BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 482: Full-Time Fireman Does 300 Deals While Working 40 Hours/Week

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

Everybody is busy. We have jobs, kids, businesses, and responsibilities to take care of. Why go out of your way and risk your money and time to invest in real estate? Mike Webb, firefighter, investor, flipper, and wholesaler argues the opposite. Mike says that it’s far riskier to simply rely on your job for the entirety of your income. Mike began his investing career by investing in a side-by-side duplex, rehabbing it, and failing to complete a successful BRRRR. After seeing the cash flow and learning from his mistakes, Mike saw an investment strategy that could carry him to financial freedom. He is still working as a full-time firefighter, but is building his portfolio and completing 20-30 flips per year while he does so. This gives Mike the ultimate freedom to do whatever is best for him and his family, even though he loves his job. In a world where it seems cool for everyone to quit their job, Mike reassures those who like their work that it’s worth staying, especially to keep that investment money flowing. He also walks through his partnerships, how he hires his team members, and what you can do to systematize your business so you can outsource your work as you take on more strategic roles!  In This Episode We Cover: Why you don’t have to choose between a career and investing in real estate Learning from your first deal and using your newfound knowledge to expand Why the 1% rule and 2% rule shouldn’t be the ONLY metric you consider during deal analysis Using the BiggerPockets Forums to meet partners, mentors, and other real estate professionals The “OODA Loop” and why it’s a great tool for organizations Starting a meetup and being in the know with local investors Why working AND investing decreases your overall financial risk And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Podcast 469: Why Do Investors Lie to Themselves? +More Audience Q&A (Pt. 2) (Mike's question) BiggerPockets Podcast 169: Using Hustle and Persistence to Build Wealth Through Real Estate with David Greene Open Door Capital Voxer Slack Loom WizeHire Google Docs BiggerPockets Events BiggerPockets Facebook Group BiggerPockets Store Brandon's Instagram David's Instagram Check the full show notes here: https://biggerpockets.com/show482 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 482. I never started this to actually quit my job. And, you know, I struggle with that sometimes because my friends are either like full-time real estate investors or full-time firemen and not too many or in between. So at the end of the day, I still like my job. So long as I like my job and enjoy going to work and am able to do both things, what I'm doing. At this point, I plan on seeing it to retirement.

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 in the Seashed with Mr. David Green. What's up, David Green? How you doing? Hey, man. We got a great show today. Mike's story reminded me a lot of me when I was first on the Bigger Pockets podcast, episode 169. Crazy that we're at 482. That is crazy. I almost have 500. 169. But he's also a first responder that started working a job while buying real estate. He's way further ahead than I was. I just had like a handful of rental properties. Mike's got like a whole business going on. Yeah. So we're going to talk today to Mike Webb. Mike Webb is a fireman out of kind of the

DC area invest in like West Virginia. And you're going to be surprised. I mean, he still has a full-time job today and works 40 hours a week, very normal job. Yet he's done between two and three hundred deals. He owns 35 current rental units right now. He's just killing it. And you're going to hear about how he's used partnerships for that, how he's hired people for that and some of the traits in hiring more of the good things to look for. He's got some really genius systems that you're going to love. We talk about risk. We talk about a ton of stuff. So you're going to love today's show. So stay tuned for the whole thing. And yeah, awesome stuff. Before we get into that, Let's get today's quick tip.

Today's quick tip is there's a little website out there. You may have heard of it. It's called BiggerPockets.com. It is the world's largest real estate investing website. I found it very early on in my career and it helped me build everything that I have today. David Green found it early on. Millions of people have come through Bigger Pockets to learn, network grow. It's like the place for real estate, right?

So the reason I say that is because a lot of people don't realize like Bigger Pockets is more than just a podcast. Yes, we're the largest real estate podcast out there. But we're also a lot more than that. So definitely check out the site. Go look in the forums. Go look in your local forum. There's a forum for every major metropolitan area in the country

where people in your area are talking about real estate and doing deals together. There's a marketplace. There's a deal analyzers. There's a lot there. There's books, right? We've got books all over there. In fact, right now you can pre-order my new book that's upcoming me and Brian Murray are launching a book at the end of July called The Multitonautil millionaire, Volume 1 and 2.

And there's some special goodies if you pre-order. So all that and more, all we're on Bigger Pockets. Okay, we're going to shift gears for a minute to cover something important, especially for new landlords. The shows often talk about getting stuck doing everything ourselves and the cost of sweat equity. The key question is simple. Is my time better spent elsewhere? I use a tool that cuts down on a lot of landlord hassles. And the wild part is, it's just $12 a month. It handles rental screenings, rent collection, maintenance requests, and accounting, all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop. It saves me time in tenant communication and keeps me organized for tax season. It's called rent. rent ready and you can sign up for a six-month plan for just $1 with promo code BP 2025.

Pro users get it for free because we believe in it. Just sign in through your pro account to get started. Rent Ready helps ensure on-time rent with auto reminders, keeps communication professional, and lets you post listings to multiple sites. Check it out at rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rent r-reedi.com slash bigger pockets. We all joke that rentals are passive, but if you're spending nights matching receipts or guessing what a property earned

month, that's not passive at all. Baselaine fixes that part of landlording, the financial chaos. Their banking and AI bookkeeping system automatically tags every transaction, updates cash flow insights in real time, and builds the reports you need for tax season. You can even automate transfers and move money around without paying wire fees.

It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get a $100 bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank, member FDIC. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a Quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow.

As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single family rental, a Burr Builders Risk Policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor.

All right, with that's that. I think we're ready to jump into this episode. David, anything you want to say before we jump into the conversation on working full-time job while investing it? That's what I love about this conversation, is it doesn't have to be either or do I do real estate or do I do my job. Why not do both? Why not do both? Today you're going to learn how to do that. So without further ado, let's get to our interview with Mike Webb.

All right, Mike, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. Good, you have you here. Thanks for having me. Let's dig into your story. You mentioned a little bit about it on a recent episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast when you were one of several guests asking questions, but we were just so inspired by your story. We wanted to bring you in and hear the whole thing.

So let's start the beginning. How did you get into the idea or into the world of real estate investing? Sure. So I worked as a career fireman since 2008. So I'd always had like an entrepreneurial thirst growing up through high school and stuff. I had my own car detailing business and did all these little things. But I always wanted to be a fireman grown up. So when I graduated college, the opportunity had presented itself.

So I ended up going down that path. But in the back of my head, I always had that like entrepreneurial thirst. So it really kicked into overdraft. whenever my wife and I found out we were having our first child. And I was like, you know, you're scared, you're excited, everything all into one. And I was like, well, I'm going to look to see what it cost to go to Disney. So did a little research. And I was like, man, that's, that's pretty expensive. So at the time, I figured out, like, what my hourly rate was. And I figured how much extra I was going have to work in order to afford to do like those cool things. And I was like, I'm literally just

going to be trading a lot of time for the money and then I'm not going to be around to see my son grow up. So I had been researching Subway and Liberty Tax and Law and Care businesses and all these franchises and ideas. And I kept coming back to real estate. My parents had some rental properties when we were growing up and sold them for a host of reasons. But something always interested me in real estate. So I spent probably about a year or so just reading every book. I found bigger pockets, started going to the local meetups and just doing everything I could to turn my vehicle and my spare time into just a university on wheels. And I picked up my first rental property in 2013. And then from there, I've just kind of evolved into kind of what I'm doing now, which is,

I guess you could say a little bit of everything. In a nutshell, how I got into it. That makes sense. Let's dive into that very first deal then. The first investment property, what was that? It was a side-by-side duplex. Okay. And did you house hack that or you just bought it straight out? So I bought that off the MLS. And if you wanted to back up one deal, before I even knew what a live and flip was, I did that. My very first house, after college, I bought this house. I had like cat hair in the refrigerator. It's disgusting. It was like mauve green and salmon pink. It was disgusting. And I basically lived there and re-did it room by room. Some of it,

myself, some of it I hired out, and then eventually sold it, made a very little bit of money, but I learned a lot doing it. So unbeknownst to me, that was my first deal, I guess you could say. My first income-producing property deal was a side-by-side duplex I bought off the MLS. Okay. Did you live in one side or you rented both out directly? I rented both out. This was in 2013, and I had met a realtor at the local meetup. Basically, I didn't know what I didn't know at the time. I just knew that I had, I had picked duplexes because in my mind, it was not much bigger than a normal house, at least if one side was vacant, the other side would carry it.

I may not make money, but it would at least carry it. I found this one on the MLS, and I was able to, in essence, get a hard money loan. And I had saved up some money working overtime and a part-time job in order to pay the points and the fees associated with it. And I just kind of jump right in. And at the time, I was scared to death. You know, I was like paralyzed, but I knew I had to do something and kicked both of the people out and turned over one unit. Then I kicked out the other side and fixed that unit up, moved the rents up to market and then eventually refinanced it out.

I thought I was going to refinance all my money out like you read about all the time, but that didn't quite happen because it did not appraised for what I thought. At the time, I was surprised. Now, knowing what I know, I should never have been surprised it didn't appraise. So I can tell from the language you're using, Mike, that fear was a big part of this when you say things like, well, I knew at least one side would rent out and not the other. Those are all thoughts we think when we're worried about what we could lose in the deal. What was going through your head at the time before you bought this deal and then compare that to now that you have a little bit of experience, how do you look at it differently? So there was, I would say, like a culmination of thoughts. You know, you're a soon-to-be dad. I still work in a career as a firefighter. And I had a couple friends get medically retired, like 25, 27 years old. And I was like, man, if that happens to me, if I can't wear this uniform tomorrow, how am I going to keep this roof over our head? You know, so you start having that like, man, there's a lot more people dependent on me besides just me soon, you know, my wife, my kids, etc. But I also. But I also. knew that nothing was going to change if I didn't do something. And in 2013, you got to think back.

I'm sure you guys remember. We were just coming out of like not a great economic time or economical time. And I was in a batch of firefighters that was projected to be laid off. So that scares you, right? Like I had just moved my wife to where we live now. Like we had built a house and I was like, I'm going to lose my job, you know. So you got a soon to be dead. I had just come off the last couple years of financial uncertainty with the county and the government and whatnot. And that's kind of where I was at with the fear mindset, if you will. So I was like, I want to do something, but what is like the safest thing I can do, but still do something to move that ball down the field.

Yeah. Do you still own that duplex today? I don't. I sold it on Craigslist a couple years ago. Why was that? Because you learned more in the process since, or you just thought you could get a max out. Yeah. At first, I was just buying everything that made sense with like a 2% number. And that's certainly a great role, but I learned that there's certainly some downsides when you only use that

as your evaluation criteria. Can we dive into that a little bit? For those people who don't know what that means, like the 2% rule, the 1% rule, can you explain what that is and what are the dangers of just following that? Yeah, so the 2% rule is basically you take whatever the monthly income is, or rent rental income and you're going to go ahead and divide it by 2%. That's what you want your all-in number to be. So like what's some simple numbers here? Like if you're going to... So if you buy a place that's going to generate $1,000 a month in rent, you'd pay $50,000 for that money. Exactly. And a lot of people are like, that's impossible to edit that metric. How can you do that? And it's not impossible. Right now it's a lot harder. But I was using that criteria to be like,

okay, if I'm buying it for 50 and I'm going to put nothing into it, I want a thousand bucks a month. So this one for real numbers, I paid, I think 100, and I thought I was going to put about 35 in it total for both sides. I put a little bit more than that into it. And then when it appraised, it only appraised for like 135. So I didn't have quite enough to pay back the lender at the time. So basically work something out to where I held a second, or they held a second. And I just slowly worked that off. So yeah, it's like when things it didn't go nearly as I planned, but I still think the best deal just because you learned so much by doing that first one. So what came next? You had the one. I'm getting the hang of this thing. What'd you do next? I kind of just stuck with that side-by-side duplex property thought process. And I identified like a little pocket of the area I was working in.

And I just started making lots of offers on every single one of them I saw. And then eventually had. I had about nine side-by-side duplexes in like a three or four street area. Yeah, so I had 18 units in this like little corridor of this city. I knew that little area very well. I knew what things would rent for. I knew roughly what I would need to do to get that rent and stuck with that for the next probably about three years. I got to unpack this because, I mean, going from a duplex to 18 units while working a full-time job. I mean, I assume you stole your job throughout this whole time.

Is that right? Yes. Yeah, so. Yeah, so, I mean, how do you even do that? Did you have the money to be able to do all that? How could you get all those loans? Like, how did that whole thing happen? Not, not easily.

There were definitely some things you had to learn throughout the process. That's for certain. But yes, I had a full-time job and still do. And I had just identified one property type, and I just started to get a lot better at that one property type. Granted, knowing what I know now, I should have bought everything I saw during that time. frame because now it'd be amazing. But I stayed very focused on those side-by-side duplexes in that area.

I knew what I could pay and I knew what I had to do. And then I knew what I could exit at. So once I got pretty good at that, I was able to just make some relationships. My first one, I financed, it was with a local bank that held my very first home mortgage. And it was not the best rate. I had a lot of extra fees. However, it was my first one. And they knew me as a person. and so they were willing to lend on it, where that always seems to be a big hang up for people. And I would say, like, you may not get the lowest interest rate, but you have that relationship with that person. And then once you have that experience, then you can go kind of shop your local banks, but then develop a relationship with a local bank that's going to go ahead and fund those

types of deals. You know, you get in touch with the commercial guys, and they start figuring out what you're doing, what kind of person you are. And you just kind of have a conversation like, this is what I'm looking to do. Do you think you can help me? And that's how you finance it. or I financed it rather. That's awesome. I want to unpack that a little bit here. First of all, I love that you said, like, you picked that niche. I don't know the exact words you use, but you pick that niche and you like went all in

on that, like side-by-side duplexes were your thing. I talk about that a lot, you know, on Bigger Pockets, webinars and elsewhere. Like, there's a million things you can do in real estate, right? There's a million different things. You can do self-storage. You can do townhouses. You can do condos, flips, rentals, burr, house hacking, whatever. But as David often, you know, in the knowledge you use all the time is like getting your reps in.

You have to get your reps in. But when you do one flip and then you go do one duplex and then you try to buy a small apartment and then you go back to doing a burr and then you go do a house tech, like you're not getting your reps as well in anything. And so I love the fact that you just chose something that said that's what I'm going to be good at because the beauty of that is that you can then talk about that. Like you're the expert in that field in that area. And so when you go into a commercial lender or a residential lender or any lender or you're trying to talk to a partner or you're trying to raise private money or whatever, like you're so good at that thing.

So I'm wondering how you've balanced that focus, but I'm assuming you've bought other property types now as well. I mean, maybe bring us up to where you're at today in your portfolio and then we're kind of work backwards from there. And then I want to ask about how do you view kind of focus versus expansion? This, what we're talking about this time period was probably like the first three or four years of my investing. And after that first duplex that didn't appraise to where I thought it would appraise, I actually started wholesaling because I had to come up with some chunks of cash to pay down that second. So I did that for probably another year before I bought another rental. Jumped back into the rental game, and then I slowly segued into flips. And then

that's about whenever I met my partner, who's from Bigger Pockets also. He's a local KWA, and him and I formed our own joint business probably about three years ago at this point. And what we do now is we run a meetup. We have probably about 35 doors and do a little bit of lending. Now we're kind of like not to go totally against what you just said. We went from being like super niche, but we just basically became instead of a one-trick pony, we've had to learn how to basically monetize all the different types of deals that come across your desk.

So it might be a listing for him, or it might be a wholesale, a rental, a flip, a loan, or something. Like we've even bought land recently. So we've kind of just learned how to figure out where we can fit into all these different deal types. That's what we have right now. I'm glad you brought that up because it's not necessarily even against what I said. Like when I get that advice of like getting good at one thing, like that's for like when you're

just getting started and you're looking at 100 different things. Like just get good at something. But as you get good at that, you got your reps in. Great. Then you can try something a little bit different. Then you can add more and then you can add more. And that's when you build out this like exhaustive skill set. So you can add more things. When I started open door capital, right? The first thing we did was mobile home parks. We said that's all we're going to do. because we needed to get our reps and we needed to get good at that. But then now a year in, I mean, now we've got two apartment complexes under contract. Now we've got self-storage under contract.

And we can do that because we're adding them on one at a time. And we're also like partner with people who have expertise in those areas. But we didn't just start by going, I'm going to invest in anything possible. Because that's just a recipe for disaster, I think. Yeah. So now you're just adding spokes to the wheel. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, very cool.

So you got 35-ish units. You got a meetup going. I want to talk about that later. Are you still working the job? Did you quit that at any point? What's the status with that right now? I still work as a firefighter. And actually right now, a lot of people think a lot of firefighters just don't work

because they're always home. That changed a lot for me. Probably about a year ago, I took a promotion, and now I work in a Monday through Friday office type setting, just like most people. So that required a lot of change within my business because I had actually served in a role similar to that about three years ago, and it wiped my business out for pretty much a year.

So whenever I went back to what most people know, it's like a normal fire department schedule, I was working 24 hours on, I was off for 48. Those 48 hours is when I did my real estate side hustle, if you will. Well, whenever that all shifted to a day work schedule, all my momentum stopped. So basically spent the last three or four years, like I said, building a partnership. We've got a couple of folks that work with us now. So I did a lot of getting stuff off my plate. So even if I'm not present, the machine's still churning.

So that now when I'm in this current role Monday through Friday, the business is still working. So, yeah, I've maintained my job throughout all this. And I can retire in a couple years, like five or six years. Sometimes it may seem like an eternity. I never started this to actually quit my job. And, you know, I struggle with that sometimes because my friend, are either like full-time real estate investors or full-time firemen and not too many or in between. So certain times I go through these spells where I'm like, oh, I'm going to quit. I'm just

going to do real estate full-time. Then I'm like, no, no, I'm not. At the end of the day, I still like my job. So as long as I like my job and enjoy going to work and I'm able to do both things, what I'm doing at this point, I plan on seeing it to retirement. What are some systems that you put in place so that your business can continue to run while you're going into your nine to five. Before, I would say I was a pretty serious hobbyist, and now you have to actually think about it like you're running a business. And with that, I took a lot of the things I didn't know about business, but I knew about the fire department. So we operate with standard operating guidelines or procedures or whatever. So I just took basically my thought process with how you function in like an

operational setting with the fire department and created SOPs or SOGs before my business. And that was an overwhelming thought at first, but I just set up a Google drive folder. And every time I would go do something, whether it paid this bill, transfer utilities, do this, do that, order appliances for a rental, I would record it on either Loom or screencastomatic or something like that. And I would just save it to that folder. And it just said systems 1.0. and because I knew it wasn't perfect. I knew it wasn't exactly where it needed to be, but it was a start. And then as we brought people on, I'd be like, okay, these are your roles and responsibilities.

And here, here's your job tasks, here's how you do it, and we'll work through it. So I use that as basically my training folder. Another thing we do that's extremely helpful is we chat day to day on an app called Voxer, which is kind of like Slack or one of those push-to-talk type apps. and we run our weekly 10x meeting or KPI meeting, whatever you want to call it. So every week we're touching on all the KPIs for the different parts of the business. What do we need to do here? What do we need to do there?

And basically handling everything at a 30,000 foot view for approximately 60 minutes a week. And then from that, a lot of the folks in their different seats know what they need to do that week to accomplish whatever. Yeah, that's really good. touch on a couple things there. First of all, I love the weekly meeting cadence, like that meeting weekly with an agenda, with a plan. Like, it's not just like, well, what do we want to talk about today, guys? Like when I did that, we implemented like EOS, right? That's one system. There's a lot of systems out there. But we implemented that. I went from, yeah, like over a dozen, maybe two dozen hours of work every week and open door capital down like four where it's like I meet like that

one impactful meeting. I meet with my team. We review any deals that need to be looked at. Everyone says what their goals are and where they're at and they show their progress. And it's amazing because now your systems managing the people, you're not managing the people. Like, that's the biggest thing. And the great thing is like you don't, it doesn't have to just people with like a dozen employees. Like it could be, hey, I'm going to grab my contractor. I'm going my property manager and or whatever and project manager, whatever that thing is. And we're going to just work it for 30 minutes or an hour every Monday to make sure that all this stuff is going together. So again, I just want people to know that this doesn't only mean people who have

massive teams of people. It is what it is. The second thing I want to point out is loom is exactly what we use as well for a lot of stuff. Loom is great. For those who don't know, LUM is just Chrome plugin on your computer. I think they have it for other browsers too, but you just click this button and it records your screen or your video or both, right? And then it automatically saves it to this website and it like copies the link to your clipboard if you want it, and you can put it in little folders right on there. So it's super simple.

So anytime I'm like, I don't do something that I'm like, I don't really want to do this anymore or like this is something I do regularly, oh, I'll just do it one more time, record Lume and I'll just talk through it. Like, all right, so this is typically what I do for looking for a, condo complex in Maui. I go to this website and then I search this thing and I just talk it while I'm doing it. And then at the end of that, I've now got a training. Like what you said there is just throw it in a folder called systems for now. Like you can get fancy later. You can have hierarchies and whatever. But at least now it's recorded somewhere. So then later on when I'm like, oh,

I just got a new virtual assistant. Oh, watch this video and you write out a list of all the steps. So now we have a checklist. And like the system was created by somebody else. So anyway, that's some gold stuff right there. I love that stuff. When you, When you mentioned team and like these people with you, what does that team look like? I mean, do you have a bunch of full-time employees or these independent contractors? What is this? Bill, who's my partner from Bigger Pockets that we met on here, him and I own the company. And then we have a full-time assistant.

And she works probably about 35 to 40 hours a week. And all this is remotely. So she's stateside. We have two part-time, full-time acquisitions type folks. So we have somebody setting the appointments. We have somebody going on the appointments looking at all these houses, or else that's all I would do on the evenings and weekends. And then we have, so it's kind of blurred lines, but my business partner, Bill, he has a full-time virtual assistant that works for his realtor business, who is in the Philippines. He works 40 hours a week, but he does a lot of some of the back behind-the-scenes stuff for our business as well.

So it's kind of a mix of everything. And then we have a couple crews that we keep pretty busy so that they're working not directly for us or exclusively for us, but they're probably getting 75, 80% of their business just from us. So that's kind of what it looks like. These people that you partnered with, Mike, who was responsible for training them? Depend on what seat they were going in. So a lot of the acquisitions and or dispositions stuff was being handled by my partner. bill and anything. I always kind of explain it. Like when it comes onto the into our funnel, Bill pretty much is handling it. Once it gets put on the conveyor belt, I handle it. You know,

I handle the rehab, whether it's going to be a rental or a flip. And then whenever it's ready to come off the conveyor belt, it goes back to him to either turn it into a rental or listed as a flip. So if it was something regarding the property management or the rehab stage, I would do a lot of the training. If it was something as far as the acquisition or disposition, Bill would handle it. So Bill sort of handles the initial stuff. You take the sandwich in the middle and then he handles the hand. Have you guys had to address any resentment on either party thinking that one of you is doing more work or the work that one of you does is harder than the other? I can't say that we've never had like a knockdown drag out over anything like that. But I think at times you have to just realize

with a partnership, and I would say we never started this business, like right from the get-go with the intent of starting a business. Like, we had known each other pretty much since 2013 and had done a handful of deals on a handshake, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend that approach, but it just worked out for me. So we knew each other as people. So before we ever started a business together, I think that was very important. And with the partnership, you have to realize there's going to be ebbs and flows in times where one, person's doing a lot more than the other and vice versa. But just being aware of that and be like, you know what, I don't have a ton going on right now. Do you want me to pick up the slack on that or

do this or do that? But yeah, there are definitely times where he's putting in more work. And there's definitely times I think I'm putting in more work. And they're not always at the same time, obviously. So you just have to kind of be mature enough and also be willing to step back and take a look to see what's actually going on. And, knowing when you can kind of chip in and help. One thing I noticed that makes partnerships work is the attitude of the people involved. If they're a team player, and when I say that, I don't mean they're willing to work in a team. I mean, they care more about the success of the team than their individual accolades,

which is always difficult. It's not hard to find a player who says, I want to go play on that team and score all the points and make all the money. But oftentimes what makes a team win is stuff that doesn't get noticed. The people I partnered with or work with in my companies that say, say, look, all I care about is how well the company does and I'll do whatever is needed. They tend to be less angry, less cynical, less bitter, and the relationship stays together for the long term so it gets smoother versus the people who are showing up to a partnership saying, well, what's in it for me? If you're coming in and your thought is, how quickly can I quit my job,

become financially independent, be very wealthy, be sitting on a beach and not have to work? And that's your attitude when you step in the door. That will be exposed in your partnership. I can guarantee there will come a point and that will cause resentment on your partner's behalf and then usually it falls apart. And all that work you did to get the business to that point was for nothing. And I think that's something that I really want to highlight because we talk about real estate a lot for its merits, which all those things are true. You can make money from anywhere.

You make money when you sleep. That's all true. But the work is still there. It's just like if you have a job or if you want to be in shape or you want to be good at a hobby or whatever, you have to put that work in. And I see people like you, Mike, I think, are doing well over this long period of time because you understand commitment to a cause. Being a firefighter, you're part of a department, you're one piece in this puzzle. What you do affects all the people around you.

And when you act in a way that's considerate of others or, hey, that person's struggling with that hose, let me go help them just because I'm not carrying anything right now. It makes the team better. I guess what I'm getting at is have you noticed that those principles that helped in the fire department translated it? into your business, or do you feel like they're just two completely different worlds? I think it translates into a lot of things, and I don't even think you need something as quote dramatic as the fire department to make that parallel. You know, I think good people are good people and bad people are bad people, you know, and chances are if you're going to be good at being an insurance agent and you have the right mindset, the right mentality, everything you just

explained, then chances are you're going to be able to get put into the real estate world or a real estate team and probably mirror a lot of that same success you did in the insurance world if you're the person of that mindset and those beliefs. And I don't care really who you are. I know you're the big sports guy. Like how many times do you have some of these just all-star athletes go to these teams but they can't get along? They can't play nice. They can't do this. They can't show up to the practices. Next thing you know, the star is a nobody. even though they're on a great team and they have all the skill sets in the world,

but they have horrible mentality, personality, whatever you want to call it. It's the same thing. What have you found has worked for you in identifying, attracting and identifying good people to work with, whether it's a virtual assistant overseas

or whether it's somebody local? What have you found? It's just been like, oh yeah, that's the secret to our success with hiring. Or maybe you haven't found that yet. Two parts, dumb luck. No. We follow a lot of the Keller Williams stuff,

so we do the disc profile and is it the 411, or 2-1-1-3-11. I can't remember. 4-1-1. Yeah, 4-1-1. Like I said, my business partner, Bill, is a Keller-Williams agent. So they have that system pretty dialed in.

So we've kind of mirrored some of what they do. And when we hired our assistant, we started with, like, 113 applicants. And by the time it was all set and done, we probably had four to six to actually sit down and do an interview with. It's a lot of little tasks. And a lot of people just self-select themselves right out of that process. So I wish I had a better answer to that. But no, it's just putting them through all the different steps and then eventually sitting down with them, whether it's on Zoom or on the phone or in person, preferably.

And you can kind of tell through all of that process what kind of person they are. And obviously, once you start working together, you start to see a little bit more. But as long as there's humans involved, I think you're always going to have that variable and it's going to be tough to say with 100% certainty, this is how you do it because we're humans. But I think you can weed out a lot of the trouble ahead of time by following a process like that. And I think you just totally nailed.

I mean, like, you're like, well, I wish I had more than that. Like, that is it, right? Like, you had a process. You were intentional. What I think most people do when I've done before, and I know David, you've probably done it before, which is like, well, that person's here. Let's hire that person, right?

It's like somebody in your life. So you're like, well, I'll hire that person. And I've done it too. I've been guilty of it many times. Like, it's easy. to do that than it is to go and make a job listing, to tell everybody about it, to have them filter into some website like WiseHire or Google Docs or whatever, and then have to filter them and read them and then interview people. And it's like a 10-hour

process. And so what I have done and what many people do is it is like, well, this person's here. I think they'll be fine. Imagine approaching real estate that way. Actually, a lot of people do approach real estate, right? Like, oh, I don't want to do the work of analyzing properties. just that's a house. There's a front door. It must be good, right? Like, it's a recipe for disaster. And yeah, you might get lucky. You might have a good deal that comes in. But chances are, it's just going to be terrible. And so it's like the whole analogy of if I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening my axe. Like getting the right people, whether it's employees, whether it's a contractor. I mean, how many times they've done it with contractors?

Like, oh, they're the first one that gave a bid. I'll go with them. Right. Like, if we approached contractors the same way as we should approach employees and property managers, if you just vet people, put in through a system is going to give you a dramatically different experience. It doesn't guarantee it, but it definitely does better. Couldn't agree more. David, I'm curious to your thoughts on finding good people. I know you hire a lot and you're growing very quickly. What have you found has worked? What hasn't worked in your hiring? Well, if we're being super transparent, it doesn't work when somebody reaches out to me and says,

hey, I want to work with you and they give me their word. I've had so many people say, David, I'll do whatever it takes. I'll move to California. I'll work for free. I just want to learn. And I've made the mistake many times of saying, well, why would someone lie? They give me their word. I should be able to trust them. It's over 90% of those people break that promise that they made. Right. Like once they actually sit and think about having to move to California and having to work for free, they change their mind every time. So that's one big thing I've had to recognize is you can't assume that enthusiasm is going to last forever. That's not an actual trait of good partner because enthusiasm doesn't stay there all the time. What you find when you drag out that hiring process, you make people go through several, several

steps. You make them wait a long time. You make them prove what value they have. Like Mike said, people self-select out that weren't going to be there. What makes that hard is that you don't like breaking people's hearts. You see these people that are so excited and there's a party that wants to help them and wants the partner or wants to see the best in them. And they want the best for themselves.

I think they just haven't gone through enough of life yet to recognize that that short burst of intensity, like the tortoise in the hair, right? The rabbit comes out the gate, taken off right away. You can't maintain that for a long time. It's really the tortoise that wins in this. The committed person that knows I'm going to suck at this for a while. I'm not going to make money. I'm building up skills.

I have to have faith that's going to turn into something. So it is the people that go through the long, drawn out hiring process with me that always work. I got two questions. I got one question for both of you. I'll ask Mike you first. If there is one trait that you could identify above all others in hiring somebody that they have to have and that you're looking for, regardless of the role, just like a general trait, what would that be? Have you heard the Uda loop? You know, like all those are really important steps, right?

Like, you've got to observe. Uda? Uda. You break down the Uda loop? Yeah, tell me what Uda is. Sure. So, so this, I think he was a colonel in the Air Force, John Boyd. So he developed this thing for basically at a tactical level fighting.

So, you know, you have to observe what's going on. Then you have to orient yourself to where you're at. Then you have to decide what you're going to do. But the most important part of that, the whole process is the acting. So I would say, like, you get this great hire in there. And they come in and they observe, like, what's going on with your business. They get oriented. They start to learn the lingo, what needs to happen, when.

then they start to make decisions on like how to make those things happen. But if they don't act, none of that matters. So I would say of that act is probably the biggest one because they can have all these great intentions and know all this stuff. But if they don't, if they're not wanting to pull the trigger and act, none of it matters. So I would say if I had to whittle it down to one, that's what it would be. So David, what do you think? I would say it's track record.

So the people that do well in my businesses are people that treat it as if it was theirs. So if I say, hey, Brandon, this is my buyer. You're going to show them homes this weekend. And you take it like, all right, how do I get in and out as fast as I can so I can get to the pool this weekend and be done with it and get my commission check? You're going to give them a bad experience. They're going to tell that they're bothering you. If you treat it like if this was my client, I would show up prepared. I would do all the stuff that David said.

I would have questions for them ready to help them make the determination. I would have already called the listing agent to find out, are we going to get this house? they're going to sense that you care about them and it's going to make me look good. I can't tell you how many people think that it's okay to treat the clients of the business as if they're completely unrelated. You would never treat that person that way if it was your client, but when it's somebody else's, then they feel good. So I like to look at the track record that they've had before they came to me. Did you have success at something that would translate into this? Or have you gone from job to job to job, taking everything you could from that employer, getting paid and not being

productive. And now you're telling me, well, when I come work for you, it's going to be different. Yeah, that's really good. The rise of the tech savvy investors here. You don't need a huge team or tons of overhead to manage rental properties. Just the right tools. So I want to tell you about how I use rent ready to get ahead. For landlords who treat their time like capital and recognize the cost of sweat equity, this tool gives you everything you need to scale. Rent collection, tenant screening, maintenance accounting, so that you're organized come tax season and you can run numbers in preparation for future deals. And more. all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop.

Modern landlords don't just own property. They optimize it. Rent Ready will keep you organized, running leaner, and ready to grow. Start with RentReady. Visit RentReady.com slash Bigger Pockets. That's Rent R-E-D-I.com slash Bigger Pockets. And use code BP 2025 to get Rent Ready's six-month plan for a dollar. When I bought my first rental, I thought collecting rent would be the hard part.

Nope. The admin crushed me. Every night was receipts, tax forms, and checking who was late on rent. I kept thinking, if this is one unit, how do people run 10? Baselane changed that. It's BiggerPockets official banking platform that handles expense tracking, financial reporting, rent collection, and even tenant screening, all in one place. It's the system I wish I had from day one.

Sign up today at baselane.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100 bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and is not an FDIC insured bank. Bank banking services provided by Thread Bank, member FDIC. If you want a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever. Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals,

covering property damage, liability, lost rental income, and even unexpected issues like bedbugs. Steadily works exclusively with real estate investors, so they understand the details that make short-term rentals unique and they build coverage to match it. A quick review of your rates and coverage every year can help you protect your property and your cash flow. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance.

Steadily. Rental property insurance for the modern investor. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites.

Indeed, sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post. The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com. Rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. I'm curious of where you are headed in the future. I mean, what's the plan going forward?

Where do you want to see your business in the next few years? Probably do a little less flipping. My goal is to kind of the whole reason I got into this was to not have to be working all the time. flipping, even if you get it systematic, still takes a little bit more work, I think, on the day-to-day. I would probably rather just have a more passive, if you can use that term, rental portfolio, and focus more on the partnerships like you just said and the lending aspect. So whenever I think, like, hey, in five years, where do I want to be? I don't necessarily think about a unit goal.

I kind of think more of income goal and a quality of life goal. So I just listen to that Life and Air book. So I'm kind of reevaluating some stuff. Yeah. But I would say probably that book messes with people. It changes people. So I would say probably more towards a rental and a lending approach or a partnership approach. So how many flips are you doing right now?

Like right now, probably about five. But throughout the course of the year, it just depends maybe about somewhere between 20 and 30. If I had to just ballpark it. It just really depends on, you know, sometimes you have a lot, sometimes you don't. Yeah, I mean, how many have you done total over your career while working a full-time job? You know, I tried to think about that when I was filling out the paperwork. And if I had to guess, I probably have done between two and three hundred deals. But as far as flips go, probably about 50.

I don't know. Somewhere in that ballpark, I should have kept better records when I started. If you're driving this kind of volume in your business and your real estate, like, what are you doing from marketing? Like, what's your lead acquisition funnel look like? You off market, on market, both. So when I first started, I was pulling most of those side-by-side duplexes off the MLS where that's non-existent pretty much right now. So most of it is direct-to-seller marketing, do some direct mail, pay-click SEO. And we run a meetup. That has helped a lot with kind of, you know, you get, some of these newer wholesalers, they just, they don't quite know what they got or how to get it

where they need it. So a lot of times they'll bring it to us and we can purchase it. So I would say the meetup is a little bit of a deal flow source for us. Yeah, the meetup thing is cool. I mean, we talk a lot about it at Bigger Pockets about starting meetup and then COVID kind of put a damper on a lot of that for the last year. But, you know, as we're emerging out of it, meetups are starting back up again. And some people just did digital ones throughout the whole thing. But just a reminder for everyone, you can go to BiggerPockets.com slash events and you can look for meetups in your area. And if there isn't one, you can start one. Especially, I think you can post

in the event system if you're a pro member on Bigger Pocket. So, like, start a meetup, like, get people together. Like, what, what have you found works for your meetup? How do you run it? How does it work? Why do people like attending it? Tell us a little bit about that. So we started it because you guys kept talking about it. We're like, okay, we'll try it. So even though I've never envisioned myself running one, we set it up like, hey, we like talking about real estate. We know a couple of folks like talking about real estate. Let's see what happens. So we scheduled one at a restaurant. We knew going into it, like we might just end up being two dudes having dinner together talking about real estate. And if that's what happens, it's what happens. Which sounds like a, that's still a pretty

good evening. Right. So, but then like 16 people showed up. So we're like, okay, maybe we're on to something. So we've been running it now for a little over two years. And we don't have the people getting up to sell this course or do this or do that. Like, we just kind of a approached it as the, hey, we always want to have somebody like to lead and somebody to follow. So like, like you two guys, like a lot of people look at you and they're like, they want to follow like these big, you know, you're building this big company. You got all these books, mobile home parks, whatever. And there's like people that are always going to be following you.

So like there were people in that room that ended up showing up that like we try and chase in a good way. And then there's people in that room that have never done a deal and they're looking up to us. So, like, there's all these different skill levels in that room. And it's just been kind of cool to be like, hey, I've never heard of that, but you're really killing it in note investing. Could you maybe talk to all of us about it and, you know, educate us all with basically no agenda other than just looking to help everybody? And you'll get people in those rooms that maybe take a little more than they give, right? That's just how it is, I guess. But for the most part, you know, it's created a little community.

and you just mentioned COVID, what we did is, unbeknownst to us, how important it would be, we created a private Facebook group at the beginning of it. So that's where we ended up meeting during COVID. And that's just a great place like, hey, I need somebody to carpet. Oh, call this guy or, hey, I need a lender for this. So everybody's kind of sharing deals and passing services

around in that room in that group. And it's just been super beneficial for us, just kind of taking that approach like, hey, we're not looking to charge. We're not looking to do this. We're just looking to kind of like help everybody grow. And that's just kind of come back to us and, you know, tenfold. So that's kind of how we run it. And I always start like every meetup, like, hey, we're much better at real estate than we are running a meetup. So bear with us because we always have some sort of technical difficulty or some sort of mess to deal with. So when it comes to working your job and investing, Mike, can you share with us how you

you made the decision for yourself that it was best to stay working while investing, what went into that decision and what you would need to see before you decided it was time to leave the job? Whenever I first decided to get into real estate, I never started with like, hey, I want to quit my job. Obviously, those types of thoughts change. One of the things I always say is like, and I forget who I heard it from, but like go as far as you can see and once you're there, you'll see a little bit further. So like once I got started in real estate, I, I was just like, I mean, I didn't know all this stuff was possible. Like, I could make more than I do it a year in like a month.

So you start to wrestle with that thought process, you know, but I've always just kind of thought, like, you know what? I've always wanted to be a firefighter, like, you know, ever since I was like a little kid. So to me, I'm able to do something that gives me purpose and quenches something that real estate doesn't. And as long as I'm able to do both, that's kind of where I've just decided to stay doing either or. When would I make the decision to leave? I think, like I said, a little bit earlier, if it ever gets to the point where it's like, this is not fun. And I can tell you now, if I was in, like, a normal cubicle job, I would have never have made it as long as I have. But, you know,

I still enjoy going to work, hanging out with, you know, the guys I work with doing what we do. It's a totally I shouldn't say totally different. It's a little bit different pace than real estate, but it's still satisfying to me. I still feel like I get purpose out of it. But everybody there, I shouldn't say everybody. A lot of people would be like, oh, buying houses is this risky, you know, this, that. And I'm like, my thought has always been like, it's riskier to only have one source of income. Like, it's less risky for me to invest in real estate than to solely depend on politicians for my salary. You know, now it's like, okay, God forbid, like if I were to get hurt, like I said earlier, and I couldn't work. I would know how to pay my bills, right? And if nothing else, like, if you think about the last 18, 24 months with COVID, how much has that changed some people's income? One day they had a business, the next day they didn't. Imagine owning a catering company right now or a year ago. It could have killed you or law enforcement.

Like a lot of people have just left those types of professions, and if they didn't have something else, what would they do, right? That's such a good point. You'd be screwed. You got me thinking about people. There's always risk in anything you do, okay? I'm going to use to go to the gym and I'm going to start working out. Probably pretty easy to pull a muscle, especially when you're new.

You're going to stretch a ligament. You're going to jam something, right? Jiu-Jitsu, we have all these little injuries. Like, Brandon's foot is pretty messed up with it's broken. And it hurts all the time, right? So there is a risk in doing it. But what is the risk in not exercising? Yeah.

It's significantly more than jamming a joint or something like that. you're going to die earlier, your life's not going to be as good. So if you're looking for risk, you will always find it. There's just something about that. And when you're getting advice from people saying, don't invest in real estate, you could lose your money. That is true. Not investing in real estate at all is probably much riskier. And if you're listening to us, we would say the same thing.

Like, well, why do you have all your eggs in one basket? Imagine people that they're working in industries now, like they were a manager of a blockbuster. That, okay, it's not risky. I go to work every day. What happens when Blockbuster is completely shut down? and you had no control over how that happened. So I really like that mentality, Mike, that you're spreading,

that there's risk in everything. And oftentimes, staying in your comfort zone is probably the riskiest thing you could possibly do. You're just giving control of your fate to others and hoping that politicians or the environment or a virus or whatever is going on in the world won't ruin that. Is that, what do you think about that, Brandon? Yeah, I mean. Because you're a parent, right? You have to think about two little kids. You have to think about your wife.

Risk is obviously going to be a bigger part. of what goes through your mind than someone like me who doesn't have any of that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, you said it. I mean, perfect. There's risk in everything and there's risk in non-action. I was thinking back to kind of what Mike said about keeping the job. And then like when I think about a lot of people look online at people like you and I.

And they think, well, Brandon's over there in Hawaii and just like living this life. And David's over in California and Hawaii. And I don't think people realize like you and I work jobs. I mean, they might not be like a typical job. But like the very fact that I'm sitting here on a podcast right now, I don't do that. this for free. Right? I get paid to do this. Like, there's ad revenue and there's stuff like that. I open door capital gets fees when we buy stuff. I sell coffee for good to sake. Like, Beardiebrew.com, get your coffee today. Like, I do all these business things to generate massive

revenue. I write books, right? I do all this stuff to generate massive revenue because I'm trying to decrease my risk. Yes. And so, like, I would not be even remotely close to where I am. I mean, I would be nowhere near where I am today real estate-wise if I would have just quit early on and just had no job this entire time. I don't think, I mean, some people maybe could, but I've been able to take more risks because I have more income. And the more income I make, the bigger risks I take. Like, I mean, I got properties under contract right now than I bought my entire life combined. Like, I can take those risks because I've got all this income coming and that can support it. So again, I think there's just a good to remember like, this isn't Brandon sitting on a beach all day doing

nothing and David's sitting on a beach. Like this is like, we work. extremely hard and you should as well. Now again, there are ways to do fun work though. I think that's where people get, they hate their job. And so they think, well, I'm going to quit my job and do real estate full time. Maybe if you want, like, it just makes it so dang difficult. So I would encourage you to ask, what can you do that's fun? I think there's a lot of pressure on you if you quit your job also to do deals that you might

not have done if you weren't. I got to bring that revenue in. Yes. I think Mike has the ability to analyze deals a little more carefully to pick and choose the spots he wants, to take time to form partnerships because there's revenue coming in from his job. It's like you don't want to jump into a relationship because you're really unhappy with the relationship you're in. You're probably going to end up in another bad one, right? I think that pressure people have, get out of my job, get out of my job, can often be like,

I don't like my relationship. I need to go find a new partner to get out of this one. And you can end up in just the exact same spot you are in. 100%. And, you know, I think it's important for some people to realize, like you said that people see you guys online or whatever. And whoever they focus on or follow. And it's easy to be like, oh, this guy just must drive around in a Rolls Royce all day, or this guy must just do this, that, and the other thing, that must be what I'm supposed to do. And I think it's real important for you to figure out what it is, like, for whatever reason, why are you listening to this? Why are you gravitating towards real estate? What is it you're trying to accomplish? And just realize, like, your path is your path, and it's okay.

And it's real easy to get focused on somebody else's journey and try and make it your own. And it's okay to use those folks as motivation. But don't think that you have a lot. have to be just like them for it to work for you or to make yourself happen. You may not want to be just like them either, right? Like if someone had to sit in your spot, Mike, and deal with, well, I have employees I'm managing now. I'm investing other people's money at times. I have commitments to my partner that when I want to take some time off, I can't depend what's going on. There's a lot of people that don't want the pressure that comes from the growth. That's a valid point. Like, you may be happy just to be the guy that flips two houses a year and does all the work yourself and

makes 50,000 a pop. Like, that could be totally fine. You don't have to do a hundred of them to make it make sense for you. That's a good point. Yeah, run your own race. Right. Exactly. Mike, what last question before we head to The Famous Four, what can our audience bring,

how can they bring value to you? What are you looking for right now, deal-wise or people-wise? Like, what do you need? I'm really interested in more of a partnership route going forward. Like, I just did my first loan. I just loaned on two flips down in South Carolina. So I'm looking to do kind of some stuff like that more as I grow. Another thing I just recently started is a little group is called for responder financial freedom.

So thinking ahead, like whenever I retired, I was like, I really want to focus on helping police, fire, that kind of stuff. Like, realize that they can invest in real estate. Like, how can I do that? So moved it up a little bit, started it now so that kind of like, I. I have a new mission when I retire and I can start working with that same clientele, if you will, because I don't ever see myself completely severing ties with that, like, first responder community, or at least for a long time. If you're a first responder or, you know, nurse or really anybody, feel free.

Reach out to me on there and we share a bunch of information from guys all over the country. Very cool, man. Appreciate that. Well, let's head over to the last segment of the show. It's time for our famous. The famous four, the same poor questions we ask every guest every week. And Mike, I know you know that it's coming. So let's get to it.

Number one, what's your favorite real estate, either all-time or current favorite real estate-related book? Probably real estate book, the one thing. All right. I like it. I guess if you want to call that a real estate bit. It's written by real estate investors. I didn't want to say rich, dad, poor dad, you know.

Everybody says. He's a rebel. All right. What is your favorite business book? I would say, Who Not How, and Extreme Owners. Extreme ownership is the weight of my heart. I love that book. Number three. Funny side note, there was a spelling error in extreme ownership and the version I had. I don't know if it's been corrected. And I was talking to my buddy Kyle about, hey, did you see

that spelling error? And he said, well, no, I didn't, but I can guarantee you that if you told Jocko, he would take complete ownership of the fact that there was a spelling error in that book. That was hilarious. All right, Mike, what are some of your hobbies? Well, like you heard a little bit ago, I got a three-month-old, a nine-year-old. So I'm busy doing a lot of the dad stuff, which I love. And I like to travel, hike. I've been doing a little bit of the Appalachian Trail and pieces. So I like that.

And when I get the chance to do some surf fishing. Surf fishing? What's this? Yeah, like out on the, like where the waves come in. You're not like surfing and fishing. Because that would be pretty. No, no. That's like a mountain.

do commercial there. That's funny. Like ride, ride aboard and fish. You got a big of a fish and it carried you. That'd be kind of fun. That'd be pretty good. Fish dragging you through the water. Kind of crazy.

Speaking of surfing, my daughter got her on a surfboard for the first time ever just a couple days ago. That was fun. Those are very cute pictures. Yeah, we were in a little cove that was like totally protected. And I would push it when a little wave came and she'd stand up. It was great. So anyway, I'm excited to get her.

And she ended that with like, I think I'm ready for a bigger, you know, a bigger wave beach. I'm like, oh, right. So anyway, I'm excited. All right, last question from me, Mike. What do you think separate successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Talked about it a little bit, but I think whatever reason you're doing this, keeping that promise with yourself and just realize, and like, things are going to come up. You know, COVID's going to happen. Life's going to happen. Tenants aren't going to pay. Appraisals will be low. Whatever. All those things are going to happen. But you just got to keep focus on why you're doing this and realize nobody's going to show up and make it happen. you. So like you got to just do it if you want this thing to be successful. Because if you're going to look for excuses, it will not take you long to find one. So it's kind of where I would,

I would say, it's up to you. Yeah. It's very similar to that risk conversation we had. If you look for risk, you'll find it. If you look for excuses, you'll find it. Yeah. If you look for extreme ownership, you'll find it. There you go. All right, Mike, tell us where can people find out more about you? I'm on Instagram, Facebook, The Investing Fireman, or one of those places, reach to me. I try and get back to every single person that contacts me. And if I can do anything for you, let me know. And did you say it was a first responder's financial freedom? What is that? Is that a website or a Facebook group? Or what's it mean? It's just like a little Facebook group I started. So it's got firemen and cops from East Coast, West Coast, all over the place. And we just get on there.

Usually we've been doing this thing every Friday we get on and solve the world problems we say. So we'll be talking about all sorts of different aspects of investing. Awesome, man. Well, we'll link to all that in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com. I'm going to go check out all that stuff there or, you know, reach out to you directly. And appreciate you, Mike. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And that was our conversation with Mike Webb.

I love that conversation. Everything from the hiring to the working a job to the risks, to everything we covered in there. Mike's a good dude. And he just gets how to build a real estate business, which is awesome. And he's not doing anything that is reinventing the wheel. He's not doing rocket science. the business Mike put together is based on a partnership with the real estate agent who understood acquisition and disposition and putting a meetup together where they can get deal flow.

This is not complicated stuff and Mike just did the simple better. Yep, very much so. Very cool. Hope you all enjoyed today's episode. And again, if you have any questions or comments about the show, you can leave them in the comments. If you're watching this on YouTube below. And if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you give the little thumbs up button.

Subscribe to our channel if you haven't yet. It just helps us reach more people because YouTube's like, oh, this is a popular video. And you can leave comments below there, or if you're listening to this right now, you can go to the show notes page at biggerpockets.com. So, show 482. And you can leave your comments down below there. And we'll have Mike check in and respond to your questions if you have more for him. So that's today's show. Last reminder, go pre-order the multifamily millionaire volume one and two and get some goodies.

Biggerpockets.com slash store. All right. David, you want to get us out of here? Oh, one last reminder. Go follow Mike at The Investing Fireman on Instagram. And while you're there, follow Brandon at Beardy Brandon. You don't want to do that. David Green 24.

Yeah, actually, unfollow Brandon and follow me because he's got like three times as many followers. Don't do that. Brandon puts really good stuff out there. Go look at some videos of him teaching his daughter how to surf. That was adorable. Well, thank you. Let's get out of here. All right.

This is David Green for Brandon, the surf coach 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 height, 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. Attention, passive real estate investors. Make sure you have the passive pocket summit on your calendar. Better yet, plan on attending it in Denver, Colorado from April 30,000.

to May 2nd. This conference is built exclusively for the LP or limited partner. It's a great place to network and talk current deals and current strategies for accredited investors investing in real estate deals right now. Go to passivepockets.com forward slash summit for all the details and use a coupon code podcast to save you $50. Hope to see you in Denver.