September 2022

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, Episode 218.

Henry:
Also, when you sit in these seats, the people who are in the room, they’re going to make assumptions, people naturally make assumptions about people, and they assume that the people who are in these power seats are the people who are doing deals, movers and shakers, people they need to meet. And so more people will naturally come and talk to you, and help you build relationships. And so you kind of take the hard part out of networking, which is for a lot of people just going up and having conversations with people, and now you’ve put yourself in a position where people are going to want to come up and have conversations with you.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with my co-host Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, where every week, twice a week, we’ll bring you the inspiration, information, and motivation you need to kick out your investing journey. And I want to kick off today’s episode by reading one of our recent reviews. This one says, “If I could give this show 10 stars, I would. This podcast has helped me so much about investing in real estate, I recommended as it listen for both experienced and new investors.” So we appreciate that feedback. And if you’re listening to this podcast, and you haven’t left us a review yet, ask yourself, “What are you doing?” The more reviews we get, the more folks we can help, and that is our goal here at the show. So Ashley Kehr, what’s up? What’s going on in your world today?

Ashley:
Well, as most of you listening know, the best conference of the year is coming up, and it is BPCON in sunny San Diego. So we thought we would use this Rookie Reply to kind of prep you guys if you are headed to BPCON, how to make the best of it, or if you’re going to any kind of meetup, or networking event. So we brought in Henry Washington to kind of help us discuss, what’s the best way to network and take advantage of the opportunity you will have going to BPCON, and meeting all of these real estate investors and like-minded individuals? Henry, welcome to the show.

Henry:
Thanks for having me, this is super cool. I was saying, I feel like I know you guys, like we’ve all met and been friends before. You guys put out phenomenal content, so thank you so much for what you do.

Tony:
Thank you, brother. Appreciate that, man. Excited to have you on.

Henry:
Thank you.

Ashley:
Okay, so real quick, why don’t you just tell everyone a little bit about yourself, and who you are?

Henry:
Yeah, Henry Washington. Let’s see, I started doing this real estate thing back in 2017, I bought my first rental property. The goal was to buy one house a year for the next five years, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. After I bought that first one I was like, “Wait a minute, this is way more powerful than I thought, and we need to revisit those goals.” So we ended up doing about five deals in our first year, and now we’re sitting at about 80 doors, and we flip about 10 houses a year, so that’s me from a real estate investment perspective.
Part of that journey was I started a social media, because I felt after I did that first deal, and I actually saw how powerful it was, that first deal changed my life. And I felt like this overwhelming responsibility, that I needed to share this information with as many people as possible, I couldn’t be the only person that was struggling financially before making this kind of a decision to start investing in real estate. And that has led me to all this craziness, of now I get an opportunity to work with BiggerPockets, and produce content for BiggerPockets, and it’s just been this amazing journey. But all of that really came to be because I went to the BP Conference in 2019 in Nashville, that’s really where all of this started. So I’m excited to be here on your show talking about it, it’s a full circle thing for me.

Ashley:
Well Henry, first of all I have to say you’re a way better person than me, because the reason I started my Instagram account was because I wanted to be a guest on David and Brandon’s real estate podcast.

Henry:
Well, it worked out.

Ashley:
So Henry, BPCON 2019, that was definitely an awesome event. I was there, Tony was not cool enough to be there, but he was there last year, will be there this year. So let’s talk about, what are some of the things you should be doing to prepare yourself for going to a conference or a meetup?

Henry:
Yeah, I think this is a great question. It’s one that’s come up a lot recently, so I feel that’s for good reason. Networking events are fun, they’re super fun, and a lot of the value that you’re going to get out of a networking event actually doesn’t come from the content that’s being taught or shared, it comes from what you’re able to build with your like-minded entrepreneurs there that are at the conference. And so for people like me, who I’m a natural extrovert, it’s exciting, I look forward to it. But not everybody’s like me, you’ve got people that are introverts, and the thought of just being in a room full of people who want to talk to them is extremely terrifying. And so what I’ve found with networking events in general, not just with conferences, is you’ve got to be prepared to get out of it what you want to get out of it.
So don’t have an expectation that BiggerPockets is going to teach you all of these things, and that’s what you’re going to get out of it, have an expectation that you’re going to go take from that conference the things that you want to take from that conference. And sometimes that involves you being strategic. And I would say introvert or not introvert, when you’re at a networking event social norms are kind of in place, and there are things like power seats. Power seats exist. And so when I went to that first conference in 2019 I hadn’t done it before, it was actually my first legit conference I had ever been to on any topic. And I didn’t know what to expect, and so I told myself, “Well I’ve got to get out of it the most that I can. And the best way I can do that is to go make sure that when I walk into a room, I walk into a room with confidence, and I go and I sit in the power seats, and I sit front and center, so that I can get the most out of whatever the speaker is saying.”
And what I learned by doing that, is when you sit in these power seats, the people that are around you typically also have that same mindset. So they’re either movers and shakers within the industry, or they’re people that want to get the most out of their experience. And if you position yourself in these seats whenever you walk into the main sessions, the breakout sessions, the people you’re naturally going to have conversations with are people in that same mindset. And how can you find a better accountability partner than one who’s already taken the accountability on themselves, to sit where they can get the most value out of whatever topic is being taught?
So if you’re intentional about just saying, “Look, I know peopling isn’t something I’m great at, so let me make it easier on myself and go sit by the people who I feel I could benefit the most from.” You’re kind of giving yourself a leg-up from that perspective. Also, when you sit in these seats, the people who are in the room, they’re going to make assumptions, people naturally make assumptions about people, and they assume that the people who are in these power seats are the people who are doing deals, movers and shakers, people they need to meet. And so more people will naturally come and talk to you, and help you build relationships. And so you kind of take the hard part out of networking, which is for a lot of people just going up and having conversations with people, and now you’ve put yourself in a position where people are going to want to come up and have conversations with you.

Ashley:
Henry, I am very much an extrovert. I sit here and I blab to Tony all day long, but I’m behind a screen, it’s not in person. But for me, going to a conference, or even worse being one-on-one with someone I don’t really know in that awkward silence, and not knowing what to say. If somebody else is also an extrovert, or they’re not very conversational, and just can’t keep the conversation going, it will be awkward silence, because I will just be racking my brain, what can I talk about? And nothing will ever come out. So one thing that helped me when I started going to meetups, is I would find somebody online that was going, and I would follow them, I would send them a message, and say, “Hey, I saw your attending.” Because even on the BiggerPockets forums for meetups, you can see people who say they’re going to attend the event, you can message them, and I would make that one connection.
And they’d have a profile picture, whatever, and visually, when I went to that meetup, I would look for that one person, and I would find them first. And it’s like, “Okay, at least I know I’m in the right place because that person is here too.” Because that’s happened to me before, where I went to the wrong location. But I think having that one person that you’ve already kind of built the tiniest connection with can really help you ease into, what’s going on? And if it’s someone else that it’s their first time too, it’s like, “Okay, we’re both new here, we both don’t know anyone, let’s go and make friends and network together.” And I think that has really helped me a lot. But you mentioned here accountability partners, can you kind of expand on that a little bit more, and maybe tell everyone what they are if someone doesn’t know?

Henry:
Yeah, absolutely. An accountability partner is exactly what it sounds like, it’s someone who you establish a friendship, relationship, working relationship with, who has agreed to help hold you accountable and vice versa. So when you have an accountability partner, it’s being able to have someone who you can share your goals with, and then have that person and you be the same for them, hold them accountable to taking the actions that are going to help you get to those goals. Conferences are great, and they’re going to give you the conference high, it’s awesome. You’re going to feel like you can conquer the world after day one at a conference, day two at a conference, and then you have the conference low, because you got to get back and apply those things. And having and establishing an accountability partner to be that person who you can connect with on a weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever you feel like is comfortable basis in order to help hold you accountable is huge.
I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to a conference and got a million great nuggets and wrote them down, and then didn’t execute on them when I got back. And having that accountability partner, where you can meet up virtually, in person’s great, but virtually works too. Where you can meet up virtually, and say, “Hey, this is what I got out of the conference, and these are the things that I want to focus on coming out of that conference.” And then setting some time based guidelines around those little things that you want to accomplish in your business, and then having that accountability partner just hold you accountable to them, following up with you on a reoccurring basis to see where you are with them is super helpful to helping you get the most value you can out of an event like this.

Tony:
Yeah. Henry, I want to ask you a question, Ashley, I want to ask you this as well. When you first made the decision to invest in real estate, how many people in your closed circle were already investing in real estate?

Henry:
Zero.

Tony:
Zero. Ashley, what about you? When you first made that decision, how many people?

Ashley:
I was a property manager, but I only knew the investor that I worked for. But it was more his brother that had got him into it, and he was just kind of coasting along with what he had. So he really didn’t even have that much knowledge, it was a second income, he had another main business he focused on. But it was two and a half years until I found BiggerPockets, and after I found BiggerPockets I tripled my portfolio in a year, just from finding people in the forums.

Tony:
And that’s the value. And I’m asking the question because I assumed I knew the answer for both of you guys, and it was the same for me, when I made that decision to invest in real estate there were zero people in my closed circle that were also investing in real estate. And I want to tie this back to the accountability partner piece, because it’s so easy when you’re first starting to get discouraged, to get off track, to lose discipline, to lose focus, especially if everyone else in your circle is telling you, “Don’t worry about reading that book, let’s go grab a beer. Let’s not do this, let’s go do this other thing.”
And it’s easy to get caught up in what’s normal, so you have to find other people that are mentally in sync with the goals that you have, because when push comes to shove you want someone that’s going to pull you back towards your goals, and not someone that’s going to pull you further away. So when we talk about the accountability partner, what are some things that maybe people should be looking for in this person to help make sure that there’s a good fit? And then I guess as a secondary question, once you find the person that kind of meets that criteria that you’re looking for, how do you start that relationship? Are you sending a text like, “Hey, you want to be my accountability partner?”

Ashley:
You slide into their DMs.

Henry:
“Do you like me?” Absolutely, no, that’s a phenomenal question. So what to look for, I’d be lying to you if I told you I knew exactly what I wanted to look for in an accountability partner, or even that I was going to find an accountability partner at the 2019 BiggerPockets Conference. But now that I have worked with accountability partners, I can tell you what’s worked well, and what hasn’t worked well. I’m a gut feel kind of person, and so when I’m at these conferences and you’re networking with somebody, you can tell through conversation if somebody feels genuine in how they speak to you, if somebody feels genuine in their eagerness or their willingness to be supportive and helpful of you, and you’re going to tell when someone can’t.
And so as you’re networking with people, one of the things that I like to do when I’m networking with people, is I want to listen, or hear for, or even just go so far as to ask for, “What is the thing that you need most in your business right now? What is the thing that’s holding you back from getting to where you want to go?”
Trying to understand people’s pain points, not because I want to know what’s failing for them so I can do better, but I want to know how I can be of service to people. And if they say something, where I feel like I might know someone who can help them, or I might have a tool that can help them, or I might have a recommendation for a tool that can help them, or in any way I can be of service to that need, I want to be able to do that, and do it quickly, and provide value to people. And if you can provide value to people, especially without them having to ask you, and your focus is on, what can I do for the person across from me? More than it is on, what can I get out of this experience? You’re going to naturally be pulled in the direction of people who are similar, and those are the people that you should build a relationship with, because that relationship is built based on you guys being of service to each other.
And so I say, the best way to get a thing that you want is to give it freely. And so if you want help in a certain area, be of service to people. And if you can be of service to people, you’re naturally going to be drawn… And the people are going to want to help you. And so if you can just keep that in mind as you’re having conversations with people, just trust that gut feeling, that this person seems genuine, this person has a portfolio that’s similar to mine. Maybe they’re investing in a market that’s similar to yours, you want to look for some similarities, because you want to be able to relate on some level on what you’re doing.
If somebody is investing in trailer parks, and you’re investing in single-family rentals, they can probably hold you accountable, but being able to provide advice that translates may not be as easy. So look for some similarities, look for people that you feel are genuinely interested in helping you, and the best way to do that is to be genuinely interested in helping them. And then the other thing to think about, is it’s almost a business partnership or a marriage, you want to be able to work with people who aren’t afraid to tell you what you need to hear, who aren’t afraid to tell you, “No.” Who will give you honest feedback. And we all have to be self-aware enough to be able to create an environment where someone feels safe enough to be open and honest with you.
And I think that that was one of the really cool beneficial parts of the accountability group that we formed, is none of us had a problem saying, “Hey bud, you said you wanted to do X, Y, and Z, but your actions over the past two weeks haven’t seemed like they’re in line with that. Do we need to reevaluate your goals? Is there something else going on in your life that we can help you with or talk about?” But being able to have an honest and open communication with you, because if you just find an accountability partner who’s going to be a yes man, and say, “Well, I mean, I know you wanted to buy 20 doors this year, and you didn’t make any offers this week. And I know life gets tough, and you just got busy, so we’ll try again next week.” That’s probably not the accountability partner for you, so those are some qualities I’d look for in people.

Tony:
Henry, you brought up a lot of really good points, and one that I just want to echo, is you said, “Look for people with some similarities.” And when I think of that, I think of the word parity, you want your business or your position in life to be somewhat similar to this person, and their business, and where they’re at in their investing journey.
Ash and I had a mastermind that lasted for maybe six months last year, and as we put that mastermind together, one of the things we said is that the sides of the business of each person has to be in a decent range of one another. Because obviously I would love if Grant Cardone was my accountability partner, but it’s like you said, how much value can I give to Grant Cardone? That would just be almost a one-sided relationship, where I’m just asking him all of these questions. So it’s super beneficial for me, probably not super beneficial for him. And same for Ashley, and I, and you Henry as well, if someone who has zero deals, it might be super beneficial if we were their accountability partner, but then it just becomes a one one-sided relationship for us. So I think looking for parity when you’re trying to find that person is super important.

Ashley:
Yeah. Tony, I think you should mention the criteria we actually set, because it was super specific.

Tony:
I honestly don’t even remember.

Ashley:
I remember, I’ll do it. So first we did a range of how much money you had made the previous year just from your investment property. So we wanted someone who was in the same range of what they had profited off of their investments, so it wasn’t somebody just starting out, or it wasn’t somebody who was already making mega millions off of their investments. We wanted someone kind of in the same place that we were.
And then also they had to be content creators too, so they had to do real estate investing and be content creators in some way or form. So we had a couple people who were really big on YouTube, had a podcast, things like that. So those were the two strict criteria that we set. And then also they were selling a content piece in some way, so a couple of us were writing books, a couple had online courses, or things like that. We have the BiggerPockets Bootcamps, and things like that. So there was criteria that we set, and then we made a list of, who are people we know? And all of them were actually guests that had been on the podcast, let’s reach out to them. Then we reached out individually to them to see if they were interested, and all of them said, “Yes.”

Henry:
Those are phenomenal points. And I want to just point out for people that it’s not like you’re setting this criteria, or you’re looking for somebody similar so that you can have this exclusive club, it’s not that kind of a thing. When you have multiple people in a room, or virtually in a room, who have similar businesses, you’ve probably all approached it differently, and you probably all have different best practices. But when you’re all in that same world, that same environment, if Tony says something that he’s doing in his business, or he hears a problem that I’m having in my business, and he can say, “Hey, we’re doing A, B, and C.” The ease of implementation for me is a whole lot easier, because I have a very similar business. And so the trajectory of growth can be a lot higher, because I can implement faster, because I’m in a group of people with similar size businesses.
If Grant Cardone comes in and tells me I should do A, B, and C instead of X, Y, and Z, and it requires me to hire a staff of 50 people, I’m not there yet. But if Tony and I have similar portfolios, and he’s like, “Hey bud, I heard you’re approaching A, B, and C with X, Y, and Z, why don’t you try one, two, and three instead?” I go, “Oh, I got a one, two, and three right here. Yeah, I’ll put that in place.” It makes your growth path so much easier, because you probably already have all the pieces somewhere close to you, and just having that like-minded person with a similar business can really help you grow a whole lot faster.

Ashley:
And I want to mention too, because I think this is an important piece to that mastermind that Tony and I put together, was it was free, so it wasn’t this big planned out paid thing, whatever. So you right now listening, you could do the exact same thing that we did, is look at the people that you think… Instead of waiting for somebody to slide into your DMs, go and start your own, and have it free. And we set the commitment of six months, so six months we were done with the mastermind, it was just you had to make that time commitment. So I think that’s something you guys should take away too, is don’t wait for other people to network with you, make sure you’re going out, and you’re making connections, and you’re providing value. The first ever mastermind I was in was from Instagram, where somebody just sent 10 of us I think a direct message, and said, “Hey, I want to start a mastermind once a month, do a virtual call, who wants to join it?” And that was it, so everybody start your own little accountability groups.

Henry:
It’s amazing.

Tony:
Well, that leads me into my next question, Ashley, you said to start the group. So Henry, what’s your recommendation? So you find someone, you got a good vibe with them, how do you actually get the relationship set up so that you guys are holding each other accountable?

Ashley:
How do you ask them on the first date?

Henry:
Yeah, absolutely. Well you just got to work up the nerve and do it, Tony, you just got to do it.

Ashley:
You don’t have any pick lines.

Henry:
No, I’ve never been that cool or suave. So again, with my group it happened naturally. So the way it kind of formed, was I was there early, which also was a pro tip, because lots of people come in early, and you can get some pretty sweet, cool, personalized networking in early. I was actually able to network with Brandon because I got there early, he got there at day early, and so I was able to have time to chat with him before everybody showed up and he was the ultra celebrity status Brandon, and couldn’t even get around him because there was a crowd. But it was super cool, because I was able to have candid conversations with him because there was nobody else there. And so the way it happened for us, was I met somebody, we were there a day early, so we established this kind of relationship, and we just kind of checked in with each other as the conference was going on.
Who did you meet? What was valuable to you? We had a similar size portfolio in a similar type of market. And so not only was I able to get value out of the sessions that I went to, but because he went to a session, or he’d met somebody, we were able to kind of say, “Hey, maybe we should go talk to this person because of the similarities in our business.” And so at the end what we said was, “Man, it’s been super valuable just networking with each other here, and sharing resources here. I’d like to continue this, would you be open to just having a weekly call, check in one day a week, we’ll talk about our goals, and then we’ll see what we did for the week?” And we were all in for it. And then we added two other people to it, and one of the people we didn’t even meet at the BiggerPockets Conference, it was just an investor friend of mine who I had heard say he wanted to do something similar.
And so that’s how we established it, we just said, “Let’s check in once a week, we’ll talk about our goals, and we’ll see what progress we’re making towards our goals, and we’ll just see how it goes.” We didn’t even have some formal agenda, this doesn’t have to be this well planned out, I’ll send you the agenda before the meeting starts, and then somebody will take minutes, and then they’ll recap the meeting. It doesn’t have to be all that, just share some goals, hop on a call once a week, once every other week, but be consistent about it. And what I liked about our group is it was more than two of us, which meant that if somebody had to miss we still had enough people to have a valuable call. If it’s just two people and someone’s sick, or they got a sick kid, or life happens, then your call doesn’t happen, and it’s easy to fall out of that rhythm. But if there’s more than two of you, then it’s a little easier to stay on track.

Ashley:
Henry, is there anything else that you want to add for anyone going to a networking event, or for when they go to the conference? One last piece of advice.

Henry:
Yeah, make the time to do the extracurriculars as well. Go to the networking events before the speaking sessions, go to the networking events after the speaking sessions. Not because you want to go have fun and be around the partiers, but the money is made through the conversations that people are having outside of those events, that’s where the real return on your investment comes. And like I said, for people like me, it’s easy to want to do that, I’m an extrovert, but that’s not everybody. So you’ve got to really hold yourself accountable to go into these events, working up the strength. So find the time to do the things that you need to do during the conference to decompress, if you’re not an extrovert, if you need to get to the gym at a certain time in the morning, or if you need to just find some alone time and meditate. Make time in your schedule to do those things so you can decompress, so you can have the energy to go to the things where people are going to be networking and having conversations.
Sit in the power seat, sit where people are going to be wanting to get the most out of that, because those are great people to start networking with. And don’t be afraid to just go up and have a conversation with anybody. I got to have a conversation with Brandon before the conference, and I went up to him and had a conversation with him, not long after that I was on the BP Podcast. Is that a coincidence? I don’t know, but it worked out well. But if I never go and have that conversation, then I’m not sitting here on this podcast with you guys getting to share my experiences with everybody. And that’s just one of the benefits that came from it, that accountability group that I formed, I doubled my portfolio that year, and is it a direct result of that accountability group?
Maybe. I got a lot of tidbits, and I didn’t want to show up on a call and be like, “Well, I didn’t do anything this week guys.” That accountability means something, and it worked out well for me. So I hope that you guys take that seriously, and networking is something you need to plan for too for some people. So plan to be outside of your comfort zone, wealth is built just outside of your comfort zone, get comfortable in uncomfortable situations. I heard you mention awkward silences, that’s okay guys, it’s okay to have an awkward silence, nobody dies. We’re all real estate investors, we have awkward, uncomfortable conversations all the time with people, with sellers, with contractors. We’re okay doing it in that environment, you should be okay doing it in this environment too.

Ashley:
From now on, Henry, all I’m going to be hearing is your voice inside my head. “Nobody’s dying.”

Henry:
You just look at each other a little longer, it’s fine. Give him a wink awkwardly back at him, and say, “It’s fine.”

Ashley:
Yeah. So the only thing I want to add to that, Henry, and I think that’s wonderful advice, and that happened to me last year at the BiggerPockets Conference. 2:00 AM, pizza parlor, Tyler and [inaudible 00:28:51] cornered me, and just this conversation we had in five minutes was this aha moment for me. And just set off this light bulb, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to do this.”
And I think one thing too, is that when you are at the conference, you’re going to be having so many conversations, you’re going to be learning so many things from the speakers. That each night, or sometime throughout the day, you should sit down and write down what you’ve learned, who you’ve met, and what action you are taking from those things. Because when you leave that conference, you’re going to be so pumped up, hyped up, that you want to… “Okay, I’m going to do all these things.” And then it’s like, “Wow, there was a lot of things, where do I even start? And what do I even remember?” And then taking time each day, or maybe even twice a day to write those things down, so you can go back through your notes and be like, “This is when I want to prioritize. Oh yeah, I forgot about that, I want to do that.” So that’s something that has really helped me too going to conferences. Tony, what about you?

Tony:
Yeah, I think just one thing that that everyone should recognize, is that there’s a common misconception around extroverts versus introverts. I’m a podcast host, I create content on social media, YouTube, and people might look at me and think that I’m extroverted, because I can get on a stage and talk in front of people. But the true definition of introvert versus extrovert, is an extrovert is someone that gets energized by being in a room full of people, whereas an introvert, they get re-energized by being by themselves. And I’m 1000% the latter, I need that alone time by myself to have the energy to keep going. So if you are an introvert, just recognize that maybe you need to take a break during the BPCON, just to go be by yourself for a little bit, that way you have the stamina to keep going. So just use that definition as you’re moving through BPCON, whatever conference you’re going to. And if you do need some time to yourself, take it, that way when you go back into the big sea of people you’ve got the stamina to keep going.

Ashley:
Yeah, and that’s great advice, Tony. Well, Henry, thank you so much for joining us for this week’s Rookie Reply. Can you let everyone know where they can find out some more information about you, and reach out to you?

Henry:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me, it’s been super fun. The best place people can reach me is Instagram, I’m @thehenrywashington on Instagram. You can also check me out on the Market Podcast.

Ashley:
Thank you so much, and thank you guys for listening to this week’s Rookie Reply. I’m Ashley, @wealthfromrentals, and he’s Tony, @tonyjrobinson on Instagram. And we’ll be backed on Wednesday with another guest.

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Do you believe in miracles? I have for years. But I didn’t see this one coming. I don’t think anyone did. 

Love him or hate him. It’s hard not to respect the greatest quarterback of our time. Perhaps all time. Drafted in the sixth round at 24 years of age, Tom Brady led a great team, the New England Patriots, to nine Super Bowls over nearly two decades. The Patriots took home the Lombardi Trophy in six of them. 

Though Brady was remarkable, he was only one player out of 22 on the team. Owner Robert Kraft and coach Bill Belichick put together a historic powerhouse with stars in almost every position. When the nearly-too-old Brady was traded to the less-than-mediocre Tampa Bay Buccaneers, no one imagined he could take them to the Super Bowl in the first year. Let alone win.

The Buccanneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-9, in Super Bowl LV. Their first playoff appearance since 2007.

Brady is proof that one dynamic leader at the helm can change everything. 

So what? What does this have to do with real estate investing, and why did BiggerPockets publish this article? Brady’s story reminds me of the importance of picking the right players when designing your real estate investment strategy. 

Miracles for Active Real Estate Investors

If you’re an operator doing your own deals, I’m referring to your REALTOR®, your contractors, your banker, your business partners, investors, and more. You may be one key hire or partner away from success or disaster. So, choose wisely. 

If you’re looking for an all-star investor-friendly real estate agent to fill out your team, check out Agent Finder!

As I said, I have believed in miracles since I saw my first one with my own eyes in my senior year of college. (Feel free to ask me about that one!) But I experienced a miracle of sorts when I met Ben, my business partner at my real estate investment firm. 

Ben Kahle was only a junior at Liberty University when he reached out to me for advice nearly a decade ago. He came to my home, and I spent hours with him. We stayed in touch, and a year later, we met for hours again, and I convinced him to join us as an intern in his last semester of college. 

Fast forward to 2022. Hiring Ben was the smartest move I have ever made in three decades in any business. After learning the ropes for a few years, Ben transformed our company. Since making him a partner in 2018, Ben implemented systems that grew us from a struggling little team chasing one-off deals to the manager of six diversified commercial real estate funds with almost $100 million in investor equity under management. 

Hiring or partnering with the right person could be your miracle story. Your Tom Brady. Don’t underestimate the power of partnering with or hiring the right person to help you get to the next level! I can’t think of anything more important than getting this right. 

Miracles for Passive Real Estate Investors

I recently published an article on why I believe most people, especially those with full-time careers or retirements, will enjoy the best lifestyle and generate the most wealth by passively investing in real estate. 

If you decide to invest passively, you must choose the right team to invest in. We talk about due diligence all the time, and I’ve written on it at length. Thankfully, BiggerPockets published Brian Burke’s wonderful volume to assist passive investors in their diligence process: The Hands-Off Investor. I highly recommend you digest and utilize this information before making a passive real estate investment. 

Please do yourself and your heirs a favor and take the time and effort to carefully analyze the syndicator/fund manager’s team, track record, technology, and more before making any investment. 

If you’re investing passively, finding the right syndicator or fund manager operator may be like your own Tom Brady story. You may be one syndication or fund investment away from passive income and growth to start your passive real estate journey. 

A Recent Example of a Miracle

I’ve widely discussed my belief that it’s possible to get great deals in any economy if you know how to add value. Our firm is on a constant search to find recession-resistant asset classes and operators who provide us with this opportunity. Our most recent investment is in a new and up-and-coming asset class for us: RV Parks. 

There’s a lot to say about RV parks, and I will talk about them in future articles. But for now, I’d like to tell you about our RV park operating partner.  

In fact, our new RV park operating partner reminds me of Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay story. His company has a long track record of transforming mediocre commercial real estate assets into something special. And quite profitable.   

We’ve wanted to invest in RV Parks for years. Even before:

• Covid helped launch RV sales and park demand to record levels.  
• Outdoorsy and RVShare’s Airbnb-style rental programs gained widespread adoption and allowed any RV to double as a rental unit. Which potentially multiplies the demand for RV park rentals. 
• Apartment and mobile home park syndicators began scrambling to figure out how to enter this suddenly intriguing asset class. 

We’ve partnered with one of the rare non-public national operators who is an expert in acquiring wonderfully located mom-and-pop parks and revolutionizing them into something great.  

Like their recent Branson, Missouri, acquisition, this previously undervalued and under-managed park is only 20 minutes from one of America’s favorite family destination cities. 

Like Brady transformed the Bucs, our operating partner is transforming this asset into a world-class family recreational park. (One of their parks was just named America’s #1 RV Park by USA Today.) 

Here are a few highlights of the Branson park we invested in: 

• Expanding from 61 to 161 RV spaces
• Adding 30 park model units (deluxe rental RVs) and 10 glamping tents
• Adding a resort-style pool with concessions, a pond with a floating water park, a pavilion and stage, 50 golf carts (that rent for $75 daily), and much more 

The acquisition cost for this park was $3.35 million. The all-in cost with improvements is over $17 million. The projected year-five value at a conservative 7% cap rate is over $31 million, and the projected net investor year-five cash flow is 15%. 

Our operating partner plans to refinance back most or all of the investor principal at year five, and investors will stay in the deal with the same ownership after that. This will be a win-win for everyone if it works out!  

Conclusion

In my opinion, investing in RV Parks right now is a rare opportunity to get in early on an asset class that feels to many like self-storage in the early ‘90s. I’m quite giddy about this asset class, and I think many of you will be, too. More to come!  

This operator is like our firm’s 2022 Tom Brady. You may be one syndication or fund investment away from investing in passive real estate opportunities like this yourself. 

What about you? Have you found the right partner, employee, or syndicator? Getting this right could make all the difference in your life, your wealth, and your future. 

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.

CNBC’s Diana Olick joins ‘Squawk Box’ to break down the latest weekly mortgage demand data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

David:
This is The BiggerPockets podcast, show 662.

Chris:
I think everyone’s played Monopoly and I consider return on equity the way to go from a greenhouse to a red hotel and kind of skipping that second, third, and fourth greenhouse. So it’s a powerful way to scale up your properties and also scale up your portfolio. And this took me about nine months to truly wrap my head around, but once it clicked, it changed everything. It changed my own investing. It changed [inaudible 00:00:29] clients and changed my business trajectory as well.

David:
What’s going on everyone. This is David Greene coming at you from Scottsdale, Arizona, where I am having a little bit of a getaway with Christian and Kyle, and we are sort of enjoying this area. It’s beautiful out here. And while here, we have a fantastic episode for you. This will definitely be one that you want to share with other people and listen to more than once because it’s just chock full of great examples, anecdotal examples, high level strategy. Our guest today is Chris Lopez and he is a SEO master. He is a real estate broker that owns a brokerage. He sells houses, he owns real estate. He invests in real estate with other people. He teaches other people how to invest in real estate. He runs companies and we get into everything he does and more.
I’m joined today by the lovely, beautiful, and talented Robert Abasolo. Rob, what were some of your favorite parts of today’s show?

Rob:
We talked about how to get mentors, some of the realities of trying to get a mentor and how you can prove yourself to get in the door with somebody, how to provide value to someone so that they can take you on under their wing. I think we spend a lot of time talking about this. Something that I think we care about quite a bit because this is something that we see often. So I think if you listen to it, you’ll get some tangible advice.
But then we also talked about how to use content to market your business, how to get lead generation just from putting out podcasts and other types of content, the importance of copywriting in doing so, and then we put a beautiful bow on this that talks about the return of equity and how you can use that to become a multi-millionaire in real estate if you just play the real estate game of moving your money from own house to another.

David:
Yeah. We also, I forgot to mention this, we have a pretty lengthy discussion about mentorship, how to find a mentor, the right way to go about it, the wrong way to go about it, and maybe who you should be looking for when it comes to mentor. Chris has some really good insight into that, as well as you. I thought, Rob, you did a really good job giving some practical advice for people who are like, “Hey, somebody, please. I want to be rich. Help me to do it through real estate.”

Rob:
Yeah. I found out that the moment I started sending you gift baskets every single day, you finally decided to respond to me and say, “I’ll teach you, little one.” And so it’s cost me thousands in gift baskets, but I’m really glad that we’re partnered up together, man.

David:
I’m a weakness for a gift basket. Yeah, no, that’s not true. Please, don’t send me gift baskets. I feel terrible whenever people do that. Lately, I’ve been getting stuff that’s sent to me, which is awesome, but they don’t always put who it is that’s sending it, or my assistant gets it and opens it and then comes and gives it to me, but they’ve thrown away the box that had the label. And I feel terrible that someone sent me a gift and I don’t know who they are.

Rob:
One time someone showed up to my house and my wife was like, “What was that about?” And I was like, “Oh, a subscriber showed up to the house. I don’t know. They were nice.” And she’s like, “Okay.” And then a day later, this gift basket shows up and she was like, “I’m not eating that.” And I was like, “Well, hold on. This is a $300 gift basket full of sardines and jerkies.” And I was like, “I’ll take the first bite and I’ll let you know if everything’s okay.” Turned out that it was a delicious gift basket.

David:
Today’s quick tip is evaluate the equity that you have in your current portfolio. We get into this in-depth on some really good stuff. A lot of people are sitting on tons of capital and they don’t realize it because they’re not actually evaluating where their portfolio is at. So the easy formula is you look up and you see how much cash flow is this property producing in a year and don’t divide it by the initial amount you invested, divide it by the current equity in the property. We call this return on equity. If that number is less than you could get if you reinvested that money into a different deal, consider selling or at minimum, refinancing it and moving that money into more cash flowing real estate.
That is your quick tip brought to you by David and Rob. And now let’s get into the show. Chris Lopez, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. How are you today?

Chris:
I’m doing fantastic. Very glad to be here. Thank you guys.

David:
Yes. So tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate investing and what your portfolio looks like today?

Chris:
Yeah, so it all started about 20 years ago and I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad like majority of people out there, total mental shift and got me hyper focused on real estate, spent a little bit of time trying to get in real estate back then. I was a sophomore in college at the time. So I was about 19 or 20. So didn’t have money, didn’t have the knowledge and the internet was not what it was like back then.
So spent a few months trying to get into real estate, couldn’t make it work. So did some online marketing businesses for about 10, 12 years. But after that, business faded away and wrapped up. I then pivoted into real estate. And then over the last five years, I have really focused on building a real estate business first. I have a local podcast. I have a local real estate brokerage on focusing on building that [inaudible 00:05:21] there and then journey revenue, get in the game and then build my portfolio.
And my current portfolio is eight units, and then I also do a bunch of passive investing. So right now I’m in a very happy space with direct rentals and also a bunch of passive investments, but my main focus goes into my real estate business.

David:
And so your investments, are they all in the Denver area?

Chris:
All my directly owned rentals are. Yeah, they’re all within about, probably about 20 mile radius of each other. And then the passive stuff is just… that’s all over the country and half the states, but I’m a big believer in invest into my backyard so I can leverage my network, leverage what I know. It’s very hard for me to duplicate all this knowledge long distance. It’s not impossible, but I very much like to have a very singular focus and just down lay that. So I’ve decided to stick in Denver.

David:
So curious, what got you moving away from buying more units, doors, properties in Denver and into the passive side that you mentioned?

Chris:
Couple things. One is just a lot of it, it’s my lifestyle. I’ve got two young kids right now, three and five. So I’m very much in the trenches with my wife, raising my kids. I love it. And I’m also experiencing a lot of business growth right now for not only my brokerage, but also a couple other real estate related businesses. So I have a lot of very limited time. And so I’ve decided to start investing passively just to free up some time for me, and also better utilize my self-directed 401ks to start investing.
Not a big fan of investing directly on real estate with a 401k or a self-directed RA, usually not really great returns. So I’ve shifted a lot of that into more passive investing because it’s easier and you get better returns that way than the stock market.

David:
That’s cool. Kind of like me. It sounds like you’re a bit of a gadfly. You’ve got a real estate brokerage. You are in a private equity fund. You own some real estate, kind of a little bit of everything. So tell me, how did you get your business started? What’s the goal of the business that you got into? Do you see real estate investing as the end goal or is business the end goal and real estate investing is kind of icing on the cake?

Chris:
So I’ve gone through a few iterations like most people as I’ve grown personally, as my businesses have grown. Things have shifted and I’ll kind of rewind before I get into real estate about the past businesses I did because I built that previous internet marketing business, lots of success there in generating revenue and learning how to do marketing. And I started taking that cash flow, and then once I had achieved financial freedom, I started trying to pivot into the stock market day trading and then eventually foreign currency. This was all before Bitcoin and NFTs, and I got my butt kicked.
And so it made me realize that there’s three main things I can focus on. I said, hey, how can I invest my time and my money? Because those are two very different assets. And depending on what you have, you have different amounts throughout your life. So before I got married and had kids, I had a lot more time. So I prioritized my portfolio where I invest in the stock market. I’m a big believer in that, not majority of my portfolio, but I like investing in the stock market, but spend less than one hour a year looking at my stock portfolio. I’ll transfer in a couple times when I need to and I’ll check out three times a year to make sure the money’s still there, that’s about it.
Then I decided I can put my active time into real estate or a business. And as I started doing some deals, I did fix and flip, did a wholesale deal, did some things like that, I realized that my best use of time and skills really focusing on the business aspect of it. So I go out there and generate revenue that way and that’s where I get the highest return on my time. If I put a 100 hours or a 100 units into the real estate business, like my brokerage, my median, all that, I enjoyed a lot more, I didn’t get a higher return.
So my real estate investing, I spend a few hours a month on it, not a tremendous amount of time, but I very much put all my attention on the business and then real estate second and stock is a very, very third distance in my portfolio.

David:
That’s interesting. I like that. I like interviewing more people that run a business within real estate than simply are pure full-time investors. And that’s because I’d say when the podcast got started, your ability to become a full-time real estate investor to just buy a lot of property and live off the income that they made, this is a subjective opinion, but I just think it was easier than what it is today. There was less competition. There were less people interested in this. There wasn’t as much technology to make it smooth and as podcasts like ours have grown and new software companies have taken root and the information’s getting out there, man, it’s not hard to learn how to do this anymore. It used to be kind of a secret. It was like knowing Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. If you knew Jiu-jitsu, you had a secret nobody else had. Well, now everybody knows it.
It’s become significantly more difficult to become the traditional full-time real estate investor, but at the same time, there’s a big demand to get out of that cubicle, out of that commute, out of that job you hate. So what do you do? Well, I tend to think that a really happy medium is leave the job you hate and get a job in real estate which you like and let that supplement your investing. But like you said, you can also make good money doing something that you like more. So I’m curious, how did your background in tech as well as your SEO and marketing experience help you with building a successful real estate focused business? And was there a pivotal moment early on where you knew, “Ooh, I can go do this?”

Chris:
Yeah. So to kind of go back a few layers on there to build up to how this went into real estate, I want to tell that backstory because I’ve had explosive growth the last five years in Denver and my portfolio, my real estate businesses. And I’ll be like, “Wow, you’re an overnight success.” Yes I am, but it was built on 12 years in my previous business where it was not an overnight success and I got quite a few black eyes and punched in the face more than I would like to admit, but that’s just normal business, normal entrepreneurship.
So I started out, got my first position opportunity as a sales guy, not in real estate, but just general sales guy. I was like, “Cool, I’m ready to go. Let’s do this,” and I realized I needed leads. And so once I had that realization, oh, if I have leads, I can go out there and make my phone calls, make my appointments and then therefore get a commission so I can go out there and pay my bills and make money. So I had a huge mental shift there about generating leads. And so I put all my focus… All, majority of my focus on how do I generate leads? Because I realized if I had leads, I can make money. And I realized, oh, I can go out there and build a sales team, pass along the leads and act more as a sales manager.
So that led me to copywriting, YouTube marketing, Facebook podcasts. I kind of grew up with the internet from 2003 timeframe and just cranked on that business until about 2012, mixture of marketing and mixture of tech in there. And as I focused on the leads, I just kept getting more and more success. And then the huge wake up call, I think it was like 2010 or 2009, is something called the Google Slap, which I don’t think a lot of people are familiar with, but as I’d ramped up all my advertising campaigns, we were spending on average between about $20,000 to $30,000 a month on a Google AdWords campaign. When you search Google, those ads would pop up, Google Display Network, all the typical stuff.
Well, the Google Slap is what some marketers coined this 12, 13 years ago where Google just unilaterally turned off a ton of accounts. They turned off people in financial services, affiliate marketers, work from home opportunities. Anything with types of claims, just all board. They turned off the ads, no warning and just cryptic, “Oh, here’s an email. Your ads are turned off. Here are three bullet points. And of course, no contact.” And those Google AdWords campaigns was the majority of our leads at the time. And so we had one big pipe coming in of a lot of leads and it was phenomenal until they turned it off and it wasn’t phenomenal anymore.
So we spent six months, me and my business partner, pivoting, figuring out, spent like $20,000 on consultants to get back on Google. We eventually got back up there, but the big lesson I learned there is I need to have multiple sources of leads and ideally lead flow that I have control of. If all my leads are coming from one advertising campaign, it’s great until it’s not because then Facebook, Google, whoever can turn that off and just put you out of business very, very quickly. So that made me pivot more towards content marketing, personal branding, being a thought leader because if I can go out there and publish a content, establish my website, build my email list, I am controlling my destiny.
So I very much focused on that and that was a huge pivotal moment in my mindset as a marketer and also a business person, realized, hey, if I want to be in control of myself and my business, I have to know how to generate leads and have a consistent supply of it, and cannot rely on an advertising campaign from a big company that can just shut me off.

Rob:
Yeah. I think a lot of people fall into this trap where they want to put all their eggs in one basket, and I think the reason that this happens is because if you find success in the proverbial basket that I speak of here, why change it? Why do anything? Why would you take time away from a successful thing to then go and put time into something else that’s probably not going to be as successful? So I’ve seen this time and time again, even in my own business. I started out on Airbnb when I was starting out my short-term rental portfolio, and about a month ago, month-and-a-half ago, same thing, they shut down my account. They didn’t tell us why? This was happening to a lot of hosts everywhere. And we’re just like, “Oh my goodness.”
So after we got access to our account, now we’re like, “Okay, probably shouldn’t put all of our eggs in that basket.” So now we’re on Vrbo. We’re starting to list on booking.com. We have direct bookings websites. And so it’s something that is very painful in the moment to do so, to stop focusing on the one thing that works because it works. I just feel like I’m taking money away from my business by not doing that. This is something I’ve struggled so many times Chris, because I tend… I’m a YouTuber by trade, but now like you said, I do Google Ads as well, TikTok, Instagram. And I feel like it takes a lot of time at the very beginning to just establish all of those different ways to acquire leads. But once you lay the groundwork, that’s how you can truly start growing your business.
So after you’ve found out that your Google account was sort of back, obviously you started pouring back into that, but what was your first big step from a lead generation source? Was it content and was it a specific platform?

Chris:
It was content, and that happened as those businesses were winding down. So I won’t talk about what I did in that business, but how I took that knowledge and pivot to grow real estate because the previous stuff was a nutrition business, online marketing, not related to real estate whatsoever. And so you can always build upon those lessons and skills you’ve learned. And so I took that knowledge as I wanted to get into real estate. So it took me about 18 months to figure out the best way to get into real estate and I’m very happy to fail forward. I have no problem with failing as long as I don’t go bankrupt or hurt someone. I’ll fail all day long and I’m happy to fail because the faster I fail, the faster I learn. So we’re not there to fix and flip, did a wholesale deal, did a few different things, made money, but I was like, wow, this is going to be a very hard transition for me to get into real estate.
So I started realizing, wow, in real estate, especially local markets, there’s just not a whole lot local knowledge. And six, seven years ago, I found BiggerPockets, started listening to a lot of podcasts with Brandon, Josh and getting plugged in on the BiggerPockets community, phenomenal, learned so much, but I kept coming back to what do I do in my local market? What do I do where I’m at, which is Denver, Colorado? How do I have success here? Who do I find? And I could find no online content and I really had no network out here, no experience. So I did not know how to learn or connect with people.
So after probably about two months of just Googling and searching BiggerPockets forums, a light bulb went. I was like, “Oh, I can be the BiggerPockets of Colorado. That is my solution to go out there and they will establish myself and generate business and investment opportunities for myself.” So I basically took what I wanted to know because I figured I have all these questions. I’m not the only person out here wondering, “Oh, what do I do in Denver? Who’s the lender? What’s working? What’s not? Because the 2% rule did not work in Denver back then, all this stuff.
I said, “Hey, I’m going to go out there and fill that void.” And as I went out there and was analyzing where I could create content and also, I’d created a ton of content between podcasts, long form sales rental letters, YouTube videos, all that stuff, I decided to go on the podcast route. And that was because podcasting was really starting to boom then, but from just a content production standpoint, I think prepping, recording and producing podcasts is some of the easiest content. Videos were great, but man, a lot more prep, a lot more editing. Where a podcast, I was in my gym clothes half the time and just have a conversation like we’re having, and then go out there and publish it.
So I focused on the podcast because that worked well on the trends. And also, what I noticed was it was going to be the fastest way for me to go out there and create content, and I’m a big believer in speed. Speed matters in everything you do. So I could go out there and crank content very quickly. So I started with that podcast first approach, and then I just did some very simple tactics of writing a simple blog post to follow along with it, repurpose some content. And all I did was take what questions I want to know and other investors want to know, and I would go find and interview people with that expertise around Denver, and I would basically just stick the keyword Denver in front of the podcast title and it was just instant SEO juice. And so that helped grow the podcast and then that just started the whole machine going.

Rob:
So when you’re establishing yourself as a thought leader, and a thought leader is someone known in this space, an authority of sorts, if you will, what are you doing to really do that, to establish yourself in a new market, zero network and zero experience? I know that you have the podcast out there. And so right now you’re obviously very smart. You’ve done this, you’re successful, but for someone starting out, is it just a matter of making content and being like, “I’m just going to do a lot of it,” or were there specific things that you were doing to really, really solidify yourself in the space?

Chris:
Yes. The biggest thing I would say is I went out there and got a mentor. I had the expertise to create content and get to know how to get eyeballs on the content. What I did not have was the expertise on all the real estate investing tactics and techniques for what works in Denver, Colorado. So I had two options. I could go out there and… Actually, I had three options, go out there and try to learn everything myself and then create it, which is a very, very long way to do it. I could fake it till I make it, and I hate that because a lot of gurus, a lot of people over years, it’s fake it till you make it, and that is complete BS. I do not like being inauthentic, but the main way, I go out there and find that person with the knowledge. That was the biggest growth hack I could go towards.
And so my previous business, I learned the power of mentorship and the power of hacking into someone’s knowledge and network, because it can give you that hockey stick type growth of just vertical growth. So what I did was like, “Oh I have this idea. I need this, but I need to learn this skill. I need to listen to knowledge and so all these other thousands of investors around Colorado.” So I did something really unique in marketing. I started calling people. I started cold calling brokerages that had any type of semblance of investing, and I was just very pleasantly persistent in my follow-up and I found a mentor.
And when I find a mentor, my goal is to turn that mentor into essentially a business partner because what a lot of people do is we all want mentors. We all want that advice, that knowledge, but what happens is people go out there, “Oh, can I buy you a cup of coffee? Can I buy you lunch? Can I go sweep your fix and flip?” It’s not really like me going out and buying coffee with someone, they don’t care about that $3 latte I’m buying them. An hour of their time is worth way more than that. So a lot of times mentorships, it’s like a one way street in value. I’m taking, taking, taking. I did not want to do that.
So the focus is on how can I make it a two-way street of value? How can I make it a win-win situation? And that starts with being self-aware for what I am good at, what skills do I have and how can I apply those skills, knowledge and hustle to someone more successful to me? And a lot of times they have a lot of knowledge success in these buckets or these banks and I’ve got knowledge success in other buckets. Well, where can we find complimentary skill sets? Because if we’re both the same, not good partnership, but if we have complimentary skill sets, well then one plus one equals three.
So found the guy, Charles Roberts, and he was actually on your podcast. I think episode 278 or 276, The Boring Path To Real Estate Success. Found him, and just a phenomenal guy. He has founded one of the biggest brokers in Colorado. He had been investing in a realtor for about 15 years and just kind of one of the pillars of the community around Colorado. So highly successful, highly busy, but what I did is I went out there and I researched him. I found out what he wanted to do. I found out where there were gaps in his business. I talked to some of his employees and agents, and just did research on there and I found out he has a passion for teaching, he generally loves teaching. He would teach classes all the time, 30, 40 person classroom, but that in-person class is great, but it’s very hard to scale.
So I proposed the idea of, “Hey, we could take what you’re doing and put it on the internet, go out there and market it.” And he’s like, “I would love to do that.” And then what I did was once I provide that solution to him, I went out there and said, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s the plan. Give me this.” And I didn’t wait for him to tell me anything. He gave me a couple lemons. I went there, made lemonade and came back, “Hey, here’s what I did. What can we do better?” And I just started executing.
So I think the key here for this is being self-aware, what’s my skillset? Trying to identify what value I can provide to my mentor, and then I want to align their interest with mine because hey, people can give free advice. They can be a friendly mentor, but at some point everyone has to focus on their business, their problems, their revenue. So the way we structured it was as we’re starting this content, this is very common in the real estate agent industry, is to pay referral fees. So as clients came in and I would create the content, I would work them and help them go out there and find the property, and then Charles would get a referral fee.
And the plan was, as everything built up, I’d always continue giving a referral fee, which I was very happy to do, but he had a vested interest in my success. So the more money I made, the more money he made and it was a great win-win situation that kept him interested and to start snowballing from there.

Rob:
A lot of music to my ears here, Chris, because this is something that I deal with every day. Probably you two David, feel free to chime in on this, but I have a lot of people that will reach out, and this actually just happened today. Someone reached out, they asked me a very, very, very long question on Instagram, that was like, “Okay. So I inherited this. I have $30,000 here. Here’s five deals. It comps out here, I would love for you to look at the whole 18 unit development, this and this and this. Also happy to provide any value to you as well. Just let me know.” And I was like, “Well, I could obviously chime in on that, but what value can he bring to me? I don’t know. I’m sure there is. I would love to know actually,” but he said, “Happy to provide value too.”
And I’m like, “But what do you do? Are you good at copywriting? Are you good at editing? Are you good at sourcing deals? Are you good at being boots on the ground? Do you have family? Do you have a family of realtors across the country? I have no idea.” And thus, because I didn’t know. I just didn’t have time to think about… It would be very odd if I was like, “Well, hey man, I actually need someone to answer emails. Is that value you’d be willing to provide to me?” It doesn’t really make sense. And so I think that if you’re seeking out a mentor, that’s totally fine. Shoot your shot, put it out there, but try to find out what that common ground is. And if there’s something that you know that, that person likes or wants or needs, talk about how you can fulfill it.
I think Brandon talked about this a couple years ago on the podcast where he said he wanted to learn how to surf or something like that. I think someone reached out and they’re like, “Hey man, I can teach you how to surf if you teach me how to, I don’t know, buy houses or something.” I don’t remember, and I think they actually became friends and worked together in that capacity. And I was like that to me is what people should be seeking when they’re seeking a mentorship. Don’t just ask, “Hey, can you do this for me? I can also help you too.” Be very intentional and specific with how you can help me, otherwise it just gets lost in a sea of messages. David, do you ever get messages like this? Or how do you handle it when this comes across your desk?

David:
Yeah. And I’m trying to be very diplomatic about how I answer this because Brandon and I did an episode one time where we said, look, don’t just ask us for a cup of coffee because $5 is probably not worth two hours of time, and it sounded very arrogant. I’m so good. I’m too good to help someone and I don’t want it to come across that way. It’s more-

Rob:
Sure, sure.

David:
If you want to, I can use an example of working out, right? If I want to work out with The Rock, the reason I want to work out with him is he is very good at working out. I’m going to learn things about workouts from The Rock. However, because he’s very good at working out, he is very focused and dedicated and purposeful about his workouts. Okay? He wouldn’t look like The Rock if he stopped every workout to teach the new person bench press form. Okay? So if you’re going to go, want to workout with a person like that and you’re asking for that much of their time in the space that they take very seriously, you can’t show up as a person that’s never lifted weights and be like, “I want you to be my personal trainer.” That’s kind of what you’re asking. Okay?
So you got to be aware that you probably don’t want work out with The Rock. Go start working out, follow what he does. When you get to a certain point, it might make sense to say, “Can I come work out with you? Let me spot you or let me help you,” in some way that would benefit The Rock. Did you have something you want to add there, Rob?

Rob:
That’s great. No, that’s very, very, very… That’s a nice way to put it. I think that’s perfectly diplomatic in that because it can seem harsh and no one obviously wants that, but I’ll give you a really good example of actually what just happened to me two or three weeks ago, I talked about on BiggerPockets, how I’m becoming a realtor in the Houston market and I’m going to start a real estate channel specifically for Houston. I just started shooting all the content for it yesterday. And someone heard that and they reached out to me on Instagram and they said, “Hey dude, I love your channel. I follow it super, super closely. I’ve actually started 14 real estate YouTube channels around the country. I’ve got 50 agents under me or a 100 agents. I can help you do this. Would you be willing to meet?”
And we met and he’s provided a ton of value and we’re actually going to partner up on a few things here in the city. And that to me was a really great example of him understanding that I was going to fall into some kind of issue. There’s going to be some barriers with what I’m about to go through and he’s like, “Let me help you with that.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t know what I know… Sorry, I don’t know what I don’t know. Let me hear him out.” And I heard him out and now it’s going to turn into a really cool thing.
So that’s a really great example, David, because that’s… I’m not going to say I’m The Rock. I think we can all just look at me and pretty quickly see that I’m not, but in this analogy, I’m pretty good at YouTube and he’s done that too, and he brought it to me and I was like, “Okay, really, really nice.”

Chris:
It’s your hairstyle that kills The Rock persona story for you. That’s the main issue going there for you, Rob. But I actually want to unpack, to piggyback what you guys were saying there. It’s not just asking how I can probably value, be proactive. I have tons of content like you guys out there and people schedule a phone call with me or email me. I’m like, “Have you spent more than 15 minutes on one of my freaking podcast or my even read my bio on LinkedIn for goodness sake?” You can research someone. So if I was where I was years ago, go online, research people, go follow their channel, go follow them on social and do that for a week. And you can see things, especially from a marketing standpoint or business standpoint, and look for opportunities on how to make something better. Or, “Hey, I noticed this. I had this idea here or I saw this that you did here and actually repurposed this into a landing page or a podcast.”
Don’t just say how I can provide value? Come provide a solution, actually come with something in your hand, ready to go because guess what? That gets a lot more attention. I think you were saying that a few minutes ago, Rob, if someone has to ask you how I can provide value and I have to put on your busy schedule and already, I imagine you’re probably already maxed out in bandwidth like all of us are, you don’t have time to figure, “Oh how can this guy, how can user one, two, three, four on Instagram help me out?” I don’t know. Then you forget about the person. You never think about them again.
So research people and be proactive, and come back with a product or a solution proposal and show it to the person.

Rob:
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I think I’ve just experienced this several times and I’m like, I’ve seen it work. It’s worked on me several times. I’m like, “Yeah, there we go. You did it. You showed me value. Thank you.” At the end of the day, we just don’t want to think. We don’t want think. If you give us something and you make us think for five, 10 minutes, we’re too busy. We’re like, there’s so many things. I’m scatter brain. I’m ADHD. If I have to think about… put any thought into a random message that comes my way, I’m like, “I just can’t. I’m so sorry.”
But if it’s like, “Here’s what I can do. I’m working on it now. Here’s how you’re not doing it and here’s how I’ll help you do it,” I’m like, “Oh, that’s a great pitch right there.” The four second power pitch as they call it.

David:
This is a principle of success that I think Chris is a great example to highlight. So Chris, I’m going to get your two cents on this idea. The wrong way to approach getting good at anything is to say, “Oh, that’s a person that’s good at it. Let me just see if they will become my friend or my mentor,” because mentor doesn’t sound bad. That’s a nice word, but what’s it really saying is I want this person who doesn’t know me to do all of the heavy lifting that I don’t want to do myself to learn this thing and help me avoid all the mistakes that they had to go through themselves just because they want to help somebody out. That doesn’t sound as nice as mentor, but that’s what’s behind it. The way that success works is it happens in incremental steps. Okay? If you’re climbing a staircase, the step three quarters of the way up there, you can only get to if you can get to the step beneath it. You cannot skip from the bottom all the way up to the top.
So you have to have some form of a skill, some way to bring value to the world, that you then apply in a different way, that opens up new doors for you, that gives you new skills. Now there are more other doors that you can walk through. You get new skills there, you’re building momentum. So like Chris, what you were saying is you were in SEO, you were in marketing, you kind of understood copywriting. You knew how to get people to find you when they were searching the internet. You turned that into a brokerage that could get leads coming in. You learned a lot about real estate. You learned a lot about helping clients. You got exposure to investing by watching your clients go through this process and learning the system, which made you confident. That confidence allowed you to go buy your properties for yourself.
Now you’ve got the confidence that comes from owning property with the confidence that comes from helping clients. You can now apply this into starting a software company like, “Oh, I know. People need help with this thing. I can solve that problem.” That opens up doors that gets you into private equity or syndications or whatever you’re doing. Every successful person did some form of a trajectory that worked this same pattern. Elon Musk did not start Tesla as his first company. He got into whatever he did with PayPal. And before that, he learned something that gave him skills to get into PayPal.
You can absolutely get mentors, in my opinion, if you’ve already got a skill that you can bring to help them, and then you learn new skills from there. It’s the skipping, “I don’t want to build the skills. I just want to start off at the top,” that stops so many people from finding the connection that they need to get them ahead. And when we say things like bring value, that just is a confusing term because that could be anything. That could be like, “I’ll smile. I’ll be happy. I’ll get you a coffee. I’ll send you an encouraging message,” but that isn’t necessarily going to get the attention of the person that you want to help. It’s got to be something practical.
So I think Chris, you’re a great example of the person that walked that staircase. So Rob, I’ll let you get your question in there. And then I’ll ask you Chris, from your experience, what is a way that you see a person can start building skills right now, that would both benefit them in their wealth building as well as in the mentor that they’re trying to find?

Chris:
So I think the best thing to do there is you got to start off with a self-assessment, self-awareness because at this point, anyone listening to this podcast, I’m assuming they’re probably older than 18 or they’ve got some life experience out of high school. We’re already at that point in our life have inclinations towards items we like. Some skills we developed from some jobs, some courses, whatever it is, like their skills. So I’m a big believer in doubling down on what you’re already doing.
When I got started in real estate, I looked to go do a fix and flip. Did one, made $25,000, and it was a pretty miserable experience. I was like, “Wow, for me to start a fix and flip business, I’m starting a lot of my skills from zero. But if I can lean into existing skill sets, I can keep doubling down those.” So I think it all starts off with doing a self-assessment for two things. What current skills do you have? And then what do you enjoy doing? And I think really aligning those two things is phenomenal because anything that we are going to do, we’re going to put our heart into it. We’re going to put time into it. And I wake up excited every day to go out there and start my job, start my day and just attack the day. I love 90% of what I do, where as I was bouncing around the past and about what business to start, I would research something or start and be like, “Uh.” Kind of a humdrum feeling.
And then if I’m not that… I don’t have that excitement, I can’t go out there and execute. And so I think starting with those two things is very important and then go out there and leverage that into a mentor, into a new business. And I like to look at skills that can be very scalable and that I can go out there and just have a real honest crack at going out there and providing value to multiple people in different terms, but going out there and looking at your own skills and I would say pick one or two that’s already a good skill you have, that has value to the marketplace or whatever niche you want to get into. Go out there and get better at that.
I’m not a big believer in, “Oh, let me go to right field when I’m on first base. Let me stay where I’m at and get better and better and better,” because the more you focus on that, I think you get a better return on your time and your skill sets by getting very, very specialized.

David:
Why don’t we… Chris, do you have a four-step system, editor, you can take this part out, that we can go into?

Chris:
Yeah. I have a four-step system. So it’s that self-awareness like I talked about, and this is for finding mentors, I would say. This is my four-step process for a mentor. So it starts with that self-assessment I just talked about, goes back to what we talked about to research the person. And basically, I’m not going to be diplomatic. Don’t ask stupid questions. Don’t waste the person’s time because if you do, they’re probably not going to return your phone call or not going to return your two-page Instagram DM.
The third step is be proactive and provide a solution the mentor needs, and the four-step is actually follow-up. I call it being pleasantly persistent. Now, when I first started reaching out to Charles or the mentors over the years, I get it. They’re busy. Cool. They don’t reply to one email. I don’t stop there. I don’t go and cry, “Oh, you just stopped calling me. You didn’t email me back.” I get it. He probably gets a 1,000 emails a day. Awesome. Give it a couple days, send it back, do something else and just stay pleasantly persistent.
And as you do that, make sure you execute. So those are very much the four things that I have focused on and I have repeated that process numerous times with really good success.

Rob:
Yeah. I really appreciate the non-diplomatic response here. I think this is probably something that we deal with a lot. If I had a $1 for every time someone reached out and said, “Hey, I’m looking to start a short-term rental business. Do you think you could send me your favorite YouTube video that you’ve done on how to do that?” And I’m like, “You could just go to my YouTube channel and just like… It all teaches it really.” And I’m sure David, how many times have you ever had something that’s like, “All right, man, I’m looking to BRRR any tips?” I’m sure the response is, “Have you read my book?” Because I do have a whole book and it’s the biggest. It’s the greatest assortment of tips out there on how to do a bur.

David:
Yeah, that comes up quite often. I think I just want to highlight, the reason we’re doing this is because we care about the people that are wanting the mentor. We legitimately wish we could help every single person but if we did that, we would never get our workout in. We wouldn’t look like The Rock and then you wouldn’t come to ask us, “How do I do this?” Because I’m not in shape anymore. Right? It’s not a, “I’m better than other people thing.” It’s just logistically, this is impossible. When you get the message where they say, “Hey, I’m looking at these seven deals. Can you analyze all of these for me, and then tell me which one of them you think is the best one?” You go like, “There’s absolutely no way I can do that.”
But you’re so excited and this person wants invest in real estate. You want to help, so what we think is, well, let’s make a video that would show people how to analyze a deal. Then everybody could watch it. In general, yes, you get the whole, “You can read my book or whatever,” but what I tend to find is the people that I’m mentoring the most, if I’m honest, are the people that work in my company. So if someone says to me, “Hey, I really want to learn from you,” I would say, “Well, do you want to work at the wine brokerage? Do you want to work on the David Greene team? Do you want to work on whatever thing that I have going on?” Because I will pour into those people because Chris, like you said, that now becomes a two-way relationship.
I’m sure agents that work in your brokerage have a much better chance of getting your attention and your mentorship than a person who’s like, “Yeah, I’m buying my house with this other company that’s not you, but my realtor doesn’t know what they’re doing. So can you tell me what I could do instead?” That’s a very common one I’ll get and I don’t think people realize it’s the same feeling of you ask a girl out and she says, “No, I’m not interested.” She dates another guy. And then she’s like, “Can you tell me how to communicate better with men? Because my boyfriend doesn’t understand me.” That hurts. You chose to list your house with someone else and then you’re coming to me to say, “How can you list the house?” That’s not a way to get a mentor.
If you came and said, “Hey, would you sell my house? And if you do it, I’d really appreciate if you could show me some of the techniques you use when you’re flipping a property,” now there’s a very clear two-way relationship and we can pour ourselves into it.

Rob:
I really do liken this to Instagram ads and why they work on me so well. I’m such a sucker for an Instagram ad because I don’t like to think about things that I need because I’m just too busy to think about it, but I know for a fact I need more clothes because all my clothes have holes in them. And so if Instagram serves me a picture of a cool guy, strapping with a nice shirt and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a nice shirt. I’m just going to do that because I didn’t have to think about it. You made the decision for me.” I’m such a sucker for ads. I hate it, but it’s very true.
So Chris, I wanted to talk about… Did you cover off on all four of those steps before we move on? What was the fourth one? I think you probably ended there.

Chris:
Yeah. The fourth one kind of muddied up on my explanation. That’s just being the pleasantly persistent, which is a polite way of saying follow-up, but that’s my mindset. I want to be pleasantly persistent, not annoying, but like, “Oh yeah, I got to answer this guy. Oh yeah. This guy, this guy, this guy.” So be pleasantly persistent and then also just falls into execution, which maybe step five. I just assume execution, probably shouldn’t assume that, but execute on what you’re going to say.

Rob:
So that’s the four steps. I think that’s very nice bow on how to find a mentor. I’m sure now you’re probably seeing kind of the opposite end of it now, as you become the mentor. Dave talked about how he takes the different employees in his company and that’s the people that he pours into. I want to start moving in back to-

Chris:
Actually, can I?

Rob:
Yeah.

Chris:
I want to throw one more thing on it because this has been a very interesting shift for me because I’ve been very focused for the last 20 years on finding that mentor to grow, grow, grow, and now with where I’m hitting in my career, now I’m the older, more successful guy that I used to go after. And so I’m having that new effect where I’m kind of changing from always finding mentors, which I still want. I’m still finding bigger and better mentors, but I also have now people reaching out to me that are doing the same approach, which is creating investment opportunities, business opportunities or great employee agent opportunities to where I get to kind of be in that mentor role now, and I always try structure with how I’ve structure the mentors in the past.
And that’s been a super fulfilling, personally fulfilling for me personally, but also very rewarding for me from a financial and business standpoint as well.

Rob:
Yeah. Actually, I’m curious, on the opposite end of this, you said it’s fulfilling, but obviously you’ve been on the end where you’ve tried to get mentors time and time again. You said you’re still there now. At what point now are you looking… How much of a mentor are you looking to be? Are you looking to be a mentor for more people in your life or do you see your role as a mentor more in the content capacity and more in the podcasting capacity where you can influence a much larger group of people?

Chris:
It’s both, because I love the one-on-one mentoring, but the problem is that’s very hard to scale and there is… We all have so many hours in a day that we all have, so have to be realistic about that. So I definitely view the content marketing as like that’s the most scalable way because whether one person listens to it or a million people, it’s about the same amount of work in cost a lot of times. So I focus on a lot of that to do the top of the funnel type branding and providing value, and then looking at various ways to mentor people, whether it’s an agent on my team to go out there and mentor them in their business, or if it’s a new business opportunity where someone can bring, “Hey, I got this idea, can we leverage this and do this?”
So I try to spend most of my time doing the content, but also looking for highly one-on-one relationships that give me a great return on my time for investing in that person.

David:
Funny that you look at relationships in a similar way to how we look at real estate. We don’t put our money into deals that don’t give us a return. We don’t dump money into a property that’s not going to give us some form of cash flow. Right? That mindset that goes into investing really does incorporate into everything else.

Rob:
It really does. I hadn’t really thought about it that way. David, you’re so profound sometimes, man. It’s getting me right here, right in the old [inaudible 00:44:04]. Well, I wanted to ask Chris because obviously, podcasting and in the content side of it was a really big component to this for you. So the content side of it was one of the ways that you wanted to start producing the leads and I wanted to talk about that dichotomy, the marriage of content and lead generation and how you were able to start actually extracting leads from the content that you made? Was that simple to figure out at the beginning or is this something that you’re still figuring out?

Chris:
I’ve been doing this for about 20 years now, so it’s very simple for me. When I got into real estate five or six years ago, I already had so much that I could do it in my sleep. And I think one of my superpowers is that I’m very good at putting myself in the shoes on the other person. They’re on their iPhone, they’re on their laptop. I’m very good at putting myself in their shoes and getting the right information on there.
So my general attitude is that there’s a whole audience out there. A third of the people won’t like me, a third are indifferent, and a third really like me. I don’t care about the people that don’t like me. I don’t care about the indifferent people. I want the people that jive with me, that like me. And so my philosophy is go out there and push a lot of content, and just be very authentic and be very real because people eventually find out who you really are. So just be real from day one and that starts attracting the right people.
Now, what gave me a very… I think a great advantage is I’m also a salesperson. I talk to people, I grab coffee, I make phone calls. I go meet people. I go to networking events. So as I’m going through my investing, as I talk to other people, I know the tools people need. I know the questions they have. So provide all the content and then do the classic lead magnet. What do people need? Well, spreadsheets and local market trend reports, they work amazingly well. So Hey, here’s a toolkit. Here’s your… I call it your Denver real estate investing toolkit. Go to the website, download it. You get, I think it’s like three or four spreadsheets. You get a bunch of local trends, data, a few maps of what’s going on around town, and so a lot of people come opt into there.
And so it’s just the next step in the relationship. And then I get to talk to the person. And my first goal was just to every time someone opted in, I got their phone number and I called them and I would build the relationship up that way. And so at first, it was just a very small stream, a very small trickle. And then as you produce content, it’s like compounding interest. If you do it the right way, it builds up every single month. I think we all know the power of compounding interest. We’ve all seen like the 401k stock graphs and by year 20 or 30, you’re making more money off your interest than you are what you put in, and I view content marketing as the same way.
It starts compounding in two ways. You get more and more reach out there as you get different SEO and different long tail stuff out there. But also, since real estate’s such a big pipeline, people listen to me for a year or two and then reach out, “Oh, I want to invest. Oh, I should talk to that Chris guy.” And so as leads start coming in, I’d call every single person and help that individual out, put the game plan together and do the process. Well, then it got to the point where I had too many leads I couldn’t handle myself, and I started getting busier and busier. So I actually started taking the phone number off the form and started going more towards a marketing approach.
So I would just do that incremental stair step like Dave was talking about on… Every time I’d get to that next part of the funnel, I would figure out what do I need to do to scale? What do I need to do to kind of take this campaign or my business up one level? And that’s just a constant re-evaluation of what’s the best opportunity and what stuff is going to get off my plate? What’s not working well? Because making phone calls to everyone is great in the beginning, but it’s a lot of voicemails, a lot of time and eventually it gets to be too much, and then you adjust and grow from there.
So I very much focus on just content, lead gen, connecting with people. And then my ultimate goal is when I have my agents, I want to drown them in leads. That was my goal from day one. That’s the game I play. I’m like, “Oh, David, you’re on my team. All right. My goal is to drown you in leads,” and that’s just my competitive nature and gives me a really good focus.

Rob:
Yeah. Let’s talk about the lead magnet side of it because we’re talking about providing value to people. Right? And so your lead magnet to people is a piece of valuable digital real estate, if you will, right? A PDF that teaches you how to do something. You said it was the Denver investor toolkit. So that right there already, if you go and you open that and you read it, it’s going to give you some fundamentals about investing in Denver, that teaches that person a lot. You have now given that to them. In return, you’ve probably gathered their information, their name, email, maybe phone number, and that right there establishes a relationship. They trust you because you’ve given them something that they’re going to use. And now there is the opportunity for you to communicate them, whether it’s via email, whether it’s phone calls. For me, lead magnets are a really big part of my business too.
I provide as many lead magnets as I can. I have all the gear you need to start a YouTube business. I have lists of furniture that people can use to furnish their Airbnbs. I have the different models that you can invest in real estate, and I give all that away for free to people. And in return, I get a lot of different leads for the different businesses that I run and it’s not complicated. It really isn’t. A lead magnet’s going to cost you a 100 bucks in design fees. It’ll cost you Chris, your time to copyright it, give it to a designer, they design it, you advertise it through your content, and then people will download it because spoiler alert, people love free stuff.

Chris:
Really?

Rob:
I know. It’s a crazy concept. Right? So that really is the lifeblood of a lot of the businesses that I’m running behind the scenes, is just giving that content away for free. Obviously, the ultimate lead magnet is your podcast, but then if you can give someone a tangible thing, it’s just one more like, “Oh, thank you for this. I really appreciate it.” So on the side of the lead magnet, do those typically produce pretty quality leads from you or are you still having to filter them out quite a bit?

Chris:
No. They’re very high quality leads. You guys ever watch Glengarry Glen Ross? That Alec Baldwin show or the old Alec Baldwin movie?

Rob:
I don’t think so.

Chris:
You haven’t seen that? Oh, okay. Got homework. Go Google Glengarry Glen Ross and watch an eight minute video on there, and it’s a 90s movie with real estate brokerages in there, and it’s a great scene with Alec Baldwin in there. And they call him the Glengarry leads. And so the Glengarry leads are like the great leads. And so through that marketing, since I’ve already established myself, I give so much away for free publicly, again, people like me or they don’t. People are like, “Oh, you know what? Chris is an idiot. Chris is investing. Philosophy is silly. I don’t want to do that. I want to do this.” They generally don’t come out and reach to me.
I’m not a wholesaler. I’m not into fixing the flips. So in the beginning I got a lot of people reaching out, but as I’ve established my brand and the content, I have very, very few people reaching out. And now when people reach out, they’re usually an amazing fit for what we can provide in the various services and help them go out there and invest in real estate. And then through the funnel and through all that, we have a very highly qualified lead base in investors. And so, no I have… So to back up on there, the better the content, the better the marketing, the better the person, the better the lead. And so I very much focus on that to attract the right person.

Rob:
That makes sense and I’m told also that you have a very unique form of a business card. Do you think you could talk about that a little bit too?

Chris:
Oh, I actually might be able to show you too. I got a row of them back here behind me. This is, I think one of my strengths and also probably one of my weaknesses, is I like to be creative. So oftentimes I reinvent the wheel when I shouldn’t, but the other side of the corner is oftentimes I get some really good ideas. So I actually don’t have a business card. I don’t have the standard business card to give to people because when I get business cards, 90% of the time they’re in the trash can when I get home. Now, if I actually make a meaningful contact, yes, I’m going to talk to that person. But most of the time, oh, a business card, whatever. If there’s no relationship there, people throw it away.
So what I have focused on is self-publishing books. I have published four books for Denver and Colorado real estate investing. So a very, very specific niche, and to go out there and self-publish a book, you can do it for less than a $1,000. Take some time, hire some people on Fiver, but you can do it for very inexpensive through Amazon or these different self-publishing sites. So I took knowledge in specific niches, like Invest in Colorado, or a really good one I have is The Ultimate House Hacking Guide for Denver, and that’s very geared towards house hackers in Denver. So super niche focused. So I publish those books and that’s actually one of the lead magnets, I give away my website. Plus when I meet people, I always carry a stack of books in my car. I have a couple on my laptop bag and I give it to people. So it’s just a couple things here then. If you’re an author and whether it’s a great book or a junk book, you have instant credibility. Now of course, always strive for great content actually give great value, but instant credibility.
But the second thing is people don’t throw away books. We are wired to revere books. Maybe it’s different now with younger generations growing up with internet age, but when I grew up, you just really respect, you trust books. And one of my lending partners out in here, Joe Massey, we do a lot of work together. And every year we publish an annual guide to invest in Colorado. So nine months ago I was at his office. We were just catching up and BSing, and on his bookshelf behind him, he had 30 books from 2019 and I was like, “Dude, why don’t you throw those away? They’re kind of useless. They’re outdated to keep a couple around.” He’s like, “I cannot bring myself to throw them away. Even though they’re completely… I don’t need them anymore, I cannot throw away books.” When was the last time you guys threw away a book?

David:
No, I’d be more likely to go drop it off at a bookstore somewhere because it feels wrong to throw away a book.

Chris:
Exactly.

David:
Burning book is sacrilegious. Right?

Chris:
Yeah. And so that’s why I like it because people don’t throw it away. What happens? It usually hangs out in bookshelf for months or years or decades. And so if that lays around the coffee table, next to me the bookshelf, well, they’re constantly seeing my name and then they don’t get rid of it. So I have done this to my old business and I think it’s one of the best growth hacks out there. And yes, it takes time, but here’s a secret to doing it. There’s this really cool website called www.google.com. If you go in there, how to self-publish a book, you can find amazing content on how to actually go out there and self-publish a book, pick a niche and go out there, publish a book and create your business card that way. Instant credibility and then your business card, AKA your book, it hangs around that person’s apartment, their house for decades to come.

David:
Yeah. I did the same thing. I wrote a book called How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar, and that’s something that we give to clients whenever they’re interested in it. So I think that that’s really smart. It’s also, in the world we live in now, nobody wants to pick up the phone and call someone that they don’t know, but they will stalk you online. They will find everything that they can about you without having to directly confront you. So a book sort of allows them to satiate their curiosity about let me know about this person without having to face rejection or awkwardness of a real conversation. We do the same thing with a lot of our listings where buyers don’t want to call and talk to an agent, but they will text. So we set it up where if they text, they can get pictures of the house and ask questions and chat with people, and then you can transition that into a phone call.
Something that I noticed you do different than other realtors and even maybe investor friendly realtors is that you’re obsessed with return on equity, which is cool because I think about this constantly. I teach and talk about it all the time. Can you tell us what this means and why it matters?

Chris:
Yes. I think everyone’s played Monopoly and I consider return on equity the way to go from a greenhouse to a red hotel, and kind of skipping that second, third and fourth greenhouse. So it’s a powerful way to scale up your properties and also scale up your portfolio. And this took me about nine months to truly wrap my head around, but once it clicked, it changed everything. It changed my own investing, changed [inaudible 00:56:38] clients and changed my business trajectory as well.
So a lot of the content out there, a lot of the education, a lot of our focus is on, hey, what’s the deal today? Let’s go out there and look at a property. What’s the cash on cash return? What’s the cap rate? Is there a good deal today? Which is a very important metric, but if I bought a property six years ago in Denver, a lot of things have changed. The market has changed. That property has changed and especially the last six years, appreciation has skyrocketed. And so it’s another way that the market gives you a return and I think a lot of us know that leverage is critical to success in real estate, and often while we get double digit, sometimes triple digit returns, because we can use leverage in real estate, which a lot other asset classes you can’t do.
And so if you think about a simple fraction, you have the numerator on top, the denominator on bottom, the numerator is the money that you’re making. So in that one year, it’s the cash flow, it’s the appreciation, it’s the tax benefits. It’s your tenants paying down your property. So it’s four ways you make money in real estate. That’s the numerator. The denominator, when you first buy the property is your initial investment. Great. I put down $50,000. I’m going to make $10,000 a year in cash and appreciation. Great. We know that return, but then after you get into years two and three and four, you can no longer just use your initial investment because your equity is starting to grow.
And you get into this really interesting, I say almost tension when looking at properties because what people see is their cash flow goes up and that’s usually the biggest metric in how we look at how well real estate is performing. So your cash flow is going up and a lot of times your appreciation is going up and all that, all your returns, but your denominator is growing as well. So if your denominator is growing $50,000 a year from appreciation debt pay down and your numerator is growing $10,000 a year, well that return gets smaller and smaller every year.
And so, one of my mentors out here, he’s just a brilliant, brilliant person. He mapped it all out. And a lot of times after about eight to 10 years, you start getting returns similar to the stock market as your real estate gets unlevered. And so the key with return equity is looking at, hey, how is this performing? Now, when you look at that, you can often see a 100%, 80%, 70% returns, but every year, especially… I should say every year, but in the markets we’ve seen the market conditions last 10 years and markets like Denver, a lot of other appreciated markets, you actually start getting a lower percent return on your money, now your equity, even though your cash flow is going up. So it’s vital for investors to go out there and figure out how to analyze it.
And I’ll give you a perfect example on how this happened to me. I bought my first place about 11 or 12 years ago. Before I was into real estate, before I was a realtor, I just knew things were so cheap and I needed a place to live. I should go buy something. I bought a condo for about $70,000, two bedroom, two bathroom condo, had a roommate and house acted it and got a private loan on there, 0% down at 5%, amazing loan condition. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time. And in my mind I was like, “Wow, why would I ever sell this property? I bought it for so low. I’m having an infinite return on my investment of zero. Why would I ever sell the property?” Right?
Well, fast forward seven years, [inaudible 00:59:59] I was like, “Oh, I’m going to sell this bad boy,” because what happened is I took this condo that went from $70,000 to $230,000, cash flow on the 1,000, 2,000 bucks a year, nothing great, but was paying the bills. And then I was sitting on about $180,000 in equity, and as I realized I could sell that or I could actually extract the equity, either through a cash out refi or sell and do a 1031 to kick taxes down the road, and I could take that equity and redeploy it. So I sold it, did 1031 and bought a fourplex. And now that fourplex makes me $1,000 to $2,000 a month in cash flow when I trade it up, and not only was the cash flow was there, but now I went from a $230,000 asset to an $800,000 asset.
So now I’m getting more appreciation, more debt pay down, more tax benefits. I increased all my returns and basically took that condo from not just a lower cash flow, but it was like a 5% return equity. Now I’m making a 25% return on my money with the fourplex. So that concept was extremely powerful for me. And then if you guys have any questions on there, we can talk about that, but I actually want to spend some time and talk about how I shifted that into helping my clients and that turned into some really cool business opportunities as well about repurposing skills into more opportunities.

Rob:
Sure. Yeah, let’s hit that.

Chris:
All right. And so this kind of came from the mindset and you guys are marketers, we are all in the minds of how do we repurpose content? Like the standard thing to say, we got an hour long podcast, let’s take a 42nd clip, post it to social. That’s repurposing content. It is a key pillar for success in marketing. And so I’ve trained my mind to always go out there and repurpose, repurpose, repurpose and years ago, the light bulb went off for me that, oh, I can repurpose skills. I can repurpose business processes that I’m doing into other products, whether it’s a different business or an info product. Like you’re an Airbnb expert, Rob. You know everything about Airbnb. You can turn that into a course or a download or coaching to go out there and you can repurpose that skill.
So I always look for how to repurpose things. It’s just a maximum return on my time. So this eagerness to learn return equity was for me and my investing. Light bulb went off and I was like, “Oh, well, I’m going to go out there and do a detailed write up on this condo trade up I did.” And now that became a great content piece of my website, my podcast. It’s actually one of the top content pieces ever produced. Draws on a lot of people, but actually help clients go out there and invest more. So it actually draws people in and helps me do more business and helps clients reach their goals by getting a better return.
And then through all that, we started developing ways to go out there and scale that so we could help clients more. Now, I built a spreadsheet and it was the spreadsheet I used to analyze my own condo to fourplex trade up. It was great and I used that for two to three years with people. Well, it just is very hard to scale a spreadsheet. And then what happens when you have a guy with nine properties? Let me make nine spreadsheets. Let me do all these different scenarios. I should cash out refi, I should do this. And you start getting, “Oh, now I have to create 50 spreadsheets.” You can’t scale that way.
So that pivoted into, wow, we need a software platform to go out there and actually be able to scale this and model these for clients. And of course, my first thought process was, hey, go out there and find the website to do it. Well, there was none out there and there was another light bulb, “Hey, we’re not the only people that need this. We can go out there, create it, create for our business, which would be key here. And if it works, awesome. If it takes off, great. It might be a whole other business because return on equity and housing properties is not specific to Denver. It’s not specific to Colorado. That service is needed for investors all around the country and all around the world.
And this goes back into… I call it, the riches are in the niches. This is a very niche thing that started out in a very, very specific market in a very small market segment. And then going deep on that and looking how to repurpose that grew into opportunities and services and software, and go out there and help other people around the country. So it was a big way. I took a concept for me and then repurposed it across marketing, across legion, across helping clients, and just some new business opportunities as well. And then starting to scale national as well.

Rob:
That’s amazing. That’s smart. That’s a very smart way to kind of swoop in and sort of just command that space. David, I know you’re relatively obsessed with the idea of a return on equity as well and you speak about this quite a bit. How are you doing the whole execution of return on equity in real-life?

David:
I have a great anecdotal example of what this looks like when you do it using several of the strategies that we’re teaching here at BiggerPockets and how exponentially powerful this can be. So I bought a property in Buckeye, Arizona several years ago and it was doing well. The problem is they started building a lot of new home construction around this house that I bought. So the value of my home was going up because new more expensive houses were coming in and there were now higher comps, but the rent wasn’t going up because most of these new homes were being bought and then rented out. So there’s too much competition for my rent to actually increase.
So I ended up with that numerator, denominator thing that you were talking about, Chris, where the equity in the home was increasing at a faster pace than the rent was going up. And so my return on investment wasn’t really climbing. So I sold that house. I think that I had probably put down like $60,000. It had climbed about $80,000 in value over a year-and-a-half or so. And I took that $80,000 in profit and I bought a house cash in Jacksonville, Florida. This was the first house that I bought out there and I ended up doing the BRRR Method on that property. So I recovered a 100% of my capital. I had almost the same cash flow on that deal as I had had in the Buckeye deal, but I had my $80,000 back, which I bought another house.
And then I used these long distance investing as well as value add as well as bur altogether. And I just kept using that same $80,000 to buy another house every three to six months, while I was still saving money to buy new properties. That one house turned into 10. On average, each of those homes had about $40,000 in equity when I was finished with them, which was $400,000 instead of the $80,000 that had been sitting in the original house. And then from there, I was able to build relationships with contractors, relationships with other wholesalers and people that were now bringing me deals because I’m the guy doing all the business out there. That led to more deals outside of just that initial $80,000.
And then the cash flow ended up being several thousand dollars, probably $4,000 to $5,000 on those 10 properties. And it’s a great example of had I just wrote it out and like, “Oh, it’s doing good. Why mess with it?” Or, “Oh, I have a really good interest rate on that property. I don’t want to have to lose it and get a higher rate on another property,” I would’ve missed out on not only the $400,000 in equity and the $4,000 in cash flow, but also the other 30 homes that I ended up buying in that same area, which I ended up selling and then doing the exact same thing like, “Oh, the cash flow’s not keeping up with the growth. Let’s sell it.” Did a 1031. Now I’ve got into more expensive properties that are short-term rentals, the cash flow’s going to be even higher. I added around a $1,000,000 in equity just from moving the money from one to another. If you look at on day of closing, what they appraise for versus what I paid, just that one move gained a million.
So in a sense you could say, I took $60,000, invested it in a property that went up to $80,000. I reinvested the $80,000 and turned that into not only a million in the new equity, but I’ve been paying that loan down for a while and the properties have been appreciating as well. That’s several million dollars over the course of, it’s probably seven or eight year time frame. Now, there’s a lot of things that go into that. We’ve had a really hot market. We’ve had a bull run. It’s not like this is going to happen every time, but you are going to have the same pattern happen every time. You’re going to see exponential increases when you take action with the tools that we talk about.
I just wanted to tell that story as a way of highlighting. You described the concept really well and I think people go, “Ooh, that sounds good.” Well, this is what it looks like when you actually do it. That’s a little bit more exciting when you can see how it plays out.

Chris:
Exactly. And kind of the way I pivot that for myself and our clients is that a lot of people sit down with a financial advisor and be their stock portfolio every year. “Hey, what do we need to rebalance? Do we need to go from change your stock allocation to higher buying allocation and all that stuff?” I think people should sit down and do an annual portfolio review and give themselves a reality check. Very few people do it, but I think it’s a great habit of doing it. And a common mistake I see is that people look at, “Oh, I bought this property five years ago. I bought for a seven cap. Okay, great. I’m going to let it ride.” No, no, no, no. You have to reevaluate that property at today’s value. What’s today’s cap rate? What’s today’s metric? What’s today’s value? What’s today’s rent? And is it a good investment today?
And that parlays into what David was talking about with analyzing, hey, if you have a bigger equity run up versus a cash flow run up, probably makes most sense to extract the equity or sell in 1031. So I’m personally having a look into my properties every single year, if not more frequently. I’m not a real active trader. I kind of do more of a swing every couple years. Trade up is my goal that fits my personality and strategies very, very well, but I would highly recommend investors out there, look at their portfolio every year. And if we have agents or lenders out there in a space, you want to create an amazing value for your clients. Do that, sit down with your clients, your investors once year, help them look at their portfolio. It’s going to do two things. You’ll help them reach their goals. You’ll also do more transactions, which is a good win-win.

Rob:
Man, I have just been waiting because I quit my full-time job about 15, 16 months ago. And obviously now to a bank, I look super broke when I’m doing okay, and I’ve just been waiting for my income to, “Season on my taxes,” for two years, so I could go out and get loans and stuff because I have so many houses with equity in them that I can’t touch. I just can’t do anything because I can’t qualify. And now, I just did my taxes. And finally, I’ve got my original house, the house that really kicked started a lot for me. And I used the equity to build other houses and cash out of those. That house has half a million, $600,000 of equity in it that I’m just like, “Oh, the things I could do with you if I just had access to the money.”
So yeah, I’m really excited. I am bummed because my interest rate on that is 3.2%, 5%. So I think we know it’s probably not going to stay at 3.25%, but just like you guys were saying, the yields from whatever properties I get into will definitely offset that extra a 100, 200, 300 bucks that I’m going to be paying.

Chris:
Yeah. And that’s another thing. People get stuck on the interest like, “Oh I got this property. It’s worth a $1,000,000 or $300,000 loan balance, but I got a three and a quarter interest rate.” Okay, great. That’s definitely a great interest rate, but let me show you what you’re missing out on, and that’s where people have to understand that real estate’s way more than just cash flow because right now you trade up, you’re not going to see a lot of times a big swing in cash flow. Of course, if you go to Airbnb or a higher cash flow model, yes, but long-term to long-term rental, you’ll see some cash flow increase, but what you really see is a bigger asset increase in NOI, net operating income.
And I always view NOI as future cash flow. As that property pays off or as things go, that is future cash flow. I think that’s a very important metric to look at when doing these evaluations, is not just cash flow, but what’s the overall return to really maximize that and realize, hey, a lot of this, it’s future wealth. It’s delayed gratification.

Rob:
Very true. Yeah. David slapped me around when we first met. He was like, “Dude, it’s not just about cash flow. Stop it.” And he shook me and I was like, “You’re right, you’re right Sensei.” And now I realize when you factor in cash flow, debt pay down appreciation, all that stuff, your return is double. It’s double usually what the cash flow is at a minimum. So thank you, David. You changed me. You changed how I think.

David:
People don’t get to hear this very often because the majority of real estate educators, they only understand cash flow themselves. And so that’s all that’s talked about and because cash flow is like what everybody starts off wanting, it’s the training wheels that you don’t always grow out of. Now that doesn’t mean cash isn’t important. It plays a very important role. You still need cash flow but just for an example, with the 1031 that I just described, my cash flow did go up, but let’s say I didn’t go into the 1031 space. And so let’s say theoretically, my cash flow stayed relatively the same. Well, I still took that $130,000 in debt that I owned on the Buckeye house and I turned that into, by burring and then doing the 1031 around $13 million of debt. So now I have the tenants that would’ve been paying off $130,000 are now paying off $13 million.
I took the overall amount of the house was worth around like say $200,000 or in that range. Okay? And that’s been now turned into a little over $15 million. So imagine if your property appreciates by 10%, a $200,000 house goes up 20 grand, a $15 million portfolio goes up by $1.5 million. Then because I’m value adding it every single turn, I’m also forcing equity at every single exchange of stuff. So every time I go out there and I’m buying deals and I’m getting them below market value, and then I’m doing stuff to add value, to fix them up, you’re forcing equity… I call it buying equity when you buy it below market value, but you’re just taking all these tools that we teach at BiggerPockets. They only make sense when you apply them and you have to be buying property to be able to use them. When you just buy it and it sits there, that is a strategy. It’s not wrong.
I buy every property assuming I’m going to hold it forever, but then you play the cards that you get dealt. And what we just got dealt was ridiculous inflation and huge appreciation and all this opportunity. Now there’s loan products where I can use to buy a house with that service instead of my own income, and buying is fun and easy again. And you take all this knowledge that people have been soaking up for the last five to six years, you start applying it. It’s sort of like watching these workout videos, knowing everything about working out, but you never go to the gym. You actually got to go work out to apply the stuff you’re using.
So I love, Chris, that you’re sharing this information as a broker, as a person representing clients. Guys, this is what to look for when you’re picking your agent or you’re picking your broker. You want a person that knows how to build your wealth, not the person who says, “Well, my commission is the cheapest,” or not the person who says, “I’m a marketing expert.” There’s a whole lot of stuff that agents have learned how to say. One of my favorites is, “I’m the neighborhood expert,” and people forget that no buyer ever cares where the listing agent lives or what they know about. They’re never going to even know the name of the listing agent, but yet listing agents can come along and say, “I’m the expert in this neighborhood and I know more.”
No, look for an advisor. Look for a person with experience that has done this, that is passionate about helping you grow your wealth and then develop a two-way relationship. Send them referrals, support their business, help them in the same way that you want them to help you. And in my opinion, in the real estate space, there is no better way for your average American to become a millionaire, to build massive wealth than just hitting these fundamentals repeatedly. Nothing I’m describing, nothing that we’ve described on the show is a massive home run that you just fell into or you got lucky. It’s just getting base hits, drawing walks, getting on base, slowly advancing forward, and then letting the power of real estate do its thing.
So this episode has me excited for all the people who have been watching and they’ve wanted to get in the game, but these really low rates and this artificial demand that we’ve created has kept anyone from being able to buy. You had to be the one out of 10 buyers for the last six to seven years to even have a chance of getting that house, and now the force has finally become balanced. Buyers are getting some leverage, a lot of your competition’s backing out. So you can actually use these tools that we’ve been religiously teaching all the time to get your butt in the gym and get those gains, get those financial gains. So thank you Chris, for sharing this. I’m going to move us on to the last segment of our show. This is the world famous-

Speaker 4:
Famous Four.

David:
All right, Chris, in this segment of the show, Rob and I will take turns firing questions off at you, one by one, and we are interested to see what you think. So the first question is what is your favorite real estate related book?

Chris:
My favorite one is What Every Real Estate Investor Needs To Know About Cash Flow and 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli. I read this book years ago. It’s actually one of the few books I actually referenced back on a regular basis, because it is a deep, deep dive into metrics and very advanced stuff, but this helped me really understand all those advanced returns, return equity that we just spent the last 15 minutes talking about. So this has been the most critical book for me in real estate.

Rob:
Awesome. What is your favorite business book?

Chris:
Oh man, that changes every time. I’ll give you two answers. So my all time favorite right now is Good To Great, Jim Collins book from I think 20, 25 years ago. And just one of the phrases that stuck in there with me was, “The right people on the bus,” because this book looked at a bunch of companies and just the great companies. How do you go from a good company to a great company?
And the thing that I remember was they focused on the right people on the bus and as your business grows, your seats change. And sometimes people no longer fit in a seat or you have to get a new person. “Oh wow. We have a new seat. We got to go fill this.” It’s all about getting the right person on the bus. And so that stuck with me and along that same theme, my current favorite business book is Who Not How, which is a very similar concept, just picking the right people.
And so that has been a key concept that’s really changed my business and how I’ve been able to scale things, and also just grow. So Good To Great and Who Not How.

Rob:
That’s awesome. You can kind of see it in the background. My buddy just mailed me that book this week and it was a note from Amazon. It said, “I think this book is going to change your life.” And I was like, “Everybody keeps telling me to read it.” So it’s going to happen this week. It will be the only book I’ve read since the BRRR Bible by David Greene, running joke on the podcast because it is the last book that I’ve read.

Chris:
BRRible.

Rob:
The BRRinle, I like that. Chris, whenever you’re not masterfully executing the art of getting a great return on equity, what are some of your hobbies?

Chris:
So I have two young girls and I just absolutely love them. So spending time with them, a lot of typical things other than Colorado, beautiful state, so outdoor activities, hiking, and also just kind of spending time with my girls to teach them life skills. This has been a very interesting thing for me. I’ve always known I love mentoring, but to actually be able to create and mentor little human beings into real human beings has been a very fulfilling thing.
So a lot of my time goes on there and then I go on an annual retreat every year. I don’t even say a retreat, but just an annual trip every year. And a lot of times they get older. It’s more like canoe trips or whitewater rafting trips, get unplugged for 10 days. I go with a couple friends who are not in real estate and it’s just a complete unplug and I find it very mentally refreshing. And so only seven days there where I don’t think about business or real estate.
And so getting that unplugged or unplugging is very, very critical to my mental health, I would say.

David:
In your opinion, what sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

Chris:
Oh, man. Where do we start the list on that? I think some common ones, I’d say two common ones are people don’t have patience. Real estate is not hard to get rich in, but it takes time. If you do what we talked about, like David was talking about, you do that for decades, you can become a multi, multi millionaire, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not hard, but it takes time.
So I think people lack, patience and going along with that long-term perspective, that patience in mind is a lot of people set themselves up for failure from the beginning. Hey, if this is going to be a 30 year career for, it’s going to set you up so you’re can retire one day and you’re thinking about your future grandkids, taking care of them, well, you got to get through year one, two and three to worry about 30 years or 300 years from now.
And when people make the transition to being an agent or an investor or they quit their job and go full time, they don’t give themselves a financial runway because it all takes time to go out there and start a business and go investing. And I think everyone should go out there and structure a financial runway. When I pivoted to my real estate business five, six years ago, we structured things with my wife where she’s a veterinarian, stable W2, complete opposite to what I do, entrepreneur and investing, but everything was structured where we could live off of her salary. No problem.
And so we’d plan out. So if like two, three, four years, I did not have to have the pressure of worrying about paying bills from my income. I go out there reinvest money and reinvest my time to go out there and build a much bigger income. So I think having that patience, but with patience, you have to make sure you can get from 30 years past month three. So have a financial runway.

Rob:
Great. Very wise words. Thanks man. Yeah. Finally, Chris, can you tell us more about where people can find you on the internet if they want to find out more about you, how they can work with you, all that kind of stuff?

Chris:
Well, since I’m a marketer and I’m SEO, the best way is actually Google Chris Lopez Denver, Chris Lopez real estate. If I do my job, I’ll pop up on there, but actually something I want to plug and I’m very excited about is I’m in the process of recording a bunch of house hacking videos for the BiggerPockets YouTube channel. We actually just recorded our last one like two days ago and I’ve done a few YouTube series with BiggerPockets. I absolutely love it.
And so I love for people to go check it out. It’s called the House Hackers Ride Along, and it’s a very unique look at house hacking, which I think is a phenomenal way of getting into investing. We go through and look at different strategies and different people and how they execute it. A single person, a married couple, a family with kids, having to go out there and house hack. We talk about their strategy. We go walk the property. And then of course, we talk about return on equity. What I call the house hack stack, which is a great way to do it.
So Google me or go check out that new house hacking series, which should be live once its podcast publishes.

Rob:
Awesome, man. And David, what about you? Where can people find you on the internet?

David:
Go to YouTube, David Greene real estate or David Greene 24 on pretty much all of social media, and I’ve been putting out more content. So let me know what you guys think or what you’d like to see more. And then Rob, where can people find?

Rob:
You can always find me on YouTube at Robuilt, R-O-B-U-I-L-T. Actually, feel free to Google it. Google Robuilt. Maybe some SEO will start kicking in for me. You can also find me on Instagram @Robuilt, and TikTok, Robuilto, if you want to see me do funny little dances.

David:
There it is. All right, Chris, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us today and everybody make sure you go check out Chris on the BiggerPockets YouTube channel. Let us know in the comments what you think about what he’s doing. My opinion, I’m sure Chris would second it, house hacking is the most powerful strategy in all of real estate right now for both beginners and experienced investors.
Unless you are like at that Ken McElroy level where you’re buying a $100,000,000 apartment complexes, house hacking is something that you need to be doing constantly and then adding in everything else we talk about here as a supplement. Chris, I will let you get out of here. Great job today. Thank you for joining us and keep flying the BP flag out there in Denver, Colorado, the Mecca. This is David Greene for Rob funny-dances-online Abasolo signing off.

CNBC’s Diana Olick joins ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss dips in mortgage demand after the weekly average on 30-year fixed rate loan surpasses 6% for the first time since 2008.

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie episode …

Katie:
Two hundred …

Tony:
And seventeen.

Ashley:
Get out of here.

Katie:
And really when you’re working with guests, working with tenants, or working with your cleaners, there’s three things, right? Treat others as you want to be treated. It’s pretty simple. A golden rule to live by irregardless of if you’re paying someone or they’re paying you. Two is just treating them as real humans. They have bad days. I have bad days. The third thing is just leading with honesty. It goes both ways. The more that you are honest with them, they’ll bring it back to you.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I am here with my cohost, Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast, where every week, twice a week we bring you the inspiration, information, education you need to kickstart your investing journey. And usually I start off with a cool review from iTunes or wherever, but I don’t do that today. Today I’m just going to ask you, please leave us a review on whatever platform it is you listen to. The more reviews we get, more people we can help. And that’s our goal here at the Rookie show is to help folks. Ashley Kehr, what’s going on? We’re here.

Ashley:
Yeah, we’re in Denver.

Tony:
We’re in Denver.

Ashley:
Tonight we are doing a Real Estate Rookie meet up with Denver’s badass investing group. We’re doing a joint meet up tonight at Rhino Brewery. Super excited to meet tons of rookies and other investors and just kind of network.

Tony:
And if you guys aren’t here, obviously this is going to come out. We’ll have already have done this. But if you guys want to come to the next meet up, I don’t know, I guess let us know in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group where you guys want to do this next. Ashley and I have this dream of going on the road with all things BiggerPockets and Real Estate Rookie.

Ashley:
Rookie Road Trip.

Tony:
So maybe if you guys get active and let the people know where you want us to go next, we can try and set something up in your city.

Ashley:
We both really want the Rookie road trip dream. We just visualize it differently. Tony visualizes flying out there meeting me, and I visualize it in a camper van traveling across country. We got to find a way to make those two dreams [inaudible 00:02:08]

Tony:
But either way, we got a really good show for you guys today. It’s a little bit different. We decided we should take advantage of the fact that we’re here in Denver. We brought some BiggerPockets employees on, or a employee plus a husband onto the podcast today. We’ve got Katie and Evan.
And I learned a lot about their story today too. I didn’t even know how big their portfolio was. But they shared so many good insights on working together as husband and wife, about not being afraid to take action, investing in different markets, appraisal issues. I feel like we touched on so many good things.

Ashley:
Yeah. My favorite thing that they touched on was relationships just between themselves as partners, but also relationships with other people, and how they handle that and how they actually add value to other people. And that’s more of a priority to them than actually taking value from other people. Evan talks about that a lot, and that’s a really great piece of advice that I think you guys should take away from this podcast.

Tony:
And Katie had a 30 second piece right near the beginning of the episode. And I don’t want to spoil it, but just look, I call it out after she says this. Just make sure you guys listen for that part as well. But overall fantastic episode. Whether you’re a husband and wife duo listen to this, or you’re just a new investor in general, you’ll definitely get some value from hearing their story.

Ashley:
And they’re also both working full-time jobs and building this real estate business.

Tony:
And they have a new baby.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
Yeah. Katie, Evan, we’re super excited to have you both here. This is a different podcast, even for me and Ash because we’re in-person. We’re doing this in Denver near the BiggerPockets HQ, and we got some special guests. For the folks who don’t know you, and Katie maybe we’ll start with you, who are you guys? Why are you here on the show today? And tell us what makes you maybe a more special, not more special guest, but there’s something special about you that maybe most guests can’t talk about.

Katie:
Well, thank you guys for flying to Denver to meet us and to hang out. This is so great. We’re really excited that you’re here, so thanks for being here. My name is Katie Miller. I am our general manager of our publishing division at BiggerPockets. I started at BiggerPockets, wow, five years ago now almost to the day.
I applied to a job posting that was on a startup website portal. And sent in my resume, and probably 20 minutes later Scott Trench calls me on my cell phone, and here I am. Yeah, we’ve started with just a couple books and now we have almost 37. A couple of them are in queue. And yeah, so I love it. I love BiggerPockets. Really excited to be here today with my husband, Evan.

Tony:
And let’s not mention the book that Ash and I have been super delinquent on one day that book will make it to the public.

Ashley:
I think we signed the contract to it almost a year ago now.

Tony:
Probably.

Katie:
No pressure, but I really want to publish it.

Tony:
I’m moving a little bit faster.

Katie:
You know what? It doesn’t even matter. We got a book deal. I wasn’t going to bring it up, but now that you did.

Tony:
[inaudible 00:05:07] Evan, what about you, brother?

Evan:
Yeah. I’m Evan, Katie’s husband. And I actually had started listening to BiggerPockets before I met Katie. And then she was working a different job when we started dating and stuff. But had bought a house downtown, and just really liked the process, looking at a lot of architecture houses, the inside and outside of Denver and surrounding area. And I really enjoyed that, so I wanted to keep doing it.
I actually just Googled real estate and investing in real estate, and found Brandon’s how to invest in real estate with no or low money down. And that was before Katie was on the team, so the books have gotten a lot more polished and awesome since then. But that one was, it kind of got me hooked. And it was really cool that Katie found a job posting on BiggerPockets, I was like, “I listen to them every day, twice a day.” And so it’s been kind of history ever since, but that’s-

Ashley:
I want to know who is more excited about this actual job, Katie or you.

Evan:
… I’m pumped about it. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff like this, I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I knew BiggerPockets was in Denver, which I thought was pretty crazy once I learned that listening to Josh and Brandon. I was like, “Oh, sweet. It’s like we’re sort of neighbors, but I have no idea where you guys are.”
And then since then getting to go to conferences, showing up at things like this, meetups, getting to meet a podcast host like you guys, it’s been really cool. And then also getting to see the behind the scenes of how BiggerPockets works. And as a consumer of their content, I’ve really enjoyed that.

Tony:
I think something else that’s unique about the two of you, and I don’t know if we said this already, but your husband and wife. And I know me and my wife, Sarah, we’re business partners, husband and wife duo. And there’s always, I think, a lot of questions that come up about what does that dynamic look like, how did you get the other person on board? So kind of give us the origin story of, not necessarily the marriage, but I guess we get that if you guys want to as well, but more so how did the business partnership kind of form between you guys as husband and wife.

Katie:
Yeah. I don’t really know if there’s ever been a start date of like, “Okay, we’re going to do this together,” but it was just I had one building, one unit before we got married and Evan had two. And marriage, we now share assets. Now I had three at the time, and he got one more required and we actually moved into the unit I had.
And so I think from there it was just kind of, “Hey, we can really do this. We can have full-time jobs. We can have a kid. We can have a dog and have a beautiful marriage and family life while still investing in real estate and still working every day.” And for us, it really just came down to kind of our core family values. And how does real estate kind of fit into that?

Evan:
And for me it was basically once she was the publisher of BiggerPockets, I was like, “I got to lock this down.” That was a big reason to propose. I think we were definitely both on board and it felt not being fully onboard together was really limiting us in what we could do. And I remember thinking about that pretty practical mindset when it comes to marriage. I was hesitant, but that was like, we can do so much more once we are a real team together in building this, our future together.

Katie:
And we really have a good dynamic. I don’t care about the numbers. I don’t want to do deal analysis. Show me a spreadsheet my eyes glaze over, right? That’s where his forte is. It really is helpful that we kind of have our own yin and yang of what we’re good at and do best in.

Tony:
Katie, you were already investing, was it an investment that first unit or was it just your primary residence?

Katie:
It was my primary residence that I house hacked, and now it’s a full-time long-term rental. I started at BiggerPockets in August of 2017 and closed on this place in November of 2017, because that’s kind of drink the Kool-Aid.

Tony:
That’s how it goes. And then Evan, yours, they were both investments?

Evan:
It was. That was a big difference between … She bought a lot smarter than I did on the first one. I was just buying because I knew that it was smart. My uncle actually had told me the one thing I would definitely do is buy a house as soon as you can. I was in the military, so I had the access to the VA loan, so didn’t need any capital whatsoever to get started.
And I love Denver. I’m from Denver. I just love the city, and so I wanted to live there, and it’s not practical. It’s actually still the only unit that doesn’t cash flow. We still have it, but its been great for appreciation. But Katie’s cash flow is much better.
She has the type of eye for a unit that people are going to want to buy. She has all the design instincts that I don’t have. That one’s been kind of a pain, but I still love it because it was my first one. It’s in Downtown Denver and …

Ashley:
It’s what got you started.

Evan:
Yeah, exactly.

Tony:
Wait, Ash, can I add one thing just on speaking about losing money in deals that don’t cash flow? There’s a part two to my Shreveport deal that I got to tell you guys about. There’s this house in Louisiana in Shreveport that I tried to sell. It took us over a year to sell the property. We ended up losing $30,000 on this house, right? We sold it.
I thought I was done with it. Turns out I turned on the gas for that property to do the inspections for the buyers, and they sent the final bill, instead of to my primary residence, they sent it to the house. I never got the final bill for this property.
We were going to close on a property two weeks ago and my lender says, “Hey Tony, we can’t close on this deal because you have a delinquency on your credit report,” and I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “Yeah, there’s some property in Shreveport.”
And as soon as he said Shreveport, I screamed from the top of my lungs because I thought this house was done, but it’s coming back to haunt me. So now I’m fighting with this utility company in Shreveport to get this off my credit report.

Ashley:
Tony, I wish you would’ve saved this because tomorrow I want to do a Rookie reply with you and it’s basically on that topic. I already pitched it to our producer and everything. I got to get something off my chest too, so we’ll record more of that tomorrow. But before we go any farther, what does your portfolio look like today?

Evan:
Yeah. We have those three that we talked about. It’s a condo and then a town home and then a duplex that Katie bought. And then we have a 10 unit in Omaha. That’s one building. And then we have a single family in Omaha as well. And then the last one that we just did is a short-term rental in Santa Rosa Beach in Florida. It’s a total of 16 units, seven properties and kind of a hodgepodge of all the different kinds.

Ashley:
Well, congratulations, you guys. That is really awesome.

Evan:
Thanks.

Ashley:
Let’s kind of start, you guys had your own properties, and then what was the first investment you guys did together and what was the story behind that?

Evan:
Yeah. The first big investment was buying our first house together. And it was mostly just to buy the house and we were going to be able to use the VA loan again because we refinanced out of the downtown condo. And we were looking, and Denver is super expensive. This was end of 2019 into beginning of 2020. And-

Katie:
The height of COVID, mind you, so everything was crazy.

Evan:
… Everything was crazy. A lot of uncertainty. I mean, that was our schedule, so we weren’t going to let a global pandemic interrupt that. And it ended up working out really well. A lot of things aligned. We had considered continuing to house hack, and what that would look like, because that’s all either of us had ever done.
And put an offer on a couple of houses that we would’ve really had to work to turn into Airbnbs as a part of the property, and we came across the one that we ended up with. And they did an amazing job designing the basement to be a short-term rental. And I think they just got tired of it. We’ve kind of asked our neighbors since then like why did they give up such an awesome income producing asset.
And they almost didn’t. It was really quite the story just getting that deal closed. But now that’s where we live. It’s in East Wash Park, and it’s an amazing location for a short-term rental. People love coming to visit the neighborhood.
And it’s just been a really good experience, as I’m sure Tony you guys both probably know short-term rentals are really fun. And so that’s been the first project together. We combined on both of them on the other three, just letting each other run with our strengths before that. But this one was where it really dug in.

Ashley:
After that, kind of keep going with the story of acquiring them and then maybe we can break down some things that you guys have learned along the way and what your strengths are. After that one, how long was it before you bought the next one after that?

Evan:
That was our second to most recent one. We bought that one in … I guess we closed on April 1st, 2020. And we didn’t actually close on the next one until April 1st, 2022. It’s two years before the next one, and that is the Florida short-term rental.
We had a little bit of experience, both of us together working on doing a short-term rental downtown with my first condo, trying to make a cash flow better, but that’s a whole nother story. We had some experience with that, and then this basement was a really good next step into short-term rentals.
I do all the maintenance. It’s easy to go downstairs at 10:00 o’clock at night when the guest calls and it’s an immediate emergency. That’s a lot, logistically a lot easier to do than trying to find a handyman that’s willing to do that. That was kind of getting our feet wet, getting really good at it.
And then we felt comfortable to try the long-term thing. And so we started looking in Florida. Katie has always wanted to own a beach house, and I was like, “All right, as long as it’s a income producing asset, I’m into that.” And so we were looking at a bunch of different places.
I knew Cocoa Beach pretty well. I had visited it and just paid attention to the area. But we’ll probably get into this later, but the regulations, the Airbnb regulations aren’t very well established there, and they’re super not friendly to, the regulations that there are not friendly to short-term rentals.
And so it was going to be a big project to turn that one around. And Katie has a lot of awesome relationships with authors that she’s produced their books, and one of them is Avery Carl. And we had talked about maybe we should just talked to her. She was listening to one of her podcasts. I think it was on BiggerPockets money maybe, BiggerPockets real estate.
Anyway, that she kind of turned us on that we could really do this with a secondary home loan. And so we called her brokerage, worked with the short-term shop. Rush Valentine was our agent, and just kind of went from there. And we found an awesome spot. It was, again, the turbulent closing. I think probably all the closings have something come up. Everybody gets experience with that, but you get to the closing day and really get to finish the project and it’s all worth it in the end. [inaudible 00:16:51]

Katie:
Not to mention that I was one day before having my baby when we offered on the house. During this whole time Evan is getting all of our loan documents together with a newborn at home, so that was a wild ride.

Evan:
Yeah. We offered on a house, and we’re under contract on a house in December of 2021. And awesome interest rate at that time was like 3.75 or something like that, maybe low fours. And everything worked great until we got an appraisal that was way under. We had offered at 830, the appraisal came in at 760. And anything that was selling in the area was selling for over 900. It was like, “I don’t know where you got these comps from.” We disputed it, some in appraisal [inaudible 00:17:43]

Ashley:
Can you talk about that process real quick? What does that actually entail when you dispute an appraisal?

Evan:
Yeah. Rush in the short-term shop helped a ton. They’re really good at all things closing on real estate. By now, I look at all sorts of deals on a regular basis. And we had been looking in that area for a year by then. And so I was really familiar with the type of property we were looking at.
We were looking at four bed, three bath, three bed, three bath. They’re all really similar. And so you kind of have an idea of what it should be worth. And there’s a reason we offered 830 instead of 760. And in this case there was an extra unit outside that they had turned into a bunkhouse, and that accounted for I think 250, 300 square feet.
And the appraisal agent didn’t want to count that. So definitely should have counted it. It made the property better. It wasn’t like a just add on afterthought that wasn’t very good. And so that was kind of the big sticking point. If he had included that square footage, it would’ve gone way over nine.
But he wouldn’t do it. It was just like you got nowhere with it. But the lender and the real estate agent worked together to submit the request for reconsideration, just kind of got a flat no back. And so I’ve heard what you guys have talked about successfully getting it disputed, and I’ve heard success stories on that, but that hasn’t happened for us.

Tony:
Wait, so you guys weren’t able to successfully challenge?

Evan:
No.

Tony:
Really?

Evan:
Yeah. The-

Katie:
Huge bummer.

Evan:
… Yeah.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Evan:
And so we lost that deal. And at the same month, all of the way that investors treat, loan investors treat secondary home properties changed. They started seeing it more as investment properties versus just secondary homes. That basically automatically increases the interest rate by 1%.

Ashley:
And your down payment probably too. Did it change your down payment that you had to do on it?

Evan:
It didn’t. We were still able to do the 10%. But I mean, loans were more expensive to close at that time too, so it ended up being 130,000 that it took to close, even though 10% of 830, which we actually closed on another house for 830.

Ashley:
Do you know what that first house actually ended up sold for?

Evan:
Over nine.

Ashley:
Oh, really? Oh my God.

Evan:
They sold for overnight.

Katie:
But it was on and off the market at least two or three times.

Ashley:
So it must have been cash purchase or people were able to cover the gap.

Tony:
Yeah. I mean, another lever you can pull is just … And obviously we love Avery. Avery is amazing. And not to take away from her, but you can always try a different lender. Because if you go to a different lender, they’re going to have to pull another appraisal anyway. You might be able to get a better opinion of value if you go with another lender.

Ashley:
Yeah, that’s a great tip.

Tony:
Something to keep in mind if you guys find yourselves in that position.

Evan:
Yeah. I think we consider doing it at the time. And I don’t remember why I didn’t. I think it could have just been we were busy. And then at the time-

Ashley:
[inaudible 00:20:53]

Evan:
… There’s a lot on your plate, but I think it would’ve saved us. It ended up being a full per percent that it would’ve saved us. We had to buy down some of the interest rate in the end for the property we ended up closing on. But yeah, it’s a whole nother process to work with another lender.

Tony:
Yeah, a lot of lessons learned there. But something a lot you mentioned, Evan, that I want to drill in on, you said that you guys have a specific criteria that you’re looking at. It’s like a three bedroom, three bath, or a four bedroom, four bath. How did you guys land on that criteria? What was the thought process behind that?

Evan:
Yeah. You can jump in on why you wanted to do the four bed, three bath. But we talked with our agent and just kind of figured out based on the analysis the short-term shop had done and then what we looked at with AirDNA. That’s where the cash flows the best in that area.
I mean, I make very few decisions without the numbers really making sense, from choosing what college I go to all the way to now. But then as we’re touring that, touring those properties, we kind of fell in love with it. It’s an amazing area that’s so gorgeous. And the houses are really spunky. All of them have really unique character. And whereas the condo buildings not as unique, they’re all-

Tony:
All the same.

Evan:
… Exactly. It’s really fun. It’s a really fun type of property.

Katie:
And when he says touring, this is all virtual. Rush is on FaceTime with us, or taking videos and sending us nine files over the course of a half an hour. It’s like we never went in-person to any of these until after we closed. And really it was nine weeks after our initial offer went in that we actually saw the place in-person.

Ashley:
How did you get comfortable doing that?

Katie:
Just be comfortable with discomfort. Honestly, I think at least for me, I am not a very good vision oriented person. So having a total trash house that some people look at and like, “Oh, I can make this a million dollar building. It’s going to look great. I’m going to have the kitchen here and take out this wall and this bath.” Not me.
I don’t have that eye for design. And so I was totally against this house, this property that we ended up actually getting. Because the way that it was already set up … It came fully furnished as well. The way that it was set up for the short-term rental already, it had crappy ’70s couches that were dingy and had brown stains all over them.
The rugs were just horrible. The carpet was stained. The staircase was just nasty. And I was so tense, I’m like, “Evan, why are we spending almost a million dollars on a property that’s trash?” And-

Evan:
That’s interesting that you say that, because I was just like, “I mean, you’ll fix it, right?” That was my approach, because she does have the eye for design. Maybe not moving walls, but definitely lean on Katie’s … I mean, this place, the pictures that were on the listing and the way it was when we bought it looked like a house I furnished.
I would’ve gone to the thrift store, just like these guys did, and buy a couch for 50 bucks, and sweet, they can sit on that couch and that’s all that matters. But it’s like, what are they sitting in though? And that’s what the stuff that Katie cares about.
That’s interesting that you say you don’t have the eye for design, because I think that’s the only … I mean, if we didn’t have you designing the Airbnb listings, which is so important for how they pop off the page to get people to stop scrolling and actually look at your property and decide to book it, it’s all because of the vision that you have.
I don’t think it’s fair for you to say that you don’t have the design. I think it’s probably I’m just like, “You’ll figure it out, and I’ll move the couches and it will work out.” Yeah. I think it definitely-

Katie:
… That’s nice of you.

Tony:
You’re selling yourself short a little.

Ashley:
You guys have talked about a little bit of what your roles and responsibilities are. You said that Evan does the deal analysis, you do a lot of the design. What about the actual operations? Are you self-managing the properties and taking on those roles, and who does what?

Katie:
Totally. Yeah. All of our properties in Denver, we manage ourselves. The properties we have in Omaha, we have a property manager for those. And then the one in Florida, we’re also self-managing from afar, which is really cool, learnt that all from Avery Carl’s book, Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth.
And it’s really incredible how people oriented real estate is. I feel like a lot of investors and especially rookie investors go into real estate because maybe they’re bad at working with people in their job, maybe they don’t like their manager, maybe their manager doesn’t like them and they’re on their way out. What else can I do?
Real estate is a people-oriented business. And so for us being able to manage all of our properties, both in Denver and in Florida from afar, we really rely on our team that we have out there.

Ashley:
And what kind of team members do you guys have out there?

Katie:
For our Florida house, I joined a Facebook group for Airbnb Hosts of Florida that I found actually from the BiggerPockets Facebook group, a little offshoot of that one. And I just kind of scouted in there as, “We’re closing on a property in a month. Does anyone have any cleaners or housekeeper recommendations for me?” And I probably got, I don’t know, maybe 10, a list of 10 cleaners that-

Ashley:
Wow, that’s pretty good.

Tony:
That’s a lot. That’s a lot.

Katie:
… Yeah.

Evan:
While I’m over here trying to type into Google cleaners in Gulf Shores, and I came up with a few lists and it was like a few options and it was like four options. None of them panned out. Definitely going the relationship route worked a lot better.

Katie:
Yeah. And the recommendations I got, someone linked to Julie who is our housekeeper out there, someone linked to her Facebook profile. I just got to put right on her, and see her whole life and see everything about her that I could. And Evan actually set up the interview with her while we were in Florida and setting the house up.
And she came by and we met her and we hit it off from the start. She’s kind of our go-to there. And we have her team of people as well. She has a maintenance guy that she works with really closely. And she has a secondary helper, cleaner that comes with her as well. Really if anything’s wrong with the property, she either finds it for us or we hear about it from guests and just send her a text and say, “Hey.”

Tony:
You mentioned a really important point, Katie. And I feel like every episode has this 30 second portion where people just need to re-listen to it. And what you said I think is that moment for this podcast, and it’s that real estate is very much a people-driven business. And it’s like, yeah, there’s the analyzing and there’s getting to the closing table.
But at the end of the day, you can’t be a successful real estate investor by yourself. You need a property manager, or you need a cleaner, or you need an agent, or you need a lender, or you need this person, someone to fund your deal.
Every part of this business requires some kind of interaction or relationship with somebody else. And I think the better you get at cultivating those relationships, the easier it becomes for you to be a better real estate investor. I didn’t want to gloss over that because it was really a really impactful statement. But sorry, Evan. I can go ahead. I know-

Evan:
Well, that’s huge. That’s I think one of my biggest learning points since I’ve started is learning that real estate is a people-oriented business, endeavor, everything. I’m not a super charming engaging person, and I like the numbers. I like sitting behind spreadsheets. And that’s probably why I like real estate, because I can swing a hammer, look at spreadsheets, do all that stuff, and it doesn’t require to meet me to be very outgoing.
And then I’ve sat back and watched Katie build relationships. I think the most important relationships we have are with our cleaners, the one that does our basement at home and the one in Florida. And starting with hiring the cleaner, that’s where it starts. That’s not where it ends. Finding the cleaner, then building a good relationship with them, keeping them happy, keeping them motivated to prioritize your building.
There’s been so many times that our cleaner in Denver has prioritized us because she loves Katie. And that’s been so amazing to me when I’m like, “It should just work. We pay you what you said you wanted, and you’re going to show up a very transactional thing.” And there is transactions in business and in real estate, but the relationships behind them really drives it.

Katie:
Well, that’s the thing. I don’t see that as being difficult. It’s easy for me. It comes naturally to me. Evan, let me take that. I’ll take care of the people, you take care of things in the building and the spreadsheets and everything. And really when you’re working with guests, working with tenants or working with your cleaners, there’s three things. Treat others as you want to be treated. It’s pretty simple. Golden rule to live by.
And regardless of who, if you’re paying someone or they’re paying you, treat them as you want to be treated. Two is just treating them as real humans. They have bad days. I have bad days. Hopefully our bad days don’t align and we’re nice to each other, right? But just being able to take a step back when someone’s upset about something and just kind of hearing them out is probably more important than you being heard as the owner of the property or their manager if they’re a cleaner.
And then I think the third thing is just leading with honesty. If something happened to the property, and we’re not trying to rip off our cleaners at all, it’s like, hey, we had a bad interaction. The property might be in shambles. Just FYI, might have a rough day.
Or Julie, if she has a conflict with work, she also works a full-time job while managing our property over in Florida, so she has a conflict with her work it’s like, “Hey, just tell me. Great. Thank you for being honest. We’ll figure out what we can do with the next guest if we need to maybe delay their entry a little bit or something.” But just leading with honesty, it goes both ways. The more that you are honest with them, they’ll bring it back to you.

Ashley:
That was awesome. And I think those are very valuable tips. And it reminded me of this book, Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer. And it’s a customer service based book, but I think everybody should read it. And especially if you are doing hospitality, or even have long-term rentals, or just dealing with people in general.
And it just talks about when people do have bad days and give you that negative feedback or criticize you how to handle it and actually basically kill them with kindness, and turn it around, and then you kind of build that relationship with them.
If you guys haven’t read that yet, check out Hug Your Haters. Let’s get into some of the nitty-gritty. How were the deals financed? You talked about you did the VA loan, you did the second home loan, which ended up being more towards the investment side. What were you guys doing for down payments for cash reserves? How were you able to scale to 17 units so quickly?

Tony:
And sorry. And I’m especially interested in the 10 unit, because I think that’s something that a lot of folks aspire to, especially as they’re just getting started.

Ashley:
Yeah. The decaplex?

Tony:
Yeah, the decaplex.

Evan:
Yeah. It started with the VA loan, because literally you need negative cash to buy a house with the VA loan. They’ll cover your closing costs as well.

Katie:
Didn’t you get paid actually on one of those?

Evan:
Yeah, you get cash back. Yeah. It ended up being a little bit more than the earnest money that I got back, which is … I got through a few properties before I even realized what closing costs were. And it was actually the decaplex that I was like, “Oh, geez.”

Tony:
You’re talking to them you’re like, “Hey, something’s wrong here. I’m supposed to be getting money back.” What is this?

Evan:
This is my lender paying me. What are we doing? I got two properties for myself, and then we closed on the decaplex before, after we were married. But that was my first experience with just more normal lending. We did a commercial loan with that. We’re just refinancing out of it, so I’m trying to separate the two different types of loans. But we did a 25 year amortized commercial loan. I think it ended up being 5.13% or something like that.

Tony:
I’m sorry. What year was this, Evan?

Evan:
2019.

Tony:
2019. What was the interest rate on that debt?

Evan:
5.1.

Tony:
That’s not bad.

Evan:
Yeah, for a commercial.

Tony:
And it was strictly in your LLCs name that the debt, the title, everything?

Evan:
Mm-hmm.

Tony:
That’s not bad. What was the down payment on that?

Evan:
There was a 20% down payment, and I raised most of that. It was like family and friends type of capital raise you could call it. I didn’t realize I was doing a capital raise at the time, I don’t think. But just talking to some of my parents’ friends and some of my friends. And one in specific was willing to … He has a few properties and he’s used to it, so he was willing to take a chance on us as a new multi-family operators.
The asking price was six 50. We bought it for 600. And we put in 120, I think it was. And I raised a total of 160, I think it was, for just have reserves. And I think the big thing was the main investor on that project was willing to put in more. And we had some smaller investors that we wanted to get involved, so we kind of replaced that money.
And I definitely underestimated the amount of capital that we would want to have on hand. And it turns out if you look at the numbers, raising another 30,000 or 40,000 wouldn’t have affected the ROI nearly as much as being able to get those projects done faster because we had the capital in the bank already. That’s kind of how that one looked. Like I said at the beginning, we’ve had a hodgepodge of loans. So the VA-

Ashley:
Did you structure that with the partners?

Evan:
… Yeah. Me and my dad had done my second property together on a 60-40, him getting the 60 and me getting the 40. They brought all them down payment. It was a 3.5% because I lived in it, so it wasn’t a huge down payment. But I didn’t have any of that. He got the 60 because I felt like he’s taken a risk and I got the 40.
We kind of tried to parlay that into the tenplex and it ended up being a really complicated structure. But essentially the operator got 30% of … We as the operators get 30% and then the investment gets 70%. And we put money into the investment side as well, so we get paid a little bit from both sides. But it’s a 70-30 split.
And the reason we did that was to make sure the investors got a good return. And that translates all the way through when we sell any equity gain, any cash flow, just everybody has this certain amount that they’re entitled to. It kind of got complicated with what the exact percentages are though, because the operators being also investors ends up with some crazy decimals that we have written in a spreadsheet that will pull up when it’s time to sell.

Tony:
Time to sell.

Evan:
Yeah.

Tony:
So you guys bought this in 2019. And this is in Omaha?

Evan:
Mm-hmm.

Tony:
Had you guys purchased in Omaha before this?

Evan:
No, this was our first Omaha purchase.

Tony:
Why Omaha?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Evan:
Yeah, I liked Omaha pretty much. I was supposed to get assigned there in the Air Force, and through a major luck I ended up getting assigned in Denver instead. But I heard things while I was trying to make myself feel better about going to Omaha. They were like, “It’s like a new Denver. They have a lot of really trendy breweries. The downtown is really starting to pop.”
Just hearing things that you want to look for as a real estate investor that I wasn’t a real estate investor at the time. But it all resonated really well when I was trying to look elsewhere. Denver isn’t a great fit for me as the type of multi-family investing that I want to do as for one I’m much smaller than most of the players in Denver, and then just have different access to capital, less access to capital than I think it takes to get in Denver, and especially in 2019.
I was looking elsewhere, and it just seemed like a pretty similar, relatively similar city that I felt like I could resonate well with. And then I just started calling realtors and started getting to know people there. And by the time I wanted to look at multi-family, we kept talking about other cities that were Midwestern blue collar cities that were just steady jobs and really good people we felt like that we were able to relate too well, but I was just more familiar with Omaha.

Katie:
Turns out his gut was right though, because there’s like an Amazon warehouse opening there. It’s like a burgeoning college town, so there’s lots of people in and out all the time going to college and grad school and that type of thing. And then there’s also a really busy hospital center. There is a medical school. It’s one of the main hospitals in all of Nebraska is in Omaha, so it’s a pretty good place for that [inaudible 00:38:55]

Tony:
Were you onboard from the beginning or was there some convincing that Evan had to do? I’m always curious, right? Because like you said, you guys played different roles. And I know what’s always helped me and Sarah be successful as a husband and wife duo is that I do a good job of staying out of her way and vice versa, right? Was there a little bit of that here where you’re like, “Evan, we need to get you checked for trying to go invest in Omaha.”?

Katie:
I was actually more bought into Omaha than I probably should have been. I grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is just four miles north, or four hours north of Omaha. My memory of Omaha is driving a bus down in middle school to go to the Omaha Zoo for a day. I had very happy memories of Omaha. There was nothing negative going on there. But I was really set on a beach house.
Colorado has many things going for it, but one thing is not water. We’re landlocked. And even the water that we do have, it’s all freezing and it’s in the mountains. I had my eye set on this beach house and I was like, “Cool. Whatever is going to get us to the beach, I’m fine.” I was just like, “Let’s keep going and set our sites on this beach house coming up.”

Ashley:
How did you find this decaplex?

Evan:
Yeah, LoopNet is where I found the listing. Again, I think the networking thing is always an intimidating thing for me, and so it’s happened out of necessity a lot of the time. And I was just looking for properties and it took a while to find properties because I had no relationships with agents.
And the more agents I talked to, the more they were willing to talk to me about different deals. And I found this one on LoopNet, talked to … I had, I think, two agents at the time that were kind of my go-tos to talk about deals, and we decided to put an offer on it. And actually I was on the top of Kit Carson Peak when we closed on this-

Katie:
Carson, for those of you who are not fourteener climbers, is an insane mountain that’s like rock scrambles. You got to use all four limbs to get up to the top. I was not with him, right? [inaudible 00:41:07]

Evan:
… Yeah. We went under contract from the top of that. Good service on the top of mountains it turns out.

Ashley:
That’s so cool.

Evan:
But yeah, it was through LoopNet. I was looking at LoopNet’s multi-family version of the MLS sort of, similar thing, or multifamily version of [inaudible 00:41:23].

Katie:
Or some people say where deals go to die, but you can actually find good deals because people think they’re bad deals.

Evan:
Exactly. And it wasn’t a home run deal, but it was a deal that I could do and get-

Tony:
It got your feet, right?

Evan:
… Exactly.

Tony:
I mean, let’s talk about the numbers. It wasn’t a home run deal, but you guys, you picked it up for $600,000, right? How much did you guys put into the rehab?

Evan:
Well, so far, I think it’s been about 70,000 that we’ve put in total turning in.

Tony:
That’s a really reasonable amount, right? What do you think the property is worth today? Because-

Evan:
We just got it appraised. It’s 787,000 that it appraised for.

Ashley:
And you put 70 into it? Yeah, that’s awesome.

Evan:
Yeah. And that’s been a nice recent win for us to get that appraised and refinanced at that value and start to feel. It’s definitely felt tight over the last three years. It’s weird that you can buy 10 units for 600,000 in Omaha when we’re struggling to buy one for that in Denver.
But the numbers barely worked and they’re going to pay the investors well in the end. We’re not looking at 100% year over year cash on cash, any of that, but still a solid return for the investors. I learned a ton. And we have some momentum now. I feel some confidence around being able to continue to do multi-families in Omaha and build the short-term rental stuff in Florida.

Tony:
Just one last question. I want to keep moving. Just one last thing. Just on the property management side, how did you guys vet and find that property manager in this totally new market?

Evan:
Yeah, it took a while. I thought I should manage myself to learn from the beginning, and I wouldn’t recommend that. I think-

Katie:
Yeah, don’t give out your cell phone number to your tenants.

Evan:
… Yeah, lots of cell phone conversations with the tenants. Eventually I was working with a realtor that helped us find the single family. And she was excited about managing a property, so she worked on it for a little while, and she was awesome. And they remodeled a couple of other units, but it was just getting to be too much for them.
And they’re such good people that they didn’t want to just quit. They wanted to quit with a lead. And so they gave us this lead for CityLine Properties out there. Dan Zimmerman, I think he had been going for maybe a year or something, but he had 30 properties that he was managing at the time. Now they’re well over a hundred, maybe more. But-

Katie:
And as soon as I heard Dan’s name, I was like, “I got to look him up on BiggerPockets.” If he doesn’t have a profile, then he’s not legit.

Evan:
He’s not good.

Katie:
And luckily he did.

Evan:
We definitely used that. We definitely leaned on that to vet him. It’s hard to talk to property management companies. I talked to a lot of property management companies and just didn’t vibe well with them. I didn’t think that they were going to take care of the property the way I wanted them to. In this case, it was one of his first properties as a property manager and it was one of my first properties as a multi-family investor. That worked really well. And it’s turned out to be an awesome relationship.

Ashley:
What are some examples of questions that our listeners could ask when they’re interviewing a property manager to kind of get that feel that this person isn’t going to work out?

Evan:
Do you have any ideas that you wanted to throw out there?

Katie:
Well, I would say the first one is just their experience level, right? And not as necessarily a red flag, because this was also Dan’s first time managing, but just being able to understand where they’re coming from, and what their background is and kind of what they’ve been into since then I think is really important.
I think the second thing is their fees. I know you just had a recent guest on the rookie show who was a property manager and her fees just seemed so wildly different than what actually I think you mentioned what you’re paying and some of your fees.
Is it a mom-and-pop shop? Is it an individual? Is it a huge conglomerate? And what are the separate fees that go along with all of those I think is huge. And they are very so wildly. It’s just trying to figure out what works for you and what works for that property.

Evan:
Yeah. I think looking back now I’d have a lot of different questions than I asked at the time. A big one is just getting to know their organizational structure and their logistics, how they keep track of their properties, how they … What technology they use to manage maintenance requests, and to keep the books, and to send out owner distributions, all of that.
I think a lot of people get into property management because they’re good at doing maintenance, and just don’t want to be working for a different group, for a different company. And they often don’t have a very good business savvy, and you want to really find out that this person is in it to be a property manager, not just to not have to pay someone else to maintain their properties or something like that.
That’s, I think, where I would focus asking them about the logistics, and what tech they use, and how they keep track of everything, and what their team looks like. Do they have a bookkeeper? Do they have contractors that they get to do all their maintenance ticket items? Do they just do it? Do they have somebody in-house? Those types of things have ended up translating to a much different experience since CityLine has a really good system going.

Katie:
That is huge, like understanding what their systems and processes are. There’s emergency maintenance and they say, “Oh, well, we have a phone number they call.” Okay, who’s answering that phone? And then what happens? Do you call someone out immediately? Do they wait till morning?understanding what exactly those processes are in the company can really help you understand if they actually have systems and processes.
This one company we were working with, they had emergency maintenance line. And the fire alarm went off in one unit, the fire company was there. Nobody was home. They were trying to get in, they couldn’t get the Knox Box open, all these things. And they were trying to call the property management company, the property manager’s cell phone, the emergency maintenance number.
And it’s like 8:00 AM. It’s not like it’s 1:00 AM. It’s 8:00 AM. And they’re office didn’t open till 9:00, and so it’s just like, “Whoa!” If the fire department can’t even get ahold of you, how are our tenants supposed to get ahold of you? So really understanding those too I think is a big thing.

Evan:
Yeah. I think I took for granted and just assumed that if you had a business, you had all that stuff worked out. And it’s amazing to me the more I get exposed to different businesses, the more I look into everything. Turns out that, that’s what makes excellent businesses. That’s not what makes a business is having all your ducks in a row when it comes to those types of logistics. And a lot of businesses don’t have that, and a lot of property management companies don’t have that.

Tony:
Can I go off on just a brief tangent? Because I think that’s a really valuable lesson in so many different ways. First, anytime you’re vetting a vendor, you can be easily fooled. Because how hard is it today to slap up a website, get a logo and-

Ashley:
Social media.

Tony:
… Social media.

Ashley:
Oh my God, they have a huge following. They’re legit [inaudible 00:48:52]

Tony:
They’re legit. But it’s so easy to make those vanity kind of metrics look like they’re legitimate, so I think the homework you guys talked about is super important. But the other point that you mentioned, I think this is more so about building your own real estate business is that it is easy to get started.
But to be excellent, I think takes a different level of dedication, a different level of preparation, a different level of sophistication. I know almost everyone who’s listening to this is a rookie still, but even as you’re just getting started, think about what you want your business to look like five to 10 years from now, and start putting those processes and systems in place today.
So that way as you start to scale, you kind of know which direction you’re going. I think I shared in one of our Rookie replies like I had a whole org chart built out for our business, and it was just me and Sarah. Right? And now this past year we’ve been hiring people in. It’s been so easy to hire them, because I already know which part of the org charts I don’t want to do anymore and we’re kind of passing all these things off. So-

Ashley:
Tony, have you read the book Traction?

Tony:
… I’ve read it like five times.

Ashley:
Yeah, I was going to say, that’s exactly what Traction asks you to do. It’s like you set your current organizational chart, you set your three year, five year, and undetermined future org chart there, and you just fill in the blanks from there. It’s a really great read.

Katie:
That would actually be great question to ask a property management company. Can I see your organizational charts?

Evan:
Yeah, that is a good one.

Katie:
You would see how the departments were, who’s selected there, and be like, “Okay.” And so you know like, “Okay, it’s a maintenance issue. I know I need to contact this person.” Because that’s been a struggle with the property management company too is, if there’s an issue, who’s the person to contact?
Because sometimes it’s multiple departments. The apartment is up for leasing, but we notice this maintenance issue needs to be fixed. Do we tell the leasing agent to hold off on showing so this is done? And the communication between departments too. Yeah, that’d be interesting to ask to see an org chart in a property management company.

Evan:
Getting to the point where you are not overwhelmed as a rookie is difficult to do. I like to tell people a lot like, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” Especially as a rookie really ever, you hear about dreaming big, have big goals and all of that.
But the habits that you’re going to be building as a rookie, I still consider us rookies for sure, are so much more important than the exact numbers that you, or how fast being able to say that headline of, “I got so many units in such little years.”
But just learning how to be consistent and reliable with one property, even if it’s just your house hack. Katie and I took a year before we even considered looking at another short-term rental property. We really wanted to make sure we had seen a full year and gotten those habits and understood what it really takes.
And we have full-time jobs, so that obviously changes our timeline. But I think it’s important to be and understand the importance of learning the habits and getting all of your logistics well ironed out before you try to scale too much and then just bear yourself in business.

Ashley:
Thank you guys so much for sharing your story with us, coming on here and telling us about the decaplex, your Florida beach house. First of all, congratulations you guys. Really awesome what you guys are doing. But we want to hear more from you guys, so we’re going to go into our rookie exam. This is where we ask three questions to each of our guests and it’s going to be the hardest exam that you guys have taken. Okay. The first one, actually, Evan, I’ll ask this one to you. What is one actionable thing a rookie should do after listening to this episode?

Evan:
I think you should sit down and kind of write out what relationships you have right now, even personal if you don’t have a lot of business relationships. But like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, relationships are what’s going to run your real estate business. And if you’re not giving value to your relationships, then you can’t expect much in return.
This is one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned that I didn’t know at the beginning. Sit down, write down the relationships that you know, and right next to it what value are you giving to those relationships. And then next to that, how you can improve the value that you’re giving to those relationships.
I think like the Avery Carl example, just different relationships in our life that Katie had been, mostly Katie, had been just pouring value into for months and years. And then one when we needed to talk to them, they were super happy to help us, and I was like, “Man, this is magic.” We accelerated our short-term rental project.
I was slogging through properties in a completely different location, and we were just like, “Why don’t we lean on some of the relationships that we’ve built up?” But if you can do that intentionally, because I think it’s important to be able to think of something you can actually do right now versus buying the sky goals.
You have relationships right now, go look at them, get more intentional about them, even if it’s just your brother or your mom or somebody, and figure out how you’re giving them value so that you can be more aware of it. If you’re not, this is an opportunity to improve the relationships in your personal life.
And if you are, that’s great, you’ll find the holes and you’ll just get better at it and that’ll end up paying dividends like you won’t imagine down the road for sure. It’s mind-blowing to me how important relationships are. And I think I’m probably talking a lot to myself when it comes to that. What can you do now to really build upon-

Tony:
To build on those, right?

Evan:
… what you have.

Tony:
Actually, someone mentioned on a recent podcast, I can’t remember which episode it was, but they said that relationships have an infinite return. That was just such a powerful statement because it’s so true, because it’s like you never know where one relationship can take you.
Ash and I are only sitting here as podcast hosts right now because of relationships that we built before we knew where they were going to lead. And it’s like, you just never know. I mean, I love that. But I love also the fact that you positioned it in a way where it’s like, how can I build up that other person with kind of no expectation of return?

Ashley:
And as you were saying that, I almost expected you to say, “What value can they bring to me?” That was awesome. And that’s so true. The more value you provide to somebody else, you’re going to get more than you could imagine back from them.

Evan:
Yeah. And when you didn’t know, you had no idea you were going to want that or the value. It’s like you said it. I’m really into building momentum. I’m not good at just immediately setting a perfect habit, and here I am, and we’re great. It takes a while to build a momentum, but once I have it’s a really solid asset to my life.
I think I made that mistake multiple times, calling a lender right when I needed a lender. And then that obviously didn’t work. But then I had started building that relationship, so it was much better the next time I wanted to look at a property, and I started to see that retroactively I didn’t know it going into it.
And so again, some of this started by necessity, but I saw the benefit looking back and we’ve worked on … Luckily I have Katie who’s great at relationships. That really helps. But I’m trying to get much better at giving the value, because chances are really good that, that relationship is giving you value. You probably don’t need to worry about it. And later on it will, so I think that’s the right place to start.

Tony:
I love that advice. Katie, this next question is for you. What’s one tool, software app or system that you use in your business?

Katie:
Well, I would be remiss if I did not say the BiggerPockets website has been I spend five years of my life.

Ashley:
Job security.

Katie:
No. But seriously, not to beat a dead horse here, but all businesses are people businesses, and real estate is not excluded from that list. How are you going to meet people? Go to BiggerPockets.com, sign up for a free account and then go to the forums. It’s like the very most simple way to get and give value, the value that Evan was just talking about.
You got to meet people, find people in your area, post a question, answer questions. And the more that you give, the more that you’re going to get back. You’ll start noticing people that you want to reach out to. And you might get reached out to from other people who notice you giving really good advice, or good answers to questions. Even if you don’t have a property, you can still start a conversation with someone in our forums. I’d be really remiss if I didn’t say that.

Tony:
Katie, let me ask you this. As a BP insider, what do you think is one part of the BiggerPockets ecosystem that a rookie isn’t maybe taking advantage of today?

Katie:
That is a great question. I would say our number one place where I think you can get the most bang for your buck is the BiggerPockets Conference. It is offsite, off the website, so there’s that piece of it. But I think truly it’s like a three day, maybe two and a half day event once a year, where you just get so much education in one place.
You have the networking that’s there, you have the educational piece that’s there. You can read a book, you can buy books from there. You can meet all of the authors, all of the podcast hosts, all of the people who you might be listening or reading on a daily basis. And I think the conference is really just the one place where you’re going to meet like-minded people, and be able to also get and give that value to those relationships.

Tony:
Love that.

Ashley:
I think it will actually make you realize that you know more than you think that too. Having those conversations with people, I think that’s a huge … It gives you really a big motivator. It gives you motivation that moment you’re like, “Wow, I actually know what I was talking about in that conversation. Maybe I am ready to start investing, or I actually know what I’m doing.” And I think that confidence boost is a huge thing about going to these in-person events like the BiggerPockets conference.

Katie:
Yeah. And it’s a little like the first day of college. You get to your dorm room and everyone’s trying to make a new friend, because no one has friends. Right? And so the conference is really similar to that. It’s really hats-off, no ego, meet people where they’re at in a new place, in a new city, preferably with a drink in hand.

Ashley:
[inaudible 00:59:51].

Katie:
It’s just a really good place for that kind of authentic and original friendship.

Tony:
Love it.

Ashley:
Well, we have one more question for you guys, and I guess we’ll kind of ask you guys together. Where do you guys plan on being in five years?

Katie:
Yeah. We hope to have full-time jobs while having 50 properties.

Tony:
50. Lovely.

Evan:
That’s the goal. Yeah.

Ashley:
That’s awesome.

Evan:
And we want to be able to operate it while we have full-time jobs, because both of us have careers that we do care about. And that’s one of the awesome things about real estate, why I really got passionate about it while I was still in the Air Force. It wasn’t an option for me to quit my job, and we’re not trying to build into our lives fewer choices.
If we want to five years from now make it a family business and go all in on real estate, we’ll be able to if one of us wants to, one of us doesn’t. But the plan is to be able to continue in our jobs and still be able to have a very big thriving real estate business on the side. Because I think that’s one of the biggest advantages of real estate is that you can delegate a lot of stuff and be able to run it without it consuming your life.

Katie:
And because I have a full-time job, I’m able to do this. Everyone who’s listening to this podcast right now can get 15% off any book, any format in the bookstore. All you need to do is go to www.biggerpockets.com/store, pick out your book, put it in the cart, and then type in the word publishing in your promo code spot. And we’ll call this the publisher special.

Tony:
We’ll call it the Katie special.

Katie:
Yeah. Yeah, 15% off. Just use the code publishing in the book store.

Ashley:
You know what, I feel like she’s really pushing it towards us like, “Your book could’ve been [inaudible 01:01:42]. You need to get writing.”

Tony:
No. But I mean that is the beauty of real estate investing is that you get to move at whatever pace you want. And at the end of the day, that’s why we want entrepreneurship, is for the control, it’s for the power of choice. And it’s like if you want to stay at your job, you can. If you don’t, you don’t have to. But it’s about having that choice to make that decision for yourself as opposed to that pressure of, “Hey, you have to do this one thing.”

Evan:
Right.

Katie:
Totally.

Tony:
Love it. All right, so we’re going to give a shout out to this week’s Rookie rockstar, and this week it’s Rafael Cabrera. And Rafael says, “Just purchase property number three with a nomad strategy.” And Rafael you might need to get an application because I’m curious to know a little bit more about what this nomad strategy is and how you’re using it.
But Rafael says that property number two, which I guess was recently purchased, he just happened to accidentally buy near the site where the new Convention Center is going up, so there’s some good news there. But Rafael leaves some final words of guidance, and he says, “Even if you’re unsure about this nomad strategy,” which is I guess just kind of moving around pretty frequently.
He said he’s doing it with a wife and a two year old and a two month old. Right? He said he’d be lying if he said it was easy, but he said it’s totally worth doing and he’s looking forward to what comes this next year. Rafael, congratulations to you and your family.
And yeah, if you guys want to get shout out as a rookie rockstar, get active in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, the BiggerPockets forum. You can slide into my DMS or Ashley’s.

Ashley:
Well, Katie and Evan, thank you so much for flying us out to Denver, buying us lunch.

Tony:
And dinner.

Ashley:
Dinner tomorrow night.

Katie:
For sure.

Ashley:
Yeah. Oh, we really appreciated having you guys on the show, and loved the value and everything that you shared with everyone, not just your story, but the great advice and the insights and the mindset. Thank you so much for coming on.

Evan:
Thank you guys. It was really fun. Thanks for having us on. And yeah, it was awesome to be able to just sit down and talk through things with you guys.

Ashley:
If you guys love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform, and check out our YouTube channel Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley Kehr @wealthfromrentals, and he is Tony Robinson @TonyJRobinson. And we will be back on Saturday with the Rookie Reply.

Logan Mohtashami, lead analyst at Housing Wire, joins CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ to break down moves in housing prices and whether a rise in mortgage rates is having an effect on demand.