BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 454: Retiring in 2 years Through “Aggressive” Rental Property Investing with Rachel Richards

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Retiring via passive income is why most people get into real estate, but rarely does someone accomplish that goal within just two years! Rachel Richards, real estate investor, agent, and author of Money Honey shares her story of aggressive real estate acquisition. All purchased, by the way, with at least 20% down! While her friends in high school may have been reading for fun, Rachel was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad and trying to find the best way to become financially free. After she graduated from college she took jobs where she felt underappreciated and at some points, humiliated. She realized that this was not the path she would go down, and started investing shortly after in 2017. By 2018, Rachel and her husband had acquired 38 doors. Yes, you heard that right, 38 doors in under two years! These rental properties allowed Rachel and her husband to retire, as they were making six-figure incomes solely from their properties alone. This didn’t mean two years in she was still a rookie. Far from it actually. Rachel had to systematize her rental properties as much as she could within those two years so she could manage them long distance without having huge headaches along the way. Rachel shares some interesting stories, from turning a duplex into a short-term boarding home, to catching her property managers stealing over $6,000 from her. She’s learnt a lot and put her knowledge into her books Money Honey and Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement, both of which may help you get to where she’s at now! In This Episode We Cover: Understanding how important financial independence is to your life Dismissing limiting beliefs that you can’t or shouldn’t do something Seller concessions and how you can use them to get more money at closing  Why being too frugal may lead you to lose more money in the long run Systematizing your long distance real estate investing And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Be a guest to the podcast Cutco Cutlery BiggerPockets Podcast 416: 29-Year Old Making Nearly $1M in Passive Real Estate Income (3 Years In!) with Matt Onofrio BiggerPockets Podcast 418: 14 Deals in 16 Months: How Alex Camacho Found his Mastery in Deal Finding BiggerPockets Podcast 320: Hands-On BRRRR Investing and DIY Secrets with Instagram Star Brittany Arnason BiggerPockets Podcast 398: 22 BRRRR Properties in Under 10 Hours Per Week with Tarl Yarber Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show454 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 454. And I just remember one time when she made me cry, I went to the bathroom and I was looking at myself in the bathroom. And I just decided right then, I am never going to let an employer treat me that way again. I'm never going to be trapped because of financial constraints. So that's what really got me going and being like, enough with excuses, enough of me saying I don't have enough money. I don't know enough.

I'm going to make this happen. And I got invested by age 24. 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 here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. What's up, David Green? How you doing? I'm doing great. I'm back in Northern California. Just got back from Tahoe yesterday. We had

our Gobundance event. Unfortunately, you couldn't make it, but I held it down for the two of us and had a great time. Thank you. Were you like the cool kid in the back, just smoking and leaning back on his chair? Everyone was like, oh, it's David Green. Is that how that was? What actually happens if everybody wants to know the reality is that when Brandon shows up, no one pays any attention to me at all. That's not even true at all. I get completely discarded and thrown to the back. I sabotaged Brandon so that he couldn't come. I put his name as a terrorist on the flight records so that he wouldn't be able to leave Hawaii using my law enforcement connections. And he wasn't able to come.

So I was the bell of the ball the whole time. I got all the attention. I was the pretty girl. So I had a great time. Way to be the pretty girl. That said, let's get into today's show with a phenomenal guest, Rachel Richards. Rachel, along with her husband, were able to build a portfolio of like dozens of units. And when I say units, you're going to find an interesting strategy they use that'll make more sense later than what I'm saying right now.

That they buy these properties and we're able to retire in not 10, not seven years, not five years, but two years after getting started, they were able to retire and live off their cash flow. You're going to learn about the aggressive model that Rachel follows to be able to do that. You're also going to hear a little, she got a lot of good tips in there, but things, make sure you listen for how she decides whether or not to do a task or not, like whether or not she should outsource it to do it herself. those really, really gold. And then just, it would be the $6,000 getting stolen from her. That's a crazy story. You're going to hear about that. And a whole lot more.

So all that and more to come. But first, let's get to today's quick tip. Today's quick tip is very simple. If you want to be a guest in the Bigger Pockets podcast and you've done at least a dozen deals, go to biggerpockets.com slash guest, G-U-E-S-T. You can upload your information, even like attach a video. Let us know why you are an amazing guest. and maybe we'll bring you on the show.

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If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Now, I think it's time to get into the show. Anything you want to add, David, before we bring in Rachel? Rachel's strategy, as you guys are going to hear today, is one of the most simple to replicate of any that I've heard. There's several other people that I've actually put on the path when they tell me what their goals are to using this strategy. Brandon hasn't coined a term for it, but stay tuned because I guarantee you he will.

If you decide this is something you want to do, go ahead and send me an email or reach out to me on social media. And I'll connect you with the people that I know in that market that can help you guys get started. Because I think for a lot of people, this is the best place to start their journey towards financial freedom. I do have a name for it. It's called the yard foot strategy or the yard inch. Yard inch. The yard inch strategy. That's what the new name is going to be.

You heard it here first, folks. It's not really that catchy, is it? I don't even see how it applies. You're going to have to break that one down. You buy by the yard and sell by the foot or buy by the yard and sell by the inch. That's the strategy. No. When you take some time to qualify it, it makes sense.

But I think you can do better. That said, let's get to the interview with Rachel Richards. Rachel, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. It is awesome to have you here. Yes, thank you, Brandon and David for having me. Yeah, so let's get into your story a little bit. How did you discover and get into the wide world of real estate investing? Like a lot of other people, I read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad in high school,

and that's what kind of sparked my passion for getting into high school. Yes. High school is not usually heard. That's unique. This is an overachiever, folks. Yes, I very much am. And actually, even at a younger age, I was reading personal finance books. Because I grew up in a really wealthy county. It was a very unrealistic bubble to grow up in. And I remember feeling like I didn't fit in. And that's not the way you want to feel in middle school and in high school. You know, my parents were always on a strict budget. Money was always a stressor in my family. And actually in sixth grade is when I read my first finance book, Motley Fool's Guide for Teens, how to have more money than your parents ever dreamed of. It's like, that sounds cool. started reading and I just couldn't stop learning ever since then. And I, that's kind of what sparked me wanting to become financially independent at a young age. That makes a lot of sense. All right. So you

read rich, yeah, poor dad. And then you're like, all right, this, this, the, the prescribed, like, pattern for life that 90% of people follow is not for me. So what did you do? I tried to figure out how I could invest in real estate as early as possible. In hindsight, I could have done this a lot sooner. I had a lot of limiting beliefs around I don't have enough experience. I don't know enough. I'm too young. I didn't have enough money. But I first went into college. I paid my way through school selling Cutco Cutlery. Have you guys heard of Cutcoe? Oh, yes. I'll tell you, there's a lot of great sales minds that came out of Cutco. I have a lot of respect for their training program. Yeah, yeah, they're great. So I was able to pay my way through school and graduate without debt.

I became a financial advisor because I had this passion for helping people learn about finance, and I had the sales background. The only problem was I wasn't interested in cold calling people for the next 10 years of my life. So I was like, oh, come on. Why not? That's fun. Yeah, why not? I was like, there has to be another way to teach financial literacy and impact people. So in the meantime, I was looking into real estate investing. And finally, at age 24, combined with my, you know, my husband's efforts and knowledge as well, we were able to purchase our first duplex. Was that a house tack? Did you live in one of it? You was a straight rental. It was a straight rental. And so a lot of people, you know, they see that we have 38 doors. We're young. They're like, you must be a trust fund baby.

And then I'm sure a lot of guests get that on this show. But no, we are not trust fund babies. I actually never made six figures from a job or a salary ever in my life. And when I graduated, I was only making $36,000. So it's not like I had any distinct financial advantage working for me. I was just really frugal. I was aggressively saving 50% of my income. So starting out, I was living off $1,500 per month. And by the time I was 24, my husband and I had saved money. So we eat. each put $10,000 in to get to a $20,000 down payment on that first rental. And that's how we got started. That's awesome. Where was that rental at? Louisville, Kentucky. That's where all six buildings are located for us. All right, Louisville, Kentucky. So yeah, definitely a cheaper market. Is that where

you live, I'm assuming then? It is where I used to live. Just last year, we moved out to Colorado. So we'll get to that part of the story, I guess. So tell me about that first duplex. I mean, what went right? What went wrong? A lot of both. So what went right and is that the way, that I found the property, it just worked really well for me. This is probably the greatest deal we've ever done was our first property, which is pretty unusual. I had my real estate license at the time because I had had it from a previous stint in real estate. I didn't ever work with clients, but I had it for my own purposes. Part of what I was doing in those early years was looking at the expired and canceled listings on the MLS and reaching out to those agents. But I think

other people might reach out once and learn, oh, can I make an offer? What's the going on, I was following up with people, you know, once a month, once every other month. And there was this duplex that I saw in a great part of Louisville at a really, really cheap price. I followed up with the list agent over six months just to be like, hey, I just want you know, I'm still interested, just want to stay top of mind. You know, when you're ready, I'm here. Super friendly. And before that seller relisted the property on the MLS, the list agent came back to me and said, hey, we're about to relist. You want to go ahead and make an offer. And we did. And that was such a huge. huge advantage for us. So we got our first rental, ended up being something like a 20 to 25%

cash on cash ROI. And it's just one of the best properties we own. That's awesome. So that's what went right. Let's say you got it. What went wrong on that one? Anything that you learned? We've learned so much with every single property that we've done. But one thing going in is I kind of structured the deal in the wrong way at first. So this was a duplex where one unit was rented. It was under rented, but it was still rented. The other unit needed a total rehab. I mean, it was an absolute disaster. So at first, I was like, okay, well, maybe we can squeeze together a few thousand dollars to do this renovation. Then when we got into inspections, I was realizing that this was like a $15,000 to $17,000 job. And I mean, we were going to already be depleting our savings just to be able to

close on the property. So I was like, okay, well, how can I make this work? How can I make this a win-win? and I went back to the list agent, I said, hey, what if we increase our price by this amount and we can negotiate a seller's concession? That's what we did. Now, sellers, there's a lot more rules around those than there were like a few years ago, but we were able to essentially have the seller pay for all the renovations and we just got a bigger loan, which for us was crucial in order to get the deal done. So it started off as a bad thing, but it turned into a good thing. For the people who don't know what that means, like to raise the price and seller concession, do you explain what that, like give us an example.

of like number wise what that's like. So I think initially we made an offer for $85,000. But then when we realized we didn't have, you know, 15K to do the work, we said, hey, let's offer 100 grand, but then you give us a check at closing for 15 grand in cash. So the seller is netting the same amount. It's just that we're taking a larger loan and then getting that cash up front. So it's a really great way for buyers that don't have a lot of money to still make a deal happen. Was that given to you by covering your closing costs in the deal? No, it was actually negotiated outside of the transaction. So, which again, I think is like not a thing you can do anymore.

It's, I mean. Okay, that's why I was asking. I just don't want, listen. I don't know that in every circumstance you can't do it. I would definitely ask a lawyer because that is a good idea. Like you're saying, we typically use that strategy when we're trying to cover the buyer's closing costs and net them more money. So that was definitely smart of you guys, but just make sure that that's something that's

still legal when people go to do that. But I like how you think. You're thinking outside the box. The reason I wanted to have people like look at this in more depth because this strategy of being able to get money back from the seller when you buy a property is something I've used numerous times. I bought a mobile home park once. It was like $1.1.1 million. And we bought it. No, granted this was a seller finance deal, but we paid $1.1.

But we asked for a $100,000 in a credit at closing that could be used for whatever we needed it for because to fix up the property. And the guy was okay with it. And so we did it. And so we really only paid like a million for it, but got $100,000 like put into the thing, which was. was amazing. And I've done it in other ways. It had them pay closing costs. I've had them fix up the property. And it goes back to one of my favorite strategies, which is when I make an offer, I usually offer two different options. I'll be like, I can pay you 85, you know, 80 as is, or I can pay you $80, or you know, I pay you $100, but I need $15 back in a credit. Or I need you to put

a new roof on it or whatever. It gives people that kind of multiple option things. So I think it's just, it's underutilized in the real estate space, but I love that you brought it up because there are ways to do it, even if like the way you did it has changed or the rules of change or a lender doesn't allow one thing over another, if you just keep that's that question, you'll find a way to get that through. It's just a good kind of tool in your tool belt. The other way that I think about how can I get more cash at closing? Because that's such a problem for buyers starting out, right? Buyers have more time than they have money. So it's like, how can I put enough money together to even close a deal in the first place? So we talked about the seller's

concession, but another real strength that I had was the fact that I had my real estate license. There's so many benefits. So when we were depleting our savings accounts to purchase the property, I was representing us as the buyer's agent. So that meant at closing, I would immediately get a commission check back for thousands and thousands of dollars. Sometimes it'd be 10 grand. That's money we didn't have before,

and that would go towards the down payment for the next property. And really is the primary reason I was able to scale so quickly. We went from zero to 38 doors in two years because of that. Yeah, that's one of the really good reasons to have. There's not a lot of good reasons, in my opinion, to have a real estate license

if you're getting into just investing. But that is definitely one of them, is that money you get back as being your own agent. David, I'm curious of your thoughts because you are an agent. You also just wrote the book sold. You're teaching agents all the time how to do this better. What are your thoughts on becoming a real estate agent for that reason for getting all that money back? Because I know I –

Go ahead, Brandon. Every time I steal my agent, like make all that money, I'm like, oh, I could have totally done that. I could have been an agent and got that money. People like Brandon think that agents shouldn't get paid because they do nothing. I know. That does come up a lot. So here's what you're not seeing is how much money those. agents are paying to hold their license and how much time they're spending they're not being

compensated for. What I would say is if you're someone like Rachel who's doing a good number of deals, like there's enough volume, you can actually write down your expenses with being an agent and determine if you're going to get a positive ROI on that. And maybe the bigger component of why what Rachel's doing is so smart is I haven't heard Rachel say, well, I negotiated a fought to get the price down, though I'm sure that that happens. Rachel, you recognize that I only have so much capital available to me. I need to structure a deal, in which case I can save as much of my capital as possible to buy the next deal. And if I have to pay a little bit more and borrow money at 4% interest or whatever, that's fine. So being able to get a commission as an agent

really just reduces how much money you're putting in of your own. And the same is true of you getting that $15,000 back. I think that's incredibly smart and I want to highlight it to the listeners that if you don't have a lot of cash, the way you put the deal together actually makes sense. it's not just the overall price that matters. Exactly, exactly. Yes, thank you, David. Let's talk about management then. From the beginning, were you managing your properties yourself or did you hire someone to do that?

We were, yes, we were self-managing from the beginning because we had the time. And I always talk about rental income is passive income, but it's only passive if you have a property manager. So you have to keep that in mind. But for us, it was more important for us to learn all the ins and outs of managing our properties and to continue to save money at that time because money was at the time our biggest resource that could get us ahead. And then it turned into time later. So we did start off self-managing, but once we got to 26 units, so keep in mind, my husband and I were working full-time, we were acquiring properties and managing our rentals on the weekends. And I was writing my books

in the evenings. So once we got to 26 units, there was no way we could do it on our own anymore. We made a pretty big mistake here. This is, I would say, the biggest mistake we made as investors. And my flaw is that I tend to be too cheap, too frugal. And when you take frugality to an extreme, it really can hurt you. It can bite you in the long run. And that's exactly what happened. So my thought was, well, instead of hiring a traditional property management company, we had a couple people that had been working for us. It was a husband and wife. They did things like cleaning the common areas, maintenance, lawn care. They were the hardest working people to this day I've ever interacted with. They always went above and beyond.

So my thought was, why don't we give these to a chance? We'll make them employees of our company. we can save a little bit of money and we can be more direct and hands-on with the way they're doing things. So that's what we did. It started out great. Sounds like a great idea. Yeah. Well, thank you. In hindsight, to me, it sounds naive, but this is why I like to share this mistakes so that other people don't make it. But it started off great. And then six months in, things just started slipping. And I was just like, what's going on? They're not doing as good of a job. My husband went to collect the rent from our on-site lockbox one Saturday. And he noticed that a lot of rent. And he noticed that a lot of was missing. This wasn't just the typical tenant paying late. It was a significant amount.

So we're calling them, of course, their MIA. We never heard from them again. They stole $6,000 in rental income just that weekend. And we found out that they had been squatting in vacant units and rooms in our properties for almost a year. Which is just such a violation. It's just so gross. So the, you know, the moral of the story is this isn't the place to be cheap in cut corners. If we had hired a licensed, bonded, qualified, insured property management company and their employees had done that to us, they would have been liable for the damages, not us. So sometimes when you're that cheap, you think, oh, I'm going to save money, but it costs you a lot more money in the long run.

So that's my rookie mistake. That's the worst thing that's ever happened so far. Knock on wood. But there you have it. I love that you shared that because it, like, you know, it's a vital. vulnerable story, but we've all been there. I know David, David, you had a terrible first experience getting ripped off from your property manager, didn't you? Or a tenant or something like that? It was my tenant. Yeah. So I bought this house and it had been worth about 600,000 and then it went down to

I bought it for $195. So the taxes being collected on it were about three times more than what they should be. So they collect that in escrow. Then the title company will kick you back a check for your refund once it's been reassessed. Well, they sent it to the property, not to me. They assume that I bought it as like a primary residence, but his investment property. So my tenant cashed the check, forged my signature, and then paid me rent for the first two months with my own money. Oh my gosh. And then completely stop paying. That was how I learned real estate investing. Wow. And Rachel, you're bringing up a great point because what you and I both did wrong when I managed my own properties was we failed to take into account that there's a financial component of risk

that needs to be taken into this, that you took risk when you hired these people, that you took that upon your shoulders. And when we don't understand like the property management company having to take that risk needing to be licensed and bonded or like Brandon said, why is my agent getting all this money? He's not seeing all the stuff that that person's having to do or the risk the broker's taking on, having, you know, Arizona mission insurance and everything else. We tend to think, oh, I can just do it myself. And then you get in there and you realize, oh, this was a terrible idea because you just didn't realize it. So we'll never know every right move or wrong move to make. But it is smart to But when you're having those thoughts, like, I should do this myself.

I'm cheap because Rachel, I promise you I'm just like you. It was a long time before I stopped stepping over dollars to pinch pennies. And what I had to force myself to acknowledge was I don't see what goes on behind the scenes. So let other people carry the risk and I'll focus on, you know, more dollar producing activities. Just so you know, like this is something I struggle with still to this day is like hiring the right people at the right price to like do the right work. You know, like I still want to try to find a cheaper way to do it. That's how I was young and scrappy. just like, you know, you guys were.

And it's like, let's just hire that guy. He can do the work. You know, it sounds like a good idea. So six months ago, I hired an electrician guy to come over to my house. I have a pool here. And he was doing some electrical work. But it wasn't like I hired an electrician. It was a guy who was a friend of a friend of some guy who knew somebody who came over to wire something down by my pool.

And then we just found out the other day that he disconnected one or two of the wires that were supposed to go to the pool lights to make it safe. So in other words, what we found out was that if at any point, water would have leaked into the, any of the underwater, like, lights in the pool, the circuit breaker would not have tripped. And it would have just killed who's ever in the pool for, like, the last six months. And, like, we swim in there every day. My kids are in there every day. Oh, my gosh. And it would have just killed whoever was in that pool if we were swimming in with the lights on and something happened. And it's like, that's what you get for hiring some random person, not the right person.

And, like, yeah, crazy. Like my stomach just twists when I hear that still. I'm like, I cannot believe like. Twisting because we're acknowledging how scary that was. But the reality is how many other things are going on in our life where it's that way? And we don't know because we're not talking about it. Yeah, like Brandon, you're just acknowledging this one story. But how many of us that are listening have the same thing we're doing and we don't know that we're swimming in a pool without a circuit breaker?

Yeah, it's crazy. Like, yeah, hire the right people, do the right thing. I mean, I've done it with property managers. I've done it with contractors. I've done it with, I mean, everybody like find the cheaper way to get. thing he's done and it's seldom the right move. So I'm glad you brought that up, Rachel, because I still struggle with it too. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's tough because like, it's like I, there's this guy we called him Felon Tim because Felon Tim. How to get that name. Yeah,

exactly. And like my mentor, like the guy who I learned real estate from, like that was his painter. It was like, like you hire Felon Tim. A felon Tim didn't have a car or any equipment or anything, but he would paint any house for 300 bucks. Like the entire house would be done. And so like, I'm pretty sure my buddy still uses Fell and Tim to this day. But there were times where he would paint and I'd come over and he just didn't tape off the floor and would like just paint the floor with his paint sprayer. And they was like just like just paint the carpet because that's what you get for $300 from Fell and Tim. So anyway. Well, I like that we're diving into the mindset of this because what it comes from and I'm sure you realize this too, Rachel, is we got ahead in the beginning by being frugal.

We didn't have many options. We had limited resources. So we had to stretch it. We had a top rom in our way right through those first five. years or so of investing. And now that we're in the point where we can hire the right people and we can make sure we don't get electrocuted, our brain still tells us, no, this is what you have to do to be safe. And it involves a mindset shift into a different way of thinking, which is what we're all more or less struggling with when we talk about this. Exactly. I mean, it's a time versus money

tradeoff. And in the beginning, all investors I see and that I work with, they have a lot more time than money. So we're doing things like self-managing, trying to fix toilets on our own. I mean, we're hustling and we're scrappy and that's because we have to be. But then when you start building wealth and you have cash flow coming in, it's like you can't have that mindset anymore because you'll hold yourself back in other ways because then time is your most precious resource and you can't keep growing and scaling if you're going down to your property three times a week doing some maintenance issue. So it's hard. It's hard making that mindset. But once you do, that's what allow you to keep growing and scaling. So now coming out the other side, let me ask you a question

and I'll fire this at both of you, but Rachel specifically, now that you've done, on that. Do you feel like here's, I almost feel like the idea of you, we had to do that in the beginning. Is that a limiting belief? Do we actually have to do that? Or could we have started with where we're at right now? The level that we're all thinking mentally right now, could we have started there? Or do you really think that we had to get there because we didn't have the money? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there were decisions I made that were poor decisions because I hardly had any money. So it was operating out of a scarcity mindset. And, but I probably would have been better off if I could make those decisions differently, even if I meant giving up more money

at the time, in the long run, operating out of an abundance mindset will serve you better. So I don't know. That's a tough question, though. Yeah, it is tough. Because I don't know if you can get the mindset. Like, my coach, his name is Jason Jerez, right? He talks about this all the time. He says, like, there's these levels that we're at mindset-wise, a level of two, level five,

level 20, level 30, right? And if you can operate a level 30 mindset, like, which, let's just say that's where we're at today in terms of hiring the right people at the right prices and managing people and teams and all that. Can you get to level 30 without having going through level one, two, three, four, five, 10, 20? I don't know. I suppose you can if you adapt from somebody else. David, what do you think on that? I think the short answer is it's a matter of faith that when we're on this side of it, we realize we could have. But when we were there, we didn't think we could. If we had more faith when we were in that point that, hey, this is going to work. It will, I do need to think. That's a better

way to think. We all recognize that. It's like it's a difference between eating more expensive healthy food versus eating junk food that's cheaper. We know that the cost will be more to eat the cheaper food, even though it appears cheaper in the moment. But it's hard to have enough faith to believe I need to invest in myself when I don't have as much money. So the reason this question's relevant is because now we're all in a mindset that isn't where we're going to be in 10 or 20 years or more levels of success. So can we go back and learn from those lessons we had and say, okay, well, right now, Where am I doing that still? And can I have enough faith that if I pay the right person, do the right thing, make the

decision that feels scarier, that it will be better for me. I'm really glad, Brandon, that you brought that up. And Rachel, that you brought us into this point. This is a really good interview. Yeah, I'm going to have to do some more thinking on this. Maybe we'll do a whole solo show on this, David, sometime, just about the mindset needed to get into it. Because I'm even thinking now, like, okay, what mindset am I going to be in 10 years from now?

And what do I have to go through the drama and the pain of the next 10 years? Or can you skip to that point and just start living that way now? I can think of like Matt on a Frio, right? Like we had him on the podcast, 27-year-old like anesthesiologist. I was just hanging out of him in Tahoe yesterday. And I know exactly where you're going. The guy starts from like, like, oh, I don't do any real estate to I'm making millions of dollars in real estate within like a year period, right? Why?

Because he already had a level 20 or 30 mindset that he had from his previous careers or because he listened to a lot of the podcast or hung out with people who were at that level. And so I think you can adapt that level quicker if you surround yourself with right people and recognize that you are not at the level you are going to be. Glad you shared that, though. That's very helpful for all of us that are listening right now and everybody who's listening to the podcast is that the mindset is the number one X factor with how quickly you get where you're trying to go. So Rachel, let's bring this back to where you're at. Do you remember a point in your journey where your mindset did shift where either you felt more confidence or you recognize this is the path I'm going to walk? Everything happened so quickly for us that there wasn't even time to think for those two years. So it wasn't about, oh, I feel much better about this now. It was just like get the next thing.

Get the next property. Get the next property. I do think, though, 2018 is when we stopped acquiring properties. So we're not actively acquiring properties anymore. A lot of investors will ask us, well, you know, why aren't you building an empire? You could be growing a real estate empire. And that's exactly right. I could be.

It's just that that's not my goal. That's not what I'm passionate about and that what ultimately fulfills me. Real estate investing for us has always been a means to an end. once we got to a point where we were generating 10K a month in profit from our rentals, for us, there was no point in continuing to grow because that was enough money to cover our living expenses. And so at that point, we were retired. We were financially independent. So then it became about how do we become more efficient with our time, with what we already have invested with our real estate. And now we're at the other end of the spectrum where time

is truly the most valuable resource for us. So we're even starting to think about selling some of our properties to invest in something even more passive like real estate syndications. So I'm totally nerding out about syndications right now. That's my favorite thing. Well, come on in. I'll take your money. It's okay. Yeah, open door capitals, crushing returns. I've been looking into it. So if I hear you correctly, you're not giving up on real estate investing. You're giving up on the asset class or the way you've been doing it thus far. Exactly. And part of it too is I mentioned it earlier. But last year, we moved from Kentucky to Colorado. We'd always wanted to move out west. We love the mountains. We love hiking.

and once we physically were removed from our properties, it just has, it's like out of sight, out of mind type thing. And even though we could hire a property manager at this point, it's just, we just feel this is the right next move for us because we're not doing a good job. We're not doing them justice. So it's like, let's get out of these and let's get into something bigger. And that makes sense for our lifestyle and our values. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market.

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Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. I want to go back real quick to the mindset stuff. Then I want to go into how you built the units because how you built that portfolio and the way you financed it and all that. But I don't want to leave a mindset thing quite yet. What mindset do you feel like? What mindset or plural mindsets have served you well over the past decade or half a decade while you've been building this? And which mindsets have you had to outgrow? I've had my mindsets have grown from limiting beliefs.

They have come from limiting beliefs. So I already talked a little bit how I was little. My family didn't have a lot of money. And it was just kind of the comparison game. And I had a lot of fears coming from that situation. I was always scared there wasn't ever going to be enough money. Money was always a stressor. And I had this fear that I wasn't going to be able to support myself financially or worse,

be able to support a loved one financially if they, needed it. So my initial instinct to become financially independent was truly because of the way that money was handled and viewed in our household as a child. Later on in my careers, there were so many different situations of the way employers were treating me where I was like, I have had enough. So I can remember distinctly working for a female boss, and this was in one of these real estate stints that I had. I was maybe 22 at the time. She came into the office and she said, hey, where's the letterhead? And I looked at her and I said, what letterhead? Because, you know, in nine months working there, we'd never use letterhead. And she looks at me and she goes,

like I'm stupid. She goes, the letterhead. Like, okay, thanks for the explanation. So I'm frantically searching on the computer, trying to print out letterhead for her. She's literally standing next to me tapping her foot with her arms crossed. Like, this is not an exaggeration. And then after 10 seconds, I guess she got fed up. So she marched to this dusty shelf behind me and took out letterhead from a place I'd never seen it before. She holds it in front of my face, and she says, what do I even pay you for? And it was just vicious. It was, it was, it was just, I was 22.

And I was being bullied by this woman at work who hadn't even taught me anything. And she had made her employees cry before she made me cry a couple times, unfortunately. And I just remember one time when she made me cry, I went to the bathroom and I was looking at myself in the bathroom. And I just decided right then, I am never going to let an employer treat me that way again. I'm never going to be trapped because of financial constraints. So that's what really got me going and being like,

enough with excuses, enough of me saying I don't have enough money, I don't know enough. I'm going to make this happen. And I got invested by age 24. I wanted to be else's ability to affect my happiness, like in my enjoyment, my enjoyment in life. I know it still plays like any argument I have with anybody ever, like any kind of like disagreement I have is always because of that because somebody is trying to somehow tell me what to do in some way, shape, or form or making me feel a way that I don't want to

feel. And so like, yeah, it's a powerful motivator. Like, like, yeah. I'd say that's your most powerful motivator, Brandon. If I want you to do anything, just tell you you're not allowed to do it. Reverse psychology. Yeah, exactly. That's funny. All right. So how did you build that portfolio, then you bought all the units? What type were they? Are they multifamily, single family? Then let's get into the financing side. Did you just save up down payments? Yeah, for sure. So we started off with two single families that we'd had because they were both of our previous primary residences. So we didn't buy them intentionally as an investment property, but they turned into one. Then we bought the duplex. And then after that, we bought three buildings that were 10 to 12 units each. So we scaled very quickly. We did finance them all with 20% down payments. Saved up money. Yeah, but it still was a lot. I mean, but at the time, my income had grown. I was making closer to, you know, between 75 and 85 grand. then and then combined with my husband's income, we were earning six figures. So if we were saving

half of that, I was earning the commissions, and we were saving 100% of the cash flow from all of the previous rentals, that's how we came up with massive down payments over and over again. If we couldn't do that, we would have done the birth strategy. Thanks to David Green. It's like the income snowball. I think somebody mentioned on our show before. And it's funny because when I look back to my initial strategy that I had. My initial strategy was to buy a single family home every year for 15 years, all on 15 year mortgages. You guys have heard this before. And then I was like, okay, by my mid-30s, I'll be retired. So that was my initial strategy. But once my husband and I kind of put our heads together and our money together, this happened so much more quickly than I ever would have imagined.

So it is. It's the snowball effect of income. You said something that I really liked and it had to do with the smattering of different ways you put your portfolio together. You had a couple properties that you just kind of fell into. You bought it as a primary residence and then you rented it out. So as a side note, every time I buy a primary residence, I always make sure it's a property that could be house hacked or could function as a rental property. A lot of people in expensive markets will say, well, they don't cash flow so you can't make it work, but they're just buying a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that has no unique features that would make it a rental. Then you got into the 20% down method. Then you moved into something else. What I love

is that you didn't wait to get started until you knew exactly how this was going to work. You jumped in there and you sort of evolved with what you're doing. And that even means getting out of the asset class that you were in and into a different form of real estate investing. And that's so important to highlight to people because this is how people that build portfolios do it. They don't wait until they have every single domino lined up perfectly and push over one. And they all just close really cleanly. Would you agree, Brandon? Everybody obviously has a little bit different approach there. But mostly, yeah, I think that it just you line them up and knock them down.

You don't always know the answer at the end of the day. Rachel, what do you think? I mean, yeah, if I had waited until I felt ready, like that's, I almost want to laugh right now. Like, if I had waited until I felt ready to get started, I'd be dead before I owned real estate. And that's another mindset thing, Brandon, is that we focus so much on consumption, right? We want to learn everything there is to learn. We want to listen to podcasts. We want to read books, all this stuff.

But if you can't move from consumption. to execution and acting on that knowledge, you will never get to where you want to go. And so something that was hard for me is, so I'm a perfectionist, I'm a control freak. And I was really scared to get started investing in real estate because I was like, well, what if I lose money? What if I do something and I waste my time? What if, what if, what if? The thing is, I had to accept the fact that I was going to lose money.

I was going to waste my time. And not once, but throughout my entire real estate investing journey. I had to accept that fact. Once I did, I was finally able to get over that mindset, that limiting belief. And I was able to just start taking action. And that's the only way you're going to become successful as a real estate investor. That's awesome. So Rachel, from the first property you bought until the point you could retire, how many years was that?

Two years. Two years. You were able to buy enough properties that you were able to just say, I'm dropping the mic and I'm retiring. Yes. Yes. And part of that is the, we bought properties that were really unique. I haven't ever talked about this on a podcast before, but I want to deliver the goods here. So we, our second property after the duplex that we bought was an 11 unit multifamily.

The way that I've never seen a property structure this way, it was basically a quad. It was a fourplex, but the owners at the time were renting out the bedrooms individually. It was something that's now called more of a boarding style house. But the cash flow on this thing, when I saw these numbers, I was like, there's no way. There's no way that this $430,000 property is generating $86,000 in rent revenue. And then they showed me what they were doing. And I was like, this is the most brilliant, genius thing I've ever seen. So that's what three of our buildings are.

There's these properties that are rented out by the bedroom. The tenants share the kitchens and bathroom areas. And we're able to squeeze way more rent out of it than we would have otherwise. So how do you manage that? I mean, we've talked to a few people on the show before that have done, you know, student housing or, you know, somewhat similar, somewhat similar things, but it's always a hassle to manage, it sounds like. It is.

It's a lot more work. And that's part of the reason that we're thinking about selling those. Because at the time, the cash flow was incredible. We were making $2,500, $3,000 in profit per building. But it was a lot more work. I mean, because you have tenants that they're like kids, right? This guy stole my food from the fridge. this guy won't clean up his dishes, whatever.

So you're kind of constantly have to not just be a property manager, but be a therapist for these people. And being like, okay, guys, kids, you know, let's figure out how we can handle this situation as an adult. The turnover is a little bit higher because we're not doing traditional one-year leases. It's just a different and unique way to run them. And then again, they still cash flow amazingly well, but it's just not worth it to us anymore.

Yeah. Are you still managing yourself in that way? regard or do you have a property manager, another couple that you got to handle this stuff? Somewhat. Once we moved out to Colorado, we have a family member in town that we're paying to help us be there, you know, just do things that we would only trust that person to do. And we have different people in place now. I mean, one great thing about being a long-distance landlord, it used to intimidate me. I used to think, no, there's no way I can do that. What we've realized, though, it's actually easier to manage these properties from a distance. Because when we lived in

Louisville, we were running down to our properties twice a week, whenever something. happened. Now though, we're forced to outsource that and to have reliable people in place, which if we had just done that from the beginning, it would have been a lot easier, but it forced us to do that when we moved away. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I love long distance investing, like, you know, David Green's book is because David, you make that point in there, like, long distance investing, you are forced to have good systems. It's like put up or shut up, kind of like you just can't survive without it. You can survive. If you have a local rental, you can survive with terrible systems and processes and awful people. You can do it just by limp and

along for decades. I mean, so many landlords do. But the minute you go long distance, like it revealed, I mean, I had that property in, in Ohio and Cincinnati. And the property was fine. But like I've told the story before, like, I just did not have the systems or the people or the core for, as David says, to be able to manage it. And I wasn't taking the time needed to manage the people that I did have. And so it revealed it very quickly. Like, yeah, this is not something you should do. So I got out of it. The guy who bought it, just doing super, super well with it. Because he's there and he can do all those systems. But yeah, I don't know. It's been, it's a fascinating thing when you move out of an area.

Well, I think, Rachel, you're hitting on a deeper truth about how business works in general. And this is something I've learned through being an agent. When you love what you do, or at least you can tolerate it, it's not in your own best interest. When you like fixing toilets or you like to be the person that shows up and fixes the light bulb, the temptation to do that every single time is massive. And you'll trick your brain into thinking, I worked hard today because you went to your property and you put in a light bulb or you fixed a leak or something. But you did nothing to get your next deal.

You did nothing to move the needle along the goal, which for most people is going to be financial freedom. It's this sweet, tempting siren that pulls you in. And I see this with real estate agents because they love the job so much that they never leverage off parts of it. They never grow. Part of why I spent the last two to three months traveling, hanging out with Brandon and Hawaii.

My team's doing good was that, to be frank, I didn't love being a real estate agent. I didn't like it, which most. motivated me to find people that were better than me and say, you do this part. You'll be better for here. You'll do a better job for our clients. And I operated at like a business. And that's just something to be aware of if you're like, oh my God, I love analyzing deals. You can spend all day long analyzing deals and never offer on any of them or pursue them because you already got your dopamine hit just by analyzing it. So we're always afraid of the things we don't want to do,

but we should maybe be afraid of some of the stuff that we like to do because that's the thing that will sabotage you that you don't see coming. You are so right. And to your point, David, there's a question I now ask myself to decide whether I should be doing the thing or somebody else should be doing the thing. And that question is, is this a revenue generating activity? Is it going to generate revenue to go fix the toilet or to manage my tenants? No, it's not.

Those things need to be outsourced. Is it a revenue generating activity to go make offers and drive around and look for your next deal? Yes, that's what you should be doing. Yeah, that's so good. So here's what the point I think we're getting at here. We can just sum up. I think everybody listened to the show should take a month or two,

just come to Hawaii and hang out so that we could all see what their systems are breaking down and what they should be doing and not. We all agree. Everyone should just come to Hawaii. I'll be there. All right. We're just going to get a quarter million people here right now. It's going to be great.

No, but on that point, like a couple of buddies of ours, Alex Camacho, who's been on the podcast before. Alex was in Southern California and just has been here now for a couple months. Investor Girl Britt, Brittany Arnison, who's been on the show. She's did the same thing. Tarle Yarber, who's a big bigger pockets contributor, same thing. It's just like left for a while during this whole COVID mess as both, one, a way to enjoy this time more.

But two, it's to put their systems to the test and to force themselves to start thinking like an owner rather than an operator. And for all three of them, they're just crushing it right now in their businesses and making a lot of positive changes because it forced their hands. So I joke about it, but maybe it is time. For some people listening to this show right now, maybe it's time to say, you know what? I'm going to pack my family up and go, you know, go to Costa Rica for a couple months.

Or I'm going to go to Nebraska for a few months. Like maybe it's time to force yourself to get out of your bubble where you're managing everything and go see what you actually have built. So there's some encouragement for people or maybe some people right now where their stomach is got twisted because they're like, oh man, I know he's talking to me right now. So use it. All right. So tell me, Rachel, about your books real quick.

I'm just curious about you mentioned you wrote some books. What are you writing? Yes. In 2017, which is the same year, I started investing. I started writing books. So I wrote my first best-selling book, Money, Honey. The reason I wrote it is because I was a financial advisor before and all my family and friends came to me for financial advice, which was great. That's what I love to do. I also had this aha moment where I realized, oh yeah, like personal finance is boring. For most people, it's intimidating. It's dry, it's complex. No wonder they don't like to learn about it on their own. So I thought to myself, how can I make this topic sassy and fun and simple? And that's when Money, Honey was born. So that's That's why I wrote the first book, Money, Honey, and it has almost a thousand reviews on Amazon now. And yes.

Before you go on the next one, what's the gist of the book? What's the idea? What's the idea? Who should be reading it? It's the basics. It's saving, debt, investing. And I really wrote it for female millennials, although all different types of people read it. But that's who I'm kind of speaking to.

Okay. Very cool. Yeah. I can't think of a better person to write that book for millennials than the one who was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, while her friends were reading Twilight. You were born for this role. Yes, thank you. And then my second book is called Passive Income, Aggressive Retirement.

And I just got so obsessed with this concept of passive income, money that is earned with little to no ongoing work. It's definitely not a get rich quick scheme. It sounds that way, but it's not. I mean, it takes time or money to create passive income. But the epiphany I had here was once your passive income exceeds your living expenses, you're retired. you're financially independent. And to me, it felt so much easier to generate five or six or eight grand a month in passive income than it does to try to save a million or two million dollars by age 65 in order to retire. So that's what that book's about. I basically outlined 28 different

passive income models. So trust me when I say that anyone at any age can absolutely create passive income. Yeah, that's cool. That's awesome. Well, congrats on the book. Thank you. Brandon, don't you have a theory or a definition of the three levels of retirement financial freedom my jet one yeah my jet one uh yeah i always say like there's like three levels of financial independence there's like you can like fly in a jet meaning you can get and go and do your thing because you don't have to have a job you can be a jet setter whatever uh level two is like you can buy a jet so those are like the david osborns that i know like that like the super wealthy people who just go buy a jet and then there's like the i can buy

the new york jets right like that level of financial independence and wealth and and for everybody It's different. Some people want to be the guy that owns a private jet. Some people want to be the person that owns the New York Jets. And some people just want to be able to travel and be able to hang out with their family more often. So having that self-awareness to know which level you want is just super, super important. I'm reading that book right now by Patrick Bet David. That's called Your Next Five Moves. And it's all about like, like this is the first section.

It's all about that self-awareness, knowing what you want and what you're willing to work for and what pain you're willing to put up with to get there. So yeah, but that level one financial freedom that just be able to quit your job, pay your bills. It's not unattainable if you want it bad enough. If you have a plan in place, if you work hard to get there. And if you're aggressive, like you said, I like the word aggressive. That's a good one, aggressive retirement. Thank you. Nicely done.

Thank you. All right. Well, let's move this thing along toward the next segment of the show. It's time for our deal deep dive. This is a part of the show where we dive deep into one of your deals. Now, I know you've kind of explained all of them, but I thought maybe we'd pick one to dive in a little deeper. So let's go there now. Number one. By the way, do you have one in mind that we can dig into the numbers?

Yeah, I've already talked about a couple. So I'm thinking let's do, yes, I have one in mind. All right. So first question, what kind of property of it and where's it located? That's really two questions. All right. So this is in Louisville, Kentucky. It's one of the now 10 to 12 unit buildings that we have. But when we bought it, it was a duplex. So we converted it into this boarding style. Yeah, it was a huge. I mean, it's over, I think, 3,000 square feet. So we converted it. I like big houses. I cannot lie. How'd you find it? This was the one where I found it on the MLS and it came up and it was $125 grand. The top floor was a duplex that was being rented out.

The bottom floor was an office space. And when I saw the potential, how cheap it was, first of all, that was a real, I don't know why it was listed for so low. But then when I did the math and I realized I could convert those spaces into like five or six bedroom units, I was like, oh my gosh. this is going to be the moneymaker. And it has a whole third floor that's unfinished that we haven't even gotten there yet. So that's what it came in at was 125.

I was down there at the property literally within 30 minutes, making an offer on the phone for full price. Nice. That's awesome. All right. So how did you find it, just MLS? Yes. Go sit agent or something.

Yeah. It just happened to come up. I had a search saved or whatever. I just happened to be looking at the right time. All right. And the negotiation, was there any other than just offering full price? Did you have to go back and forth at all? Not really.

I don't remember there being any intense negotiation. I mean, I made a strong offer because I recognized if I didn't, they would be getting other offers that day. I just knew. The other thing that complicated the situation a little bit is that because it was an office space, it was actually zoned commercial. So we did have to get a commercial loan on that, which I didn't realize at the time, but I kind of learned later on going in. Okay. All right. So how did you fund this deal?

This was just from saving. So we came up with a 20% down payment and then we got a commercial loan. Or it might have been a 25% down payment because it was a commercial loan. Okay. And then what did you do with it? You then divide up the bedrooms. I'm curious how that all work. How many total units did you get out of it? And then what's the average rent on a bedroom? Okay. So it's now 11 bedrooms. And the renovation process was an absolute nightmare. This was the worst renovation I had ever done. And it sucked because that duplex that we bought that first one, we had this guy do the whole renovation. He was amazing. The thing I did then, though, is I was out the property every single day. I was bringing them Gatorade and bagels and they loved me. And they knew that. I was going to come, and they knew they better be working. At this property, by the time we bought this, we were so overwhelmed. We absolutely could not take time to come to this property every day. So maybe we got there once a month, which is horrible. I mean, that's a really bad thing to do. And what was supposed to be, I think, you know, a four to six week renovation was like a four to six

month renovation. And we went way over budget, not to mention the holding costs, but we went way over budget on the renovation itself. So luckily, though, the way that I run my numbers, I estimate things so conservatively that it still ended up being pretty close to what I initially projected. So it still ended up being an amazing, amazing deal. What was the initial question? Did I answer it? Yeah, just what did you do with. Oh, and what the rent gets raised to. Okay, yeah. So we renovated it into 11 bedrooms, and they're on average, I would say, there are $130 per week. we do weekly rental. So it adds up to something like,

it's almost 80 grand a year in revenue. Wow. Do they pay weekly or do they still pay monthly? I mean, like, there's every week they drop off a check. They pay weekly. It's all online now. It used to be like our on-site lockbox, but now everything's done through online. That's cool.

How long, I know we're going a little bit deeper maybe than we usually do, but how often do people stay at a thing like this? Like how bad is it turnover? It depends. I thought the turnover would be horrific, but most of our tenants stay for years. I mean, we even bought some of these properties that still have tenants in them from the previous sellers. And they've been there for three, five years.

So I would say half of them end up being really long-term tenants. The other half, maybe they end up lasting their first six months or so. And then I want to be careful with this question, but what type of people are these? You know, I mean, like, are these like really, really like dirt poor, like just out of rehab kind of like people? Or are these like, hey, I just work at a job and I want to live as cheap as possible. So. Yeah, it's, it's definitely a mix. We don't have students. We've had one student, but it's mostly blue collar workers. And we've had

travel nurses before travel doctors because they're looking for a short-term lease and we can offer that to them, furnish bedroom, all that stuff. It's easy for someone to move into. But it's just, it's normally somebody that, you know, they're not making a ton of money and they just want a simple solution. They want a place that they can live where it's furnished. They have a TV. They have a nice kitchen and bathroom and they don't have to worry about any of the other costs except for paying the rent. Okay. So what was the outcome? The outcome is that this building... We made a ton of money.

We made a ton of money. This building is probably worth 300 grand now because of how much income is generating. The cash on cash return, I think, was literally 30% for us. And it's been just an enormous moneymaker for us. So all in all, great investment, even with the horrible renovation. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So what lessons do you learn from this deal overall? What can you pull out and say, this lesson just demonstrates this? or I learned this. Just, I think, be creative. Don't take something at face value. So when you see a property and the way it's being run now, that doesn't mean you have to keep running it that way. It's like, how can you either increase the rent revenue

of what they're already doing and how can you decrease expenses? So I think if you can approach it that way and just be creative and imagine a way that you can run it where you can generate even more revenue, that's when you can start finding good deals. Because you're thinking outside the box and you're going to do something with that property that another investor wouldn't, so you can pay a little bit more for it. That makes a lot of sense. What really, what I like about the strategy is it's like, it's like buying, what's the whole

thing, like buy by the yard, sell by the foot? You know, like you're taking a property that you're just taking the whole thing, dividing it up. It's cool. I mean, it's obviously a lot of work to renovate and to be able to get the system right to manage it. But especially like you mentioned earlier, at your level, like where you were at the time, it was perfect for it.

And now like you're thinking, okay, now we're at a different level, a different spot in life. Maybe we'll unload this and get into something different. And that's just like the life of an investor, right? I was actually just talking with my property manager, Jesse, who we sold our mobile home park that was in Maine, Bangor, Maine, the one that Mindy Jensen and her husband, me and Ryan Murdoch bought together. We sold that. We made a really good return. It was amazing.

It was one of the best deals I've ever done. And we're talking to Jesse, the property manager bought it. And he goes, yeah, the guy who bought it is so excited about this thing because it's perfect for where he's at right now and his investing. even though you guys, like it was perfect before and you got it to a point where it was stabilized, it was fully occupied, we took it from 30 to 50 units or whatever. Like we, that was our thing. And then it became, you know, the next guy, that his thing was a different level. So in other words, like, what's great about real estate is it's all like, it's different phases

of investors' career work for different types of investments at different points in that investment thing. And so there's, in other words, there's so much bloody opportunity out there for people. because like even in a hot market like today, there's things to do because you're at a different stage in somebody else's. So anyway, I think that's encouraging. Yeah, no, because I agree 100%. And another lesson from that, Brandon, is don't invest based on what other people are doing. Like, don't see this amazing, successful real estate investor with this huge empire and think, I'm going to do exactly what he does. Because he has different values than you.

He has a different time versus money tradeoffs than you. So it's about, okay, what are all these different ways I can invest in which one works? best for me. With that, it's time to get to the last segment of our show. It's time for our Famous Four. The Famous Four is a part of the show. We ask the same four questions every week to every guest. So we're going to throw them at you right now, Rachel. So book, our question number one. I just gave a hint of what the question is. Question number one. Yes, I think most people do at this point. Number one, what is your all-time favorite or current favorite real estate related book? Well, everyone says rich dad, poor dad. So I'll go with something

different. Because I'm so obsessed with syndications right now, it's the Brian Burke hands off investor. Oh my gosh. That book should be $50. There is so much value. I'm not even finished with it, but I just can't get enough. So a big fan. Yeah, it is, it is phenomenal. Brian Burke's like the man. He's a good friend of both Brandon and I, very trustworthy guy. I like Brian quite a bit. You know, it's funny about that book. I don't know if I've ever told this story. Maybe Brian would want me too. I'm good anyway. We're sitting outside like this restaurant, the Kula Grill out in Lahaina. And this is like three years ago. And we're talking about him, like, raising money for his, his syndication, practice his capital.

And I'm like, and I'm like, you know what you should do, Brian. You should write a book on like how to, like, how to evaluate syndications and how the whole makes it. Because then everyone who reads the book is going to be like, like, who do I trust now? How about the guy who wrote the book on how to evaluate syndications and raise money? And I don't know if it's worked for him, but it was, that was the idea behind it originally. And then he just like carried away and actually made like an incredible book. It wasn't like a teaser like, hey, here's a few things to know. you should invest with me.

Like, he was just, like, legitimately wrote, like, the best book ever written on the topic. Which also speaks to, yeah, that's just like Brian's personality. It's like, I can do something or I can do it the best anybody has ever done it ever. That's Brianberg for you. So he's a good dude. That said, question number two, David Green. Your favorite business book? My favorite business book is The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DiMarco.

Oh, my gosh, that book is so good. Such a classic. It just, oh, it's so good. It really helped me transition my mindset from, like, a consumer to producer mindset. set and understand why running a business and being an entrepreneur can help you build well so much faster than doing like a nine to five jobs. So it just opened my eyes totally. Have you read his follow up to that? It's called Unscripted. Yes. Yeah, I love that one too. Yes. That one was really interesting as well. We're going to get MJ on the podcast at some point. We're just scheduling around,

but it's going to happen. Oh, that's awesome. I can't wait. Yeah, that guy is legit. Anyway, now I want to read these books. They're so good. They're so good. Yeah. That Millionaire Fastlane, I Yeah, it was one of the books that changed my life. All right, Rachel. What are some of your hobbies? Hiking and traveling. So we moved to Colorado essentially to hike. I went on a nine-mile hike yesterday.

I'm icing my foot now. And I'm trying to climb my first 14- or 14,000-foot mountain in the next couple months. So that's what I love to do. Josh Storkin and I went and hike to 14er. I'm not a hiker at all. I hate hiking with a passion, but he forced me to get up like 3 a.m. And hike a 14er in Colorado back a year and a half ago. And it was as miserable as it sounds.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I'm excited or dreading it, probably dreading it. it, but I still want to do it. Brandon can do that in 12 steps. It was hard to breathe. That's what the crazy thing was. It was so weird to breathe. That said, so Josh went and told me, he told me that he's now climbed several of them,

and he started doing the Wim Hof breathing exercises, which if you guys know Wim Hof at all. He said it made night and day difference for him climbing. He said it was never out of breath. So do a little Wim Hof YouTube searching. Yeah, I'll do that on my next hike. That's cool. Run random story. We were on top of this 14 here.

I might have told us on the podcast before, but I love the story. Josh and I were at the top, just being like Josh and I, which if people remember the podcast before David was here, it was Josh and I just basically making fun of each other for an hour and a half every week straight. Anyway, so we're sitting up there just being ourselves, like, just whatever. And some guy turns around because he recognized our banter. It was like, Josh and Brandon. And, like, knew us from the podcast.

So. Oh, my gosh. That's so cool. Yeah. Apparently, the way we are on the podcast is the way we are in life. So random. Yeah. All right.

Moving on. Last question. So Josh had enough breath to just rip on you the whole time. and you couldn't breathe so you couldn't really say anything back. Pretty much. I had to sit there and take it. Story of my life. All right.

Last question from me, Rachel. What do you think separate successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think it just comes back to that knowledge versus execution, right? Knowledge is nothing without acting on that knowledge. So it's really the ability to implement and to take action. There's this quote by Zig Ziglar that I love. And he said, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.

Thank you very much. for people that are fascinated with your story as it's very cool where can they find out more about you well thank you my instagram is money honey rachel um and my books are money honey and passive income aggressive retirement so you can find those on amazon and i'd what what i love to do with your listeners just to add some value is give them my passive income starter kit for free so even if you you know without reading my book you can see all the 28 different passive income streams i talk about deadly mistakes to avoid and a bunch of resources and tools. So if you want to download that, you can go to money, honey, rachel.com slash bonus.

Very cool. Thank you. We'll put that link also in the show notes, of course, at biggerpockets.com slash show 454. It'll be there as well. But yeah, this has been awesome. Thank you so much, Rachel. Really, really good stuff today. Thank you both so much. I appreciate it. Great job. This is David Green for Brandon Mountain Treker Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

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