BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 830: From Burnt-Out Tech Worker to $95K in Passive Income in 2 Years w/David Lecko

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Off-market real estate deals can make you a millionaire in just a few YEARS. Instead of buying the nicest-looking rental property in the best area through a brutal bidding war, David Lecko went the opposite route, purchasing the properties nobody else wanted, finding deals simply by driving for dollars or paying someone else to do so. He went from a burnt-out nine-to-five worker to financial freedom in just two years by following this strategy, and you can do it, too! David was working all day and all night, making a meager salary with almost zero time freedom. His boss, who worked far less than he did, outsourced his business and had rental properties on the side. David knew that to be in the same position, he’d have to mimic his boss’ path to wealth. So, after work, David would drive around his local area, looking for the tallest grass, the biggest roof repairs, and the worst paint jobs. He finally found his first deal, which cost less than a used car, but ended up springboarding David to make millions. In today’s episode, David will walk through EXACTLY how to find off-market real estate deals the RIGHT way, how to get around the lazy lists that most off-market investors use, and how to turn a few properties into millions of dollars of wealth and close to six figures a year in passive income. And in today’s tough housing market, finding deals like these is even MORE crucial. So, what are you waiting for? Financial freedom is only a couple of years away! In This Episode We Cover: How to reach financial freedom in just a couple of years by buying off-market real estate  Driving for dollars and using this strategy to find massively underpriced deals Outsourcing your deal finding so you can drive less and make more money Building your off-market deal list and how many houses it’ll take to get your first payday  To BRRRR or not to BRRRR and why NO cash flow isn’t always a bad thing  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area Davids's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Subscribe to David’s YouTube Channel Join David’s Spartan League Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's YouTube BiggerPockets Podcast 731 with Brent Daniels BiggerPockets Podcast 781 on Finding Off-Market Deals BiggerPockets Podcast 663 with Pitch Anything Part 1 BiggerPockets Podcast 664 with Pitch Anything Part 2 Real Estate Rookie Podcast 241 with Sahleem Lee Books Mentioned in the Show Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat by David Greene Pillars of Wealth by David Greene Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Connect with David: David's BiggerPockets Profile DealMachine David's Instagram David's Podcast Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-830 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pock's podcast podcast show 830. I actually started in 2016 when I worked for somebody who had five rental properties and I was like, why do you have this? And he said, well, unlike the stock market that can go up and down, if you get rentals and you buy them right and manage them well, they'll always make money. And so that's what motivated me to go looking for some of these real estate deals. But there weren't any. Nothing was going to cash flow until I found out about going off market and then providing value to somebody, getting a discounted property, fixing it up. And so that's actually led me to two million in rentals that I have today with a million-dollar equity

position. What's up, everyone? This is David Green, your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Podcast, the biggest, the best, and the baddest real estate podcast in the world. Every week, we bring you stories, how-toes, and the answers that you need to make smart real estate decisions now in this current market that is ever changing. and we have a great story for you today. Joining me is my overly eccentric co-host, Rob Abasolo,

who is either being a mime or doing ASL for those who are watching on YouTube. Rob, how are you today? Oh, my gosh, dude. I got home at 4 a.m. last night, and now I feel like I'm on vacation. Now I feel like I'm on vacation because being on a plane with the two and a three-year-old for 12 hours. Today we're about to speak with David Leco. He's going to be describing the strategy that he's used to build a $2 million dollar portfolio with $72,000 a year in cash flow that he started with only $4,000.

Yeah, it's crazy, man. And on top of that little fun fact, he's also the founder of Deal Machine, which we didn't really talk about in the podcast today. But yeah, he's got a really cool story and really breaks down, I mean, really everything from the beginning. I think it's going to be encouraging for a lot of people to hear a story. Absolutely. Today's quick tip is going to be brought to you by Rob, who actually has some advice to

share that came out of today. show. Hey, when you see an opportunity, take action, you're going to hear why today at the very end of the at the very end of the podcast. We talk about a deal that I just did because the moment I saw the opportunity, I made the phone call and got stuff done. There you go. Strike when the iron is hot because it doesn't stay hot forever. And as we know, decisions are made based on emotions and emotions change. So when you've got the right opportunity, don't waste your shot. Much like Eminem said, you may never get it again. What if I told you you could forget everything you know about investment property loans.

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Ready to unlock your property's true potential? Visit hostfinancial.com. Don't let old school lending hold you back another day. That's hostfinancial.com. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you only a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NREG.com slash BPPod. That's NR-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. Most investors spend all their time talking about their high-level returns. But that's not the number that actually matters.

What actually matters is what you keep after taxes, and that's where multifamily real estate quietly stands out. With built-in advantages like depreciation, the right deals can generate steady cash flow while reducing the tax drag. Bam Capital structures its multifamily investments around those fundamentals, pairing tax efficiency with disciplined operators and a long-term approach. This isn't about chasing hype or guessing market timing. It's about building durable, tax-aware wealth over time. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. All right, let's bring in David. David Lecco, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How are you today? I'm great. Thank you so much. Nice, man. So can you give our listeners a quick rundown of who you are, where you invest,

and how long you've been investing for? Yeah. So I actually started in 2016 when I worked for somebody who had five rental properties and I was like, why do you have this? And he said, well, unlike the stock market that can go up and down, if you get rentals and you buy them right and manage them, well, they'll always make money. And we know Warren Buffett says the rule is don't lose money, never lose money. And so that's what motivated me to go looking for some of these real estate deals, but there weren't any. Nothing was going to cash flow until I found out about going off market and then providing value to somebody, getting a discounted property, fixing it up. And so that's actually led me to two million in rentals that I have today with a million dollar equity position and about

$95,000 net cash flow expected this year. Last year was 72, but I did a couple acquisitions this year. And so those properties were acquired over about a two and a half year period from 2017 to 19. And then I kind of like chilled out for quite a while. But I had a lot of appreciation. So I'm now like remotivated to go acquire some more rental properties. All right. I want to ask you, Rob, a quick question. How long do you think we'll still hear stories about people who heard about real estate from a human?

Because now with YouTube and social media, it's like bombarded by real estate. I just realized that. That's how you people used to say it. Like I met a guy in a restaurant one day. He was a mysterious man smelled of rich mahogany and leatherbound books. And he told me he had rental properties. And I was so fascinated versus what it's like now. I'm just curious, Rob, what your perspective did like,

do you think that anyone will ever hear about real estate from a human from this point forward? That's very funny. I was legitimately just thinking about this because everyone that I follow on Instagram, like, they are all real estate people. And so it's all like, here's five rental strategies you need to perfect in 2022. Here's how to make $10,000 cash flow. And that's all my Instagram is. And I'm like, man, the entire Instagram landscape has really changed for the real estate industry. But that is really like a big part of how people even find out about real estate. So I don't know. I don't know. I think the days of the coffee shop, you know, meeting with an older real estate vet and they teach you everything and take you under their wing. I feel like those, yeah, it's getting a little bit more rare these days. That's true. And also I feel like when you talk to someone before, they tell you what they actually had versus when you hear something online now.

might be someone with like a house they live in and one investment property, but they're talking about it as if they have 50 rentals. That's a little different too. So it's easier to find out about it, but you got to dig a little bit deeper to figure out what's really going on. And that's what we're going to do today. So David, we're going to hear all about your expertise in a second here. But give me an idea on what strategy or tactic is working for you right now. So I'm doing two things right now. I'm paying a driver to look for rundown properties. I'm sending marketing and I'm getting calls back answered by. a call center and then I follow up and do a virtual appointment. The other thing I'm doing now that's new for this year that I've had a couple successes with so far is actually making offers on properties on the MLS in my market that are over 45 days old. And I'm sending 70% offers to those properties. And I've sent about 500 of those offers and done about three deals in the last three months, I would say. So you're taking steps just to get the ball rolling. You're trying to get the

conversation going. Just get that first date and then see where things go. Actually, the off the on market listings that I'm giving it 70% off, they're actually just receiving offers 70% off as is. And you never know what they'll accept unless they have like a low offer in their hand. So that's actually, yeah, I mean, they're signing it and I'm like, oh, wow, I have a property under contract. So yeah, I have a question about that. You're making these offers presumably if they've been on the market for 45 days. We're getting towards the point where that listing is going to expire. That agent is probably going to lose the contract as my guess. So when you make an offer,

how are you actually doing that? Do you have a realtor representing you making that offer? Or are you just making that offer to the listing agent and asking them to represent both of you? It's through an agent and I use a software that connects to her email and uses her contract and fills in the docu-sign details. I have a slider that says what percentage do I want to send out all my offers. And I usually do 35 per week because she'll get an influx of emails and texts. And she does respond to those. And some of those end up being a counter. And so that's how I get the ball rolling. It doesn't take her time. But we have a process and a tool that we use that allows me to send those offers like that. Hold on. Wow, that sounds like the most system and process oriented way of doing

this. I just thought you were calling, hey, make this offer. So you actually have this, I don't want to say automated, but really efficiently laid out to where, if you're going to make 35 offers, are you actually examining all of those properties running the numbers on them? Or you're just like, all right, hey, if it's 70% and they accept, I'll then run my numbers. The second thing. And I'm, I am doing a little bit of filtering. I just want like a three-bedroom two-bath house with a certain square footage. So I'm not doing these offers on commercial buildings or I'm not doing it on like a two-bedroom, one bathroom house, because I just do want it to actually be a property that I'd probably buy.

All right. So we're going to get into those details a little bit later. Before we move on to the show, just remind me, which area are you buying these in? Indianapolis, Indiana. Okay. So we're going to talk about the Indianapolis market as well. We'll ask you some tough questions. So get yourself prepared for that.

But hopefully it gives you an opportunity to shine. So let's start with a story. So tell me about a moment before you found real estate when you knew things had to change. Man, my life was actually horrible. I'm working for this company for two years on a product that I actually built before I ever worked there. And I sold it for $10,000. Now, it was a recruitment tool in another industry. And the reason why I bought it is because there's advice from Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, that says you shouldn't take the most expensive, the highest paying job. You should actually go work for somebody that you want to emulate. And so that's exactly what I did. So I sold this tool I built.

and it was a low cost. And I was getting paid $55,000. And on the first day, the CEO says, hey, David, please don't share what you make with anyone else on this team because nobody else makes that much. And I was like, man, I don't even feel like that's that much. I took a $20,000 pay cut to get here. And I did, though, really like working a ton.

And I'm working a ton on the software developer, I'm the tech support and the trainer. When there's a problem, like I'm not actually having anyone else be able to do those things. So there's no backup. So I'm actually the most technological person that they have. And this culminated over two years. I'm learning a lot. But there is always these times where I take my computer to the bar with me if I was going to go out with friends because something's going to come up. I want to be able to fix it instead of have to drive home and come back. And I'm finally, I'm at my best friend's wedding. And I'm actually in the wedding party. And I leave the reception because I got the call. Something is wrong. And I'm out in my Honda cord, 10 year old Honda. accord with my hot spot and I'm fixing this tool. And I was like, man, he was upset. His wife was upset. I felt terrible because I'm missing the reception. And I knew that something had to change. And I knew that the owner of this company of mine had these rental properties. And so I knew I needed

to start taking action towards making a change, towards finding an off market deal. And at the time, he said, well, he bought these properties in 2009, which was a great buying opportunity. And I was a little bit discouraged by that. It wasn't his intention. But I looked at the market and I couldn't find anything that would cash flow. So thankfully, I went to a meetup and found people that were doing deals all the time. So that's when I realized, you know, you can't just time the market. You've got to find deals in whatever market condition exists. You've got to figure out how to find good deals and all those conditions. So you went to a meetup and you said people are doing deals. I mean, as someone that didn't know anything about real estate or not all that much, right? I mean, you go to a real estate. state meetup and you find out that people are doing all these kind of things, like, what kind of deals were they doing? And then were they all doing so many types of real estate that it was overwhelming? Like, what was that first experience even like? Well, it was pretty awesome because they actually had a prize that was a random drawing for all the attendees. And I won the prize. It was an iPad.

And I thought, this has got to be a sign. I'm not super spiritual, but this definitely doesn't feel bad. This is great. I won this iPad and I immediately sold it for 500 bucks and I used that to start sending postcards to distress properties. I remember there were people doing a lot of stuff, but the prevailing theme was wholesaling. I love this. Okay. So what you're saying is if somebody's having a hard time getting started, they need to go to events, win prizes and then pawn off the prize to get the capital C to get started. Correct? Yeah, exactly. I love it. I love it. I love it, Because instead of just having an iPad where you could log into Netflix and hang out and do nothing, you're like, all right, look, I could have this iPad or I could just, I mean, it's basically a free $500

that I can use to experiment and just do random things with in the real estate world and see what sticks. And so somehow you land into the postcard world. How did you even learn about that? There was definitely a blog post on bigger pockets that I saw on driving for dollars. And the unique aspect of it was this person was putting the photo of the house on the envelope. And that was something that they said gave them a better chance, a better response rate. And so from this day forward, every piece of mail that I've sent has the photo of the house on the property. And not even not like the Google photo, like an actual photo that he took. And people call back still to this day. They're like, I got a few pieces of mail. But I called yours because it looked like you put a lot of time in it. Or I could tell you're really here. I could tell you were local. That's cool. All right. So you've sort of unlocked this. You took, all right, you went to bigger pockets. You figured out the idea of driving for dollars. You've unlocked sort of a really great entry point into your real estate career. And it seems like it's working. How did that feel emotionally for you for it to start clicking really? I mean, it seems like a relatively like relatively soon into your career. Yeah. Well, there was a period of time where I was just looking for the rundown properties and I wasn't. sending out the mail yet. I was prepared for it. I had the money set aside for it. But what I was focused on was finding the properties. It was so much fun driving up and down and just like

picturing myself buying this property and felt really awesome. And two months into that, I had a nice list on a tablet of paper, but my stomach sank to the floor when I saw one of these properties had started construction. So I went home, looked up. Sure enough, this property actually recently sold. And I looked up the price. I wasn't an expert on numbers, but I felt like it was way lower than, you know, what I would have even felt comfortable offering. So I knew that that could have worked for me. And I had this terrible feeling that I didn't even reach out yet. Spent so much time just thinking about these homes that I wasn't following up. And I realized humans have a lot of follow up issues in general. And I needed to start, you know,

nipping that in the bud and doing something. So I went to go put those letters together with the photos. And that's when I realized like putting letters takes a long time. And at the time, you couldn't send out mail one at a time, you had to buy a minimum of 200 with some mailhouse. And so that's what left me doing them myself in my basement, which took quite a bit of time. And so that was the next struggle for me. But I'm glad I did it because I didn't have a ton of money. And I heard over and over, the driving for dollars is the best list. Well, there's something ironic about the fact that you were making this list on a tablet of paper instead of like an iPad, an electronic tablet. So that's pretty funny. So you kind of find this house, you find out it's the one that got away, but not really,

because you never even tried to get it to begin with. And then you get into this time suck. At this point in your journey, was time something that was very important to you? Or was at the beginning of your journey where time is all you had? Tell us about the emotions of that time in your real estate career. Well, as you know, I was working a job that was time consuming. I don't know the exact hours, but it required, it had some flexibility during the day, but it required lots of stuff at night and random times when people were using the software and I would need to go and fix it. So I was feeling quite burnt out. I did enjoy driving around, but when it came time and I realized like how time consuming this was, it just didn't feel like I had time, you know, working nine to

five, a couple random things for work in the evenings. Now I have to not only go out and look for properties, we've got to put them together. And there's not enough time left to go hang out with friends to go, you know, eat dinner or anything else like that that I needed to. So I was definitely feeling like the candle was burning at both ends. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think a lot of people feel that way, especially at the beginning of the real estate career, if you're working a nine to five or if you're working any kind of job. And then when it's over, you still have to do the real estate stuff to get that going as well. So at this, point in your career, did you have a very clear why defined, like your mission statement?

Did you know what you wanted? I know that you missed some important moments in your, like, the best friend's wedding and everything like that. But had you already defined what your why was? I had missed some important moments. I also noticed the owner of the company I was working for and learning so much about, didn't put in the hours that I was. Now, I got the sense he did at the beginning, but I wanted that. I didn't want to have to work so much for a small salary that I couldn't even talk about. I wanted something more. It was definitely, I wanted time freedom, but it probably even goes back to like high school. Some kids had these really cool cars, and I wanted that. I wanted more than what I had growing up. And so I was driven by those two things.

David, when you look at why you were driven for time freedom, can you trace it down to a specific event that happened in your life and experience you went through something you witnessed. I think a lot of us would like to have time freedom. We would rather not have to work for somebody else. But if you're lacking the motivation to get out there, make it happen, because it comes at a price, as you well know, you give up a lot of security. You maybe work more hours in the beginning when you're trying to build that. What do you think about your story specifically led to you having that fire that you were

able to use to get over the hump? My dad worked at a telecom company. He had a friend that was a contractor. I didn't really know what that meant, but they were buddies. And that friend was not only a contractor himself, but he owned a contracting business. So he would place people in different companies like this telecom company, and he would make a portion of their earnings as well. And I met him at a breakfast with my dad.

He gave me a book called The Four Hour Work Week. And so that book taught me that you could build a business so you can earn in. income that's not limited by how much time you put into it as long as you're the one who's actually setting up the business in the right way. That has to be my moment where I knew there was a better path than what I had been exposed to in the just W2 world. All right. So what about that quest for time freedom led you into our world of real estate? Well, it seemed like rental properties were pretty stable. If they were never going to lose money, if they were always going to appreciate as long as you manage them well, it seemed like the more rental properties I get, the more secure

salary I can have, like where a business might have fluctuations. That was intimidating to me, but a rental property is physically. You could touch it. You could see it. You can rent it out for a certain price. And then when I went to the Federal Reserve graph on rent rates, I saw that it never went down. Even in 2008, it stayed constant for a year and it kept climbing up. So that's what seemed like it would give me the security the most secure way. It wasn't that you heard. It wasn't that you heard someone else talking about it or you heard it on a podcast or a YouTube channel. Like, was there a certain influencer that got your attention? Or did you just sit down and logically think through real estate makes the most sense? The time when I figured out real estate

would make the most sense was the boss that I had at the final job that I had had, had five rental properties. And I asked him, I said, I put my money in a 401k. Why do you invest in real estate? And he told me it's because you'll never lose money as long as you buy them right and you manage them well. And I had seen my 401k go up and down and felt like I had no control. And the feeling of control is just like such a good thing. So I knew that that was something I wanted to go after at that point. Yeah, man. So let's fast forward a little bit.

You end up, you go to this meetup, you sell the iPad, you get your postcards out. The one of one of your dream deal gets away and you realize I got to take action. So where did that actually culminate into your first deal? Like, tell us about how that first deal actually took place. Yeah, so I got a phone call and he says, hey, I'd like to get an offer on my property. And I just knew after putting in 300 properties over the course of six months that it must be the small house I remember with a blue tarp over the entire roof. I just knew that was probably it.

And when I looked it up, sure enough, it was. And I didn't know what to actually say next because I had never done this. before Rob, and I just said, well, how about I meet you at 6 o'clock? So got off the phone as soon as possible. And once again, when I met him at 6, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to ask. I said, well, let me just take some pictures and I'll just ask you about things that I see while you're walking me through the house. And then it wasn't a very big house. It was 600 square feet. But I took the photos and then he said, how much will you offer? And again, I didn't know. So I was like, I'm going to get back to you 24 hours. I'll have an offer in front of you. So I went

home and I was going to offer $10,000 for this house. Now, it was in rough shape. I found out later that he thought I was just going to demolish it, but I ended up repairing it. I'll tell you that. I actually remembered this episode on the Bigger Pockets podcast where they said, if you don't feel like you're uncomfortable making this offer, if you don't feel like you might be offending them, you're not offering lower enough because there's going to be problems you're going to encounter. and if you don't leave yourself the profit margin, you're going to find yourself in a bad place where you own this deal that you're upside down in. So instead of offering $10,000, I remembered that and I offered $4,782. Now it was specific because I felt like that would help him see I approached this in an

analytical way. I actually looked at some of the comparable sales by square foot and then I subtracted the cost of everything that I knew I needed to do in that house, which was pretty much everything. And then I did subtract $10,000 for my profit or in case something unexpected came up. And I showed him that transparently. I said, this is how I got to your offer price. I can make you this cash because I actually had $4,000. And he waited a day. I got nervous.

But he just said, ultimately, in a super calm voice, you know, I'll accept it. Let's go forward with it. And so that's how we ended up doing my first deal. So I just want to make sure I got these numbers right. You offered $4,750 for like an entire house. It's 600 square feet. It was the smallest house in the neighborhood. There wasn't even really a true exact comp because all the other houses were 1,200 square feet.

Yep. That's right. $4,000. That's great. But I mean like, and then what did you actually, you ended up renovating it yourself? Or is that sort of what happened next? Okay. Good thing to know here is in the Midwest, Rob, as you know, there's these neighborhoods that a house in perfect

condition may only be worth 50 grand. And so you can get in trouble investing in these neighborhoods because you buy a house for 4,000 and you put 45 into it. It's like, okay, you don't have like a deal. That's just like a house. And so a lot of times it takes more than 45 grand to repair one of these crazy things. But I thought this one could be worth 100 grand. And so my plan was get four no interest credit cards. I applied all in the same day because I was like, let me do it all at the same time. Maybe I could trick the credit bureau. So I don't know I have all these other cards. And so, yeah, I got, did $65,000 renovation. And then I rented it out for like 99. It's rented for $1,200 now. But, but that's how I ended up doing it. I still own the property to this day.

Cool. So when you took out the credit cards, I mean, it's not like you can just swipe your card to like pay for vendors and stuff. Were you doing like a cash advance? Like, did they send you a check that you could deposit into your account or what? I think those. are really good. I didn't know about those. The contractor that I found would actually let me swipe a credit card. Yes, on his square account that he could use to receive payments. Now, he did charge me the extra 3% fee, but that was the only option I had. Well, you'd probably pay that regardless, even on a cash advance anyways. So, okay. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance, and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage

wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC-held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BP pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. Here's the truth about passive investing. If the strategy isn't right on day one, the returns won't save it. Multi-family real estate offers structural advantages.

Many investors are overlooking, including depreciation that can help offset taxable income while cash flow continues. Bam Capital builds its investment with that reality in mind. They are focused on solid operators, tax efficiency, and long-term performance. For investors who want real estate exposure without being landlords and who care about consistency over hype, this is a smarter way to allocate capital. Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. Tax season reminder for all the real estate investors listening. If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, basically anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation.

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Yeah, so tell us about some of the lessons from that deal. I thought I could get a mortgage because on my account, it appreciated for $100,000. But even though it was rented out for a 1% rural property, about $900 or $1,000 a month, the mortgage companies didn't value the property like I did because there was no other house with that small of a square footage. And so I couldn't get it to a parade. So I was stuck. And so it's a good thing that my job actually kind of,

picked up, my business for my primary income picked up, I ended up using that to pay down the credit cards. But if I hadn't done that, I would have been stuck. I would have had to go to a private lender or to sell the house or to get some type of bridge funding. But that's ultimately how I got unstuck was I was able to ultimately pay those off. Another lesson that I learned was working with a contractor. A great way to find a contractor the way I found him was I asked another real estate investor that I knew from one of those meetups who I should use. So he gave me his name. Now, he didn't have a crew ready, but he put one together, aka a group of people he hadn't worked with before. And so ultimately, after a month in, I was like, yo, what's going on? And he's like,

well, they're just doing this or that. They'll start back in a week. And I got that about four or five times. And so, I had a hard conversation with him. I was like, look, we've got to cut ties. obviously this isn't going to work out. And I had paid him too much. I had paid him 50% of the project's value. He had not done 50% of the work. So I needed a refund if we were to part ways. And so we met in person. I think if you're going to have a hard conversation with somebody, having it in person goes such a long way. It shows that you care and you can really read each other's body language that way. So that's what we did. He ended up giving me a refund on one of those credit cards. And I started searching around for somebody else that could solve the problem.

lesson there was actually don't give huge chunks of payments, but do smaller increments. And the other lesson was let him pick a due date himself at the beginning, then maybe add on a couple extra weeks and say, all right, if you want this project, commit to this date, I'll give you a couple extra weeks of padding. If it's late, $50 per day from you, that it is late. And so those are how I operate now with renovation projects, but two lessons there. And then the third one was I had to ask around for somebody who could bail me out of this project that was halfway complete that had a budget that wasn't going to work anymore.

And sometimes real estate investors have a special guy that can bail you out. So when you need help, start talking with other people instead of just trying to figure it out yourself. So those are three lessons from that first deal. Yeah. Yeah. So going back to that second one about the timing. I mean, David, you kind of have a trick of the trade here. I mean, I don't know if you still do this, but didn't you use to bonus your contractors based on if they hit their deadline. So you would say, hey, if you hit this deadline and you actually get done in time, I'm going to give you 1% more or something like that? Or did you fall out of that strategy? How could you possibly know that since you never read any of my books?

This is impressive. Well, I read, I read the one book. I read Burr. And I am in the first chapter of Pillars, which is not out yet, but it will be. Right on, man. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do. is David, I like that way more. You like what way more? I like the bonus for completing it on time. And I think people would be really motivated by that. So here's what I would do. I realized there was a bit of a power struggle going on.

And when I say that, I don't mean an unhealthy way. Just human beings have different incentives, right? When we are an investor, our incentive is to get the work done as fast as possible, as cheap as possible, and as well done as needs to be done. The contractor's job is to get as much money as they can, take on as many other jobs at the same time as they can and be held the least amount of accountable. So they're going to take on all these different jobs. They're going to spread their cruise thin.

And what you get is this clashing of you said you were going to be done by X and them not wanting to tell you, well, I didn't bid this right or I didn't know the details or the guy that was supposed to be working on it, didn't show up to work or he ended up sucking or I had to put him on another job because we didn't do that one right. So yours fell behind. You never get the truth. So what I figured was I just want to fight my way to the top of the. funnel of priorities in their head. And so when we were discussing the scope of work, I would say,

look, this is going to be a contract, which you should be familiar with because you are a contractor. And as a contractor, how long will it take you to do this job? They would give me a timeframe, say, eight weeks. I'd say, okay, what if I give you nine? Oh, yeah, that should be no problem at all. Well, yeah, it definitely shouldn't be because you told me eight. Here's the deal. If you get this done in nine weeks, I will pay you what we agreed upon. And I gave you an extra week of some grace. But if you get it done, it less than that for every day that it's early, I'll give you a bonus of this much money. And if it's late, this is how much is going to come off the last draw. And if they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, I can't guarantee it's

going to be eight weeks. Well, now you know the truth. Okay. Like, you just do a little bit of digging and the truth will come out. If they go, yeah, no problem at all. Now they are incentivized to keep your job as the priority because they want to make all the money they were supposed to get. And they hopefully want to make more money, which makes you a more important customer than the person who's complaining that they left some paint on the cabinets or one of the tiles wasn't laid correctly and they got to send someone back. They're going to make that person wait five weeks. They're not going to make me wait five weeks. And if somebody with paint on their cabinets has to wait five weeks, I'm okay with that. I'm not okay with it when it's me when I got a 12% hard money loan

and the market is shifting all the time. And if they don't fix this thing, then the next thing can't get done. And we all know how the domino effect work. I think that's really smart. Now I'm going have to read that book to figure out the percentage that you pay as a bonus because I want to start doing that. Yeah, man. So, yeah, okay, so it sounds like, you know, you guys had similar strategies except David does actually do like a percentage of money or whatever. So, yeah, let's, I mean, you do this deal and it seems like it's going pretty, pretty well. You're obviously starting to move into your real estate business here and you talked about driving for dollars. Now, a lot of people can be a little wary about driving for dollars as extremely time-consuming and sometimes not worth the time.

What would you say to that? Because I know you've built your business effectively on this model, right? Definitely. So the advice I was hearing from everyone at that meetup was to go drive for dollars. So at my time, there wasn't really another option because just the group that I was with, they were saying that that's what I need to do. And then I totally get, though, that it can be time-consuming. Like if you're a doctor, this may not be the strategy for you. It's great if you have more time than you have money because the list is so good. These big real estate investors don't typically do it because they're buying these lists that are easy to get and they're just spending more mail, spending more money on more marketing to those bigger lists, which is required because they're competitive and they're bigger lists and they're less

niche. So the driving for dollars list is a list that nobody else has. You're the one who drove around and found those rundown properties. Plus, if a tree fell on a house that was vacant, nobody else, it's not going to show up on any list. You can't buy that list. It's hard to get. So if you put in the time to do it, you can actually get a deal for smaller amount of money because there's less properties you have to market to you. And there's less people that are marketing to that homeowner. Therefore, you're not going to have as much competitiveness in terms of them trying to shop around and get the best price. So that's why I like driving for dollars and why it's been a really great business. Actually, can you just run us through what is driving for dollars? I want to make

sure that everyone at home is on the same page as us because, you know, we're going to be talking about this a little bit more. Yeah, driving for dollars is a strategy to find a real estate investment by looking around for a rundown property. Then you look up who owns it and send the owner a letter asking if they want a cash offer on their house. And if they do, they call you back. That's what driving for dollars is. And the reason why it works is because that house is run down. They probably can't sell it on the market. If something happens in their life, they might not have the cash to deal with a medical expense or deal with something that would cause them to have to move. So they need to unload that property, kind of like a pawn shop. When you take somebody to the pawn shop,

you know you're not getting the top dollar, but you do want to take it there because it's the easiest thing to do. It's the quickest way to get cash and move on to the next thing in your life. People do that with their house. People need that service with their house. And driving for dollars is a great way to identify those types of properties. Can I tell you why I like that strategy? Because it's very difficult to do, which means nobody else wants to do it. there is a trend in our country, in our culture of how do I automate, delegate, systemize. I wanted to do a thing that makes me a bunch of money on its own and I just show up to the money tree and I pull the dollar bill out of the business, but I don't want to have to pull the weeds,

water the tree, shelter the tree, check the pH balance of the soil. I don't want to do the work of a farmer. I just wanted to grow and give me money. And there's become an obsession with that. And there's little tiny ways this will work for a short period of time. We saw it with crypto. We saw it with NFTs. You'll like drop shipping at one point was like, it was like you struck oil and there

was all this gold. And then everyone rushes into it. It dries up. It's not a sustainable thing. You just might get lucky. The popular way that most people are running businesses like you, David, is they are trying to automate a system that sends letters that look like they're handwritten, that hire somebody else in another country to oversee the job, that let,

leverages out the answering of the phone and tries to qualify the leads and then send somebody else to the house to go negotiate with the person. And when it becomes easy like that, it just means everyone else can do it. And someone with more money, more experience, more resources than you will just do it better. And you end up chasing the same deals that everybody else is chasing, asking, how come these strategies that I heard people talk about on the podcast don't work? Driving for dollars cannot be leveraged. You can't pay somebody to go out there and just drive around and look for the right homes, at least not effectively. You have to go do it. And when you do that, you find the property that's not getting bombarded by other people.

You find the lead that you actually have a chance to nail down and you get to make the connection with that person. You get to go talk with them, build rapport, use all the skills that you've built, not some employee that is like, I only want to do the bare minimum and I only want to get under contract if it's easy. And they can hit the layups, but they miss the tough shots. that's what I love about what you're saying. This is the strategy, and I see you smiling because it sounds like this is landing with what you recognize in your business, that our listeners can go apply because it's real and it's honest and it works.

It's not looking for a cheat code that everybody else has already found. What do you think about that perspective? No, I think it's absolutely true. And I think that's why it works so well is because the easy way to do it is to go by a list of absentee owners or go by a list of high equity. and it's just the easiest thing to do. People do that. And seeing the property laying eyes on the property is something that is harder to do.

And I think that's why it's such a better list. Yeah, I think there's always going to be growing pains with really any model. If you want to achieve automation or anything at the largest scale, I mean, you do. I think that's always really, really tough to do. And I'm curious, David, obviously you were the one driving around doing a lot of your own deals when you were doing this. But how did you actually scale out of that? because I know you said that time was so important to you. And this sounds like a, I mean, I know you said doesn't necessarily have to be a time-consuming strategy.

But when you were starting out, I'm sure you hadn't figured that out. So how did you actually scale in a way that was effective when it came to driving for dollars? I just kept doing it. And I kept doing deals. And as soon as I had done like maybe $200,000 of, you know, I did a couple of bird deals where I got the cash out and I could recycle that money. that's when I realized, all right, maybe my job is worth what you can actually hire somebody to do this for, which might be $20 an hour looking at Amazon driver salaries. And so we can get into that.

But that's whenever I figured out, maybe I shouldn't be the one driving anymore. But that was a couple years into it after I had done several deals. And after, you know, I learned a lot of the neighborhoods that I wanted to buy in, knew those by heart already. Yeah. We've actually heard a couple of interesting strategies on bigger. pockets of how people. I don't want to say automate, but increase their deal flow. Like, we had someone on the podcast said that they give flyers to pizza delivery people and they say, hey, anytime you see a distressed property or if you're delivering to a distressed property, leave this on the pizza

box or leave it on the door or whatever. So I've also heard of people doing that with like UPS drivers and all that type of stuff. So it seems like you can get creative with ways of increasing your deal flow. Did you ever go down that route or did you just go straight to hiring somebody? Yeah. So I never did the pizza delivery thing. There's basically three ways that you could hire a driver. And most of them are tricky if you don't know exactly what you're doing, which is still what makes driving for dollars great because it's difficult to scale. But here's the three payment strategies that people use. They either do per hour or they do per deal added or they do you get a bonus when I close a deal, like to the pizza guys, right? And so if you're going to,

so people have made it work. I have not. One thing I've observed, is that the, if you're going to give a bonus when you close a deal, that could take three months, you know, these houses have been distressed for a long time. So they're not going to sell right whenever they get a postcard from you. You need to keep sending postcards. Every basic marketing advice says it takes 10 to 13 touch points before somebody responds to your marketing. So you've got to catch them at the right time. And by the time that happens, the person you trained what properties to look for, they probably have moved on because they have bills to pay. They need to live their lives. And so unless it's like your mom, your spouse, somebody that loves and cares about you and can stick with you for three months without payment, I don't know that I'd spend time training anyone for this model where you pay a fee just when you close a deal.

The other one is per property added. So some people might add pay 25 cents to $2 for each property that looks to stress that they add. You could do that. It has worked. All three of these have worked. But I don't like that one because people like security of knowing how much they're going to make. think about jobs in terms of hourly payment. So that's why the hourly payment is actually the best when you're going to recruit somebody reliable. And you want them reliable if you're going to spend

time training them. You don't want to train them and have them go away. I posted a job on Indeed for hourly and I got a bunch of people responding. So I set up five interviews on a Saturday and every person actually did not come to the interview. I texted them. I was like, what happened? One person even said, oh, I moved to Florida. And it's like, wow, I felt so disrespected, it was a huge waste of time. So I knew I needed to change something. So I incorporated a test project. Now I posted the job again. When they applied, I said, please send me a two-minute video, you know, download this app that I use to look for rundown properties. It's free, no cost. Just add three properties. Text me when you do that, I'll Venmo you $10. And that really weeded

out people. But if they did that, I knew they were tech savvy. I knew that they had read my instructions instead of blindly applying. I knew they were serious. So then I pretty much had a hundred percent show up rate when I scheduled interview. So finding them, I would incorporate a test project like that. And then $5 more than what Amazon drivers make is fair because the driver that works for you is going to actually be, they're going to actually be using their own car and paying for their own gas. So they will want to work for you because they love seeing that money that's a little bit more than what they could make at Amazon. And it's a good deal for you as well because they're paying for the car and the gas. And if I were to say a couple more pitfalls, have a weekly meeting with this

person to review the properties they added and make sure that they feel like they're a part of the team as well. That'll keep them going week after week and stick with you for a long time. All right. So we've covered the bottom of the funnel, the hiring and the delegation of how you're going to spread out some of the workload. What about the top of the funnel? How are you going to build this list of potential opportunities to pursue. So I actually was given the advice that if you find 100 rundown properties, that's about what it takes to get a deal. Now, as time goes on, I've had the fortune of working with a lot of people who scale

their driving for dollars teams. And I noticed that it depends on your market. So if you're in a lower cost market, I'd recommend four to 500 rundown properties marketed six times each. And if you actually are in the more expensive markets like Seattle, Los Angeles, somewhere in New York State, you may need to add as many as 1,500 to 2,000 run-down properties before you get a deal. Now, if you're wholesaling, typically, you're going to get 15% of that value of the property as an assignment fee. So you'll notice that even though you spend more time

and money to get a deal in a high-price market, you're going to make a bigger profit. But it's easier to get started in a Midwest market that's lower cost. You'll make a smaller profit, but it's easier to get started. Why is that? Is that because most people are attracted to the higher profit market, so you're just competing with a lot more people. Wish I had the answer. I just know what I observed. Oh, okay. Okay. No, that's a, I mean, this is a principle that runs their out business. It's pretty good for us to talk about it. I talk to my team about this constantly. And this will apply to many things in life, but definitely to business. What I say is it's easy in, hard out, hard in, easy out.

When you buy an online lead for a real estate team, like the David Green team, and we go to Zillow and we say, hey, we want to buy a Zillow lead. They're very easy to get what we call leads. People will say, hey, I want to know about this house on Main Street. They'll ask a question, but they're not reaching out to you because they want you to be their agent. They just wanted to know about a house and they were forced to go through. These hoops they had to jump through. They're very hard to close.

You got to get a lot of them and put a lot of work into close anything, but they were easy to get. When you go to an open house and you meet a person organically and they're motivated to look for a home and they're out on their weekend trying to find one, and they haven't found a good agent, you build a stronger relationship with them, way easier to put those people into contract. This happens with a lot of things. The toughest markets to get your foot in the door in will make you the most money over the long term. The easiest markets to get into are easy for a reason. There's not as much competition. There's not as much demand or there's a whole lot of supply, but you will make less money later. And it's just this idea of delayed gratification. It's not that one

way is better than the other. It's just know what you're getting into. What's your experience like, David, with running the business when it comes to, you know, the things that are easier to get the phone to ring, do they tend to have the smaller amount of margin in them? Yeah, I would say definitely the things that are easier to get the phone to ring have a smaller amount of margin in them. They're going to, so the easiest thing, the easiest thing, right, that I've ever done is pull a list of high equity properties to have 35% or more equity. And then also, they actually expired on the MLS. You can pull that list straight out of a tool and you could start sending postcards or calling them.

And of course, they want to sell their house. They listed it and it failed. But everyone else is calling those people. So the fact that you're going to try to approach them, how do you make your deal sound sweeter than the rest? You compete on price and then the margin shrinks. Exactly what you're saying. So I have a question.

I guess I don't really understand how this part works. You said that you're looking for something that has higher equity. So that means that the owner has a lot of equity in the house, meaning in your mind, if they're a distressed seller, theoretically, there's more wiggle room for them to come down. But how do you even figure out how much equity someone has in their property? I mean, it seems like that's private info now. Yeah. So I use deal machine to go look for these rundown properties. It has public info. It also estimates the equity they have on there. Just to be clear, when I'm driving for dollars, I don't even look if it's absentee owner,

owner occupied. I don't look at anything. I just look if it's distressed. I see. send the letter. But when David was talking about do easy things have smaller margin, I was using that as an example because separate from driving for dollars, I've pulled a list of just properties that expired on the MLS with decent equity. And it turns out a lot of other people pull that list too so that the margins are smaller there. Sure, sure, sure. Okay, cool. And so is there, if you're driving for dollars, I know that at this point you have like a whole system for getting everything out, automated offers made. But are you, do you have like a target process? or assignment fee or ROI that you're looking for on a specific property? Yeah, I'm looking for

something in the range of perfect condition, $200,000. And I want to either do a Burr deal where I put in, you know, 75% and that way I can refinance out and have no money in it at all, the Burr strategy, read David's book. Or I actually just want to analyze the rental, say like, well, could this cash flow at least 500 bucks at that price point, meaning the difference between, what my mortgage payment will be, and what I can rent it for would be $500. So those are two analysis that I look at to see if I want to actually do a deal. Question for each of you. If you had an opportunity to be all in for zero money on a burr and you're still having

25% equity. So houses worth $200,000, you're all in for $150,000 of equity, but none of your own cash is left. You got it all out. However, it loses $150 a month in negative cash flow in the first year. Is this a bad deal or a good deal and why? Let's start with you, David. It loses how much? You said $250? $150 a month. I'll say this. I wouldn't keep it. If it was worth $200, I'm $150 in, got all my money back out.

I would sell it. I would never keep a property that loses money for myself. Great point. So you would just basically take that $50,000 of equity and you'd sell it. Same for you, Rob? Yeah, I don't want to keep it. I was just negotiating a seller finance deal last week or two weeks ago. and I laid out the numbers that said, hey, man, look, this is going to lose on a long-term rental, $200 a month. And he was like, well, you know, the thing about rental properties is other people are paying your mortgage. And so sometimes you got to take a small loss, but, you know, at the end of the day, like the appreciation and the location is all that matters. And I was like, look, I understand what you're saying. I don't go into any deal where I lose money. And so we

renegotiated the terms to at least break even. Some people will do that deal. So I know I could be able to sell it because if you own a rental property in San Francisco, a $3 million house may be only rented for $5,000. Like that doesn't even cover the mortgage payment. Could barely even cover the taxes. But people buy them. Just not me. Okay.

So same question. But now the house is in a prime market in the country. It's worth $800,000. You're all in for whatever 75% of that is. Very nice location. But it's still losing $150,000. a month in cash flow. However, when you look at the principal paydown, you're paying off much more than the $150 a month. The appreciation is all but guaranteed. And you know that rents are going to be

going up pretty significantly in the future because it's such a great area with less supply. What's your answer now on that same scenario, David? I still want to do it because I don't want to have to babysit a property. I don't want to have to calculate how much of my active income I have to suck away to actually keep that property afloat. I want to scale properties. The only way to do that is to make sure they all positive cash flow. I think I learned this from the cash flow game that goes along with the rich dad, poor dad book, is you can't get out of the rat race if you have negative cash flowing properties. Now, sometimes randomly, you could get the appreciation and sell it, but you're still not out of the rat race yet until you actually buy cash flowing rental

properties that are positive. So again, I would sell that deal, use the cash to buy some cash flowing properties. I don't, yeah, I really don't like to lose money on a monthly basis just because I've worked so hard to get my cash flow where it is. But with that said, I feel like you want me to say I would buy it. So I'm going to say yes. No, no, I'm just kidding. I see that there's a lot more hesitation in each of your answers, though. There was like, it kind of, it moves a needle a little bit, right? Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, I guess the caveat to that is like, I would take a deal that loses money if there's a clear path to not lose money. So let's say that I'm inheriting a tenant that's undermarket like you said. And as soon as they move out, I can increase rents to not lose

the money and that's going to happen within a year. Yeah, no problem. Like I can do that. But if it's like, I'm inheriting a three year lease where I'm losing 500 bucks a month, like, no, I would never do that. But if it's like, you know, get a turn pretty quickly, then yeah, sure. So what if this property that we just mentioned at $800,000 can have a cost-sex study done and the bonus depreciation is going to save you $50,000 that year. Yes, okay. You see, now, now, yeah, you're asking a good question. Are you, I guess here's what I'm getting at. Are you losing money if you're only looking at the monthly income versus expenses, or are there other factors at play in the overall investment of real estate? Yes, 100%. And that's a, it's a very fair point, because, you know,

Yes. I think if you knew that you were going to like, like you're talking about like, bur, flip it, get out of it in the next three years. And you've got a ton of equity in there. And you're only going to lose, let's say, $10,000 or $15,000 in rents, but you're going to make $200,000 from that flip or something. Totally. I think at that point it would make sense. What about you, David? Yeah, I would flip it. I would make the quick cash. Unless it's making me money, $500 per month, I'm not going to keep it myself. But I still might do the deal if I was going to go ahead and sell it. Yeah. So what you're saying, what I hear you saying is that,

You would create energy through capital gains of a flip and then re-invest that energy into the cash-filling real estate that you know that you can find somewhere else, right? That's right. I like it. Great stuff. Is this a preview? Is this the blinkest of pillars of wealth? Wow, dude, you're getting good. This is scary good.

I think I picked the right co-host. Look at this, man. That was really, really good. Yeah. And the book that's going to follow it. It's just an understanding that most people were taught how to, to buy real estate using like a training wheels model, which was just cash in, cash out every month. That cash flow was the only thing that we were trained to look at.

But once you get into real estate investing, Rob, like you were just mentioning, you own quite a few properties now, you start to see that it's not quite that simple, that there's energy that's flowing in and out of these assets in many different ways. It could come in through equity that you bought up a low market value, equity where you forced equity. The cash flow doesn't say the same every year. Rents go up in some areas. or you can add units to properties to make them worth more.

Certain areas tend to appreciate more than others. There's tax benefits owning real estate. And then I think things also change if, like, let's say that David's business that he's running is bringing in 50 grand a month in profit. Well, now that $150 a month he might be losing isn't as significant as when it's like, dude, I'm on a tight budget. I got to get out of the rat race. And for the people listening, we're not all in the same position.

And the part you start at is not going to be the part you end up with. So it's okay if you're, model and your blueprint doesn't look exactly like everybody else. All right. So, David, for the person who's starting off here, the real estate investor, who's the ideal avatar that should consider driving for dollars? I think somebody who's not got a lot of extra cash that they're willing to invest in marketing. I think that if you haven't done a deal before, it's a great way to learn your neighborhood.

So the combination of those few things would be what I would recommend who should drive for dollars. What do you think, Rob? Yeah, I think this is going to make the most. sense for the newbie. I mean, I think obviously anybody can enter this, but a lot of the times people who are already relatively established already have their deal flow established, like they've already got their deal flow going from people that are driving for dollars. So it does seem a little bit more of an entry point for most people. With all that said, I just locked down to seller

financed property driving for dollars as well like a week ago. So, I mean, accidentally driving for I was driving in my neighborhood and there's a for sale sign with the flag on top of it that said seller finance. And I was like, well, hey, I'm driving and I'm going to make the call and I made the offer. What a smart marketing strategy for that seller. That's a smart agent or whoever put that together. That's a great idea. Oh, dude, it was a dream. It was a dream.

3% interest, 10% down. I mean, 30 year maturity. I mean, he just doesn't want to pay the capital gains. And here's the best part, everybody. He has like 150 units in Houston, multifamily. He's like, I'm wanting to get rid of them all over the next couple of years. And guess who's going to be first in line, this guy right here. I mean, you'd ever know when you're doing the right actions and you're taking the right

steps, what that's going to turn into. I think that's awesome. Now, David, these days you're cash-selling about $72,000 a year and you've got more coming. You're helping other people finding closed deals all over the country. Do you have the time freedom now that you were looking for in the beginning? 100%. I could live off $72,000 if I wanted to. Now, I do spend a little bit more from other active income.

But I've got the time freedom. What I love doing is getting up at four and going wake surfing three times a week. And that's something that's not like super cheap, right? But I've got the time freedom and the disposable income to be able to do that. So that's one way I love spending my time freedom. What kind of a sentence starts off with what I love doing is waking up at four. Okay, it's 4 p.m. I get up. No, I don't wake up at 4 a.m. I get up from my desk at 4 p.m.

Okay. All right. that might make a little bit more sense to me then. I love waking up at four in the morning. Rob's been spending the last three months dragging himself through broken glass, trying to get to the gym waking up early and letting us all know the whole time how terrible it is that David walks in and says, oh, my favorite thing to do is wake up at four in the morning. That's what I use my time freedom for. So you've been able to experience a life you wouldn't have been without real estate, right?

You're doing the things you love. They keep you charged up. You're getting your wake surfing done. You're experimenting with different barbers. you found the perfect wave to your hair, which I don't think should be lost on our audience, since you do love wake surfing. I wonder what Rob's equivalent would be, maybe mountain climbing. The quaff kind of looks like a bit of a, have you tried that yet before, Rob?

Since his hair, it looks like a wave and he likes to wake surf. I feel like mine does also kind of look like in this particular moment. It's got this bottom quaff and then there's like another quaff on top of it. I woke up like this. I got in at 4 a.m. last night. That's when I was waking up. Yeah, that's funny. David, when it comes to landing these deals that you find the opportunity, you go talk to the seller,

what we didn't talk about are some of the psychological tools, scripts, whatever, what advice do you have for the person who thinks that they found an opportunity? They want to go open a conversation with the seller. Obviously, with your experience, you can ride a person off who's not serious, not motivated. You can also navigate the conversation when it's a little more complex. But just for the person who's like, man, I want to go talk to them, but I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Are there books? Are there podcasts, are their influencers?

Who do you recommend that people listen to to get better at having those uncomfortable conversations? I think Brent Daniels talk to people would be a great person to follow and check out his cold calling scripts on how to talk to people and have those conversations because ultimately there's only two things that give you money in this business. It's finding or distress properties and communicating with the owners. Yeah, I actually did a podcast with Brett not too long ago. Very nice guy. Love the philosophy.

Seems very successful. And yeah, talking to people. What a novel concept, right? Right. Well, I think for people that are good at talking to people, the assumption is why is this so hard? And for people that are bad at talking to people, it's like up there with public speaking. And so what I don't want is for the people that are nervous about it. They don't have a natural skill with other human beings conversating, but maybe they're great at analysis or they have a great work ethic. I don't want them to be afraid to go initiate contact. It is a skill that can be improved. I think when I read Pitch Anything by Orrin Kloff, we had him on the show to talk about him. That was one of the takeaways I had is, oh, there's an actual. science to communication. And if you could get this down, people will listen to what you have to say and they will see your perspective and it will greatly increase somebody's confidence with communication, which is what I teach to the people in my company. So communication is the foundation of life. I just started taking a storytelling class for the very same reason. It doesn't matter if you're

trying to sell something, if you're trying to entertain friends. The ability to communicate in a way that inspires people to listen and stay with you all the way to the end is the foundation of every or every transaction, it's just so important to life. And I believe that. Awesome, man. That's a great, great story. And you did a great job communicating today. So, thank you for that. For people that want to communicate with you more, where can they find out more about you? Yep. You guys can follow me, DeLecco on Instagram. Or if you want to check out Deal Machine, get a seven-day free trial. We help people find distressed off-market properties and make sure they're communicating with those owners, which is so important. And one of our top customers and I hosts the

Deal Machine Real Estate Investing Podcasts where we interview people who have done their first wholesale deals. Love it. What about you, David? You can find me at David Green 24 or David green 24.com to see what I got going on and how I can help people build their wealth. Rob, how about you? You can find me on YouTube over at Rob Built, where I talk about a real estate, short-term rentals and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And on Instagram, too. All of it. All of it. If you want the goofy videos, good Instagram. If you got something at this episode and you want to keep learning more, check out Bigger Pocket's podcast episode number 781, where we have a round table discussion with Rob Henry and I on the beginner's guide to finding undervalued off-market

deals in any market, episode 731 with Brent Daniels or the rookie podcast episode 241, where Salim Lee was interviewed, who went from being a line cook to a long-term investor with 32 wholesale deals. David, thanks for being here, man. Really appreciate you sharing your story as well as the details that you did. We will have to have you one again and follow up with how things are going. This is David Green for Rob, reading his second book. Abbas Solo, signing on. 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, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk.

So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.