BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 530: Finding the “Hidden Gold” Most Investors Miss Both On & Off-Market

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

Having limited lung capacity while playing college basketball seems almost impossible. But, like almost everything else in Nolan Gottlieb’s life, he pushed through it to accomplish his dreams. Hard work and determination are what allowed Nolan to step onto that basketball court, even with a severe physical disadvantage. The same determination is exactly what allowed him to close on nineteen units in just ten months of investing. Nolan didn’t know anything about real estate; he couldn’t even describe what a mortgage was if you asked. But, as he ventured off the basketball court and became a real estate agent, he knew that agent commissions wouldn’t protect him and his family if he got sick again. He needed long-lasting wealth, passive income, and an ability to scale his success. He started out partnering with a friend on a BRRRR. It went so well, he decided to tackle an off-market deal. Nolan was able to close not only on one off-market deal, but on a fourteen-unit apartment building as well, thanks to his six steps to find “buried gold” in his market. In This Episode We Cover: How to accomplish your goals, even if you start at a severe disadvantage Why passive income sources far outweigh one-time profits The six steps to finding profitable, undervalued off-market properties  Taking down a fourteen unit apartment building as a rookie What appraisers look for when going through your property Discovering your “why” behind investing in real estate And So Much More! Links from the Show: qPublic.net Shutterfly Whitepages MLS.com BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Podcast 500: Robert Kiyosaki: America’s ‘Rich Dad’ Sees a Real Estate Crash Coming BPCON 2021 David Greene's Instagram Duke University's Blue Devils Basketball Team Bobby Hurley's Wikipedia page C.S Lewis's Website Brandon Turner BiggerPockets Profile Robert Kiyosaki's Website Check the full show notes here: https://biggerpockets.com/show530 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 530. On today's show, we talk about finding off-market gold, seller financing wins, and the six-step process to contacting off-market leads that you need to know about. My life went from being black and white to now being in color. And it shifts that perspective so much that, you know, I don't wake up every morning and thinking, oh, I've got to go to work or, oh, whatever. Now it's like, oh, my goodness, this is exciting. Let's go see what we can find today.

Let's go see what we can accomplish today. What's going on, everyone? This is David Green, your host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Here on the Bigger Pockets podcast, we get into how you can build wealth through real estate today. We do that by bringing on top performers, expert investors, and just plain, regular people. We lay out the tactics and mindset that they used to be successful so that you can copy it if you do one simple thing. Take prudent, consistent action. Today, we have a great show for you.

We are going to be interviewing Nolan Gottlieb of Georgia, who has been putting together a very impressive portfolio with grassroots efforts that anybody can achieve. We're going to be covering how he was able to walk on to a basketball team that he really had no business playing on in his own estimation, then went on to receive a double lung transplant that gave him a new lease at life. And he shares the mindset he has that has him exploding after what he calls lightning in a bottle, which is. finding off-market deals and some deals to the MLS, but basically he fell in love with real

estate with his new lease on life. And he has a great story. This is very heartwarming. It's also very educational. We get into a lot of very practical things that anybody can do from things as simple as driving around and seeing an ugly house and then contacting the seller to joining a real estate team. If you actually want to work in the agent space and sort of using those two realms to work together, real estate sales and real estate investing to build your own portfolio. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without

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whether it's a single-family rental, a burr builder's 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. Please make sure you stick around to the very end of today's show. We draw a parallel between how he was successful in basketball. how he is successful in investing in real estate. There's actually some very similar patterns

that he copied from his career in basketball that are making him successful in real estate. And here's why I want you to hear it. No matter who you are, you might not play basketball, but you do something. You have a job. You are involved in athletic endeavors. You have a hobby. You are good in relationships. There's something that you are doing that you do well. And there's a way to take the elements that make you successful in that space and apply them to real estate investing so you can be more successful in this space. A lot of people, people are walking around with gold buried inside them that they don't even realize. And today's conversation will help you figure out where you've got an advantage over other

people, where you have a skill set that will really help you and apply it to real estate. All right, Nolan, what's going on? Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How are you, David? Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm actually doing really good. Thanks for asking.

I'm wearing my favorite t-shirt today. It's the Bigger Pockets follow the fire method where it's sort of a principle of bigger pockets preaches that if you think about what you get excited about, It gets you jazzed up. What gets you just basically overall optimistic about life? That's a good indication of where you should be spending your efforts. And you have a very cool story that I'm excited. We're going to get to share with people about how you sort of found your fire and then fueled that fire into a fantastic flame.

That's a lot of Fs right there. So let's start off. Why don't you tell me about your overall portfolio. Tell me what you own now and where you own it. Okay, yeah, sure. So I got started 10 months ago and I am currently at 19 units. I've got a triplex. That was my first deal.

I've got a single family. I've done a couple single family flips, which I'm not a big fan of. And I've gotten a 15-unit deal, one single-family house and a 14-unit apartment building. So I currently have 19 units right now. Those are all in Northeast Georgia, Jackson County, Northeast Georgia. Why are you not a fan of flipping? For me, it's too stressful for me. You know, because there's a lot of factors.

is a big factor when flipping and there's just factors I feel like that are out of my control. You know, you're having to depend on the buyers and picky buyers and this and that. But when I'm doing rentals, I know that I'm going to be holding for a long time. I know that if I go over budget 10 grand, then, you know, as long as I keep them and rent them and, you know, do my thing, they're going to be safe. So for me, it's just kind of a peace of mind thing. That's about it. I really like that. I've described that before as when you're flipping a house, Well, if you get a lot of meat on the bone and it's in an area and a price range that's very popular, your risk significantly decreases with flipping, right? That's one thing. What I say is you have a big target. If you're not exactly on that bull's eye, but you still hit that target, you're going to be okay. When you start getting into luxury flipping or you don't have a big margin, maybe you think I'm going to get in, fix it up quick and get out. It's okay. I'm only going to make 20 or 30 grand, but that margin is really thin. You can miss really easy, especially when you're new or. or not just a new investor, but it's like a new asset class you're not used to or you're using a new contractor.

Anytime it deviates from a reliable system you developed, you want a bigger target. And flipping in general, I think, is less forgiving than single family rentals. You screw up on a flip, you lose money, you screw up on a single family rental. You got to wait longer before you get that money back. Yeah. And it took actually doing a couple to realize that I didn't like it because initially my first deal was a bird traplex. And it went great. It was beautiful. It was by the book. I mean, it was just, it was perfect. So I thought, well, you know, we'll do a couple flips and that'll be that. And it just wasn't. I didn't like it. Yeah. I mean, like you say, it was, it wasn't tons of meat on the bone. And, you know, I learned the lesson. You know, I learned a lot of lessons in it. But the biggest one was, I don't want to do this anymore. And I know I'm kind of digging deep here and I wasn't going to, but I'm curious when you knew kind of on this follow your fire trend that we started with, when you

knew this isn't for me. It's usually like this emotional feeling you get that just it feels wrong, right? How would you describe what those emotions were like for you that led you to believe that's not the path? I don't want to be a flipper. I want to be a buy and hold investor. Well, the second flip we did was really kind of, I felt like out of necessity because at the time, and it wasn't that long ago, we had private money that I was paying interest on. And unless that money was being used, the way we've got our note structured, unless that money was being used, it was costing me money, right? And at the time, I did not have the apartments under contract. I really didn't even know they were going to be in the future for me. So I basically just did this

because, hey, we need to do something. We need to move. And I don't want to keep this for six months and, you know, be paying interest for six months. So that was the reason I did it, which is not a good reason to do anything. But I did, you know, we were fine. We broke even. We made, I don't know, we made like $4,000 when it was all said and done. But it was that the whole time I had this like undercurrent of anxiety that was going on that is not present when I'm doing rental renovations. Yeah, that's really good to listen to because even if it makes sense on paper, if you've got that undercurrent of anxiety, that's a great way to put it, your subconscious will fight you. You won't dive into that.

And when you want to be good at real estate investing, you have to do the same thing you do with anything else in the world to be good at it is you have to practice it until you become excellent. And if you don't love it or at least really enjoy it, you're not going to put the time into becoming excellent at it. And that's true for everything, right? Like I like going to jiu-jitsu, even though it sucks right now. And so I'm willing to put the time into getting better at it. I like lifting weight. So if I'm going to exercise, that's usually what I do. Brandon Turner hates lifting weights.

So he's never at that mentality going to become somebody who gets into lifting weights because he doesn't like doing it. So he's not going to put the time into it that would take to get good at it. And for the listeners, that's just a really good point to highlight is there's all kinds of different ways you can invest in real estate or make money through real estate. You really want to find the one that you're drawn to that energizes you. Because Nolan, we also have a background as basketball players. And I'm guessing that that also played a big impact in your mindset, your psyche that was being

developed and part of why we invested so much into basketball was we just love the sport. Would you agree? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'd love to kind of explain my journey into basketball and explain my journey into real estate because they kind of run along the same lines and there's some common threads in them. So I was born with a disease called cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis is a lung disease primarily, but it also affects your digestive system. but it's a progressive disease like many are. And as you get older, it gets worse. Well, I always had a dream that I was going to play college basketball.

When I was a kid, the big team was the Duke Blue Devils, and my hero was Bobby Hurley, and I wanted to play college basketball. It was all I could think about. Well, you know, played through the league. It wasn't a big deal, but, you know, I always had this dream that I was going to play college basketball. Well, when I got to about middle school, I started having some physical issues. that just kept persisting and, you know, my lung disease started to get a little bit worse,

but I had this dream and I was going to do it. Like, it was not an option not to. I had a chip on my shoulder that made me persevere. So, and I'm going to make this a long story short, but I was, I played at a small private school in Georgia and I was able to walk on to an NCAA D2 junior varsity team. Okay. So I, you know, worked, my tail off. Every summer I'm playing. I even actually had to get a feeding tube because at the end of my sophomore year, I was 5'4 foot four and weighed 95 pounds. And anybody familiar with basketball knows that that's not going to cut it. So, I mean, I got feeding tubes and I was in and out of the hospital, but I just kept working, kept on persisting. Well, once I got to Anderson University in South Carolina,

I was the JV, I was on JV, but I was also the varsity manager. So I would go to all. all the JV practices, all the varsity practices, all the JV conditioning, all the varsity conditioning, weight room, individual workouts, everything. Well, I just kept showing up for every practice. I was in the gym as much as the coaches were more than, I was in the gym more than any of the other players in the program were. But what ended up happening is because I was in the gym so much, I picked up on so many things and I was able to learn without actually being on the court.

So fast forward, going into my junior. year. I'm in a 6 a.m. workout that I did not have to be in, but it was an open gym, and one of the guys on varsity got in trouble or something and got thrown out of the gym. And I just happened to be sitting on the sideline, and coach asked me, hey, do you want to play? And I was, sure, absolutely. That's why I'm here. So from that point on, I was on varsity and played all four years in college. And then I got into teaching, you know, fast forwarded a little bit further. I got into teaching. And when I started teaching, the lung disease really, really took a nose dive because I was in a room with a bunch of kids all day, every day for like five years. And I just

kept getting sick. Anytime the kids would come to school, sick, I would get sick. So, you know, when I played basketball in college, I was at 50% lung function. By the time, five years into teaching, I was at 30% lung function and having to get on the transplant list for double lung transplant. By the time I'm transplanted, I'm at 17% lung function on oxygen 24-7, and then I get a lung transplant. And all of a sudden, I come out of transplant, and once I heal, you know, I feel great. I feel better than I've ever felt, but I could not go back to teaching. So I had a friend that was a real estate agent, and they said, hey, have you thought about real estate? And I was like, no, I don't know anything about it. I don't even own a house. I don't know what a mortgage is.

They were like, well, you can learn. So I started working with a group in commerce, Brittany Purcell and Associates, and I started just being around the business. I started understanding things without actually investing myself. I worked with a couple investors. And when they're offering $225,000 cash for something, I'm thinking, how in the world does anybody affording this? I don't, you know, how do you do this?

And also, I was becoming successful in being an agent, but I knew that as soon as I stopped hustling or if I have to stop work, the money stops. So I had to figure out something where I would make money if something were to happen. So if I were to get sick again or had to stop working, income would still be coming in. Hugh, bigger pockets. I learned as much as I could driving back and forth to appointments, driving back and forth to showings. I got a college education by playing a podcast. And eventually when that first deal popped up, I knew what I was looking for.

I knew what to expect. I knew how to do it. I just had to do it. And when that first deal popped up, I jumped at it, made an offer and hit the ground running. But it was scary. But that is the story. All right. Here's a few patterns I want to kind of pull out of this so that people can see why it really

wasn't a surprise that Nolan became successful at this. You started off with the love of something. You love basketball. Your physical attributes were somewhat of a barrier to your success in that sport. which I think a lot, in fact, I don't know of a successful person that didn't have some experience like this at some point in their life where either they weren't good enough or they perceived that they weren't good enough. Like you could have been amazing, but if your dad wanted you to be an Olympian and you weren't that good, this same thing can take place. And so instead of just quitting and saying, oh, I'm just going to go play World of Warcraft and I'm going to avoid reality because it's scary. You kept showing up.

You just dropped your expectations. You're like, okay, I'm not going to play D1 basketball, but at least I can still go play. The two. All right, I can't make the varsity. I'll make the junior varsity. All right, I'm on the junior varsity. I'm going to show up to the varsity practice and I'm just going to put myself around where I want to be. And you probably had low expectations there too. I just want to learn. If I don't make the team, that's okay. I just want to learn more about basketball because I love it. I got a fire. I ended up wearing the right t-shirt. This was not planned, everybody. Then what happened to you is what always happens when people make the right move.

It's like if you're a football player and you're always running towards the guy with the ball. when the fumble comes out, you're there to pick it up. So they had a moment where somebody else got hurt, got in trouble, something happened. The coach did what all of us that are in positions of leadership do as we look around and be like, who do I have? I can plug in here. There's an emergency, right? And you're sitting right there.

And because you had been paying attention to what they do in practice, you probably already knew the plays. You already knew what was expected. You knew what made the coach happen. You knew what pissed them off because you've been watching. You didn't go in there and dominate as this amazing athlete, but you did solidify your position. on that varsity team because you were moldable. You fit right in.

Okay. I'm guessing something subconsciously in your mind kicked in and you said, oh, that worked. If I do this, I can get into the world I want to be in. Then you got into teaching. You weren't able to teach because being around sick kids was getting you sick all the time. Your immune system couldn't hang up to it. You get the lung transplant. You realize I got to stay away from there or I'm going to end up right back in the same

position. So you have a friend that brings you into real estate sales and the same thing happens. You get that fire. I like this. I like real estate. You just start showing up every day. You become part of this team, not knowing anything, like you said. I didn't know what even a mortgage was, just like you didn't know much about basketball

at one point. But you loved it, so you immersed yourself in it. You made yourself useful. You had a good attitude. They liked having you around and you picked up information just by immersion, by being there. While you were there, you got introduced to bigger pockets. Now it's more the investing side of real estate, not just the sales. You immerse yourself in it.

You learned from being around it. I'm totally recognizing that, Nolan, there is a method to your, badness for how you become successful. Absolutely. 100% you summarized it perfectly. The method is work your butt off and show up or show up and work your butt off. That's it. I don't know. I mean, there's probably been something, but I can't think of something off the top of my head that I had a passion for that I put my mind to that when I showed up, I didn't learn, I didn't grow, I didn't get better at and didn't achieve. That's the key. I mean, the limiting belief that a lot of people have is that even if I do show up, I'm not going to be any good at it.

And I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm going to be able to do that. And, you know, I'm going to fail. Well, you know, I don't know who said it. Michael Jordan. Somebody said, you're going to miss every shot that you don't take. So get in there, take your shot, see what happens, learn, get better, fail if you got to, but learn from your failures. So that's what I did. That's the thing. And it works. I think there's a beautiful combination of raising your standard, what you expect of your So how that would have looked like for you is you showed up early to practice. You worked harder than everyone else did. You study the plays when you were at home. Like what you expected of yourself, you were constantly raising the bar.

But what result you expected, you're always lowering the bar. So lower your expectations, but raise your standard. You didn't have an expectation that you should be starting on that team. Otherwise, you would have quit because now you're not hitting your goal, right? Like you said, a lot of people think, well, I'm going to suck at it. Well, that means you have an expectation. that you should walk in and be good right off the bat. And that's the part you have to lower. You can't expect to be successful right away, but you can raise your standard, which will actually

increase the success. And I think the people that figure out how to pull those two things, like increase the flame of your standard and then lower the flame of your expectation will be successful. So when you talk, that's really like the pattern that I recognize that was in your mindset that led you to getting to this point here. Absolutely. Absolutely. It all started with the first step. It all started with being in the right place and taking that first step. With real estate, you know, I didn't know anything. The first step is sign up for the real estate course, right? Then when you get into, you know, and then that progresses, then you get into investing. The first step is listen to a podcast. It's such an easy first step. And then once you learn enough, take that next first

step, make an offer. And then the next first step, get a deal. So it's a series of first steps that you just got to be willing to take and show it up. So let's reverse engineer how you're actually getting these deals from what you look for in the end and then we'll go all the way back to what the first step would be. When you're sourcing a deal, what are you looking for in that deal? Gotcha. Well, initially I was because I really didn't know any better, initially I was looking on market. And I did find one on market and it was great and it turned out to be fantastic.

But since then, I've realized that the gold is very deep. So I have started looking off market for myself and, you know, even for clients too, but for myself. And I've kind of got some steps that I kind of follow if you want me to get into that. So I've probably got six steps. Is that good? Yeah. Let's hear them. All right.

So I've got six steps for finding off market deals. And this is what I do. I follow the system. I do this and it's paid off big time. And we can talk about how it's paid off. So the first thing is find the property. you know, it seems overly simplistic to say find the property, but a lot of people ask me, hey, where do I find deals? What do I do? What do I do? And you just got to get out there and hustle.

So what I usually do is because I'm in the real estate industry anyways. I'm always driving around. If I see a dumpy house, I'll just write down the address. I'll take a picture of it right down the address. So that's the first super simple step that anybody listen to this podcast can do. All right. Second thing I do is I will look it up in Q Public. I'll look that address up in QPublic. I don't know what it is everywhere, but in Georgia it's called QPublic.

It's the tax assessor's website. A friend once told me, actually the friend that introduced me to real estate said QPublic will become your best friend. And I didn't know what he was talking about, but I do now. So usually these dumpy houses are not people's primary residence, right? So when you look up the property in QPublic or in the tax records,

you're going to find so-and-so owns it and their address is not that address. Their primary address is not that address. So that's step two. I look up the property. Step three is I will write a handwritten note to that address explaining who I am. And it's a simple note. It's something like, hey, this is Nolan. I'm a local investor in the area.

I've noticed your house several times and I was just curious if you've got any plans for it. I would love to buy it. I'd love to talk to you about what your needs are for it. Right? And I do that all on just a little easy, simple card that I ordered off Shutterfly for 50% off. And I'll send that off. I'll send it to them. A lot of times I'll send three or four.

And then the next step happens, I will call them. All right. The reason I send the letter or send the card first rather than call first is because I want to turn a cold lead into a warm lead. So whenever I get on whitepages.com and look up the owner of that house, I can find some sort of phone number. And then I'll just dial and dial and dial until I actually get that person. And I'll say, hey, I'm Nolan. I'm the one that has been mailing you cards. I hope you've gotten them and had a chance to read them.

You know, I was just wanting to follow up with those and see where you're at with that property. Right. And I think there's magic there because people hate cold calling. So make it to where it's not cold for you. Warm up the leads. for yourself. Yeah, meaning you have something you can refer to. I've been sending you note cards.

And where are you finding their phone number to get that information? Really? I pay $5 a month and get a whitepages.com subscription. And then whenever I find their name in Q Public, I will punch that name into whitepages.com that I pay $5 a month for. And it'll spit out every phone number that's been associated with them. It'll even give their mother-in-law and sisters and everybody else is phone number. So you might have to dial 15 people until you get the right person,

but eventually you'll get the right person. So it's probably the best $5 I spend every month. I haven't heard that before. So step four is get their number from white pages and call using the name you got from step two. That's right. That's exactly right. So and then it's just build rapport, find out what their needs are and keep falling up. You know, usually the first time you talk to somebody, they're not going to sell you a house or sell you a property. It takes time. It takes time. It It takes building a relationship. It takes, you know, finding out what they need. I've discovered that a lot of people, or, well, a few recently, have been recently widowed.

And they are, they've now gotten 10 to 15 properties in their name. And they just don't really understand what to do with them. They don't quite know what they're going to do and whatever. So I'm there to say, here's a couple options. You know, you can sell them all now. You can sell them later. you can defer taxes by doing this or this or this. And, you know, it just, I'm offering some sort of value to them and not expecting anything

in return. It's great if something comes back to me, but, you know, trying to help them out as much as possible. So the fifth is follow up. And then the sixth thing is just start making offers. Start making offers. These people might not be interested in selling first, but take two or three offers to them. And, you know, eventually, and like in my case, eventually they say, all right, we'll sell. So what was the purpose of step five?

Is step five just to build a relationship? basically before you hit him with the offer? That's right. Yep. Follow up. I don't want to be the guy that says, you know, that's on the commercial saying, hey, I'll buy your house. I'll buy your house type thing.

You know, we'll buy your whatever cash, sight unseen, this and that. That's such a good point. Here's the problem that I find with lists. People that are drawn to like, give me the six steps to do, are typically trying to get from step one to six as fast and as efficient as possible without thinking about how to be excellent at those steps. if that makes sense. And so they would normally skip five.

They would get the number. They would call them and say, I hear a write an offer on your house. And when you hear someone use a phrase, it's a numbers game. It's a numbers game. At times, yes, it is a numbers game, like you said, like you got to shoot the ball if you want to score.

But there's also such thing as good shots and bad shots. Sometimes the numbers work against you and you're just wasting energy and not getting anywhere. So what I like about this is that before you let yourself take the shot, make the offer, them up. You break down the defense. You try to get open. You try to move the ball around and get other players open. And then the right shot makes itself known. That's a really big step, everybody is before. Don't just skip right to what you think is the end result. Take some time to build a

relationship with that person, feel them out. Let them see you're not the same as the, hey, hey, hey, I buy houses right now. Call 100. I buy houses and I'll buy your house guy. Yeah. And another thing that I can do that I can offer that a lot of people can't is I can, if they don't like the offer that I'm giving them, saying, well, I completely understand that is, that's a normal thing. You know, you want to see what the top dollar you can get for. I get it. And I can help you that way too, because I'm an agent. So I've actually done that before where I kind of tell them who I am and what I'm about. They tell me their needs. They tell me their wants. And it just, you know, I know it's not going to work out for my numbers. And I'll say, well,

you know what? I think I can get you that number. And then obviously that leads into a different side of the business, but it provides a service to them that, you know, not everybody can offer. Well, it also shows where your heart's at is that, yeah, you want to get a deal if you can get it, but you also want to help the other person if you can't. It's not just, oh, you know, what I say is the wrong attitude to have is, is this apple right? If it's not, I just move on. I'm only looking for ripe apples.

I think the people that run a better business say, this apple's not ready to be picked yet, so I'm going to nurture it for a while. I'm going to keep feeding it. I'm going to keep watering it. I'm going to keep shading it, making sure. gets what it needs. And then when it's ripe, I'll be the first one to pick it because I got a relationship with that apple. Yep, exactly. Okay, so this is, are most of your deals coming from this kind of like off market method that you've got here? Pretty much. The first deal I got was

on market, but the big deal that has kind of given me the confidence and change my mindset was definitely an off market deal, which, which is a story in itself. I love to get into it. But yeah, I'd say I'm focusing 85% now on off market. Okay. So, go ahead and tell the story that you were thinking about that. Okay, sure. Yeah. So as an agent, I'm always driving around. Well, this one particular house kept seeing, you know, in fact, it's right across the street from our office and commerce.

It's the stereotypical house that's been abandoned, trees growing up in front of it. You could hardly see the house from the road, that type of thing. So I did the, what I just explained, I did the six steps. I looked the person up in Q Public. I wrote cards. I did this. I did that called. still nothing. No answer to the cards, no answer to the phone calls. Well, I thought, you know what?

I know where this guy lives. I know who the owner is. I'm just going to go knock on the door. So I printed up an offer for 70,000 cash for this house. Went knocked on the door, told him who I was, introduced myself, kind of, you know, built a little rapport and said, you know what? So I would love to buy that house. I haven't been in it. I haven't seen it. I don't know what your plans are. but, you know, here's an offer just in case you would be interested in selling it. Well, the offer was 70,000. He looked at it and said no. And I was like, all right, well, that's fine.

That's, I completely understand, not a problem. I'll check back with you, this and that. And because I had done my research and I knew that he had at least one more property that he was paying taxes on, but I hadn't looked into it. I said, well, before I left, I said, you know, I know you're not interested in selling this, but do you have any other properties that you might be interested in selling, knowing that he had at least one? and he said, yeah, I do. He said, but it's a 14-unit apartment building, and it's in terrible shape, terrible tenants, and you probably don't want that, but I'd be willing to talk about that.

And of course, my head almost explodes. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am interested. I'm definitely interested. So I said, all right, well, let me, you know, I'll drive by it and I'll take a look at it, knowing that I didn't need to drive by it. I didn't need to look at it. So I said, yeah, I'd be interested. I tried to reach out again, again, again, again, again.

And no answer, no answer. And finally, this guy's son calls me and said, hey, this is Ken. I've been getting your cards. I've been meaning to call you. My dad said, he's ready to sell. So I said, all right, well, let's talk. And we went back and forth. And, you know, the time I thought, well, I'm going to have to pay cash for these.

There's no way that I can pay more than like 400 grand for this. So I offered, and he counted at 600 just for the apartments. And I was like, well, dang, I can't come up with 600,000. I said, what about 450? And we kind of went back and forth and he was hard on six. And I said, you know what? You only is free and clear. What if I just paid you monthly and we did owner financing and he agreed to it? So long story short, I got the house and the apartments for 625, 90% owner financing. Yeah, that's awesome. And you believe you were able to do that because it was off market and you were really the only person negotiating with the seller, right?

That's the number that they threw out too. It was one of those things where it was, you know, that's what they want. That's what I'll give them for it and let's make it happen. So that's the biggest deal that I've gotten so far. And that's kind of what I'm excited about because now that's going to leverage me into being able to buy bigger deals from here on now. So how are you managing that 14 unit apartment with the house? Property manager. So I listened to enough Bigger Pockets podcast before I even bought my first deal to know that if I want this to be truly passive, which is part of the reason I got into investing anyways is because I needed it to be passive

in case something were to happen. And I knew for this to be truly passive, I need property management. So from the very first deal I got, which was a triplex, from the very first one, I did property management. So my property manager handles everything.

All right. And then how do you have that set up? Can you mind sharing what you're paying them, how the compensation works? And when there's a problem, are they just taking care of it? Are they coming to you first? Yeah. So I'm kind of in a good position because the team I work for, the team leader, has a brokerage that is also like a sister brokerage property management. So I get a great deal. I get like 6% on the apartments and 7% on the others for property management. So that's what I pay for property management. So they do 6% of the gross rent plus, you know, there's, I think, the first month rent of every lease. So that's what I do. And then the property.

manager will check with me first if it's, you know, something that she thinks that I might be able to get my brother over to fix. But otherwise, she'll just call somebody and have it fixed herself. Right. So it can really be that simple as you find the property manager and you explain, hey, if it's something my brother can fix, call him first. If he says no, then send somebody out and then they just bill you for it, right? That's right. And I've built into my numbers. I've listened and learned enough from you guys that I built into my numbers to set aside money for for repairs and CapEx and maintenance and taxes and, you know, the whole nine yards. So that's all accounted for before something happens.

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That's why I like Mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. 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. So I know one of your philosophies is that there's gold all around us,

but it's not sitting at the surface level. If it was, somebody else would have picked it up. You actually got to dig a little bit to get to it. Can you kind of expand on your belief system with that when it comes to finding deals? Sure. Well, you know, I kind of explained a little bit about how I find these deals where, you know, they're off market and whatever. But you can actually dig and find gold on market.

I've actually done one, and I've done a couple for clients where for some reason, something in the MLS is not quite right. And you guys have talked about this before, so this isn't super new to anybody, but it's always good to hear. The first thing I'll look at is days on market. You know, I'll just narrow down my search to things that have been on the market for 60 days or more. And then I'll look on market for terrible pictures or no pictures. There are ways to find deals everywhere. A lot of people say, well, there's no deals on market. Well, yes, there are. There absolutely are. One of the flips I did, and this was not the reason, you know, this was not one of the reasons why I don't like doing flips. But anyways, I got a flip deal on market that was listed at $78,000. I offered $48,000 because I had terrible pictures and had been on market for 100-something days. And I thought, $48,000, well, we'll just see what happens. And they accepted it.

So unfortunately, it was in a different town, and I've learned not to invest that or try to do a flip that far away. But that was just a simple, you know, it took me 30 seconds to filter out a search. And there it was. Made an offer and it got accepted. And the same as with off market deals. There's things everywhere. Just have conversations. Talk to people.

Tell them what you're doing. Tell them, you know, what you're looking for. And you'd be surprised at what's out there. So what about this triplex that you got in December? that you ended up burying. Can you tell us how you found that one and how that worked out? Yeah, exactly. So this was another one of those on-market hidden gems.

So the triplex was a part of a bigger deal initially that was listed like $3.99. And in our area, you know, a dumpy triplex and a couple dumpy houses for $3.99 just wasn't that great of a deal. I mean, it could have worked, but it wasn't an attention grabber. So the agent, in order to try to get this thing to move, separated two houses. off of the listing and then separate and then listed the triplex by itself. Well, it was actually a fourplex, but listed it by itself. So it went from $3.99 in the MLS to all of a sudden being a $125,000 fourplex.

And because I was kind of plugged into the MLS and knowing what was going on, hunting things every single day, I saw this come up. I called the agent and said, hey, what do I need to do to get in this house? I need to see it quick. he's like, well, the owner's over there showing some other people. You can jump in the showing. So I went over there, and by the time I got there, there were five other investors. And I took one look at it and kind of slowly backed up out of the tour that the owner was given to other guys.

And I called the agent and said, all right, I want to do it. And strangely enough, I didn't have any money at that time. So I called some folks that I'd had conversations with before about investing and said, hey, I found this property. Do y'all want to do it? And they're like, well, I don't know. We want to do something flip. We want to make quick money. I was like, look, get it under contract. I'll find the money in the due diligence. So we had a seven day due diligence. We got it under contract. Seven day due diligence. And in that time, I called a friend that I went to college with who's now my business partner and said, hey, you know how you've been talking about wanting to get into investing? I said, I found a gold line. I said, let's do it. So we did it. We came up with a 20% down payment on a hard money loan, which, you know, for a first-time investor, not knowing what they were really doing, it was kind of tricky, but it worked out. Got a hard money loan, went in, closed the thing, fixed it up. It was a beautiful, perfect burr. But yeah, that's on-market deal. Well, tell me what, what did the rehab look like?

How much did you spend and what did you have to do? Yeah. So the purchase price, the MLS listed it at 125. We ended up getting it under contract for 125. So we did a hard money loan. So we had to come up with 20% of the purchase price, right? The hard money lender would lend up to 80% of the projected ARV. So basically we had 25 down into it, right? And then we had a budget of, you know, roughly if we needed it, 170 something. Okay.

And we had to do the draw process, which I'll. I was not aware of. And for those of you don't know what the draw process is, if you get a hard money loan, sometimes in order to get the money for the rehab, because they'll also fund the rehab, in order to get the money for the rehab, you have to do the work first, have an inspector come out and inspect the work that was done, and they reimburse you. I didn't know that. So I put down, or me and my partner put down $25,000 thinking that, okay, now we'll get a check

for, you know, 50 grand for the rehab, and it just didn't happen. And in fact, we had to pay the inspector $300 to come out in the spec to cut us a check. But we ended up putting about $50,000 into it. We put $50,000 rehab into it. And when we were done with it and had it rented out, the ARV, it appraised at $242. So we did a cash out refite 70%. And pretty much got all our money back. We left in $17,000.

But cash flows $1,200 a month. So, you know, our cash on cash is about 85% for the money. first year. Can you share what you did in that rehab? So this was a house built in like 1906. So it was four units and the upstairs was unlivable. The windows were busted out. There was no kitchen. There were a couple bathrooms. So what we did is we combined the upper two units. We had to put new wire. We rewired the whole property because it was, you know, the knob and tube and cloth wires and all that kind of stuff. We rewired the whole thing. We put HVAC in the whole house. We painted, we cleaned, you know, we made the upstairs two units into one three-bedroom two-bath unit. You know,

new toilets, new vanities, new kitchen sinks, new water heaters, everything. You know, the bottom two units, one unit was somebody who probably smoked three or four packs a day inside. So the windows were just so grimy of smoke and it smelled terrible. You know, we went in there, repainted new floors, new carpet, everything, the whole nine yards. So it was pretty much everything but the roof. So cosmetic, complete remodel, electrical included, no roof. HVAC. HVAC?

You had to do HVAC. Okay. And then did you add any square footage to it at all? No, we didn't have any square footage. We just made what was there livable. There you go. And then once it was done, what it had a. appraised for it appraised for two hundred and forty two thousand dollars the appraiser to come out and give us

the hard money loan initially they projected it to be 230 but the actual riv was 242 perfect so you bought it at 122 you spent how much on the rehab about 50,000 so 122 plus 50 put you a little under 175 and then it came out at 242 you said yep and did they let you borrow 80% loan to value 70% we we did a cash out refund 70% so that's a amazing that you only got 70% and you still got more than the money that you had put in. So you pulled out just under 170 and you were all in for what did actually, what did we say? It was 122. Yeah.

So you basically like left a tiny bit of money in there maybe at a 70% ARV. So you had a lot of equity. And I bet now if you wanted to in six months or so, you could probably refinance, get all that money back out, get more than you put into it. And it was still cash flow, right? For sure. For sure. And you mentioned only having 70% pulled out.

out, you know, I ran my numbers at 70%. Everything I do now, like, is the numbers are run super, super conservative because I want to give myself that cushion. Like, I don't want to think, well, you know, the numbers will only work at 80% cash out refi. And then all of a sudden, you can only get 75 or 70 or whatever. So I ran my numbers conservatively, like super conservative in the first place. So when I was only able to pull 70% out, partly because it was my first deal and cash on hand, a lot of different factors, but it didn't catch me off guard and I was prepared for it. And you mentioned it was a fourplex, but before that you called it a triplex. Was there some like disagreement over that one unit or was it just marketed improperly? It was originally a

fourplex, but it was a funky layout upstairs. So one of the units would have to walk out into the hall to use a bathroom. And the other unit had a bathroom in suite, I guess. So we thought, well, you know, there's a demand for 3-2. So let's just make this whole upstairs one unit instead of having one unit that's normal and one awkward unit. Or having to build a bathroom somewhere in there, which can be really expensive. Sure. Okay.

Gotcha. And then what do each of those units rent for? Let's see. The upstairs rents for 1250, and that's a 3-2. One of the units downstairs rents for 850 and one of the units or the other downstairs unit, which is a 1-1. both are downstairs or one-ones, and it now rents for $6.50. Okay.

And then what city is this in again in Georgia? Commerce, Georgia. Come on, everybody. Put on to commerce. Yeah. I know. You're always nervous to say that. I remember when I first told people I'm buying in Jacksonville, Florida, it seemed about

two months later that there was nothing on the MLS anymore. Everybody flew there. I don't know that'll happen with you, though. What do you explain? You might be surprised. Commerce has got like nothing but distribution warehouses. and manufacturing coming up the I85 corridor, man. It's a hot, hot place.

People ought to come. So that was my next question. What do you expect to see rents doing over the next five years in that market? We've now, you know, there's a huge battery plant, you know, from overseas being built like millions of square feet. We've got 6,000 new jobs coming to the town. You can go on the MLS right now, and there is probably one or zero rental units under $1,500 a month in that whole town. So in the next, I don't know, several years, I mean,

it is going to just be absolutely berserk trying to find rental units and commerce. Yeah. And so what's funny is when you did your due diligence very conservatively, you may find in three years or so that whatever numbers you thought you're working with are wildly different than what you're at right now. And real estate tends to be forgiving like that. It tends to skew. So if you give yourself enough time, it plays in your favor. But for some reason, everybody, when we're buying the deals, we always look at it with this worst case scenario gogg. Like, oh, what if this happens? What if that happens? And those things will happen, right? Like, you play a basketball game, you're going to have a turnover. You're going to miss a shot. There's going to be things that go wrong.

But there's usually way more things that go right when you're good at playing the game. And so it's easy to forget that. Yeah. I like to tell people that, you know, because I hear that, well, you know, what if the housing market crash and you're stuck with 19 or, you know, eventually 100 units? Well, I don't want the housing market crash for lots of different reasons. But if it does and people lose homes, they still have to have a place to live. They're going through it. And I want to be there to be able to provide that service. And that's what we saw in 2010 when everyone was losing their home.

They didn't just cease to exist. It wasn't like Thanos snapped his fingers and the half of them disappeared. They still had to rent something. And so you've got all these houses that are sitting vacant that are not owned by anyone that bank owns them and they're not able to be rented. So the inventory has been decreased. But the demand has actually increased for renters because you had homeowners that now need a place to live. So if you owned a rental at that time, you're recharging more for rent every single year.

It was actually the best place to be during a crisis is the person that owns the existing inventory. Now, the value of the asset itself will go down. but that only matters if you're planning to exit. If you're not planning to exit, which is another great thing about real estate is I choose when I want to get out of that market. If it's down, I don't have to sell. I can just keep renting. It's not like a stock that goes down and it's useless to me until it goes back up.

Yeah, a thousand percent right. I couldn't agree more. So I know you have a story about how to get a good appraisal for a burr you did. Can you share sort of like what your advice is for someone if they get a bad appraisal or how to navigate that process? Well, here's the thing. So the appraisal went well, but I thought it was going to be a disaster. I did my due diligence on, you know, what appraisers look for and things that add value and things that don't.

The bathrooms add value. The half bathrooms add value. Remodeled kitchens add value new roofs, et cetera, et cetera. So I knew all that. But what I did not factor into the picture was, and, you know, I don't know if it would have made a difference anyways. But initially this triplex that we had, we leased a unit to a tenant, and we allowed, and partly because I didn't know any better, but we allowed a tenant to pay a year in advance.

Okay. And this was before we had the appraisal for the cash out refi. So, you know, for me, being the first deal, this was a big, big deal, right? I didn't want anything to happen. Well, we ran into this tenant who relapsed, he was an alcoholic and relapsed and was having major problems. We were having the cops called out there, you know, what everybody's needs. nightmare investing situation is. Well, we had the cash out refraiser scheduled for like four o'clock.

And because we had some issues with this tenant, I was like, well, let me go early and make sure everything's okay and, you know, make sure that the appraiser has everything he needs and everything's in place and whatever. Well, I got there and the guy was passed out with the doors wide open, front door wide open, his door wide open. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, is this guy dead in my unit right before the appraisal was coming. He wasn't. We called the paramedics and everything and he ended up being okay and whatever, but I ended up having to clean his apartment, which was a mess. And I got done with that. I had some folks help me and I got done with that clean, the clean out of that apartment, or the cleanup, it wasn't clean out, but the cleanup of that apartment

about five minutes before the appraiser walked in. He did not know any different. And, you know, I walked around with the appraisal because I was curious as to what they were looking for, how they were going to measure square footage and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, he kept making a comment. He goes, man, this is an old house and you did great with it. So the whole time I'm thinking, if you would have been here an hour ago. But it turned out all right. And I learned kind of what they're looking for and, you know, the things that add value and the things that don't.

Can you share a little bit about what the appraiser mentioned when you were there? Yeah. So condition of the property was big for him. the square footage, the livable square footage, right? And the bedrooms and bathrooms and all that kind of stuff. And because it was only a three unit, they didn't really take into account the cap, right, and all that kind of stuff, which now the 14 unit will. But I learned that not all space that people live in is counted as livable space, right? If it's a partial basement, which this property wasn't, but if it's a partial basement, it doesn't count as livable space. It doesn't count as livable

square footage. That's one of those rules that I did not know, and I know now. And whenever I'm looking at a property, I'll take that into account. Because even though it might be income producing, let's say you can rent out a basement, even though it could be income producing, it does not necessarily mean that it will reflect that in the appraisal. Yes, it doesn't have the value in the appraisal like it would if you were selling that property to someone that was valuing it based on cash flow. And that's, that gets tricky for real estate investors because you have to understand that there's not one solid source of how you value a property. There's what the appraisal says it's worth.

There's what the market says it's worth. There's what a cashful investor would pay for it. There's what it's worth to somebody else who just said at 1031 and has to stick 300 grand somewhere quick. Otherwise they're getting taxed on it. They're going to pay more than you. And you kind of have to understand how all those. pieces are playing to determine like why a property that you think should sell for less is selling

for more or vice versa. And for me, knowing that I wanted to pull all the money out, or I still do, I want to pull all the money out because I want to recycle that and scale up with it. That's the thing that I take into account now is I make sure that all of it would be counted, livable space and an appraisal. All right. So tell me, Nolan, what is your why? What is driving you to accumulate these properties that you are right now? My why is, Well, initially my why was if something happens to me where I'm not able to work anymore because, you know, as a real estate agent, if you're not working, you're not making money. If you're not out there hustling, it ain't happened. And I knew, even though I'm doing fantastic right now, I've never felt better my entire life, I knew that if something happens and I can't get out there and hustle like I'm hustling now, that it might put my wife in a tough situation where she's got to fills the burden of all the bills and.

whatever. So initially my why was so that if something happens to me, we'll always have income coming in, or she'll always have income coming in. And that's still my why, but now I feel like I've got magic in a bottle right now. And I want my whole family to benefit from that. I mean, I moved my brother from Wyoming to help with the business. And he's getting it too now. What started out being just a way to like have some security if something were to happen to me is now transformed into an excitement and an enthusiasm to share this with as many people as I can and improve the lives of the folks I love and the folks I'm around. I think that's awesome. I like that you called real estate magic in a bottle because you're sort of or lightning in a bottle that is that feeling of man, where has this been my whole life? And I like to say this too. Before transplant, I felt like even though I did something.

some fantastic things and exciting things and I accomplished a lot before transplant. My life was like watching a black and white movie. My life was in black and white since transplant. And since I've gotten into this career that I absolutely love and would do, might even do if I didn't make money because I just enjoy it. My life went from being black and white to now being in color. And it shifts that perspective so much that, you know, I don't wake up every morning and thinking, oh, I've got to go to work or whatever.

Now it's like, oh my goodness, this is exciting. Let's go see what we can find today. Let's go see what we can accomplish today. And I think that's infectious and it's catching on. A lot of people in my circle are getting excited about it too. Well, that is awesome. I'm glad that we were able to sort of catch some of that infectious delight here on the podcast. Before I let you get out of here, I am going to take us to the last segment of our show.

It is the famous four where we ask every guest, the same four questions every week. So, question number one, what is your favorite real estate book? My favorite real estate book right now is the multifamily millionaire by Brian Murray and Brandon Turner. And I'll explain why it's that right now. Because of this 15 unit apartment building, what I used to think might be impossible is now possible. Like my mind shift has changed. Now that I understand it's possible, I've got to figure out how to do it. And that's the thing that this book has been teaching me.

And I can't get enough of it right now. I like that. He's got a T-shirt on this as Brandon Turner is my best friend. Apparently, I've got a lot of competition out there in the world right now for best friend of Brandon Turner. I almost crossed it out and put David Green is my best friend because Brandon's not here. Yeah, that's a good question. Why are there not those T-shirts floating around anywhere? Clear case of Brandon bias.

That's what I'm going to say. All right. What is your favorite business book? Favorite business book is Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I would not be in this position today if it were not for that book. You know, early on when I was listening to the Baker Pockets podcast and starting to get this itch to get into investing, almost every single person said rich dad, poor dad was one of their two favorite books. So I picked up rich dad, poor dad, and I understand why. It changed my whole paradigm.

I don't want to say it changed my life completely, but it did a huge number in shifting my mindset. Well, there's something powerful about that, right? because you mentioned before the transplant in your life, BTP, everything was sort of black and white. And then afterwards, it was color. And I've had experiences like that in life as well. And they're usually tied to, at least in my case, like hitting a new realm, a new dimension, or just unleashing emotions is before that I was operating a certain way emotionally. And then I had a relationship or an experience or something that opened my eyes to a whole new side of life.

And it is like color is introduced, right? And I'm sure in some way it was similar for you. You have just have a different range of emotions that you're operating underneath now that you got this new chance at life and this new career that you love. And books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, or like really wise speakers, like C.S. Lewis was one of those people for me. Absolutely change not, they don't change the world. They change the way I see the world, but it might as well have been changing the

world because my experience, if you put a different lens on me, it's like I was wearing a pair of sunglasses where everything looked yellow and now I'm wearing a pair that everything looks blue or something. It is a completely different experience that you're having. And that's why that book, I think, is so impactful to so many people is it does click into place a new lend that you're perceiving everything through. It's quite a difference from the books that I was reading about preparing for death before transplant. Because believe it or not, I read a book on how to cope with the dying process. And now, that's a heavy book.

The first book I read after transplant is that. Awesome. Well, if you want to hear more from the author of that book. Brandon and I interviewed him on episode 500 of this year podcast. All right. Next question. What are some of your hobbies? My hobbies, you know, if you don't count real estate because I enjoy real estate and I enjoy doing it, I consider partially a hobby, but my hobbies are traveling out west with my wife, hiking, fly fishing. One of these days, we'll have a cabin out in Colorado where we can just go and that'll be base camp. Yes. I'm actually looking to buy a cabin, probably in the Smoky

mountains or I'm open to other places where I can have like a retreat set up where I can take a big group of people out there and put together like a weekend get away where we talk about mindset struggles we're having maybe like business planning more so than just tactical like the six steps of being successful we can get into deeper things that's one of the visions that I have for 2022 is trying to figure out how to get like an accumulation of those properties across the country run them as short term rentals when I'm not using them but when I am using them, put events together where we can sort of like get into that place where I guess what you said, bring color into people's black and white life. I like it. I like it. I'm only an

hour and a half from the smokies. Let's talk. All right. We should talk. Yeah, that's another great thing about the South. Everything's close. Ever since I went to New Orleans for the for BPCon, I've been really, really enjoying the South. Although I only see the awesome parts of it, right? Like, I'm sure the rest of Louisiana isn't as great as New Orleans is. Pretty hot. All right. Second and the last question. In your opinion, what sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think it is the courage to take action when you don't have all of the answers ahead of time. I think that's a different. You know, why I think that many people that are good in real estate investing came from, there's certain backgrounds that you see a lot of them came

from. An athletic background is absolutely one of them. Part of it specifically for basketball players is when you are playing basketball, you're trying to beat the guy in front of you. You're trying to beat the guy in front of you. You're trying to get past them. And you don't know where the help defense is going to come from. Okay. And the way you get good at basketball is by beating your guy, seeing where the defense is coming over to stop you and then finding the open man from there. And you never know who's going to be open when you make your move. Your brain almost has to just accept, I don't know how this is going to work out. It's going to change very quickly. But I've trained myself to read this and then combine that with movements my body has to make to deliver the ball where it has to go.

And it almost becomes like, what makes basketball so fun is you got to think so quickly. You get past your guy. It feels good. Boom, the defender's coming over. If I pass it to that player, he's not a good shooter. He's very far away from the basket. I don't want to do it. If I pass it to that player, he's very short.

He's too close to the basket. That's bad also. That's the perfect guy to throw it to. And it all happens in a split second and the ball's moving. And I think that translates well into this world of business where we don't know what's going to happen on step three or four when we take step one. You just got to have confidence that when step three or four comes, you'll make a good decision. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why there's so much repetition that goes into basketball practice.

And I think it translates to real estate. Repetition, repetition, repetition. If you run the numbers for deals five or six times every night, then in two months, whenever that deal pops up and you've got that memorized, it's almost like a no look backdoor balance pass. you know is going to be there. It's like when you're practicing layup drills, what you're really doing, because it would look very simple to someone watching, why are you practicing layups? You're actually training the coordination of your body to practice dribbling a ball,

picking it up, taking two steps. And those two steps are going to be at different speeds at different lengths. They might even now with the Euro step be in different directions. There's a lot that's good. Your body's trying to navigate in what looks like something that's very simple. But when you can do it subconsciously, now when you see that open lane, bam, you're on it. It's just like when a deal crosses your plate. You've been patient, boom, you're on it. If you don't have that footwork down, when you see the open lane,

your brain has to sort of stop and navigate. If I hit that lane, how am I going to handle the footwork to actually get to the rim and will it take me too long? And by the time you figured it out, that lane is closed. Like, you're right. There's a lot of really similar approaches. And so practicing those fundamentals, practicing, building your confidence to where a deal comes your way and you can analyze it without thinking. And guys, it does get to that point. Like, I don't very, I barely even have to pull out the calculator in most cases when I'm looking at a deal because I know how it's going shake out. It does give you that confidence to be aggressive when the opportunity comes. And just like when, if you have to hesitate when that guy gets open to make the pass,

he's not open anymore. If you have to hesitate with that deal, it is not going to be available anymore. You are so right. And you told a story where you went in and a broker was or an agent was showing the property and you said, I slowly backed out and called my agent. Those people looking at that house were the ones who hesitated to make the play. They were like, ooh, let's look at it. Let me think about it. Let me run my options. Maybe I need to make a phone call to figure something out. Meanwhile, you backed out and you're aggressively putting pieces in place to get that deal. That's why we tell people to analyze deals and to get familiar because your competition is Nolan. your competition is someone who's been out there that's been practicing, practicing, practicing.

And when he sees that open player, he sees that lane, he's immediately jumping on it. And if you're like, oh, I better figure out how to do a layup, there's an open lane. It's too late. Someone else is going to get there. Yep, 100%. All right. Well, this has been a great conversation, Nolan. I really appreciate you sharing it.

My last question for you is where can people find out more about you? They can find out more about me. I've got a website, Gottlieb Properties, GA, like Georgia.com, or on Instagram, Nolan G20. I'm on Bigger Pockets and Facebook too, so anywhere. Right on. If you're an Instagrammer, go follow him at Nolan G20. Follow me at David Green 24 and follow Bigger Pockets at Bigger Pockets.

Nolan, anything you want to leave us with before we get you out of here? I appreciate the opportunity. And if I can do this, anybody can do this. I did not know what a mortgage was. Get out there, hustle, and get it done. All right. Thank you very much, my man. This is David Green for Nolan.

Find that gold, Gottlie. Signing off. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calicoe content.

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