Netflix.
There we go. End of show. All right.
No. Well, I would say you want to buy David Green's book because David is in a market that a lot of people think is bloated, which is the Bay Area.
And they feel like I can't even break into this market. But the good thing about being, let's say you live in the Bay Area is you can use California money and California equity.
and arbitrage that to go find a cash flowing property in the Midwest or in the southeast of the United States.
Now, granted, you might not be able to house hack that and move out there the way that I did.
But don't be, if you own a house in Cal in the Bay Area, you could have millions of dollars of equity that is right now frozen,
that with a very easy, either home equity line of credit or with a cash out refinance,
you could reallocate that money and go through David's protocols to go find a good property
manager in a market that is going to cash flow as soon as you buy it, instead of just closing
your eyes and looking around at what happens to be in your neighborhood.
And it's a very advantageous arbitrage, by the way, because prices, and I'll say values,
values in California are super high.
And let me, I'm going to throw this on there right now.
If you're listening to this and you already own a home right now, like while you're
listen to this podcast, go take showing grade pictures of your house and save them on your computer
and have them always ready along with a description, a showing description of your home,
ready to rock and roll. Because if your life goes sideways or you need to move or you want to
move, having that stuff ready to rock and roll can mean that you can sell your house more
quickly or you can even refinance more quickly. And it doesn't cost you.
anything to have pictures of your house cataloged on your computer.
My wife, since the last podcast we did, my wife and I sold our house.
I had my wife take pictures of our pool and landscaping in May with nothing on the horizon.
And we ended up, we didn't even know where we were going to do.
But I knew this.
I knew that come September, we were not going to be able to go back and take May pictures.
Oh, that's true.
So in May, you take May pictures.
You cataloged them and you save them, you know, the first.
flowers are new, the mulch is new, the pool is clean. And then when we went to sell it in September,
those were the outside pictures that we used to sell our place. And honestly, we had an offer
within like 24 hours of listing our place on Zillow. Yeah, that's cool, man. All right,
next question, we got a couple more for you in this section of how would you respond to this question
from a new investor, and I need a better name for this. My spouse does not want to invest. How do I
convince them to invest in real estate?
Well, first, I would say this.
When you start out and you have a dream of being a real estate investor, it is like a fledgling
bird.
Okay?
Its wings can barely open.
Its eyes can barely open.
It has to have worms chewed up and fed to it.
And that is your real estate investing dream.
And the people that are closest to you, they will accidentally step on that baby bird
and kill it before it has the chance to grow into something that is sustainable.
So I'm going to say this.
Don't go to your significant other right away with your dream.
Because one, they may have had a bad day.
They may be stressed.
They may not have read all the books that you've read or listen to the podcast that you've read.
Or they might be the kind of person who is too analytical and they're going to shut you down
preemptively while your dream is still fledging.
I would say do this instead.
Get your own private journal, like a moleskin journal, something that folds flat and is easy to write on.
And start writing down what you actually want and how you think best you can get there.
Read books, listen to podcasts and write notes on it.
And give that dream some legs and some life before you expose it to anybody's criticism.
Because even the love of your life may, in advance.
inadvertently kill your dreams before you, you know.
So do that and then then show them, bring expert testimony when you actually have the
idea and say, you know, I've done a lot of work on this and I have answers that I'm bringing
you instead of guesses and postulates.
There you go.
I think that's probably sound advice overall is don't take every single idea or dream you
have to your spouse or your significant other.
Right.
They're not a one-size, one-stop shop for everything that you would want.
and it may be in their best interest in their own head to shoot that idea down because that's
a risk that's going to lose that money. So don't pit yourself against the other person where each
of you are trying to look out for your own best interests. Okay, I've got another question for you.
Sure. I want to invest in real estate. Where do I go to find the best deals? Geographically,
where? Website, geographically, realtor, like just what do I do if I just want to get a good deal?
Well, I would start by analyzing your local market because you're going to have at least some boots on the ground knowledge of where you happen to live.
Again, it may be that you find out it's overpriced, it's bloated, and there's no deals there.
But that's something you should go and find out first is in your local market.
So for me, that's where I started.
It just so happened that I think I lived in one of the best places to invest over the last 10 years on the Eastern Seaboard.
I mean, I kind of lucked into that one. Thanks a lot. But do that first because you're going to know
boots on the ground, okay, this is where the street is where I wouldn't invest past this street
because the neighborhood turns into as it goes here. And you're going to know this area is up
and coming. You know, we ate at that restaurant. We went here. We went there. Start with your own
knowledge. Then I would say, if you're up for it, get on a realtors auto email for not just your
neighborhood, but like your county or your zip code or whatever, if it doesn't bug you too much,
have Zillow plug stuff into desire, the zip codes around you. It's scary to invest outside of
area. I think you need a, you always need somebody with boots on the ground knowledge to invest in
any area. So otherwise you're taking too big of a chance. I'm assuming David, when he invests in
out of area properties, he at least has somebody who knows which street.
it becomes not a good investment on and which street is up and coming.
And maybe he built a relationship of trust there, but that's the person that he asks because
he built that network.
So start where you are, start even with your own house.
How can you optimize that?
Can you refinance into a lower interest loan?
Can you get a he lock?
Can you cash out refinance?
And then start concentric circles outside from there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When I wrote long distance real estate investing, what I realized was it was really a book about
systems. It's the same process, Brandon, I'm sure you'd agree, Bryce, you'd agree. It's doing the same
things over and over and over, but it's a different solution at every step. You can't repeat the same
solution, but the steps are almost always the same. And I realized that I needed other people to do those
things. So like you said, Bryce, that's exactly right. You get a person who knows the area really good,
often your property manager. Well, you're already going to need a property manager, so boom, two
birds with one stone. Right. You're going to need a person who is going to find you the deals. Well,
that person often has lenders that work with investors because if you work with an agent who invest
frequently, they need to find people they can do financing so they can get their deals closed.
Boom, two birds with one stone. A lot of the stuff we talk about when we're discussing all
the work you have to do, people erroneously think they have to go find 50 different human
beings to do every step. The reality is you find your agent, they recommend a home inspector,
they recommend a roof person, they may have and they can go give you a quote on work that has to get done.
property manager might have a handyman if the agent doesn't. Both of them know what lender in town
tends to work with investors and maybe they put in a good word for you. A lot of the people in your
core four are finding out the periphery positions that you would need for different people.
And then you just keep cycling through those people until you find the ones you like and boom,
you've got a system. So I know one of the things that I've noticed that new investors make the
mistake of is they think it's kind of like buying stocks. We're like, well, do I use the Robin Hood app or
do I use this app? Like, what, what's, can I just listen to what stock that person bought and I'll just
go buy that stock. And real estate investing is very different than stock investing. It's not one
road that you take every time to get into that deal. There's a bazillion different roads.
There's sometimes the handyman himself or the home inspector has like, well, I know that
house down the street needs a lot of work. No one's buying that thing. And you never would have even
thought of it if you weren't talking to enough people. Yeah. And tell me if this is, if you agree with
this too, David. That kid who I mentored, right, who bought the triplex, you know, he wanted a deal,
but if I right away had walked him up to that triplex and again, just handed him a docu sign and said,
initial here, sign here, initial here, do this here, that would not have achieved the result
that I wanted because I couldn't just hand him a deal. I needed to turn him into somebody who
could be a real estate investor. He had to grow and learn. And,
then we had to go get a deal.
Yeah.
It sounds like what you're saying, David, is that a lot of people come to you and they're like,
how do I find a deal without growing personally?
Yeah.
And increasing my own skills.
I just want it, you know, over and done with it.
And the answer is you should invest in a REIT or you should be a limited partner in a syndication.
Yeah, it should be a limited partner in a syndication because you want an app-based
solution to real estate investing.
you don't want to grow into a real estate investor.
That's what I loved about your answer when you said,
you can't just go watch Netflix.
That really is the best answer of that person.
Sometimes I get this as an agent when they're like,
okay, David, I want a fixture up or that I can burr,
and I want it to cash flow at the 2% rule,
but it has to be in the best school district,
and I really want to view.
But my mom, she also has to approve
because she's going to come paying all the time,
and it needs to be the worst house on the block.
Like, what do we have to do?
And I'll say, you should just keep paying rent.
That's the only answer.
you can give someone who has the expectations like that.
They have not yet worked through this process to have realistic expectations and a clear
path for how to get what they want.
So the takeaway is sometimes the best thing you can do.
Like, yeah, just don't actually.
Tell me how it feels in 10 years when your rent went from 2000 a month to 3,800 a month.
Right.
Yeah.
Or, I mean, I'm not knocking Netflix.
There's some good stuff on there.
The crown is great.
There's some other.
You spend enough time not taking action and you start to realize that you were getting in
your own way, right?
looking for an app-based solution to the,
I want to able to retire from my job and not have to work anymore.
That's a really serious undertaking.
That's not something you just make a couple clicks.
You just buy Bitcoin, you'll be fine.
And let me save you the grief here, okay?
I'm sure you guys will both agree with this.
We are all investors, okay?
If you're listening to this, as king of the universe,
I hear by W an investor.
You are now a capital I,
and there's no going back and you don't get to outsource that title. You are an investor,
whether you ever buy real estate or not, you are investing in something. In my book, I say,
if you're a renter, you are a real estate investor because you are paying to live somewhere
and there is some opportunity for optimizing your financial scenario within that renting.
My wife, when we were really struggling and we were renting, she shopped like crazy for a cheap enough apartment for us to get into.
And it made like a $200 or $300 difference at a juncture when that was a really important $300 a month.
$300 of cash flow differential.
So my wife was real estate investing when she was looking for a more optimal renting scenario.
And I'm glad she put on the investor hat to try to, I'll call it to bring.
bring up the NOI for our little family corporation.
We needed to look at it like that.
And most people, they never internalized that lesson,
that you're an investor already.
You're the CEO of your homes corporation.
And your job is to maximize the income,
to begin to minimize the expenses
so that the NOI on this endeavor is profitable.
You're in that game whether you like it or not.
So you better start getting good at it.
there you go man this has been fun this has been fun so we got to get transitioning out of this
episode i got a Brazilian jiu jitsu instructor showed up in a few minutes so i'm going to left you
all go but before we get there let's get to today's famous four all right the famous four
these are the same four questions we ask every guest every week brice you're ready for the famous
four i know you answered this last time but i don't remember your answers nobody else does either
and maybe they're changed so number one favorite real estate book my favorite real estate book was
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Now it's the book on real estate investing by Brandon Turner.
Oh, man. Thank you. Wow. I feel so good. I'll send you your check later.
And my own book. Of course. Your own book. The On The Los Hacker's Guide of the Galaxy.
That's my favorite book. That's my favorite book. I haven't read it yet. It's my favorite
you should send me a coffee, man. All right. Question number two. I'll pay for it, but you know,
I want to sign copy from. Absolutely.
Stewart. This is going to be good. I'll sign it. All right. It's a plan guide to the galaxy.
Exactly right. Thank you. Thank you. Someone's educated.
All right. Number two, what's your favorite business book?
The last time I said think and grow rich, which is an unorthodox answer, and I just rewatched the episode.
I'm going to stick with it, and here's why. Think and grow rich is a mindset book from like the 1930s.
Yeah. Okay. And businesses are made up of people and people have mindsets. And so to the degree that you can improve your own
mindset, that will pay out dividends in whatever business endeavor you happen to be with a side note
of since meeting with you guys, I read the E-Mith, which stands for the entrepreneurial myth revisited.
That's a great book about what David was talking about, building systems that allow you more
passivity and more freedom. So think and grow rich and the E-Mith revisited.
Awesome, man. All right. What are some of your hobbies?
So I like playing guitar on podcasts.
Just kidding.
That's the first time I've ever done that.
So I have four daughters and we've been homeschooling them since quarantine, which means right now my hobby is being a principal and a warden.
Yep.
And a teacher and sometimes a police officer.
Yep.
I'm arresting homicides in progress in my own home because we've been quarantining.
But yeah, I like that.
I'm involved with Young Life, which is a ministry to high school kids all around the country.
It's a non-profit organization.
I love Young Life.
Young Life is terrific.
Last time I was a Young Life leader.
At this point, they demoted me to board chairman.
So now I'm in charge of raising funds and allocating resources for young life.
Fun.
Very cool, man.
All right.
Well, what do you think separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail,
or never get started?
I'll say this.
It's custom designing your future life.
I'm not going to say setting goals because I hate setting goals.
It feels like homework.
But people who are willing to custom design their life as if it was a product and then
figuring out how to reverse engineer that ideal life, they tend to be successful because
their actions can be directed towards a real target, and they're not just mirroring or flailing
around. They have defined what they want to produce. And it's like an iPhone, okay? They didn't just
like find a bunch of plastic and glass and circuits and then say, hey, we should build an iPhone.
Yeah. Yeah. They said, we need to make an iPhone. And that means we have to go out and find glass.
We have to go out and find silicon. We have to find germanium. They knew what to go get very
definite end product. Successful people in any endeavor, they start with what's the definite end product
that I want, and then they know what pieces to grab along the way. That's so good. Mike drop.
That's awesome. I really like your thinking there. Yeah. All right. Last question of the day.
Where can people find out more about you? So my website is bricestert.net. That has a link to my book.
It also talks a little bit about me as a investor, about the journey that I've been on. If you want to go to
my properties page and see my properties are really nice like nicer than my house nice those are
all listed on bethlehem rentals.com so both of those ways are ways to find out about me and then i have
a youtube channel which you can look up by just looking at bryce stewart on youtube as or bryce store
real estate might dial it in a little bit more specifically and uh that kid who i helped invest is
it going to help me do this youtube channel where we both from a pro perspective and a rookie
perspective simultaneously that's awesome
Very cool, man.
Well, we really appreciate having you here.
It's been a fun show.
It's great.
Last time, it was great this time.
But just learning from you.
And obviously, you know, as a former teacher, you know how to explain these concepts well.
So it's always good to have you teaching everyone how to do this stuff.
So thank you for joining us today.
It's been awesome.
You guys are terrific.
I'm pleased.
Thank you.
Thanks, Bryce.
It's great having you back.
This is David Green for Brandon.
Top Real Estate Book Turner.
Signing off.
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