BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 69: Getting Your First Deal, Quitting Your Job, and Successful Marketing with Brandon Krieg

Episode Date: May 8, 2014

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down and chat with a real estate investor who is a successful wholesaler and rehabber out of the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.  Brandon Krieg shares his insights on how he transitioned out of a full-time job to become a full time real estate investor and shares some incredible insight for others who are thinking about making the leap themselves. During the show, Brandon speaks on the importance of integrity in business and the priority of taking care of family and then continues on to shed light on his innovative marketing tactics, that has him averaging a 15-25% response rate with direct mail! Whether you are a new investor struggling to figure out how to generate deal flow or struggling with making the transition from part-time real estate to full-time or you’ve been investing for years and need some marketing tips to take you to the next level, this is the show for you. In This Show, We Cover: How to transition from a full time job you hate to full time real estate How to find good wholesalers The keys you need to succeed at wholesaling How Brandon uses direct mail with an  15-25% response rate How to ethically use bandit signs How Brandon used BiggerPockets to grow his network Who Brandon uses for his direct mail success How many deals should you do before jumping into real estate full time? How to handle leads outside your comfort zone How important are business systems? And a lot more! Books Mentioned in the Show Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott FLIP, by Rick Villani and Clay Davis Tweetable Topics “If I quit real estate when it gets tough, I lose my chance of gaining success from it.” (Tweet This!) “Ask yourself, “If this client was my sister, my cousin or my uncle, how would I help them?” (Tweet This!) “The greatest moments of growth in my life have always been sparked by great books.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Brandon Brandon’s BiggerPockets Profile Brandon’s Website: TheHoneyBeeHomes.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 69. 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. Hey, what's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin.

of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with Brandon Turner in the flesh. What's going on, Brandon? Hey, what's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with Josh. How you doing? Are you mocking me? I don't mock. How you doing?

Such a nice guy. Such a nice guy. I'm good, man. I'm good. Excited about the warming weather. You know, summer's almost here. Kids are about to get out of school. Things are going well.

You're looking forward to your kids getting out of school. Yeah, why not? Why wouldn't I? Because you're going to have one coloring all over the walls again. My kids don't climb on the walls. I think coloring, different crayons, right? Oh, coloring. Yeah, yeah, we talk about that in the show later. That'll make more sense.

Well, you know, whatever. We'll deal with it later. We'll deal with it later. No, I'm excited, man. So looking forward to the warming period here. Good. Good for you. Good for you. I got six more months until that hits Washington.

I don't think it ever hits Washington. I don't think so. Yeah, we got to get your house. out of there. I don't know. I like my, I like my green on like your brown there in the middle of the country. I'll live with it. Anyway, let's go to the quick tip before people leave our show. Yeah, anyone bored yet? All right, guys. So today's quick tip, check it out. In the forums, if you read a really good thread or if you read a post from somebody that's really valuable, please go ahead and click the vote button to let the person know that it was good. Clicking the vote

is kind of like a like button on Facebook and it makes people feel good. They can email saying that somebody thought it was worthwhile. So please go ahead and do it. Ultimately, what it does is it tells our little computer algorithms that this person is providing value to the community. So get out there and acknowledge those folks who are putting in the efforts. Yep. So that's today's quick tip. Quick tip. All right. I want to let people know this is show 69 of the Bigger Pockets podcast and they can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 69. So if you have any questions or want to refer to any of the stuff that we talk about, you could do that on the show notes. Also, if you're a listener and have not yet rated or reviewed

the show, please jump on iTunes and go ahead and do that. It does help spread the word. All right, guys, so let me bring on our guest, Mr. Brandon Krieg. Brandon is a wholesaler and flipper primarily. We're going to talk about a lot of cool stuff. We're going to talk about knowing when to quit your job and actually making that happen. We're going to talk about some unique marketing strategies that I might guess most investors listening aren't currently doing. So you'll definitely want to hang around for that. And of course, remember jump in and check out the show notes that I had mentioned before. Brandon's a smart savvy guy. He's a good marketer. And no matter what your strategy or focus is, definitely want to check it out.

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bring him on. All right, Brandon. Welcome to the show, man. Good to have you here. And I'm not talking about Turner. I'm talking about the new guy, Krieg. Hey, yeah, I'm very, very happy to be here. It's a beautiful, a beautiful day here on the lake. So it's awesome to be talking to you guys. Nice. A little day on what lake is that? It's called Long Lake. It's in a very small town called Delton, Michigan. I will personally send you a $50 gift card if you can actually identify that on a map. Yes, another rural guy, right? Another Michigan guy. Yeah. Yeah, we've had a number of Michigan guys. We have. Yeah, this is our first Brandon, though, we've ever had. A few weeks ago, we had another Josh. So today we're going to complicate things.

No, not at all. Not at all. Yeah, very cool. All right. Well, why don't we, uh, why don't we get to your story and kind of hear how you got started and where you came from? So I guess why don't we start the very beginning. How did you get into real estate? Like, what were you doing before and how did you get into it? Sure. Well, real estate for me really has always been about freedom. whether for me that was a combination of, you know, living the life that I wanted with financial freedom. And then as I got older and met my wife and, you know, we started talking that extended it got to a bigger definition, you know, became for the whole family, much more than just about myself. So really quick, I mean, you know, I don't think we've ever actually asked us, but what is, you know, what does that mean to you? What does financial freedom actually mean to you?

Yeah, financial freedom for me means the ability to do what I want to do when I want to do it in the way that I want to do it, if that makes sense. And I'm using a lot of eyes, but again, this has become very much a we at this point with my wife and I. But that could mean taking a trip, going out, going to Italy and staying there for two months, and that being fine. It could mean not doing any of those things at all. could mean going to my future daughter's soccer games and not having to worry about coaching and being late to a business meeting or something like that afterwards. It's really just the opportunity to do what we want rather than being constricted to a time frame. And without worrying about money ultimately.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you could do that and, you know, sleep on a piece of cardboard. You know, it's not exactly it either. It's not what you're looking for, right? Yeah, real estate's one. It seemed to me one of those few things that could actually get you both of those in the same way down the same path. And how did you figure that out? I mean, I think those people who aren't familiar with real estate may not have that realization, right?

They're like, yeah, well, you know, what do I do? I want freedom. How do I find it? So how did you decide that real estate was the path? Well, I actually started. I think my path downness started in high school, just picking up random books from my parents' basement, you know, the millionaire next door or lead the field or one of the rich dad, poor dad books that I bought from a library book sale, you know? So I just started reading all these different things. And I think I was drawn to them because I felt like I've been just a little bit different than a lot of the people around me.

And I think once I really started getting into it. There's a cure for that, by the way. Once I really started getting into it, I realized there's so much that you can do with real estate. I mean, you can make it a job where you're very active and doing very well with things like flipping, no pie, all that, or you can take it very passively. I mean, well, not quite as passively as you'd like, probably, but with, you know, buying, owning houses and getting all those wonderful advantages. So once I started investigating real estate versus stocks versus running your own business, which I've, also done and is actually extremely exhausting as anybody who's ever done it. You know, looking at all these different ways, it just seemed like real estate had the best

opportunity to grow and really both financially and in terms of freedom really provided the best avenue. Nice. You know, one thing, we always ask that question at the end of the show, which we'll ask later about what sets apart successful people. But I just wanted to point out that, like, what I've noticed time and time again on the show when we asked people how you got started is I would say. 90 to 95% of everyone started with a book of some kind, like reading, right? Right?

Definitely. Reading is just so important that I don't know what it does, but when you're reading a book, like when I think of my life, all the greatest times of growth where I've grown the most as a person have been in times where I read a lot. Yeah, definitely. So I think it's very important just to- Reading is fundamental. Reading is fundamental. So if you are somebody who doesn't ever read and you want to get into real estate, I think that's something that you want to do is start reading. Another alternative, actually, to reading, if you're really just not a reader, if it's really just not your thing. Someone recently, actually, I got into more audiobooks because I find myself living in Delton, Michigan, which is between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo on the west side of the state, between those two, I do a lot of driving to actually go to houses and work on rehabs and things like that. So with that, with audiobooks, with podcasts, like we've got, you know, you can actually get a lot of that advantage, even if you don't.

have time to sit down and do it. So audio books of these great classics that everyone always brings up on the show is a really good way to go, I think. Nice. Nice. There you go. There you go. All right. Moving on from the Captain Obvious questions that Brandon decided to throw at you. So what do you do, man? What's your what's your what's your path in real estate? What do you focus on? Well, the beginning of the path was I quote from one of the Jim Collins book, was fire bullets than cannonballs. I think it's from the newest one. But the bullets were everything. It was seller financing, wholesaling, rehabbing, mobile homes, really whatever I could do, whatever I could get a foothold in, whatever I could start to figure out. I would try, which is good in a lot of ways. I've figured out a lot of what I like and don't like and all of that. But most recently, I've really settled into rehabbing homes, so buying them, fixing them, and selling them, and also wholesaling things.

So I do a lot of direct marketing. So I kick those other ones back to other people. So your pursuit of financial freedom has found you working a job for yourself. Yes, it has. Yes, it has. So it's start for me, you know, that path is process. You know, it's not like in six months I could say, hey, okay, sweet, I don't have to work anymore. Awesome.

I mean, if somebody has pulled it off, kudos, and I want to hear them on the next podcast. That would be awesome. Yeah, me too. I want to hear the guy on the podcast who got rich in six months with that system. Like, I swear, I would kill to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. He's not going to find them.

Crickets, crickets, crickets. But, you know. My real story is there was a pop-up ad that came up and it said, be rich with four hours a week of work in 60 days. And I clicked on it and it totally worked. And now I don't have to do anything. It's an amazing story. Great story.

All right. So you've done all these. different things, right? You've bounced around. You've tried all these paths. When did you start in real estate? I mean, it's pretty recent, right? Yeah, yeah, it is pretty recent. I sort of fiddled before then. I had another company and another couple of companies actually before I really got into real estate and that really took up a lot of my nights and weekends before. So it wasn't until the latest one stopped happening that I was able to really dig in and that was only about two years ago. a little less actually. So two years ago or less you jump in. And how many deals have you done since then? Because I know, you're busy. Yeah, a little bit over a dozen. I've been involved in in some way. So I am not the, I've done 200 deals and can tell you how everything works. But it's good progress so far.

That's what I love about the podcast is that we, you know, we interview those guys once in a while that have done 200, 300, 500 deals. And then we do the guys that have done a dozen deals. And I think the insight that we get from both, is extremely beneficial because the guys who were doing two or 300 deals don't remember necessarily, yeah, what it was like to do the first and the second and the third. And that's what we want to talk about today is how do you do that first and second and third deal. So speaking to that, let's go to that. I mean, what was your very first deal? Would it look like? First deal was, well, I did probably, I would say hundreds of things that didn't work. A lot of which I just started with no marketing budget and found, you know, tried to call every person on Craigslist saying, you know, hey, you've got hours for sale. Sweet. Let me take a look at it. I'll make you an offer. So while extremely unproductive, very inefficient, I didn't learn a lot and got really comfortable talking to people. And that's actually really important. I mean, I'm terrible at that because I never did that. Like, I never cold called. I've never done that in my life. So it's brutal. Yeah. It's a hard-knock school, school of life. So when I first started, I was really looking for sour financing deals. I was sort of the first thing that I really dove into.

and started looking. And as it ended up, my first deal ended up being a rehab, actually. And it worked out really well. So that first one was a tax sale, a woman owned a place free and clear, but owned back taxes and was going to lose it to the local government in three days when she talked to me, which was actually a real shame because that she, you know, gotten in touch with me even a few weeks before there was any number of things we could have done. So we end up getting this condo. It's a two-bedroom condo in Clinton, Michigan, not Clinton Township. There are two different things.

And just this little place. And, you know, I know people say, you know, paint and carpet rehab. It wasn't quite there, but it's about as close as I've realistically seen. I mean, the woman had smoked a lot. She was a chain smoker for probably 10 years. So, you know, a lot of. clean up and fixing, but really very minor things. And I learned so much from that deal. It was crazy. So first, how did you find the deal? Sure. First, it was direct marketing. By that point, I had been sick of digging in and cold calling people for a while. So I think that one was from, I do a whole lot of direct marketing. So I believe that one was from AdWords, from Google, I think, if I'm remembering specifically.

Okay. And we could talk more about the different direct marketing stuff that you do. So you got this deal, and it's this woman who's going to lose her house in three days, right? Yep. What happened? I mean, you know, you said there's more you could have done had you had more time. Sure. So what could you have done had you had more time?

And ultimately, what did you end up doing to actually get the deal? Sure. Well, I think having had more time, I wish actually I would have been able to do more for her. her. Because this being the first one that I actually, you know, closed on, I had, you know, few options and, you know, a lack of knowledge, really, of what to do. So what I could have done probably was investigate more options, get her more financing, looking to create a finance, all these different things, you know, start the process, get an extension, something like that to actually get her more than we ended up getting her. But in the end, we basically just squared it away

with taxes and helped it with a little bit of moving money to get out. So I ended up partnering with a friend, a very good friend of mine, and we split the deal 50-50. He came in and provided the funding for it, and we both dug in and fixed it up and ended up doing pretty well on it. Nice. Nice. Well, let's talk about that a little about the partnership thing. Yeah. You recommend that, I would assume, like that it worked out well? I do, actually. I think that I have the advantage of having a very great group of friends and family that I've known, these are friends that I've known since we were 10 years old, I think. And so we trust each other like family. And so working with

somebody like that where you know you've been through the ups and downs already, you know, you've been through the rough patches and dealt with it and come through on the other side. If you can find a relationship like that, then it's actually worked out for me every time that I've done it. So friends. and family can be a really great resource if you have a strong relationship. And I may have dozed off for a second here. I'm kind of boring. I ramble a little bit.

Yeah, it's all good. No, I got really excited because I noticed I'm on a call with Brandon and Brandon, and they're both sitting with drum kits behind them. Yes. I was like, I got wowed by this weird thing. Punk rock. Yeah, there you go. So tell me, how did you end up structuring this partnership on this first

deal. Sure. Actually, this is something I wouldn't really recommend. Looking back on it, it probably makes sense to actually have a written agreement. But I, because we had three days. Who needs to write? Who needs actually to lay things out all the way? So basically, I said, he had contacted me before and we had talked about some potential deals that had ended up falling through bad inspections or, you know, whatever. And he said he really wanted to do it. So I called him and said, okay, man, we got three days. If you want in, here's what we got. So I went through over and he showed up to closing three days later.

The title company did an amazing job, pulling everything, all the records, getting everything together. And we closed on the house. And as we're driving to it, he's like, you know, man, I must trust you a lot, considering I've never even seen this place and about 10 pictures of it. And I just bought a house. So, yeah, and then we drove over there, figured out a plan and went. So we actually never even had a structured agreement. It was all just handshake deals and knowing each other well enough where we could pull that off. I don't recommend.

I mean, it worked out fine. Like, again, it was all fine. But, you know, if you're looking for recommendations, just even if it's basic, graph something up because, I mean, it could have turned south in a hundred ways. I'm sure that a lot of people could have pointed out. But, yeah. Yeah. Hey, really quick. So on the tax sale, the person didn't pay taxes and ultimately the government's going to take this thing away from them, correct? Correct. So what, are you acquiring the property for the full price of the property? Are you acquiring the property for what's owed? Tell us how that works exactly. Sure, sure, sure. So she owned, she owned the property free and clear by this point. She had three years of back taxes on the place, which for this place, again, pretty, and that was the line, you know, I

I looked at all the documentation here in Michigan. They said, basically, if you're not paid by April 1st, you're done. We're taking the place. No recourse, no nothing. It's gone. So looking at that, we paid. So with the title company, we coordinated it. So we would bring a check for the remainder of the taxes and then plus a little bit of moving money,

basically $500 or $1,000, something like that, for, for, the woman to be able to move in with some family that she had been wanting to move into with already. And then they closed it all up. Taxes got paid off and then it got put in our name. So she walked, she walked away ultimately getting out instead of losing it completely. She got into the place. I mean, the benefit to her was you got her into the property that she needed to move into. Yes. She had been really stuck and really wanted to get out. But, you know, and she was like, I don't want the police to come to my house, but I don't even have enough money to make it to my sister's place. Yeah.

So, yeah, we were able to, you know, get her there at least. All right. So what was the amount in back taxes owed and what's the property worth today? Or what did you turn it over? It sounds like you flipped it. So what you took it? Yeah. Yeah.

The total purchase price was $6,500. Okay. property. And that was the back taxes and what we gave to her. And we ended up selling it. It was on the market for two days. And we sold it for 37. Nice. And you said it was it was basically paying carpet. Do you remember how much total you put into it? I believe $4,300 in the end. That's a nice flip. That is a nice flip. And that was found through direct mail marketing. Yeah? Yep. Direct marketing. Absolutely. Right on. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. All right. So, that's not a bad, not a bad start.

Oh yeah, that's, well, you know, start is a... And then it went downhill. And then it all went terrible. No, it actually, that was really nice. Even while that one was getting fixed up, other deals started to materialize and come into play. And then I was able to do, you know, some other things to do it. Well, let's talk about that.

Like, so what came next? I mean, was it more flips or was it? You said you do wholesale and you've done some. Yeah, yeah. So I think about, five or six days after that closing, I got a lead for a mobile home. I think that was the next one. And with mobile homes, I had always said, okay, it's not really something I do. I know it's a specialized field. I'm not really comfortable with it. I can't really help you. Sorry, something along those lines to people that would contact me with those leads through direct marketing. I got one the other day that I said that exact same thing to. Somebody called, I have a Facebook ad going right now. And somebody called on it. I'm like, I don't even know what the deal of like. I don't even know who did it. Yeah. Like, like, I don't even know what to do. Yeah. Like, like, And so, you know, I stop, you know, I'm all hyped up on confidence. You know, I just closed my first one five days later. I better do a second, you know, get all excited. And so I realized I was like, okay, well, look at it this way. If this were my sister, if this were my cousin, if this were my uncle, and they were stuck in this situation, what would I try to do?

You know, somebody says, hey, I hear you do real estate. Can you help me try to figure something out? What would I do? So it was a very, very simple method. I just Googled whatever terms I would use to sell a mobile home. Sell my mobile home fast, whatever. And I found a few people here in Michigan that do deal with mobile homes regularly. And I just gave them a call. I said, look, I've got this lead. It came through.

It seems to be pretty good. But granted, I don't know very much about mobile homes. So what would you do in this situation? And they said, well, you found the lead, so why don't you just get it under contract and I'll buy it from you? And he's like, do you have any pictures? Shot him over pictures. He's like, yeah, if you priced it about there, we should do okay on it. So, signed it up.

And a few days later, I had the first mobile home wholesale, which was an interesting one. Nice. What was interesting about it? It's just, it was so quick and easy. I think we did it on the hood of somebody's car. I mean, you know, and just figuring out like, wow, had I actually thought and stopped and said, okay, why don't I actually try to do something with this six months ago? I probably could have done this five times in the interim.

Yeah. Well, you know, you say two really interesting things I want to touch on there. First was that you said earlier, when you talked to that person, you asked yourself, like if this was my sister, brother, uncle, aunt, what would I, like, how would I help them? I love that. I've never heard anybody say that before, but if you think of real estate like that as I'm helping this person, their family, how would I help them if I go? Even if I don't make, I mean, like, even thinking like, what if I don't make a profit? How do I help them? If you approach it like that, I think that's great. And I think if more investors did that, we'd have a lot, you know, better name in the industry that there's too many people that. Yeah, what's enough for me? How do I, how do I, you know, what's in it for me? How do I destroy this person the fast as I can? I'm going to disagree for a second there. Because, you know, I mean, I know we've talked to a lot of people in this podcast. And, and I think. think the folks that I deem to be credible that we've met, talked to, that we link up with a lot. The people who have sustainable businesses, I think have that approach.

I think if you're going to take the, I'm going to take advantage of people approach, I don't know. I kind of feel like your lifeline in the business isn't going to be as long because at some point it's going to catch back up with you. I 100% agree. I think that, you know, if you, first of all, to me that all starts with honesty, you know, with somebody that's with, you know, colleagues that you're working with. It's with, you know, your family and friends. Where are you? You know, I feel like one of the issues I think is there's a whole lot of fake it to your make it, which has in some ways a good benefit. I think the negative part is when people start inflating everything too much or they make promises they can't keep and then end up just leaving somebody

stuck in the mud and so I made a promise to not do that a long time ago and I think it's really helped a lot. Yeah. That's great. Hey, the second thing you said that was really interesting that I think we should touch on is that you said like had you had you known it would be that easy, you could have probably done a lot more deals before that, you know, right? So yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's kind of convicting for me too. Like I said, I got that leave for a mobile home and I'm like, I don't know, whatever. It's not my, it's not my thing. I don't, I don't do mobile home. So I just kind of left it alone. I'm like, now I'm thinking, man, I should have at least made a couple phone calls. Like who's blind? Who's blind? That's a great tip. Go on Google. Search for,

you know, find the guys that are trying to rank for those terms of we buy mobile homes fast or whatever. And yeah, if you go, if you go on Google, you know, or or Bing, if you're a Microsoft person or, I don't care, you know, whatever. Or a bigger pockets. It's, yeah, that's actually a really great place. I don't mean to, you know, I hope I'm not now in that all. No, I'm just, you know, I'm just saying in case, in case the list. Listeners don't know who they're listening to here. I mean, you know. Yeah.

If you go on there, you know, well, Bigger Pockets is a great example. You know, you see, you know, the people that are there that if you have a conversation with somebody or, you know, you find that they're putting money into their marketing, you know, and they're on Bigger Pockets and they're making regular forum posts and they're helping people out. You can tell that they're serious about their business. And so if you can hook up with people that are serious about whatever it. it is. Anything you either want to learn or get help with, whether it be mobile homes, like in this case or flipping, you know, you can really, things like bigger pockets, it really helps you identify who those people are, and then you'll get really good advice instead of, you know, just only give me 30 grand, and then I'll give you some advice.

You know, even on the deal side, right? I mean, you're looking for mobile home guy. You just, you know, you can actually do a search and find, you know, mobile home, Michigan and figure out who does it and link up with those people. Yeah. But, no, listen, I mean, it's good points. And I liked what you said before about, you know, the credibility aspect. I mean, it's something that I push and have pushed kind of from day one with the site is, you know, I think. And I think we as a community need to strive to do better and be better representatives of ourselves, so to speak.

And I love that, you know, I love talking to people who are doing it. I hate when I talk to somebody and I'm like, oh, I like this guy. man, but he is shady. It's always disappointing to me because I'm like, you know, people are going to look up to him. He's smart. But, you know, he runs his business in a way that's not quite on the up and up. Yeah, it's going to make us all look kind of dirty. I think that, you know, getting into a different side of it a little bit is if you actually get into wholesaling a little bit,

there's all kinds of gray areas with wholesaling, you know, where you can do things, you know, honestly and straightforward. Or you can do them a little on the shady side. And I mean, to me, it's no contest. You know, if you're not being straight with people, then you're not doing it the right way. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So we got this wholesale deal that fell in your lap that you did on the hood of a car.

Yeah. And, you know, so the first two deals are, you're on a roll here, man. It's easy. Life is good. And then, I mean, was there a brick wall moment? Did you hit any kind of trials and tribulations with any of the? deals as you're kind of experimenting and trying to load your way. Definitely, definitely.

I think I have more brick walls than slip and slides, that's for sure. So the first one, I was so excited. I remember this was the first deal that I successfully got under contract. Remember I said I said about two years ago. This was in December. So 12, 12, 12 was the day we got this thing. It always sticks out in my head. And get this thing.

and it looks great, everything's awesome, and get this inspector to come in. And I want this thing so bad. I want it to work. I have been essentially doing this nights and weekends, getting home at 536 o'clock, calling people, going, you know, spending money on gas, I don't really have, you know, trying to get these deals running into it. And the inspector says, I mean, you can do it if you want, but, you know, you're going to fall down flat on your face. So having those moments, and even right before that first rehab came in, getting to that spot where it was just so dark, I remember sitting there with my wife one night and just being like, what am I doing?

Like, I have now been doing this for months and doing it right. I mean, doing marketing, going hard, following up with people, tons of leads, all kinds of stuff. Am I just awful? I mean, what is wrong with me? Why can't I make this work? Yeah. So that was rough. interesting. Well, you know, I don't think you're alone with that. And for the people listening,

if you're in that situation where you're out there and you're struggling and you're trying to do marketing and you're trying to find deals and you set criteria and you're just either not finding deals or you're finding deals and you're talking to people and it's not working out, it could be incredibly frustrating, incredibly frustrating. So what did you do to take a riff on Brandon's question about, you know, what does successful investors do? What is, what did you do to kind of get you over the, the mental hump and, you know, to avoid just giving up because it would have been really easy to say, you know what, I put six months in, I haven't gotten anywhere. It's a wrap. Oh, it would have been incredibly easy. Like, I really wanted to do it, honestly.

Yeah, sure. And, but I think the first thing is I have a fantastic support system. I mean, my wife throughout this has been just incredible. I mean, always so supportive, but realistic at the same time. So that was a huge help. And honestly, I think a big thing with me is for a while now, I've really tried to flood myself with positive messages, whether that be books, tapes. It's a combination of really eliminating a lot of negative. Do they make tapes still? Yeah, I think so. Well, I had a 91 Toyota pickup, and that thing, didn't have AC, but had a tape player, so I rocked the heck out of a field, Earl Nightingale, 80s stuff.

But, yeah, just, so, you know, basically anything that I could get my hands on, any kind of, I mean, now these books are common, you know, that I found this community. Before I found it, you know, I just was sort of doing this all on my own. You know, positive thinking books, you know, good movies. You know, I was reading Game of Thrones. and I love reading it, but I actually stopped myself because I realized that it was really kind of bumming me out the whole time that I was reading it. They did like the most depressing books, too. I read everyone. I know. I love it. But they're like awful. You know, and so I was like, you know what? I can't handle this right now.

So basically to push through another really important thing was I actually looked at it really logically. I was doing a job, which was fine and good and great people that I was working with, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. And so logically I thought, well, what happens if you quit? You know, you are, you just stay where you're at or you stay on this track that goes nowhere you want to be. So what's the point of quitting almost? It's a strange phrase, but what's the point? If staying what you're doing and not continuing on, get you somewhere that you don't want to be, then why quit? Because at least if you don't quit, you have a chance to get where you want to be rather than be.

guaranteed to get somewhere that you don't like. I have no idea what you just said. All right. Let me try to pull it down. No, listen. I mean, you're saying, you know, just kind of get out there. I mean, you got to take a chance at some point, right? It's really, you know, for me, I had to use logic to overcome it.

It was like, well, let's look at the pros and cons here. If I quit, I don't get it. So, and I won't be happy with it. So I might as well keep going. Well, your logic didn't make any damn sense to me. However, if it worked for you, then that's great. All right. So are you now, are you a full-time investor?

I am. Yes, I am. It's a very fun thing, and things speed up immensely when you can actually make it full-time. Now, did you just quit your job then to get into the investing thing, or were you doing it while you were working? And then at some point you said, all right, I'm starting to do okay. get out. Yeah, it's the second one. I had been working, I was working a full-time job, and it was nights and weekends for a little bit over a year. My wife was actually doing a master's program, and she found a job over here in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is about two hours from

where we had been living in Ann Arbor. So I wasn't able to actually keep the job that I was going to have anyway. So it was almost this natural transition of, well, let's give it a try. I have to find a new job anyway. So let's dig in. Go for it. I've already had, you know, some good successes. Let's make a jump. So my wife and I agreed, we'll try this for three months. And if you don't have enough momentum going, then, you know, we'll figure something else out, find another job, do something else. But fortunately, the momentum caught and able to keep doing it. So, it's excellent. Howie, what do you think, what would be your suggestion for somebody who wants to know when

the right time to quit their job is? Like, when should somebody say, okay, I'm quitting, I'm full time now. How prepared did they have to be? I would say it would definitely help to have some deals under your belt. I think that number is really going to vary per person. Some people will feel comfortable with two or three. Some people will only feel comfortable with 10, 20. and that's really up to your personal comfort level.

For me, the stars kind of aligned on it. But in turning it, you know, trying to get it to somebody else, it's, you know, also realize that the lights are never all going to be green. You know, if you're trying to get from, you know, Michigan to San Diego, you know, you're never going to have all green lights on the way. So at some point, if this is something that you're committed to and you really want to do it, you just have to make a leap. On the flip side, I would say, just make sure you're not going to throw your family into the ditch to do it. So we were at a good place where we had enough savings,

you know, put a way where we could be fine. And we knew that my wife was working and walking into a job so we wouldn't be really up the creek without a paddle if it didn't go well. It did go well, but we had enough of a safety net to make that work. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, I think really good advice. I mean, I think a lot of people struggle with when to quit your job and when not to. I know I quit my job three times, two times, something like that. I mean, even now, now I'm at bigger pockets because, you know, I don't know, I like working a job, I guess, more than I like not working a job. I was getting worried there. I was, I was wondering if you're about to quit your job again. No, I mean, like, I quit it the last time, you know, I said, I'm never going to have a day job again.

And then I did real estate and then I got enough, you know, cash flow to, to not have to work or even have to invest in real estate anymore. And I was like, well, now what do I do? I'm, or to death. So, I mean, just your life changes as you go through it. And it definitely, definitely changed for me a lot in the last couple of years. So let's, let's move on enough about me. But we want to talk about marketing. Because I, let's talk about me. No, we're not going to talk about Josh either. We want to talk about your marketing, what you do, how you're getting leads. You mentioned direct mail. You mentioned AdWords. I'd love to cover both those things and then whatever else you want to share. So why don't we start with AdWords? What is it and how do you use it?

Great. AdWords is, it's only one variation of pay-per-click marketing. There's a lot of variations on it. I know there's AdWords, there's Facebook ads, there's Bing ads, there's Yahoo, there's paid placement on any number of good sites going where people are going that need to sell their houses. The basic concept is you market to whatever you're looking for. If you're looking for people that have a lot of equity, try to find those terms. And you're trying to get these people to click on your link to come to your website to give you their information. From that, you take that lead and follow up. So what does that cost? I mean, presumably, well, I know the answer to the question bell still. I mean, obviously it's going to vary depending upon the term. And how does that price vary? Is it auction system?

Yeah, it's the one that I use primarily is Google AdWords. I have heard very good things about other things. yellow pages, lots of other good systems that work for people. But it is an auction-based system. So based on the individual keyword, it will vary. Some keywords are super cheap. Five cents, ten cents, honestly, for a click. Other ones are super expensive, 20 bucks for a click, 30 bucks for a click, something like that. So that really comes down to you. How do you want to compete? Do you want to compete on the long tail to use a marketing term? Or do you want to, you know, jump in there and fight with the big dogs on house?

you know, and then you're going to pay a lot for each click. Yeah. Yeah. So presumably, you know, we do talk a lot about the mail, direct mail stuff. And I don't think we've done enough on the show about the online marketing stuff. Sure. What type of funnel are you typically trying to create there? In other words, for those people who don't understand what I'm saying, you know,

obviously you're going to put out a bunch of... advertising, you're going to expect, say, 100 people to click on the ad. Of the 100 people who come to your website through the ad, what percentage of those are going to actually fill out a form? And then of those people who fill out the form, what percentage of those people actually have some actionable intelligence on a potential deal? I've heard a pretty good ratio. At least this is for online stuff only. I think all of these methods have different. Well, I want to know what you're experiencing. Oh, sure.

So say I get... A hundred. Yeah. Say I get 100. Out of that, I will get maybe 20 people filling out the form. And then from that, I'll follow up with them. A lot of those people actually kind of drop off the map. You can follow up with them every day and then they'll call you back.

But out of that, you've got, you know, five solid leads. And ideally, you know, you can get, you know, three out of that that are actually actionable that you can get under contract for a good rate. So, you know, you're looking at probably 1 to 3% of your clicks that might actually get you good results. And what are you personally paying for a click usually? I mean, I know you said it varies, but what do you usually hear? Sure. I focus a lot on the long tail end, so I pay less than a lot of people. normally it varies between about a dollar or two dollars. It's also cheaper in West Michigan than it is in California. So say the high end it's $2 times the hundreds, $200 to acquire one to three leads essentially.

Sure. Yep. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. I was surprised at the success, honestly, before I thought it would take a million clicks to get any leads. But once you start getting at it, refining things a little bit, you can have success. Yeah. I've been doing, like I said earlier, I've been doing Facebook marketing just a little bit kind of playing with it. Sure. Because I, you mean, I enjoy that stuff a lot. So what I've, I mean, what I've been doing is I've had like five bucks a day. My ad just says like, you know, I live in Graze Harbor County. So I say like live in Grace Harbor question mark. And then a little picture, I have a little picture of the the Aberdeen sign, which as like Kirkobains come as you are phrase on it. And it says, yeah, yeah, do you looking to sell your house quickly, clothes and whatever. I think I have like, you know, seven days. cash for your house. Whatever it says. Anyway, and I've had, like in the past week, I'm looking at right now.

The past week, I've had 161 clicks, averaging 40 cents a click. Granted, a lot of people see that, like, they're like, there's a local ad on Facebook. They're going to click it just because it's something, you know,

like, they know. They know. So the clicks are cheaper than you get on Google, but it's also not as targeted. But, and out of those 161 clicks, I've had, I think, four or five phone calls

and four or five, like, website submissions. and looked at a couple. I mean, just kind of casually looked at. Nothing like solid yet. But anyway, those are just my numbers. Yeah. I mean, I'd say overall, it's a pretty low cost, but across all marketing, I'd say

each lead is probably between $20 and $25 per lead generally across all my marketing, which is, I mean, solidly, not like fluff, you know. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I'd probably agree with that quite a bit with mine on some. Cool. Cool. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model. They help investors buy turnkey new construction homes, often 10% below market value in top rental markets across the country. Their local teams

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Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. All right. Well, let's, so we talked about, we talked about AdWords, a little bit about Facebook. Let's go to direct mail. So how many letters are you sending out? And what kind of response rates are you getting? I actually am very happy with the response right that I get here. It's between 15 and 20%. Wow. Wow. That's really good. That's on your direct mail mail mailers? on direct mail mailers.

How are you getting that? I mean, because most people say, you know, 5% or even 1% is good. Would be great, yeah. So, well, the highest that I ever got was with when I was sitting down and handwriting letters. And I would write 10 to 20 to 30 letters a day, depending on the day, mail them up, first class mail and mail in a mail. Now I've gone to a printing method. I'm not sure if I should plug away all my secrets, but I use that. Oh, there's no secrets.

There's no secrets. It's actually, I use Jerry Puckett here, and I found him on bigger pockets, actually. And he does a lot of the printing. Yeah, so he'll print those up. Then he mails them to me. And then I will put a, it's a small envelope. I use a first class stamp, and it's a letter. And it is printed off of a computer, but it looks like,

a handwritten style, if that makes sense. It's not a computer font. It's like a handwriting kind of font. And the list that I've been using is from list source, and I focus a lot on absentee owners around the bigger cities that are right on. Right on. So that's been the most effective. The most effective was the handwritten, and you've moved over to the printing of the handwriting. Yeah, which I think was a good decision because I just ran out of time to do that. I just did not have enough hours in a day. So how much mail are you putting out now every week, month, whatever it is? Sure.

I've actually paused. Jerry could probably say he's probably going to send me an email after this podcast saying the next one's due up. You owe me money. When I was doing it, I actually started small with only about 300 a month, give or take. And that was enough to keep my pipeline full through that method, which was pretty remarkable. I know, listening to Justin, he sends out, you know, many more than that to get those same results. I feel like I might just be in a lucky pocket here in Michigan. Yeah, it makes sense.

Well, cool. So direct mail, Google AdWords. I mean, are you doing anything else? Do you have a sticker on your car or anything like that? I don't have a sticker on my car, but I do signs. I do yard signs. Some people call them bandit signs. It's okay. So I do that. It works. And I've sort of figured out the areas where they're okay with it and the areas where they're not okay with it. Let's talk about that, Brandon. Yeah, sure. So them being okay with it being the places where it's

legal to place them. Exactly. That's the more technical way where it's actually legal to put these up and where it is not legal to put those up. So obviously, in, sitting with everything else that I do, if it's not legal or not good, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to, I'm going to pull them down. But they do work. So in terms of finding out where it's kosher, I mean, how does one do that? Do you just call the city and say, hey, I want to do some marketing and this is one of the things I want to do? What do you do? Yes, that's a good first step as you go and then you tell people and say, hey, this is what I want to do? Is this okay? A lot of times, A lot of responses I have is if it's okay with the property owner, it's okay with us. So then it's another follow-up call to wherever you're going to put it saying, hey, is this okay if I put a sign here?

You know, sometimes you'll float them a few dollars and then they're okay with it. Other people say, who are you? Get away from me. I never want to hear from you again when you follow up with them. And even with that, you put them down and you get all the permission in the world, and sometimes they'll come back through and say, hey, this isn't allowed. And you're like, well, I talk to this person and this person and this person. it was fine. But once, you know, if that happens and somebody says, hey, don't put it here,

then I stop. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, instead of putting it on right of ways and street corners, you're focusing on putting them on people's actual property versus city property. Or, you know, even with that, even a store, a local store, there's a lot of local stores here in West Michigan. It's not all, all chains all over the place. And you try to do it a little bit targeted where, you know, a local ace hardware might be fine with it. And so you try to do it a little bit more focused where, you know, if somebody's going to work on their house, you're going to go into a hardware store. So getting it there, you know, is a good thing.

It's a good area to shoot for. Yeah. And let me just put this out for everyone listening. We have bigger pockets are pretty big advocates of doing things the right way and doing them legally. You know, if you go out and you start hammering neighborhoods with ban, Bandit signs, you know, illegally. You're just making a bad image for yourself. I mean, personally, I hate bandit signs.

I don't think anyone should use them. I think, you know, I really think they litter neighborhoods. I think they're awful. But I'm going to say, you know, if you're thinking about it, make sure you do it legally. Do it the right way. Do it the right way. If you're not, you know, I don't know.

I get a lot of people who don't like me because of my position on these things. but I think there's plenty of other credible ways to market than to go out and illegally post up signs and say, hey, how do I put up a sign so people don't take them down? Well, they're taking them down because you're doing it the wrong way. You're breaking the law. Don't put it on. How do I get a fake number to do this?

Well, if you need a fake number, something's wrong with what you do. Probably, yeah, and I completely agree with that. You know, that's why I said lawn signs at first. because, you know, the way that I do it, they're not bandit signs because they're okay in those areas. And it's a big thing. In this particular area, in these particular markets, they are not uncommon for any number of services from excavating. We're going to, we do siding, all kinds of things use it in this particular area. Yeah, right on, right on.

Any other strategies? Or is that pretty much? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I do networking. I've found leads and deals through Bigger Pockets, so definitely do that. Follow up with people.

It just, hey, I've got a lead in this state. I've thrown deals out to other people that other people have jumped on, and I've accepted deals from others. So Bigger Pockets is an excellent networking source. I've used it a lot. I do a lot of similar networking at local real estate investor meetings, and that's good. That generates a lot of leads.

And then I do other things like Craigslist and stuff like that too. Cool, cool. All right. Well, let's move on to what, we talk about cash buyers a little bit because you said you wholesale some deals. You already talked about earlier how you found the one. Do you have another good method or what should people be looking for when they want to know how to wholesale a deal to somebody? Sure.

I think a big thing to remember about cash buyers are that you don't need a million of them to have a successful business with. wholesaling. Generally, I've found that just a few solid people is really what you need to keep your lifeblood flowing in that area. So my style is, I know some people, and maybe these methods work great for them, but they'll find a lot of houses, get them all under contract, and then shoot them out to a million, million and a half people, and it's a big list of 20 homes or something like that. With me, what I do is I do a lot of talking to people, sitting down having coffee, figuring out really what they want. So that could be, I like this street, I don't like that street. This is my price range. I want three bedrooms only, never two. And so whenever I find a house,

then my job is to, you know, gather that information that I know about the people I've met and say, hey, this person is looking for a house. It does fit this. And then I'll put together a really customized package for one specific buyer rather than a big blast style. Yeah. I think that's a little differently than some people do it. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a smart way to do it. You know, you basically build a database and establish a set of criteria and pretty much list who wants what.

And if something comes in that matches, you know, person A through G, then you send it to A through G and you don't need to send it to everybody. There's no reason to waste your time and energy on it. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the big thing. Finding cash buyers for me has been a long, long and slow process. It's really developing relationships. I think that that's the big key. If somebody, you know, if you're able to work with someone that you can trust on either end, either they trust me, I trust them, then you can get a lot of things done. But that's going to these meetings, sitting down with people, having real honest conversations without, you know, fluff, being honest about what you're doing. doing and why you're doing it. All of those things make such a huge difference in the end. Yeah. Now listen, there's lots of approaches. There's no right one. There's no wrong one. Oh, absolutely. You just kind of got to go with what works for you. And it sounds like you've got some good ideas here. So how do you decide, you know, you find a property? How do you decide

what you're going if you're going to flip it or wholesaling? You know, it'd be easy to wholesale but maybe I should flip this one and go for a little more money. I mean, how does that process work for you? That process is definitely on a case-by-case basis. This is actually where we're getting into one of the weaknesses of where I am at right now is when I first started, I just sort of jumped in and said, okay, I just get things done. You know, methodology systems, who needs those? You know, just go.

And so I am now running into the problems with the, just go method. So for instance, right now, if another deal crossed my desk that was even a great flip, I would have to say, okay, I just can't take on another project right now. I have overloaded myself. And so for me, it's right now, it's not a perfect answer, but it's a debate between, okay, how much, you know, using a computer term, how much bandwidth do I have to actually handle this project. Do I have, you know, where are my contractors at, et cetera, et cetera? In the future, what I would like to do is just have a system going. Okay, all right. Well, I've got three deals going right now. That's my max. Time to wholesale them. I also, if it looks like it's better as a rental,

I just go straight to wholesaling those because rentals and property management and that kind of thing is not something that I'm doing at this time. Not yet. Do you want to get into that eventually? I do. I do. I know that, you know, it's a really good piece of advice, actually. Just jump into the thing that you want to be doing eventually. I think several good, reliable posters have said that. Seems like really good advice. But with me, being able to do this as a job for now, while learning a lot about houses and getting into that eventually, seems like a really good middle ground. I agree. Yeah. So you're at this position of scale. right? You're at the, hey, I could handle things kind of on my own. But if it's, and if there's any kind of scalability that that's required, I'm in trouble. So it seems to us, well, it seems to us being, seems to me, we, we are the queen of England. The royal we. No, it seems to me that, you know, you're probably at that point where, yeah, it's, it's time to kind of hunker down and focus on.

you know, how to build the systems for yourself and how to, you know, get those team players into place to get you to that next step. And so what is it like? Because I think we've talked to we've talked to a lot of guys who were, you know, hey, I'm getting one and two deals. That's awesome. And we've talked to a ton of guys who've said, you know, hey, I've got my systems. I don't think we've actually talked to anyone who's where you are, which is I'm stuck. I can't kind of get to that. Well, I'm not saying that you said that, but I can't get to that next deal because I really don't know. I'm not saying you don't know how to scale, but, you know, I'm at the point where I haven't started to. So what is that, what is that like and what's kind of going through your

head right now as you're facing that? Well, for me, it was an epiphany moment as I was working on this rehab that I'm doing right now. I'm sitting there painting trim and, and this, it's an old house, it's 100 years old. And it will work in on this thing. And I'm thinking, I am so wasting time right now. This is not what I should be doing. This is not efficient at all. And so this epiphany moment for me, and then saying, okay, well, in that case, what does it look like? So doing the first ones, it was like, okay, what I want to do is make, you know, basically the top dollar possible. And what that means is me personally doing as much as I can with every deal. If I can lay floor, I'm going to lay floor. If I can finish drywall, I'm going to finish that. So now I have to look at it as, okay,

what am I actually good at? What are my real strengths and how do I bring in people efficiently to relate, that can do the stuff better? They're absolutely people that can lay floor faster and easier than me. Painting, you know, even outsourcing the direct mail that I mentioned. I mean, that was a huge help. So it's basically taking these little pieces and fitting them into a system that works. So I've started doing little things, but that's definitely the next step of the growth, is saying, okay, where do I pull myself out of this system? Because the less that I'm in it every day, the more that the overall system can succeed. You know what's interesting. As I sit here, I think about my own business. I think about bigger pockets. And I think about this show. And granted, a lot of this show is

very, very specific to real estate. But we are, you know, we being the audience and we being the folks that we're interviewing. We're all kind of small business people, right? We're all, every real estate investor is a small business person. Every real estate agent is a small business person. And, you know, everybody kind of faces the same issues in terms of really figuring out where they are, where their company is, and what they're good at, what they're not good at. Who did put it into place? I think that I read this book probably six years ago, and I've read it a couple times since it's the e-myth,

revisited by Michael Gerber. And it's a really good book that talks about exactly this thing. Essentially, you're working in your business instead of working on your business. And basically you're baking the pies instead of creating the systems so the pies can get baked without you being there. Stop painting trim. Exactly, exactly.

Stop painting trim. It's not a good use of it. your time, you know. Are you yelling at me? No, I'm yelling. I was actually going to say, stop climbing on the window sill and putting, you, putting, uh, yeah, thank you, thank you. Ben, I should, I should probably reread that

book, uh, just to remind myself. Yeah, that's actually one of those books I think you should reread every, kind of like, I say like reread Rich Dad Portad every year. Oh yeah. Like, reread E-Mith every year. I think you just got to re-reminded of those things. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, hey, what do we, uh, actually you know, I have to ask one more question before we go to the fire-round. Sure. That question is I ask every single person pretty much who does rehabs.

How are you finding good contractors? References. All references. I also use Angie's list. If you guys have heard of that, it's a super cheap subscription service. They have lots of, if you're stuck, you ask around your local real estate club and you just got nobody, no idea. I'd recommend going there. but my best successes come from,

hey, I use this guy, I know this guy, he's really good. That's both online and in person. But getting a reference is pretty much the end all be all for me. You know, I was just thinking based on that, I've never actually done this, but I'm going to do it today, is just go put on my Facebook wall. Hey, does anybody have a good recommendation for a plumber in Grace Harbor? I'll just write that.

Definitely. I'll report back next week on what I find. Yeah, we'll see if that works. Oh, boy, I'm super excited. I'll let you want to find out. to find out. I know. We got to keep people, you know.

The plumbing update. Yes. All right. Now we're officially moving to the... It's time for the fire round. The fire round. These questions all come from the Bigger Pockets Forums, which you can get to at BiggerPockets.com slash forums. Fancy.

All right. Number one. I'm a college graduate. Just got out of college looking for my first investment. How should I get started? For your first investment. I would say try to find somebody that has done the kind of investment that interests you the most. Talk to that person, find the pros, find the cons, see if after actually digging in a little bit it's what you do want to do.

If you find out that it is, try to get good help. On my first one, my friend that I partnered with had already been a landlord for a while. He already knew a lot about these basic house fixes and things to do and things to look for. And so getting people smarter than you around you is a very, very good thing. Yep. Good. And that, again, can be applied to pretty much every component of business. Absolutely. I am not that smart and I will take all the help I can get. There you go. Well, at least you admit it.

Hey, hey. We all know our weaknesses. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Cool. So when wholesaling properties off the MLS, how do you get around the 60-day hold requirement that some banks have? have you run into this yet? I can't actually speak to this because I have never wholesaled a property off of the MLS. I have only worked with sellers directly, so I've never wholesale the property off the MLS.

So I couldn't tell you one way or another. I'll kind of adjust the question then. Have you bought any properties off the MLS for your investing? No, I have not. Okay, let me ask another question. All right. Have all these been pretty much direct deals with the seller? or are you working with real estate agents as go-betweens?

Directly with the seller. I think that this is something that I will work on and add to the repertoire is working more with real estate agents. Actually, I love real estate agents. So you've never bought through an agent. Presumably you've sold through agents. I have sold through agents, yes. I've never bought through an agent.

So I think that's another really good next step for me. Wow, that's pretty impressive to go that many deals. without having to purchase through an agent. So that's pretty cool. Impressive. It's something. It's something. I don't know. It's, yeah. It just shows that there's a lot of ways. I mean, I've hardly bought in any properties that were not MLS.

Almost everything I've done flipping or wholesaling or multifamily have almost all been MLS. There's been a couple direct sellers, but not many. It just shows there's different ways to do it and you can succeed at either one. Exactly. What's good in your market and what are you good at? All right, next, how would you suggest finding a credible wholesaler that understands leaving some meat on the bone for rehab buyers? Good question. I like that. That is an excellent question.

I've both worked with other wholesalers and wholesale deals myself. A big part of it is relationships, again, to me, it's all about that. Finding somebody who is not going to just try to suck every dollar out of the deal. I've been on both sides. I've been on the rehab side. I've been on the wholesaling side. So for me, it's just talking to people and really analyzing a deal and saying, if it's too high, it's saying like, all right, dude, what are you looking at here?

Like, can you get this any lower? Because these are where my numbers are at. Here's where I'd be comfortable with it. I don't know what you actually have it under contract for. And if you get somebody who's constantly just trying to peg you as high as possible, that's not somebody I'd want to work with long time. term. So, I mean, in some cases, it's just that's as low as the seller would go.

And that's the deal and it's just no deal. But if you've really got a guy that's trying to milk you, it's kind of like, eh, I don't really know. Yep, yep, yep, yeah, yeah. Cool. All right. Cool. Last question is, how would you suggest someone get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke?

You dealt with that on your first deal. What do you need to do? Excellent. Rip out all the carpet and the pad. Absolutely. Get it out of there, day one. That was the first thing we did, and that removed 75% of the smell, probably. After that, you'll want to use something like kills, a latex-based paint that's specifically made as an odor killer. You're going to have to do a lot, you or somebody else, you know, getting these systems going to have to do a lot of washing and scrubbing for anything that you want to keep. Say you want to keep the cabinets or something.

You're going to spend a lot of time on those cabinets because that smoke is just going to seep in everywhere. So get professional grade cleaning products. Talk to people. The cheap stuff is not going to help and you're just going to want to run your head into the wall. Also, open the windows. Keep the windows open as much as you can. Run fans all day. And at some point it's just a time battle.

You keep doing this stuff over and over again. But if you keep it all flowing, then eventually. it'll go. All right. So I've got a probably what's a stupid question because I've never had to clean a house out of cigarette smell. Say I would presume, say I started in the kitchen, cleaning the kitchen, right? Well, we get all the carpets out of the house. That's the quick and easy. But every other room still stinks, even the rooms that you pulled this out of. My assumption is you start in one room and as you kind of clear the stank out of that room, do you have to kind of seal it off so the smell doesn't, you know, leach back in and get all over, all over everything? Or is it,

it almost feels like it'd be this never-ending battle? Or is it just, you know, little by little as long as you've got kind of the air flowing constantly, you're okay? To me, it's a little by little. Unless you are able to create a vacuum seal somehow, it's air. I mean, it's going to get there and it's going to get in. So you just do the best you can and keep at it. I've always find that like We couldn't seal it off. I mean, we're scrubbing the walls, and it looks like coffee running down the wall. I mean, it's disgusting. I think, like, 99% of the smell comes from the walls anywhere.

I mean, like, obviously the carpet, but it's not in the air as much as it is. It's on things. So if you get it off the things. Deep scrubs. Yeah, deep scrub. Magic eraser is a great. Yeah, it is. That is a good, that works well for things.

Yeah. They have that little, have you used that yet, Josh, a little magic eraser. It's like, I don't know. Mr. Clean. Yeah, I don't know if you clean, but. Yeah, I know what magic You've got kids though who would draw crayons on the wall You know?

Your kids don't do that. They're not savages. They don't draw cans on the wall. No, there's a... Every rental I have ever been in has crans on the wall. I assume every kid does that. My point is, no, no, I'm kidding. But no, listen, my kids don't draw on the walls

because, you know, we put the fear of the God into them. So, yeah. All right, nice, nice. All right, well, hey, let's move on to the final section of the show, which we like to call the Famous Four. All right. The Famous Four, these are questions we ask everybody on the show, so you know what they are, and I'm going to throw them right at you. First one, what is your favorite real estate book?

This one is a really hard one. I read a lot of real estate books. My current favorite is Flip. It's part of the Millionaire Real Estate Investor Series. It's Clay Villani and Davis, and Gary Keller, of course, is, you know, involved. That one is very good. I want to, next up on my reading list is actually the one by Jay Scott. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot from that one, too. So those books that are really nitty-gritty detail. Those were really big helps for me. I mean, there's a million in one. Yeah. Cool. Right on. What about your favorite business book and non-real estate? Non-real estate. Well, my favorite, like, non-anything book is probably Lord of the Rings, which is awesome.

But more in this. Nerd alert. Yeah. Oh, I am a hard nerd. You don't have to worry about that one. So the is actually not even a book. I mentioned it earlier. It's lead the field by Earl Nightingale. It's a really good. It's a series of audio capes, actually. It's recorded, I think, back in the 80s. It's really just about your outset and your look on life. And it's really good. I probably listen to that one at least once a year. Nice.

I'll have to look for that in Amazon. And I'll put a link to those in the show notes at Biggerpockets.com slash show 69. And Josh, next question. Yeah, what about hobbies? What do you do for fun? I do a lot of things for fun. I'm a lacrosse coach in high school. High school lacrosse coach.

That's great. We actually have a game today. Maybe you'll tell us next week how the score went. And then you can tell me how your teeth brushing went. I feel like I'm getting made fun of here. Is that anybody else noticing that? I don't know. No, not at all.

It's ridiculous. So other than that, I really love to travel. Travel seeing friends. My friends are scattered all around the country. I love to travel. I like games of all kinds. board games, video games, like I said, giant nerd alert. And I really like to

ReDGens and Dragons. I actually haven't gotten into that, but I hear it's awesome. He's not that nerdy, Josh. We did have one of our guests as a Dungeons and Dragons fan. I think it was Dawn. Was it? Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, I played it when I was, you know, younger.

That explains a lot. Anyway. So, games. Lots of cool. Cool. All right. Final question from me. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who never get started or fail? To me, I thought about this. I figured you guys had your famous four so I could throw mine out here at the same time. I tried to boil it down to one and I couldn't. So the four elements. The first one that I really see is courage, which is your ability to act in spite of fear. Even if you're afraid, you can still move forward. The next is knowledge, figuring out what to do and when to do it. You can be as courageous as you want, but if you run straight into a swamp, you know, you're not going to, some quicksand.

You're not going to get out too fast. Really important one is persistence, just keeping at it, even though it seems like you just want to quit. Like I've had that experience several times. And then the last element, probably the most important one is just faith, knowing that as rough as this gets, if you can focus on it and keep driving towards it faith that you will ultimately accomplish your goal. Cool. There you go. Well,

well, well said, well said. Nice. Well, cool, man. So before we let you go, where can people find more information about you, link up with you?

Excellent. Yeah, the bigger pockets profile. I love that. I use it all the time. So shoot me a message, things like that. My company's website is the honeybeehomes.com,

T-H-E at the beginning. Honeybeehomes.com is, I think, a realtor in Texas. That is not me. Nice. So my picture's right on there, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. So that's my website, and my email address is my first name, Brandon, at the honeybeehomes. And yeah, any lunch, calls, Skype dates, whatever, no big deal. I like talking.

You're going to regret that. Yeah, you are going to regret that, by the way. But, okay. Listen, hey, it's all good, man. It's all good. The 24,000 people listening to the show might all decide to know. Do not, do not everybody in and date Brandon with you, just for fun. All right, man. Well, listen, it's been a pleasure. Really enjoyed listening to you and hearing about your story. And hopefully folks learned a thing or two from you. Of course, this is show 69 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And anyone listening can check out the show notes. at biggerpockets.com slash show 69 where they can ask Brandon, not Turner, but Mr. Brandon Craig here, questions that they've got about today's interview. And otherwise, listen, that's really it. If you're listening to the shows and you're not yet connecting with us on Bigger Pockets, please jump on the forums, get involved, get engaged. The more you do that,

the better you feel. I don't know. And, you know, just, just, just get involved in the community. I think you'll find a lot of value in doing that. Otherwise, you know, again, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Gplus, and all the usual major social networks. And get out there, make things happen, guys. Network, connect, interact, learn, and be successful and share your stories with the rest of us. And let's all help each other thrive. So thank you for listening. And we'll see you next week at Show 70 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm Josh Dorkin, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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