BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 521: Leukemia & Bankruptcy to Retired with 250 Units in 7 Years

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

People often tell each other to “stay positive” in light of grim circumstances or hard times. This consistent positivity can feel forced when going through something truly terrifying, but it’s exactly what helped Jeffrey Holst fight cancer, get out of bankruptcy, and retire in only seven years. Once Jeffrey committed to having no bad days, he was able to either change his day that was going poorly or see the positive in everything around him. This philosophy helped him spur on new relationships, find new partners, and close on deals creatively. It was never “we can’t close on this” for Jeffrey, it was “how can we close on this.” He uses what he likes to call the “sideways eight” strategy that allows him to have infinite returns when investing, all while giving his partners and private lenders a sizable profit. Jeffrey also talks about seeing the positive attributes of negative situations, and how he was able to leave his job as a lawyer and hit financial freedom due to his cancer diagnosis and later bankruptcy. If Jeffrey was able to dominate the multifamily market with an underwater net worth, think of what YOU can accomplish in the world of real estate investing! In This Episode We Cover: Buying properties without credit, money, or experience  Creative financing strategies that allow you take tackle bigger and better deals Fighting cancer and using hard times to fuel your success  Managing a portfolio of two-hundred and fifty units The “last life philosophy” and how it gives you a clear path to victory  Syndicating on a small scale to close multi-million dollar deals Analyzing your market as a "boots on the ground" investor And So Much More! Links from the Show: Carlton Sheets Real Estate Course Infomercial Matt Faircloth's BiggerPockets profile Tony Robbins' Website Hal Elrod's Website Four Reasons to Invest in Real Estate episode on the Old Fashioned Real Estate Show hosted by Brian Levredge and Jeffrey Holst Feras Moussa of Disrupt Equity BiggerPockets Podcast 488: From 4 Units to 2,000 and Why Large Multifamily “Isn’t So Scary Whitney Sewell of Life Bridge Capital GoBundance BiggerPockets Podcast 004: Commercial Real Estate Investing With Frank Gallinelli BiggerPockets Radio Podcast 002: Starting Out with Karen Rittenhouse – Subject To, Direct Mail, and Investing from a Woman’s Perspective Generational Wealth with Dr. Tony Pennells episode on the Last Life Ever Podcast Akamai Coffee Website Mike Tyson's Website Arnold Schwarzenegger's Website Shaquille O'Neal's Profile Richard Branson of the Virgin Group Check the full show notes here: https://biggerpockets.com/show521 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 521. The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you can change anything in your life. And I love that quote. It's like radical responsibility. It's not my fault that I got leukemia, but I still had to take responsibility for it. And I think that that's applied to real estate is like, yeah, stuff's going to happen. I mean, same with good and bad days. Like, good and bad stuff's going to happen to you no matter who you are, no matter what you do.

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 about?

It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, here with my co-host, Mr. David, No Bad Days Green. What's that, man? How you doing? There you go. I'm good. I'm actually in Denver at Bigger Pockets Headquarters right now, recording the podcast from Ground Zero. Fancy. And I'm actually not in Denver, which is weird that you're there and I'm not. But I came back home, but you and I were hanging out this past few days. It was amazing. I love hanging out with you, dude. It's like, I don't know, whenever we get to hang out, I just walk away so refreshed. So you're a good soul. I appreciate that because I was about to say the same stuff about you. But now I will look like a D-bag if I do that. So I will just accept the nice things you said about me and tell everybody that if you ever get an opportunity to hear Brandon, and you don't do it, you will regret it for the rest of your life. Mutual admiration society.

Thank you, dude. Yeah, no, really, it's fun hanging out with you. So, and that's that I want to get in today's quick tip. You know what, today's quick tip is really, I'm going to keep it kind of, I want to say light, but I'm going to keep it non-tangible. And that is adopt the attitude that our guest today has. That's all I'm going to say, I'm going to let you listen to the show. But adopt this attitude in your life will be changed.

But speaking of today's show, we have Jeffrey Holst. Jeffrey is a real estate investor in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area, who went from being bankrupt, getting leukemia, all the way to having hundreds of rental units and killing it. And I would say it's largely because, if not entirely because of his attitude that you're going to hear more about later. So make sure you listen to for that. You'll learn a little about medium multifamily, kind of like the in between, between large and small. You're going to learn about this crazy cool strategy that we actually name right on the show where he utilizes a combination of three different creative strategies to pull off a lot of no money.

down stuff that you can start using it right now. If you got no credit, like he did, had no credit when he started and he couldn't buy stuff. No income, no money. Like, this thing is phenomenal. I think you're going to like it. He talked about how he uses partners a lot, this no bad day attitude,

which is you could adopt it today. I hope you do. Help you a little better life. And really, we go into some steps for understanding your market. Like, how do you know what a good market to buy is? And both David, Dave, you and Jeff go really in depth on that topic.

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Today is one of, I think, the best jobs we've ever done of taking the mindset stuff that Jeffrey talks about and combining it with practical application within real estate. I agree. So the whole win-win, take what you have and make more of it. Jeffrey did a really good job of taking that concept and applying it to raising money, to making it a win for his investors, to structuring deals that were a win for everybody, which just made his own job easier when he scaled his portfolio. So I think that that's a really interesting thing to pay attention to is as we talk about

the mindset that Jeff has that allowed him to get to where he is. There's some very clear, practical ways that you can apply that within our specific world of real estate investing. Perfect, man. Perfect. Well, well, that said, let's jump into our interview with Jeff Holtz. All right, Jeff, welcome to the Bear Pockets podcast, man. Awesome to have you here. Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah, so let's get into your story. What were you doing before real estate? I was a bankruptcy attorney. A bankruptcy attorney. Yeah. Sounds thrilling. It's an interesting field for sure. It was 2008, nine, and 10 that I was doing that. So it was probably the best possible time in the world to be a bankruptcy attorney.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good time. So are you still doing that right now or that's the old you? Yeah, that's the old me. I haven't practiced law actually since 2010. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was, I actually was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008 and it kind of distracted me a little bit, as you might imagine. And what ended up happening is I had a, I had another attorney that worked for me.

And he quit a week before I got diagnosed, which was bad timing. And then, so we went from two attorneys to zero, literally like overnight. And as a result of that, I ended up going personally bankrupt in 2010. So, wow. I didn't really want to do that kind of work anymore after going through that myself. Yeah. What led to that original bankruptcy? I mean, I thank you for, you know, talking about it here. So what led to that? Yeah, it was, well, there's a couple of things. One, I didn't start investing in real estate soon enough because that would have supported me when I couldn't work. But it had a small firm and my overhead was about $6,000 a week. And we went from making, you know, 10,000 a week to zero right away.

And so instead of making four, we were going negative six every week. And I did that for months and months and months. And that's what cost it. Dang. Man. And leukemia is no joke. Did you have to go through like treatment for that, I'm assuming, and all that? Yeah.

Yeah. I actually still technically have leukemia. It's called a chronic myeloid leukemia and it's treated by a one-a-day oral chemotherapy. Okay. So, yeah, it's like a daily reminder that I might die one of these days. Oh, wow. It's pretty fun. All right.

Well, nothing like a daily reminder that you're going to die. I spur you on to some real estate. So how do you even discover real estate? Why real estate? What was the kind of the build up to that? Yeah. So I'm actually a really weird guy. So when I was like 14, 15, I would sneak out of my bedroom late at night and watch

nefarious television by which I mean Carlton Sheets, no money down, infomercials. Like, I literally was that guy. I was like, you know, 14 and I'm going to sneak out of my room and watch like how to buy real estate with no money down infomercials. And so I was always interested in it. You know, my parents had a, you know, four or five rentals when I was growing up. So I think I always had a little exposure to it. And that definitely helps sort of peak the curiosity.

All right. So first deal. I mean, here we are, 2010. I'm assuming it's after that or was it before that you got started. Actually, when I was in law school, I met this guy who was flipping houses in Detroit. And he was doing pretty well. And he was paying for law school by flipping houses. And so I did actually do one flip when I was in law school.

And by do a flip, I mean, We bought a house for like $4,500 or something like that and sold it for $8,000, right? So it wasn't like, it wasn't, you know, a huge amount of money. But when you're, you know, not making any money and living on student loans, an extra two grand for your share of the profit was, yeah, it was pretty good. So that was my first deal. That was like 2005 or six. But then in 2011, after I had quit practicing law, I took a job.

I moved from Michigan to Chattanooga. And when I got down here, I thought, I got to do something. case I can't work. Yeah. And so I just said, well, what do I know makes money no matter what? And the only thing I could think of was real estate. So I just started buying real estate. But it was challenging because I didn't have any credit or any money.

I actually had a negative net worth because I had 100,000 in student loans that didn't get discharged in bankruptcy. So, you know, negative 100,000 net worth and no money, I had to be a little creative. Let's walk through the very first one you did. I mean, like, I'm going to get a little bit of your mindset there. You're like, I got no money. I just go on bankrupt, negative net worth. I'm going to go invest in real estate.

I mean, how did you even get that process started? And what was the very first deal? Okay, so the first deal I did was actually a condo. And it was with the same guy that I met in law school. I started saving money right away. I got a pretty good job. That's the nice part about having a lot of education. I have an MBA in a law degree.

I got a pretty good job. And I didn't have really any consumer debt. So I just had my student loan and a rent payment because I lost my house to foreclosure during the bankruptcy. So I just started saving my bonuses. So I had saved up like $17,000 or $18,000. And we bought this condo for $30,000 for cash. And it was a bank on foreclosure.

And remember, this is 2011, bottom of the market. It had been a $100,000 condo a few years earlier. So we just knew it was a good deal. But I still had to put in like $17,000 out of the $20, I had to my name, right? And my wife said to me, she said, listen, if this doesn't work out, you can never buy real estate again. So fortunately, Fortunately, it did work out, so it's fine. And we actually still own that condo today. It's probably worth about 150, something like that now. Wow. Wow. Okay. So, I mean,

how did you even buy it? You had no credit, you said. So how were you able to buy it without the credit? Yeah. So like I said, I saved up about $20,000. And my partner in that deal, he also had a little savings. So we actually paid cash for it. It was $30,000. We started an LLC and we each put in $17,500. So I went from having $20,000 savings and the negative net worth to having, you know, $2,500, like, overnight. So my wife was not super on board, but she's, she's a saint. So if she let me do it. So, yeah, okay. So, I mean, what was the plan? You're like, we're going to rent this thing out, make a few hundred bucks a month in cash flow. And that was the plan? Yeah. I mean, so I thought about it quite a bit. And I've been reading

about real estate and watching infomercials for, you know, 15 years at that point. So I, I had the idea that, you know, it was more of, yeah, it would pay for itself. But more it was an appreciation play. a really good area. And we knew that the market was kind of goofy at that point. And I was just very, very certain that there were buying opportunities in 2011, just because I'd been paying attention to the market for as long as I had. And actually, as a bankruptcy attorney, I was exposed to a lot of real estate investors and a lot of people that were going bankrupt because the real estate market was crashing. And I was looking at it, thinking about it quite a bit before I quit practicing law. So I had really paid a lot of attention to that. Yeah, that makes sense.

All right, so keep going. I mean, this is a good story. So where'd you go next? What'd you buy? So, I mean, you had asked about the mindset, right? Because that's actually the harder part. Like, it's one thing to just like, you know, find a deal and go buy it, you know, when you have the cash sitting in the bank to do it.

But it also was very scary, right? I mean, it was like everyone's first deal is kind of terrifying. But in this case, I had just gone through bankruptcy. So I really didn't have the option of going bankrupt. So, I mean, I didn't even have a safety net. Like, there was nothing. If this didn't work out, I was just out of love. So I just said, you know, I got to do this.

And that's actually I think why I partnered with my one partner than that deal is because I wanted to find someone that already was doing the kind of thing I wanted to do and sort of freeload off of his knowledge. And it's been a really good strategy. We ended up buying another duplex in the same building about two or three months later. And this was just dumb luck on my part. But we named our LLC after the address of the building. And this condo actually, there's like 20 units in the building. And they're like, you know, one, two, three, Main Street, one, two, three, four, five, et cetera. And so we had bought number 10 and the number 14 came available.

So when he went to buy it, I said, well, you know, we already have this LLC that has the name of that address. And so you might as well, you know, we ought to buy it together. And I didn't have any money left. And so he ended up actually loaning me the money for my share of that from his personal resources. So I was able to get my second deal, essentially $0 down like that. Then it got a little trickier, right? because, you know, we still didn't have any money and no credit. So I found a private money guy.

It was a relative of mine. And I said, hey, we've got these two paid off condos and they're going well. They're cash flowing a few hundred dollars a month. I mean, actually, they were cash flowing pretty well because they were paid off. You know, it's like, eight hundred a month or nine hundred a month, something like that. I said, why don't you give us a small mortgage on each one and then put in some of your own money and we're going to go buy this duplex. And it was like down the street a little ways. And I think it was like $75,000.

So we got $25,000 mortgage on each condo. And then this other investor put in $25,000. And we each put in $25,000 to buy this duplex. Again, for cash, because this is 2011. And the market was different than it is now. We actually still own all three of these assets. And that duplex is on a double lot. And we ended up later buying the one next to it.

I think the four lots together that we own are probably worth close to a million dollars. Wow. Yeah. And just because, you know, the market has been insane. last few years. Can we dig in a little bit to the mindset of that private lender? I mean, how did you approach them? Why do you think they said yes? Can you talk about that a little bit? A lot of people are thinking, well, that sounds great, but I don't know anybody that's a multimillionaire in my life to give me all that money. I mean, is that who this person was,

super rich? Well, he was, I mean, he had $75,000 sitting around. So he at least had that much, which was more than I had at the time. It certainly seemed rich to me. I don't think he's super rich, though, although he did loan us a fair amount of money over the years. But, you know, look at when he did that deal, he got 6% interest on his $50,000 that he had put on the condo loans. And then he got a third of the equity in the deal that we were doing. And it was a deal that made good sense. It was going to be a free and clear duplex. It was going to cash flow like $1,000 a month. So he's looking at it and going to go, hey, I'm going to get 6% on this $50,000. And my $25,000 is going to have some equity upside and also going to give me a few hundred dollars a month in cash flow. So it was actually

a really good deal for him. And I think when you're trying to deal with private money lenders, the secret is to think about it from their perspective. Like, what would it entice you to make that deal? So I literally just said, hey, like, if I had $75,000 and someone proposed, you know, buying this duplex, like, how would it be attractive to me? Because our original plan was we're just going to be like, hey, why don't you loan us $75,000 and we'll pay like 6% interest? And he was, I was like, I don't know, you know, inflation. I'm not sure. And then I was like, wait, wait, I got it. This is what we're going to do. We'll give you some collateral, right? The condos that are paid off. And then we'll also give you some interest on the money

loan and we'll give you a chance to participate in the deal. And that actually ended up being one of the smartest things I ever did because same guy loaned us about $700,000 over the next five years and never had collateral again after that. It was always 6% interest to the company that the three of us owned together. He just loaned the money to the company to the company. He just loaned the company and we'd go buy something for cash. That's cool. Yeah. And when you pay six percent interest only, I mean, it sounds like a lot now, but back in 2010 and 11, that was a fair rate. But even still, it's a pretty fair rate for private money. I mean, people pay a lot more than that. So, yeah, but I love is that you, you put yourself in their shoes and you're like, what would make this

attractive for them? And so many investors, I think when they get started, they're just thinking, me, me, me, me, me, like, how do I get this? And why can't I find an investor that give me a 6% loan? It's because 6% is not, I mean, it's not that high. Like, you can probably get that in the stock market on average. Now, granted, back then, nobody knew what was happening to the world. But yeah, you give equity. You gave some, you know, whatever collateral. We call that oftentimes cross collateralization, a big fancy word. You put the other properties that you have maybe paid off or you have a lot equity in it. You put those up and say, hey, if something goes wrong, you can take this one as well. And yeah, it's smart. That's smart, man. I mean, you still do that today. That kind of stuff,

partnerships and all that. I do. In fact, I was just having this conversation with someone yesterday. I have never done a deal without a partner. Really? I actually have several times. Yeah, several times I've had smaller deals under contract and I was going to buy them. And then at the last minute, I was like, and I think I'll bring someone in on it. Because what happens is the other day, I had this duplex under contract. I was still under contract. I was still under contract, actually. And I was going to buy it. And I'm like, I'm finally going to buy something on my own, you know, 100, like, 250 units. And I'm like, I'm excited about this duplex, right? Because it's going to be my own deal. And I was talking to a friend of mine about it that is a really smart guy.

And he's always wanted to invest in real estate. And he's like, man, I wish I could find something like that. And I was like, all right, I'll split it with you. Because, like, I really want to help people get into real estate. And he's a friend of mine. So I was like, well, you know, we're just going to split it. So again, another partnership has been formed. That's cool. All right, so let's, I can only move.

While we speed way forward and go to the end of your story, and then we'll come back and kind of fill in the blank. So what are you at today? What are you doing today? What's your portfolio look like and kind of what's your business like? Yeah. So I'm mostly in multifamily now. So I, and I don't mean like duplex multifamily.

I mean like a sort of midsize multi family. Like I target 10 units to like, So we're at about 250 units, mainly those types of buildings. I bought 60 units so far this year, and we've got another 120 under contract. And we do some of that through JVs. In fact, we bought a 16 unit this year using the exact same strategy that we used back for the first duplex, right? It was this, have somebody put up all of the money, actually, and get interest on that,

and they loan it to the company that we formed. And then we each own a third of it together. So we did that exact deal. And I call that like, I've tried. try to think of a creative name, you know, because you're so good at that, like, burr and stuff. But I was talking to Matt Faircloth about this a couple of months ago, and he's like, you should ask Brandon.

Brandon will come up with a name for you for this structure because he was like, I'm the private money guy and I've never even heard of anyone doing it like that. That's funny. I got to think on that one. Let's go through this guy's your click. So the guy lends you or the gal or whatever, you know, the partner lends the money for the down payment and the repairs and all that stuff that you need to the LLC. the LLC then takes and buys the property, and then you just split everything, equal partners.

Yeah, that's, or whatever percentage we negotiated. So depending on how much money it is. So we've done this where somebody might get, if they didn't want to be on the bank loan, we can give them under 20% equity. They don't have to sign the guarantee on the loan. So sometimes we'll give them like 15% and a little bit more interest, or we'll give them a third and a little bit less interest. And it's all negotiable, but it really is, it's like a combined debt equity play. And when I learned is the banks don't care. They just want to see the money comes from the partnership group. A lot of people are like, well, banks won't let you do it if you don't have skin in the game.

And it's like, well, we do have skin in the game. The skin in the game is our other partner's equity. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, like, it just shows like it's a combination. I don't have a good name for it yet, but it's a combination of different strategies. You're doing a little bit of private money, a little bit of partnerships and combining it together. I mean, in the book on Invest in Real Estate with No and Low Money Down, the longest book title in history, I have a whole chapter called Creative Combinations.

And that's because the best no money down deals or low money down deals are typically not one thing. It's usually two or maybe even three. You combine that strategy with the burr strategy maybe. And now you can build some massive equity in it. You got three different strategies all in one. It's cool. It's awesome. Exactly.

And then, you know, we burr these deals too because they're value-ed multifamilies. So then what we do is we'll actually burr the deal and pay back our investor, all of his capital, eliminate that interest payment and then keep the property for the three of us. That's just so smart. That's worked out pretty well. It's allowed me to buy a lot of real estate with, you know, very little of my own money involved. So, Jeffrey, when you look at the numbers on some of these deals after you refinance out and you pay back the people that you borrowed money from, what's your typical ROI that you're seeing on most of these deals? So it depends on if you're looking at my personal ROI or the ROI for the deal. If it's my personal, it's like sideways eight, you know, it's infinite return because I didn't put any money in, which is, you know, that's sort of my favorite. One of my partners, it's like when I explain the strategy, to him, he was like, we need to name our company sideways eight. And I'm like, I'm not doing that.

But yeah, no, so for us, it's really high. But for the investors, they're usually looking at like, I mean, because they'll get six percent interest on their money. And then they'll get paid off in like 18 or 24 months. And then they get the equity upside. So it's, it's really hard to calculate an IRA unless you've actually liquidated the asset. And we almost never sell anything.

But the last one we sold, the investors, there were two guys that put up the money on that one. they made it was like 27% annualized return over a two and a half year period. So I mean, that's, I think, fantastic return for them. And then, of course, our return is infinite. You know, I think I put like $130,000 in profit to myself on that deal and had no money. I got a name for it. I'm going to give you two options.

You tell me what you like better because we like alliteration. So it's not an actomers elimination. There's the infinite investing strategy, infinite investing, right? Just like the sideways. The I, I. Or we call it the triple threat, which is actually a jiu-jitsu move. but the triple threat is that the three things, the private money, the partnership, and the bur. Wrap it together, it's a triple threat.

That's how you do, no money down. Those are both solid. I would have to go with infinite investing, though. I like that, because of the sideways eight, we should just call it like sideways eight. It's not bad. I just wish that there was an alliteration in there because people, like, people remember the, like, my partner is going to be super jealous if we call it sideways eight, though, because, like, he wants to name his company that.

That's pretty, it is pretty good. Sideway seven and just drop one of them. Yeah, yeah, sideways seven. right it's not quite the same when it's it that's like a hockey stick yeah or something like that maybe there's like an e word for eight or an a word either an a word or an a word or an either an a word or an e word for like instead of sideways i don't know is there us we can go like the old school weatherman thing and call it like uh you know esbn ocho right there you know ocho right oh oh ohio investing that's not bad yeah yes bn eight the ocho yeah that's great um all right well i was going to ask you said

there's three ways that you're securing their investment the first is you secure it with the property the next is they get a fixed return of 6% and then you would let the guy participate in the deal. Is that still basically how you're structured now? Yeah. So, I mean, I do some traditional syndication also, but again, smaller deals. I don't want to compete. Like my strategy has been pick a market that I like. And I'm in a couple of markets, you know, Chattanooga, still in Metro Detroit, not in the city,

though, but in the suburbs. And so pick markets that I really understand and like. And then target stuff that other people aren't targeting. And I find there's like a soft spot in the market between. like about a million dollar minimum purchase price to like about four or five million. The five million and up you get all the the big syndicators are jumping after it. And under a million, you start competing with like mom and pop people. So we can kind of like, there's probably only actually one of your previous guest is in Chattanooga.

And he said there's only three people in Chattanooga that do what I do. And yeah, I'm one of them. Right. So like I get it. Like he's right. There's only three of us. I call it the media multifamily, like media multifamily. Because there's like small multifamily everyone talks about and then large.

Like that's very much medium multifamily. Another alliteration for you there. And it is in my worldview of me dealing with these things. It's incredibly challenging at times because you're not big enough to get the massive economy of the scale. But it's incredibly rewarding if you figure out how to manage them right. And so I want to go into that here in a minute and figure out how you're able to do that because I've had just, I mean, at bottom, they're always a headache for me at that size.

And so I want to know. You're going to like my strategy. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to hear this. So I love it because, again, it's bigger than. most newbies can get in and do. You're not competing with 99% of people listen to the show because either people are way above that or below that. So that's genius. And again, understand the area and then having some good system for management. So yeah, that's going,

250 units and 60 so far this year. I mean, you're killing it on this. I, by the way, I'm changing my mind. I like Sideway, investing. I think I'm going to go support that way. Here's why. It's not an alliteration, but it's clever. I like it. Okay. But we have to credit my partner them because he's really the guy that came up with it. And he's actually got the best name in all of real estate. His last name is leverage. Really? Leverage is his name. So it's like the ultimate leverage is Sideways 8.

So Brian, thank you for that. Brian Leverage. Sideway to investing. We could just call it the leverage investing strategy. We could. Yeah. Leverage investing. It's solid.

Yeah, that's pretty solid. Leverage. Who's got that? Yeah. His parents knew what he was going to do. I guess it's not really his parents. His great, great, great, great grandpa knew what he was going to do. In fairness, it is spelled a little different.

It's like Redge instead of leverage, but it's close enough. Well, that close enough. All right. So let's let's talk about how you're able to take down not necessarily buy because we get the sideways eight investing strategy now or the infinite investment investment investing. Infinite investing is too much like infinite banking and everyone has it is. It's too much like that. We're going sideways eight investing. Sideway's eight. The side eight. You can do side eight is a little shorter. Side eight. Side eight. Yeah. It's kind of like side eight.

Yeah. It's better than side Ocho, I think. I agree. The side eight investing. I kind of like that lot. We get how to you're buying it, but how is that model work? How are you managing those size? Yeah. So I almost feel bad saying this because my part. will be, like, sad when they realize the secret, but I'll tell you anyway, because I like you guys. So I only pretty much partner with property managers. So my friend Brian, who came up with side eight investing, he's a property manager, owns a property management company. And then my partner from law school all the way back in the day, when he got out of law school, started a property management company. And so I partner with him. And those are my two primary

partners. Now, I do have a lot of, like, people that kind of come in and out of deals with us. but those are the guys that I do the majority of my investing. That's smart. That's really smart. I guess in a way I did that too, Brian Murray, who is my partner in Open Door Capital. He owns Washington Street management. And so when we bought all these mobile home parks, I mean, 2000 in the last year, it was just like, take care of it.

And he just took care of it. And now we're bringing it in the house, but with Brian. But yeah. Well, I was thinking about that actually earlier. You know, you're much smarter than me because you, you, you know, really because like you didn't go to law school. That was a smart move. I was going to you.

Oh, yeah. I was going to. Yeah, there you go. I've actually, I've probably heard from 20 attorneys in my life when I say, oh, yeah, I was going to go to law school. And they're like, oh, you are so much smarter than me. Because no, I've never heard a lawyer say, I love being a lawyer. It's the best job ever.

Yeah, I always say I'm a recovering attorney. And then I actually make it sort of a life mission to talk attorneys into quitting practicing law. I've done it three times now. Yeah, that's funny. So that's a nice little side project there. I want to ask you about many people did take that road of going to college, racking up a lot of student debt.

I mean, obviously a degree in law is going to be better than some of the things that people get. And it could be discouraging to think, well, I screwed up. I should have went into full-time real estate. Instead, I went and I did this. But you really took your knowledge of like, you were a bankruptcy attorney. And I'm sure you saw what happens when assets get divvied up. And you took some of the connections that you have in that world and you've used them to create partnership. So what advice do you have for people that are, they're already a doctor.

They're already an attorney. They have a good job. They're making good money. But they also recognize, I'm going to be in this thing, this rat race forever. How do they use the skills they have from the career they started to amplify the success they can have with real estate investing? Yeah.

So, well, first of all, law is actually a great thing if you want to get into real estate. I mean, learning about contracts, learning about mortgages, securities, things like that, is super handy. But I think in Kiyosaki's board game, like, you get these cards and you're assigned a different occupation based on your, you know, randomly at the beginning of the game. And one of these that I always found interesting is, like, it seemed to me, that if you were a mechanic and had really low expenses, it was pretty easy to win the game,

like get out of the rat race. And it was a little bit harder if you were a doctor or a lawyer. But if you did manage to win the game as a doctor or a lawyer, because your expenses were higher, you were doing awesome. So what you have to do is you have to leverage wherever you're at. So if you're a doctor and you have high income, you have the opportunity to invest in other people's deals. You've got cash.

So you have opportunities that people like me, when I was, I mean, it's ironic that I was, you know, had low expenses. The reason I had low expenses is because of, you know, falling into this bankruptcy trap. Otherwise, I might, you know, I might never have been able to do what I did. In fact, I have this thing where when I was 17, I said, I'm never having another bad day, right? And I got diagnosed with leukemia at 30 and people would come into the office and they'd say, or they came into the hospital and say, oh, you must be having a bad day today. And I was like, no, like, I didn't find out until 10 o'clock at night. Like, my day is going pretty well.

But I even have like my coffee mug, you know, no bad days. Oh, that's cool. Like all the time, like constantly talking about not having bad days. But the thing is like, somewhere in the world right now, someone's having the best day of their life, right? Somewhere in the world, someone's having the worst day of their life. So objectively, the day is neither good nor bad. It's really just how you perceive it.

So when I say, you know, that day was a good day for me, it felt that way at the time. And then in retrospect, you know, honestly, if I hadn't gotten leukemia, I don't. I might have still been playing this someday I'll invest in real estate game. And I wouldn't be able to do all the amazing stuff I've done the last few years. Like right before COVID, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Oh, wow. I mean, I took a month off and went to Africa in February of 2020. And this year, I went to Puerto Rico for a month. I mean, people don't get to do that unless they develop financial freedom. And real estate is a great way to do it. And I would have never done that as a lawyer. So I would say, to answer your question in the roundabout way, take advantage of the situation you're in,

and recognize that you have to take responsibility for everything that came before it and just sort of move forward. Well, I think if you're asking yourself, is this a good day or a bad day? It's very funny you say that because I literally just committed a week ago to never having a bad day. From now on, if I catch myself thinking that, I will do something to either see good in it or make good happen. And so I'm new on that journey, but I like that you brought that up.

25 years, man. It's so possible to do it. But it doesn't happen right away. I'm going to give you, I wasn't going to go on to this tangent, but I need to tell you this. because it's really important for you is the first day that I said I wasn't going to have bad days. I mean, I was in a dark spot. Like, you know, my parents were going through divorce.

I broke up with my girlfriend, but I was 17, so it seemed worse than it was, right? I actually went into the bathroom with a knife, and I don't know what I was thinking, but I put this knife on my wrist, and I was like, oh, that kind of hurts. I don't really want to do that. And I go, you know, I live in America and a middle class family in the suburbs. Like, my life can't be that bad. I'm young and healthy, right? So I'm like, today I'm just going to decide it's a good.

day. And this is like pre- YouTube, so I didn't know what mantras or affirmations were and stuff. And I just said, you know, out loud 10 times, today's a good day. And the next day was not a good day. So I just kept doing that. And it probably took about a month of saying, today's a good day out loud. Every time I saw a mirror, every time I got in the car, every time I was in a room alone, pretty much anything I could think of to trigger that, I would say out loud, today's a good day. And then one day I walk into a 7-11, guy behind the counter says, how are you doing today? And I go, I never have bad days. I didn't even think about it. It just came out from inside of me. And then I went, holy, I can never have bad days, right? And the thing is, Tony Robbins talks about this. It's the reticular

activating system. You train your brain to recognize the familiar. And if you are used to seeing the positive and everything, you're sort of embracing that. You walk outside and the sun hits your face and you're like, that's nice. Stop for a second and say, this is, really nice. Like, it's a nice day. Or if your car starts go, hey, this is great. My car starts, right? I know it sounds weird, but it rewires your brain. And there's science behind this. Like, I've read books on it and stuff now, but back to the day, I didn't know it. I just did it. And it's the greatest decision I ever made because it allowed me to do things like when I got sick and I was, I mean, I thought I was going to die. Like, you don't understand when I got diagnosed, my white blood cell count was

so high. The nurses, not the doctors because they didn't have official diagnosis were like treating me in a way that I knew I was going to die. But I knew one of the nurses because she was a childhood babysitter of mine. And she's like, I'm really sorry. You're here. You know, this is really terrible. And like, she's all crying and stuff. And I'm like,

I'm actually really happy to be here because I've seen you in like 20 years. And like, that's exciting for me because I only look for positive and everything no matter what. But I think she thought I was insane, right? Like literally insane. But again, that's still one of the best days of my life. So the fact that I went through that day and felt positive about where I was,

It allowed me to figure out what I needed to do to get healthy and stay alive. And now I'm here 13 years later. It's actually be like 13 years next week. And, you know, no bad days for 25 years. It's amazing. Brandon and I talk a lot about the power expectations play in our lives. And I promise I will relate this to real estate. And when the idea of a good day or a bad day is, like you said, objectively, there are

no bad days. It just depends where your expectation was. If you had very high expectations, the sun hitting your face, it's supposed to hit my face. You don't look at that like a blessing. And it sounds like what leukemia did was it really lowered your expectations for what you expected out of life. You're just happy to be alive. And so now all these things that happen because it's very easy to have a good day. And these problems that real estate bring apart, they don't really seem like that big of a problem compared to dying. And I think that that, like, what I'm really getting at here is we all

know if you want to make people wealth through real estate, you got to even a one deal. You got to get that first deal and it will all start to come together. But the expectations that you're not going to lose money. It's not going to be stressful. You're not going to make a mistake. They're so high when you're new, especially when you're listening to a podcast like this and it's all success stories. Brandon moved to Hawaii. David's had a successful career. Jeffrey here, he's on the podcast. Talk about what he did. The expectations are, I got to be that. That is ridiculous. And so I really think that boundary is what stops most people from getting involved. And what you mentioned when you're raising money is you're actually just trying to set expectations with the person you're

raising it from. What do they expect? What return do they expect? What safety do they expect? And then how do I meet or exceed that expectation? So I think Jeffrey, you know, we're going to get back into your story and more practical details of how you buy properties. But what I'd love everyone to hear is the reason you got ahead was that you had lower expectations for what the deal should look like, especially when you were new. You built momentum and then you started to raise expectations on the deal accordingly, but that is nothing to do with being happy in life. You could make a bazillion dollars in real estate. If your expectations are nothing supposed to go. wrong. My car is always supposed to start. It's so hard to be happy, right? Like, I just went through an

experience when I did my TED talk where my car didn't start the day of the thing. And I feel like that was God's way of reminding me. Like, don't expect everything in life is supposed to be easy. Like, you just show up and you do your TED talk and it goes great. When those little things go wrong, it reminds you how fragile a lot of life is. And it makes it easier to be happy when your car does start. So I think, like, in addition to all the practical insight you're giving us here, That might be the most powerful thing that you've said so far was those lowered expectations made it easier to get going. I'm actually super glad you point that out because that's actually why I wanted to come on your show, right? Like the real estate stuff is cool, but like there's a million people that have a lot of real estate.

I love real estate. I mean, like I said, I watched infomercials about it when I was 14. I'm a weirdo. But and I would drive around when I was first 16, I'd see these big abandoned buildings and be like, someday I'm going to own that. I'm glad I didn't ever buy the big abandoned building. But that's a different issue entirely. But, I mean, that's literally me. But at the same time, I was terrified to do it until I got sick.

And then when I got sick, I was like, well, what do I have to lose? Like, you know, you can't count on the future. You can't count on your life. And I was looking at this and going, look, my wife, she helped support me when I went through law school. Like, I owe it to her to make sure that if I die tomorrow, she's fine. So that was a big motivator for me. And you're right.

It was about changing my perception. I wouldn't phrase it necessarily as lowering expectations. but it was like when you said about starting your car, I'm glad you brought that example up because I use that a lot. Like when my car wouldn't start, I would go, I'm so glad that mechanics exist and somebody can fix this for me because I'm not a mechanic, right? So it was just about reframing whatever you were at. Actually, Hell Elrod has this thing. He says that the moment you take responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you can change anything in your life. And I love that quote.

It's like radical responsibility. It's not my fault that I got leukemia, but I still had. to take responsibility for it. And I think that that's applied to real estate is like, yeah, stuff's going to happen. I mean, and same with good and bad days. Like, good and bad stuff's going to happen to you, no matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter what you, you know, how good you are, what you do, good and bad stuff will happen. Good and bad stuff is going to happen in your investing career. It's going to happen in your personal life. But if you look at it and you say, I'm going to focus on the positives and I'm going to do what I can to mitigate the negatives. Buddha has this thing,

I'm not Buddhist, but Buddha has this thing where he says, you know, like if it's about worry, but I think it applies to almost everything in life, if there's nothing you can do about it, it doesn't help to worry about it, right? So, you know, you might as well ignore it. And if there is something you can do about it, it still doesn't help to worry about it. You should just go fix it. I feel like that's the strategy in real estate. It's like some stuff, you can do something about it. Well, if you can do something about it, go do it. And if you can't do anything about it, then just, you know, mitigate it to the extent you can and move on because you're going to learn from it. So now that insight you have,

have, that perspective you have. How would you say that has changed your strategy when it comes to both raising money, choosing what deals you're going to buy, running your business in general? Yeah. So the first thing is, and I call it like the last life philosophy. Like it's my last life. So I get to do this right this time. I think of it like this. One, I'm going to guard my time really a lot, a lot more than I could make more money if I wanted to. But I'm much more interested in setting up my deals in a way that I don't have to spend a lot of time day to day working on them. That's not like I can, I can never get to where I don't pay attention to them or don't care about them because if I do that, then they're not going to work out. I know this.

But I can like mitigate the amount of time that I spend on it. So that's the first strategy. And then the second thing is like, if it's a really big problem, I have to see a clear path to victory or I'm not going to be interested in it. Like some stuff, it's just too hard to deal with. And sometimes you just got to cut your losses. I'm a big fan of selling your problem property. If you've got a property that's bugging you and it's causing you a lot of trouble, get rid of that thing. even if it's your only property, it's a lot easier when you have a bunch. But if you only have one, it's still better to get rid of it and then try to fix it.

Because, you know, somebody, like, I may sell it to one of you guys and you might have a different process that fixes it and it might be a great deal for you. It just didn't work for me. Yeah. That's such a great principle. No one says that, but it's so brilliant because the whole reason we're buying real estate is to have a better life, right? It doesn't make any sense if you're doing it to have this big balance sheet so you can say, I have another 50 doors, right? that this is how many doors I have becomes everybody's metric, but 50 doors on the wrong property can be 50 headaches that you don't need.

Yeah. And I mean, listen, I hear these people and I go to these seminars sometimes and people are like, I have 1,000 doors. And then you find out they're like a limited partner and, you know, they own a 10th of a percent or something. That's cool. I mean, whatever. It works for them.

It's fine. But for me, well, if I was going to ask someone and I never would because I don't think it's anybody's business really is, I'll be like, well, really, how much money do you make? Like, are you paying your bills? and do you have to show up to work? Because that's the metric that matters to me. I think the secret to life is buying back your time as soon as possible.

I stole that from a guy I interviewed on one of my podcasts, but his name is Dr. Tony Panels. But when he said that I went, holy cow, like, that's amazing. Like, that is the secret to life. Buy back your time so you can do what you want to do with your time. And then you can do things like give more, help more people. You can't do that stuff. If you have to struggle to pay your bills, you can't help people. And the world rewards value.

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They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. And they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way. What do you see in the future for you? What do you head in the future? How big do you want to go now that you can pay your bills,

sounds like you got some money coming in? Do you keep growing or do you go and shift focus? Yeah, so I mean, a couple things. One, when I first quit working, I quit at 2017. So, I mean, I literally went from bankrupt to retired in seven years, actually about six and a half. And my goal had been to retire by 40. So when I went bankrupt, I was like, wow, that's not going to happen.

I'm 32. And I'm like, but I still did. I squeaked it in before 40. And so that was pretty cool. But I got bored really fast. I was sitting on the beach. Actually, I was at a pool, and I was reading a rich dad, poor dad for like the nine millionth time in my life, you know. And I was sitting there and I was like, well, other people should hear about this.

So I started doing trainings and going to events and talking to people and just going to network stuff and telling people. And that's when I got into syndicating. I didn't really do it because I wanted to grow as much as I wanted to help other people get into investing. Yeah. And that's been, I mean, that's been an amazing journey in and of itself. It's been a lot of fun. What would you consider your superpower is? Yeah, I'm really good at structuring deals.

Like this, the sideways eight thing, I forget what we're calling it already, a side eight, the side eight, strategy. Like, no one else does that, apparently, except for me and the people I've told about it. But, you know, stuff like that, it comes from, I think, combination of, like, being in a really bad spot and not having an option. And also having my background in law, you know, to David's point earlier, that's, like, really useful. And when you combine those things and you get a little creative, that really helps. So that superpower, probably just taking complicated things, simplifying it in a way that people can understand it and projecting it out there to make it work for everyone. I love it.

I love it. And you said syndicating. So I'm assuming that you do more than just, you're not just doing the side eight where you bring in three partners. For those who don't know what that syndication is, can you walk through what that is and how your syndications typically look and what you're buying there? Yeah, sure. So I'm actually buying the same kind of stuff. No, this is very unusual for syndication. Most of the syndicators are pooling people's money because we're really what a syndication is.

it's like you just take a syndicate or a group of investors, you put their money together and you buy something. From a technical perspective, if the three of us go out and buy something, it's a type of a syndication. But the kind that really matters is like when you start raising money from passive investors, at that point, it becomes a security. And there's all sorts of legal implications to that. So people need to get good legal advice. And I'm certainly not giving that right here, even though I may be an attorney in some jurisdictions, but pulling money to buy deals. And so what I'll do is, like, I might find a deal and I maybe just bought one. And so I don't have any of my own cash.

And I don't, maybe one of my investors is like, yeah, I can't really take it down all by myself. So we look at it and go, hey, we need a million bucks. So we'll get like 10 people to put in 100,000 each. And then we'll keep a piece of it for putting the deal together. And they'll each get a percentage of it for their investment. That's really what a syndication is. And we still are targeting that. Like, those are usually like a little bit bigger, but it's still that medium in multifamily, you know, like medium multifamily.

you know, like medium multifamily, 25, 30 units. So that's where we start on that. And we've done a couple of commercial buildings that way, too, like a strip mall and a office building. I don't think I'd buy another office building. Fortunately, we have it under contract to sell. So our investors are going to do well on that one. But I don't think I'd buy another one at this point because the market's kind of goofy on that with COVID and everything. Yeah.

Yeah, I can totally see that. Where are you buying it? Those are both in Chattanooga. I mean, again, another one of my like core investment principles is you have to know your market. Like, if you don't know what your market, like, that's how you get an unfair advantage, actually. I mean, talk about unfair advantages. Like, if you can buy something and you know more about the market than everyone else or just than most people, you can, I think I heard David say this a long time ago on a podcast. Like, you can actually be the, the expert on a specific subset of your

market. Like, I can be the best guy at buying 10 to 20 unit buildings in Chattanooga. I know I can do it because there's not that much competition. And then I get a, I get a, a, unfair advantage over the market because of that. Well, you're about to have a lot of competition now that you just said that on the biggest real estate. That's all right. I'm going to find a new market. It'll be all right.

We won't tell them. Well, can you talk about if you don't mind the baby talking in the background? Hi, wild man. What's going on? Wild man just came in to say hi. But can you talk real quick about when you say know your market? What do you mean? Yeah.

So, I mean, part of it is just like, you know, you have to have, and I'm not an expert at out of state investing like David is. So I apologize for if I, if I simplify this. But the way I look at it is. I think you have to know enough about the market that you can see if a deal makes sense or not. You need to know what the rents are. You need to know what the trends are in that market. Because, you know, some things can look really good on paper, especially from the distance.

And then you drive the market and you're like, whoa, this neighborhood's not as good as I thought it was. Right. So it's about really just getting a deep breadth of knowledge about your local market. I'm a big fan in local investing. But even when I do invest out of state and I invest in a few other markets now, I spend a lot of of time in those markets. Like, I invested in Michigan, but I mean, I'm from Michigan. Like I, to me, it's not rocket science. The reason I pick the markets I'm in, yeah, I like the metrics. I like the growth. But, you know, like Chattanooga, I moved here partly because I knew it was a good market.

But I didn't buy real estate in Chattanooga from Michigan. I moved to Chattanooga and got to know it. And in fact, I took a job as an Uber driver so I could drive around and see where people that were riding in Ubers were getting picked up from. And it turned out, these guys were getting picked up. from apartment complexes. So I started seeing all these small apartment complexes. And I was like, whoa, I didn't know that was there. I didn't know that was there. And that kind of stuff, that knowledge is really helpful. But here's the thing, Jeffrey. If I wanted to invest in Chattanooga, I wouldn't have to fly there. I would just invest with you because you do know Chattanooga, right? So that's my strategy of Michigan actually, right? Like I invest with my property manager

friend that I've known for 20 years and I know he knows what he's doing. And that's why in the long distance book, I hammer how important your property manager is. They are not a person that collects checks and fills vacancies. They are a Sherpa that leads you through some of these areas because they know better than anyone. Like Brandon manages his own properties. He can tell you where he likes investing and owning and where he does not because property managers cannot avoid the pain of real estate investing. They're the first people to hit it. I think that's brilliant. That's one of the things that I use them for the most is their insight in a market. No one's going to know it better. I just want to say you're making my point that you shouldn't invest in market you don't understand

unless you have a person who you trust that does understand it. I agree with you completely. That's what I said. I simplified a lot more, but I actually think your solutions are very elegant because it is really about that team on the ground. And the property manager to me is the number one person on that team because they also can bring you deals. They know when people are getting ready to sell.

They know what things have traded for. They know what rents are. I mean, there's so much knowledge in property management. I'm going to add a tiny quick tip to what you're saying. People don't understand. There's two reasons that people get in the property management business. The first is they want to make money, and God bless you for trying to make money in property management. They're doing God's work.

It's a very, very hard business to run the margins. The second reason is that they know they're not going to make a lot of money, but they're trying to get to the front of the funnel. They're finding opportunities when the landlord doesn't want to own the property anymore. They either sell it through that property manager's real. estate company or they buy it themselves. And you hit the nail on the head. You find deals through property managers. And I probably shouldn't be saying this because it's going to like hurt my own method in a lot of ways. But if you want to find off market stuff, that's the number one best place to go to right now. I 100% agree with that. And that's why I partner with them because then

you get to the front of the funnel. Because like you know, if a property manager is also an investor and they almost all are, they still take the first crack at it. It's when they don't want to buy it that you find out about it. And that's still better than waiting until it gets listed, you know, an MLS or something a lot of times. But it's definitely good to be at the front of the funnel. Yeah, it's really, really, really smart. Hey, what would you guys both? I'll both of you question, but I'll start with you, Jeff.

What would you recommend for somebody to listen to this show right now going, well, I just don't know what market to go to. And once I pick that market, like, give me some tangible steps to learn that market. Should they become an Uber driver drive around? Or what's the, you know, what's some tangible stuff they can do? Well, I mean, I don't think everyone's going to do it the way. I did, which is, you know, actually move to the market and drive around as an Uber driver. But, I mean, that does work. It does.

And you know what? It also shows, I just want to call this out. It shows, like, a level of dedication that most people won't do. They say, I will do anything to quit or to me financially free. I will do anything. Okay, well, move across the country and go to a market that's amazing and then learn everything you can about it. Well, I'll do almost anything, right?

I had a really, you know, big advantage in that I got sick and, you know, thought I was going to die. So I was highly motivated. But try to avoid leukemia. That's the first step to find in the right market. Step one. And then step two is, you know, look for a market where there's growth. Like one metric I think is really interesting. And one of the things I'm most happy about being in Tennessee for is that we have a net

migration of U-Haul trucks. So like U-Haul publishes this thing where they say, this is where the most, like the most U-Haul trucks go. And so as a consequence, if you want to move out of Chattanooga, super cheap to rent a U-Ha because they're like basically subsidizing you to move the truck away from here because they just sort of build up here because people want to move here. So if you see U-Hauls building up in the neighborhood, that's a good sign. But also, you know, job growth.

I mean, this stuff, you can buy the stats on this, job growth, diversity of employment, and population growth. Because at the end of the day, population needs to live somewhere. So that's going to drive rents forever. Like if the population's growing, probably you're, you're. It's going to be fine. That's so good. That's so good.

You know, one of the things you said earlier is something that I've been doing lately a few times. You know, we had a Ferris from Disrupt Equity on the show back a few months ago maybe. I've partnered with Whitney Sewell, who's another investor. So what we're doing is very similar to what you're doing in that I don't know Houston. And I don't know Colorado market very well. So I'm partnering with these companies who are like the best in that area. Like one of the best, you know, operators. And like an example of like disrupting Ferris down in Houston.

Like they also are a massive property manager there. And so it's funny that you say that because I was like, Oh, I'm like, I don't even know if I did it deliberately with the property management side of that, but it sure does work well because if I can't be the smartest one on the market, I'm going to find out who is the smartest one on that market and we're just going to partner together. It's like a win-win. Yeah. And the thing is, like, I didn't do it deliberately either. I like to pretend like I did, but it really was. I knew these guys were doing a good job on stuff and I was like, I want to be partnered with it. Yeah. That's a lot of actually like stuff. Like, for example, the entire, like my entrance into house hacking, like, I had no idea that was like going to be a thing or that people did that. I just was like in the very beginning, I was 21 years old.

I'm like, well, I got to live somewhere. If I live in that duplex, I can, you know, make the mortgage from the other unit. And then, like, Burr was a complete accident. Like, it was just like me trying to flip a house, couldn't sell it. So I just refinanced it. And like a lot of the things in life, we may be like looking back. There's a great quote from Steve Jobs. It says you can't connect the dots looking forward.

You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. And I've always loved that quote of like, yeah, looking back, I can see all these things that makes me look really, really good. And David probably looks really, really smart when it comes to, like, figuring out the long-distance investing game and the birthday. We just, like, do stuff and then, like, make mistakes. Literally, I couldn't buy in California.

And I was like, well, where can I buy? I can buy in Arizona. I'll just, I didn't even know you weren't supposed to do it. You just do it. That's how I ended up with my, you know, side aid investing is I didn't know. I was just like, how do I do it? I just got to do it. And this is the way that it worked for me.

And I've been able to repeat that over and over. Because that's the one thing. When you find something that works, just keep doing it. Just keep doing it. Do you hear that, newbies? Quit overthinking it. The most successful people didn't think enough. And that's why they did well.

I was just in Steamboat with Brandon at a Gobundance event. And we were sitting and talking and I was saying, you know, it's funny as much as we, as much real estate as we own and we talk about it. We make our living off it. To this day, there's still not a deal I buy that I don't wonder, did I pay too much? Is this the wrong time to buy it? Is this a bad deal? What if it goes wrong? And there's not a deal that I've bought that I didn't look back and say, I'm so glad I bought it.

I wish I would have bought more. It never goes away. You always have that fear that says, be careful because you can't see how the dots connect. But when you look back, you always see how they connect. And so just I hope that encourages the people that are listening and you're looking at a deal and it makes sense. But you got that little thing going on in your head that's like, but what if? And it's bringing up ridiculous ideas. All of us, I would bet Jeffrey still has that when he's by, what if I lose my investor's money? What if it doesn't work out? What if it's in it has mold and I don't know. It never stops. Yeah. And actually, I think if you don't. have that, then there's, you're not actually doing anything. Like, I know that sounds weird, but if you don't have any fear, then that means you're not stretching yourself at all. And there's something about just doing things that are a little bit hard.

Like, that's where all the rewards come from. So if you don't have any fear, then you're probably not doing anything hard. And if you're not doing anything hard, you know, you're working at McDonald's flipping burgers for the rest of your life. As Brandon would say, so good. Oh, yeah. I never say that. What do you think about?

Look at me. I love McDonald's. What can I say? Not McDonald's. I mean the comment you made. Oh, sorry. I thought Brady was a big fan of McDonald's all of a sudden. I'm like,

he doesn't look like a McDonald's guy, but I know like the mint Starbucks thing or whatever you do. Today it's a cappuccino from Akamai coffee is probably the greatest drink on the planet. So you guys ever in Maui Akamai coffee. All right. I'm hopping and playing. I'm on the way. Anyway, all right.

Well, we got to start getting you out of here in a few minutes. But I just want to say you're an inspiration. I love hearing your story, everything you've done, everything you're doing. You've got so much to teach. I hope people follow you. And we'll ask you in a minute where they can. But anyway, I just want to give you just a, thank you.

Thank you. You're awesome. David, any questions you want to go before we head to the famous four? I want to clarify the point you made that if it isn't scaring you, maybe you shouldn't do it. There's, that's a common thing. A lot of actors are saying that now and it became kind of cheesy. But there is an element, I think, of really insightful truth in there. When I gave that TED talk, I was talking about the way you build skills.

And part of the talk was this idea. They talked about it in the one thing in chapter two, that a one-inch domino can knock down another domino that's one and a half times bigger. And one of the ways we cheat ourselves in life is we stop going for bigger dominoes. We get comfortable doing the same thing. Brandon talks about just quit buying a single family house every time. Use the stack. You can get a one house and then a duplex and a fourplex.

And the fact that you're trying to knock down something bigger than you did last time will absolutely create fear that maybe this is something you can't do. And that stops a lot of people from moving forward. But really, if you ever want to be growing, if you want to get the best out of yourself, there has to be a point where you put enough weight on the bar that you don't know if you can lift it or maybe you fail. You can't lift it without a spotter. But I would say that probably the times where I need a spotter to help me lift the weight are the times I'm getting the strongest, right? Like pushing myself past what I can do and leaning on someone else and is always going to feel scary, but that's why you should do it.

You made that point, Jeff, and I just, I don't want to kind of gloss over that because I think that's right. I mean, there's something wrong with doing deals that you're comfortable with. Just to be clear, that's okay. But for somebody like me, I want to be growing. If I want to grow, I have to push myself. Like, the scariest deal I did is still the, you know, $30,000 condo that I would, like, be able to do without even hesitating right now because I'd be like, well, whatever. But it was really scary because it was the first one.

And so it does get easier. But every time I push myself just a little bit, it's like, ooh, am I sure I want to do this? Even moving to Chattanooga was like, do I really want to move to Chattanooga? Or, like, maybe I should just stick around, you know, Grand Rapids is pretty nice. And, you know, I think that's true in everything in life. Yeah, just push yourself a little bit. You're going to feel that fear and then you know you're going the right direction. That's the hero's journey.

You don't find the parts of yourself that are the best without going past what you're comfortable with. And it makes you dig deeper because you don't have enough to accomplish what you're trying to in the current version of you. Right. Like every time Brandon enrolls, jitsu, or I do, you're reminded that you're not good enough. And the you that you are right now cannot accomplish that task. And so it forces you to get a skill, get more in shape, learn something, improve. yourself in some way. And literally, like, real estate is one of the easiest ways to force

growth in your life. Just by the pursuit of it, it forces you to realize I didn't know as much as I thought I did or I need to live beneath my means and be a little better with managing my money so that I can have more in reserves. I think that's one of the reasons we're addicted to it is because you can't succeed in this without growth being tied to it. Yeah, really good stuff, man. All right. Well, let's head over to the last segment of the show. This is our Famous Four. The Famous Four is a part of the show. We ask the same four questions every week to every guest.

Jeff, I know you've heard them before, so you should be ready for the famous four. Number one. You like that rhyme? Oh, I am ready for what it's worth, so. All right, good. I'm a poet and I didn't realize it. Number one, favorite real estate related book. Okay, so I know everyone says Rich Dad Porte, so I'm going to skip that because that would probably

be the answer. But I like the book, what every real estate investor should know about cash blow. and 36 other key metrics by Frank Gellonnelli. Yeah, Frank Gellonnelly. He was on our show years ago. And I'm telling you, this book is fantastic. It breaks down every metric that I think about and some I never heard of. It was recommended to me, actually, ironically, because I'm weird and I still go to school,

even though I work for myself, I took some, like, online Harvard class, and the professor was like, you should read this book. And I'm like, okay, I read it. And I was like, this is amazing. I liked it so much. I made a YouTube video where I did a book review of the book. That's how crazy I have about this book. It's the only time I've ever made a book review YouTube video, but it's out there.

So people should definitely read that. It was a phenomenal. I read it before I got into real estate. And yeah, we recorded with Frank Gallenale way back on episode four of the Bigger Pockets podcast, where we had like mid-500s now. Wow. Yeah. So that's interesting. I don't remember that.

And I started at number one and worked my way. Oh, yeah. I would like to listen to that one now. That was in the days when me and Josh were like, hey, Josh. how are you doing today? Yeah, and I think like number three was the was, I don't know if he was number three or four, like five, somewhere around there you interviewed like somebody that didn't talk about real estate the whole time.

Do you remember that? Like a financial planner or something. Yeah, talking about death. It was like planning for death. It was like nothing to do with real estate. Yeah, we were still trying to figure out what the show is going to be at that point. Ironically, we've come back to talking about every other show, not talking about real estate, but it took a, took 500 episodes to get back to not real estate.

When we realized that like sometimes it's the not real estate people that can teach you the most about real estate, which is what I find fascinating about those Sunday episodes. And you want to talk about personal growth. Go listen to episode two with Brandon and Josh, both Brandon's life and his podcast in general. Brandon just gave in Steamboat the best presentation I've ever heard him give. It was even better than what I thought Brandon might grow into in 20 years. Like he just looked like Michael Jordan in the zone and he could not miss. He commanded the crowd. I saw you posted that on Facebook and I was like, man, I kind of wish I was there. I actually saw Brandon speak like a few months ago or, you know, by the time this comes out,

it might be a few months ago. And I was really impressed, especially because you just sort of popped in and like it was a surprise appearance. Like I think you just kind of, I'll just talk about what I do. I like getting compliments, but here's the irony that I want to actually point out of this. So I've done, you know, a lot of talking over the years. The two speeches, which I've done, the least amount of prep work in my entire life was the one at Steamboat that Dave Eut thought.

Because I didn't know I was even talking until I got there. And so I didn't plan anything. I just sat on stage and talked with Pat Hybin. And the other one was the one where I met you, Jeff, at Brian Thumrock's event, where I didn't find anything until I was on stage. I'm like, oh, wow, there's 300 people watching me right now. I guess I'll talk for a minute. And I end up talking for 10.

Anyway, so, and those are like the two people seem to like the most. So sometimes in life, like, I mean, I've worked hours and hours and hours and hours on speeches before, and it just kind of falls flat. But sometimes in life, you just got to wing it. That's my lesson there. I actually agree with that. My best talks have always been ones where I just was like, I know what I want to I'm just going to say it, and I didn't plan how to say it.

But it doesn't mean to be lazy. It means to always be prepared. What are we going to ask me, Brandon? I was just also my cheerleader. So I'm sure the speech was probably mediocre at best, but thank you. I was literally answering questions about my net worth. I was literally in the bathroom stall when Brandon got done and hearing people talk around me about how good the speech was.

That may be TMI, but that's how powerful I just want people to understand. Hicks and Gracie, he has a new book outright called Breathe, a Life and Flow. And he is considered one of the best fighters, definitely the best, jujitsu practitioners the world ever saw. And part of what made him so great was that he never knew who he was going to fight when he was going to fight what style that he just had to be ready that he believed I, my style is better than anyone's in the world. And I'll just beat anyone you put in front of me. So he didn't prepare for the fighter. He prepared by perfecting his craft. And I think that's why you two do really well when you're not over preparing. It's not that you

don't care. It's that you're always caring. You always want to have the answer when someone comes to you and says, how did you do this? How does this work? You know, that's part of being in a platform like where people you look up to you is it forces you to kind of sharpen the iron that's in your life. And that's one more argument for why you should do things that are hard and scary. Because getting on a podcast where we talk about real estate constantly in any minute, someone could pull me aside and say, how does this thing work?

And if I don't have the answer, I look really stupid because I'm expected to forces me to grow. Oh, yeah. You know, and I've been on a lot of podcasts, but I don't normally get nervous on them, but I got nervous about to you guys. I'm not going to lie.

You guys are a big deal. So, you know, thanks for having me on. We showed up late without cameras, microphones working and you just, you very graciously dealt with about 30 minutes of, of tech issues this morning. Sorry. All right. Question number two, moving on from the mutual admiration society.

What is your favorite business book? Okay, so it's still rich dad, poor dad. But if I don't count that one, total recall, actually, by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Really? Yes. And ironically, I heard about this book on your show. I think it was like, you know, 400 episodes ago. may not remember it, but I think it's the best mindset book I've ever read. Like, it's really,

and real estate and business in particular are, it's really about mindset. It's amazing. The guy, like, tells his story about how he went from being like a poor person who didn't speak English in the hills of Austria to becoming like the best bodybuilder in the world, the biggest action star in the world, the governor of California. And everything boiled down to one thing. And that was, he just refused to accept that whatever he wanted wouldn't happen. So, like, he first heard about the mystery universe contest when he was 16. He'd never lifted weights before. And he goes, I will be Mr. Universe.

You know, like, that's it. Like, it's just, I will. Like, I'm not going to consider anything else. And the greatest part about it is it's almost a real estate book because he made his first million in apartment complex invested. There's in Southern California, right? Yep. Crazy.

I love it, man. I'll read it. I haven't read it yet. I'll read it. Next question. What are some of your hobbies? Well, I love traveling. I mean, I think I alluded to that before, but honestly, my biggest hobby, and this is going to sound so weird, is helping people figure out what they want in life and helping them achieve that.

You know, that's like going back to my last life philosophy. It's like I feel like I've had this life experience that allows me to go to people and go, hey, you know what? If I can never have bad days, so can you, right? And not everyone has the story that they can back that up. And so I feel like I almost owe it to the world to do it. So I just love to get out. And I mean, I'll go to like a cafe and the person behind the counter will say, oh, you know, how you doing today?

I'll be like, I never have bad days. And they'll say something like, oh, that must be nice. And I'll be like it is. And you can do it too. Let me tell you how. So that's my biggest hobby, I think, is just trying to tell people how to like live their life, which is when you say it like that, it sounds really bad. You know, it sounds like I'm telling them what to do.

But the reality is I just want to help people wherever I can. That's what I focus on these days mostly. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, final question for me. What do you think separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? You're going to think I memorize this answer, by the way.

But I think it's taking action. I mean, I know people say that all the time, but there's a quote I love, and I did not memorize it. I swear for this show. I've known it forever. And then I think it was Richard Branson. I can't even verify who said it first, but it's the difference that separates successful people from those who never

succeed is successful people take action and this is the key part without all the possible information yeah and that's the fear thing we were talking about earlier like you know you have fear because you don't know everything about what you're doing but you got to do it just got to take action that goes back to that mike tyson quote everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth punch in the mouth right like he would go into a fight knowing whatever plan they have or what a plan i have it often goes out the window the first time something hits you really hard and i put up an instagram quote that Brandon says everyone has self-discipline until the waiter brings chips and salsa to the table very similar. That's true for me. But that, you know, speaking of Mike Tyson, his book is really good,

too. Undisputed. That audio book is amazing, actually. There's something very, very powerful about all these successful people, right, Hicks and Gracie, Mike Tyson, Jeffrey Holst that are all telling us, you don't have to have all the answers. In fact, you'll never get them. So if you're waiting for that to happen, you'll be waiting for your whole life. Mike Tyson is somebody who has also had some real estate in his career in his portfolio, I believe. And we'd love to have on the show. So, anybody has a good connection to Mike Tyson. That goes for me too. So I'd love to have him on any show that I'm doing or if you just wants to hang out with me, you know, anything. So people know Mike Tyson or Arnold or send him my way to him up. Yeah, Arnold's another one. Yeah, we would love to hang out with Arnold.

You know, if they want to come hang out with me and Jeff and Arnold. David might go to come. Yeah, I will go wherever you want us to be. Anyway, you want to go. Yeah, we'll get it. Or Shaquille O'Neal. If anyone has a Shaquillo-Neal connection, he's got a good real estate. They're on our list of people who want to get on the show and connect with Jeff. So, all right. Let's get out of here, fellas. David, won't you ask the final question? Last question of the day, Mr. Holtz.

Where can people find out more about you? I thought about this a lot because I'm everywhere. If they Google me, they'll find me. But Instagram's good at Jeffrey Holtz. But, you know, my real passion is, like I said, the last life philosophy. And I have a Facebook group called Last Life Ever, private group. And people can find me there because that's where I hang out the most, actually. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun and people can come hang out there and, you know, I mean, they can find me. It's not hard. I promise. If you Google me, you're going to find me. It's not a common name. All right. If you Google me, you'll find me or a skateboarder.

So, you know, it's actually really sad when there's somebody famous with the same name as you. There's a guy in Sydney, Australia named Jeffrey Holtz that's working on solving cancer. And I'm kind of like, I hope he doesn't solve cancer because if he does, then I won't be, you know, be hard to find me. But then I'm like, oh, I have cancer. So maybe I actually do hope you saw kids. There you go. That's the no bad days. Either way you win.

No bad day. Either way I'm okay. Yeah. Thank you. All right, Jeff. Jeff, this has been phenomenal. Thank you so much. I love chatting with you.

And I'm excited to kind of see where you're had in the future and all the people you're helping and all the lives you changed today. I just thank you. Thanks so much. All right, guys. This is David Green for Brandon. So Good Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio.

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