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No appreciation story, no value-add narrative, not even cocktail-party bragging rights.

A secured note doesn’t promise to 3x your money. It promises to pay you. On a schedule. At a fixed rate. Backed by a lien on a real piece of property.

For investors who have been chasing yield in a market where promises are easy and delivery is hard, that might actually be the most attractive thing they’ve heard in a while.

Here’s what secured notes are, how they work, and why they belong in more passive real estate portfolios than they currently occupy.

When a real estate operator needs to borrow money… to acquire a property, fund renovations, or bridge to longer-term financing… they have options. Banks are one. Private lenders are another.

A secured note is a loan you make to a real estate operator or investor, backed by a lien on real property. You’re the lender. They’re the borrower. They pay you a fixed interest rate on a set schedule, and your loan is secured by an interest in whatever property they’ve pledged as collateral.

The key word is secured. Your investment isn’t backed by a promise or a handshake or a business plan. It’s backed by a legal interest in a physical asset. If the borrower defaults, you have a path to recovery through foreclosure on that property.

That’s meaningfully different from unsecured lending, and it’s meaningfully different from equity investing where your returns depend on a property performing according to plan.

First Position vs. Second Position

Not all notes carry the same risk. The most important variable is where your lien sits in the capital stack.

A first-position note means you’re first in line if something goes wrong. If the borrower defaults and the property gets foreclosed, you get paid before anyone else. Equity investors, other lenders, everyone. First position is the safest place to be in a secured lending scenario.

A second-position note means there’s another lender ahead of you. If the property sells in foreclosure, the first-position lender gets made whole first. You get whatever is left. In a scenario where the property has lost significant value, second-position lenders can end up with less than they’re owed, sometimes much less.

When we evaluate notes in the club, we strongly prefer first-position liens. The yield is typically lower than what second-position notes offer, but the protection is substantially better. In our view, chasing an extra two or three percentage points by taking a subordinate position is rarely worth the additional risk.

Loan-to-Value: The Number That Matters Most

The second critical variable is loan-to-value ratio, or LTV. This is the loan amount expressed as a percentage of the property’s value.

A note at 60% LTV means you’ve lent $600,000 against a property worth $1 million. If the borrower defaults and the property has to be sold quickly… even at a discount… there’s a meaningful buffer before you start losing principal. The property would have to lose more than 40% of its value for you to be underwater, and that’s before you’ve even started a foreclosure process.

A note at 85% LTV is a different story. The margin for error is thin. Property values don’t have to fall much before you’re at risk.

We generally look for notes in the 60-70% LTV range for first-position loans. It’s not the highest-yielding segment of the note market, but it’s the one where you can genuinely sleep at night knowing the collateral covers your exposure.

What Happens When a Borrower Defaults

It’s worth being clear-eyed about this, because some investors treat the foreclosure path as a theoretical comfort and never think about it practically.

If a borrower stops paying on a secured note, you don’t just lose your money and move on. You have legal remedies. As a lienholder, you can initiate foreclosure proceedings against the property. The specifics vary by state and loan structure, but the general mechanism is: you take the property, sell it, and recover your principal from the proceeds.

This process takes time. It involves legal fees. It’s not painless. But it is a real protection that unsecured creditors and equity investors don’t have.

The practical implication: your due diligence on the collateral matters. You want to understand what the property is worth independently of what the borrower says it’s worth. A recent appraisal from a qualified third party is the baseline. You also want to understand the local real estate market well enough to know whether that value is stable, rising, or at risk.

What Secured Notes Pay

Yields on first-position secured notes have ranged considerably depending on the market environment, the borrower’s creditworthiness, the LTV, and the property type. In the current rate environment, well-structured first-position notes have been offering anywhere from 8% to 12% annually, sometimes more for shorter-duration bridge scenarios.

Those aren’t projections tied to a business plan working out. They’re contractual. The rate is set at origination. The payment schedule is fixed. You know what you’re getting before you wire a cent.

That predictability is what makes notes attractive as part of a broader passive real estate portfolio. Equity investments offer the potential for meaningful upside… appreciation, profit on sale… but those returns aren’t guaranteed and depend on a lot of variables going according to plan. Notes give you a fixed return that doesn’t fluctuate with the real estate market.

The downside is the flip side of that same coin. You don’t participate in appreciation. If the property doubles in value over five years, you still collect your fixed rate and nothing more. The upside belongs to the equity holders.

For investors who are primarily seeking income rather than appreciation… particularly those closer to or in retirement, or those building a cash flow base to live on… that trade-off is often a good one.

Henry:
Kent Long bought his first rental property at 46 years old, just two years ago in 2024. By the time he’s 50, he’ll have a real estate portfolio that will retire him early. He did all this while working a nine to five, on the road three to four days per week, and without a ton of his own savings. Kent began looking for passive income streams, but all the internet gurus and guides turned out to be selling a fantasy. After hitting a breaking point, Kent saw a house on the market with enough square footage to convert it into two units. This would turn into the beginning of an investing career Kent never imagined. With just $14,000 down, Kent turned one down payment into four properties, making him $5,500 a month in cash flow. And he did it all in just two years. Now he’s close to fully replacing his salary with rentals, allowing him to retire from his job at age 50, 15 years before traditional retirement age.
He did it all starting in 2024. So if you think you are late to real estate, this is your sign to get in the game. What’s going on everybody? I am Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and today we’re bringing you an investor story with Kent Long from Altoona, Pennsylvania. Let’s bring him on. Kent Long, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

Kent:
Henry, I’m honored to be here. Honestly, BiggerPockets has been a huge part of my real estate journey.

Henry:
Well, why don’t you start there? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate in the first place.

Kent:
Starting off, I was always looking for passive income. So unfortunately, just life costs so much money. So to live normally, you have to have extra income coming in. So my initial thought process was I read Tim Ferriss, four-hour work week, and I started an Amazon business. So I made two products on Amazon and I had two different manufacturers in China that would send stuff directly to Amazon. So ideally it makes sense, then that’s totally passive. You watch all the YouTubers and they say how easy it is and you can make extra thousand bucks per unit that you’re selling. The kicker is it costs so much money to advertise on Amazon that you don’t make any money. So then after that, I stumbled on BiggerPockets and started listening to just real estate. I’ve always been like Mr. Fix It at home and can fix things. And my dad’s a union carpenter, so I’ve always had a background of building and fixing things.
And then about two years ago when I was going through a bad divorce, I had an option and I could either rent because my wife was keeping the house, or I could look at either flipping a house, live in flip, or buy a property that I could fix up and then pull some equity out. So that’s my initial dive into it.

Henry:
About when did you start researching real estate? And then about when was it when you bought your first real estate deal?

Kent:
My job, my nine to five, I travel a lot. So I’m in the car between two and four hours, three to four days a week. So it would just be podcast after podcast, whether it was entrepreneurship, and then eventually about three years ago to two and a half years ago, really just diving into BiggerPockets and just constantly listening to it in the car. So in July of 2024, I was looking at my first property. My real estate agent at the time had a property that used to be a duplex and it was converted to a single family, but all I literally had to do was put a door on it. So you walk in, the first floor would’ve been one apartment and then there was another door that went upstairs for the second apartment. So literally just putting a door on it would make it a duplex.

Henry:
What city was this?

Kent:
In Altoona, PA.

Henry:
Altoona, Pennsylvania. And how much did you pay for this large single family home that was a duplex, turned into a single that you wanted to turn back into a duplex?

Kent:
But I actually turned it into a try.

Henry:
We’ll

Kent:
Get to that. So purchase price is $70,000.

Henry:
70 grand? Was it just sticks? Was it livable?

Kent:
All new LVP in the first and second floor and the third floor, all LVP already done. And everything was freshly painted.

Henry:
Is this just prices in this market? How’d you find this deal? Was it on the market? Was it off-market deal?

Kent:
It was on the market for a while. So that house fell through a couple times. They sold it twice maybe, and the loan didn’t go through right or something happened. So then the seller just needed it kind of off his plate. But at most, it was on the market for 80 or 90.

Henry:
Wow. I just didn’t realize the price points were that low.

Kent:
Well, the price points will get better and you’re going to be. So that’s in the high end of what I paid.

Henry:
Okay. All right. All right. So you paid 70. It was a single that used to be a duplex. You ended up converting it back to a multifamily. How much did it cost you to renovate this property to get it turned into, I guess you said, a triplex now?

Kent:
$10,000.

Henry:
Okay. Did it cost 10 grand because you have the skills to do all the work yourself or did it cost 10 grand just because it was in pristine condition and you didn’t have to do much?

Kent:
So I didn’t have to do a lot, but I do all of the work. So the idea is I have a background of redoing kitchens and redoing bathrooms and I can do flooring and painting and everything else, but that’s all that I had to put into it to convert it into a try. I had a little bit of cabinets I had to add into the kitchen, and then there were some cabinets up on that second floor that I used in the third unit, which was in the back.

Henry:
Can you estimate what you think the renovation would’ve cost had you had to hire a contractor?

Kent:
I mean, I always double it. So it’s 20 to 30, 20 to 30 grand. That’s

Henry:
Fair. That’s fair. Okay, cool. That paints a good picture of about the level of work that needed to be involved with this property. And so then you converted it to a triplex. I know I’m probably getting ahead of myself, but I’m so curious because of that price point. What are the rents for the individual units?

Kent:
So they basically added a business off the back side of this house. That unit, I furnished it, and then there’s a makeshift kitchen back there too, and I get 850 for that little unit, and it’s as big as a whatever, hotel room.

Henry:
Okay. So you’re cash flowing off one unit. Allright, what else you got?

Kent:
Right. So then on the first floor, one bedroom, I get right around 900 a month for that.

Henry:
And the third unit?

Kent:
1250.

Henry:
What?

Kent:
Because it’s three bedroom, and this is off of a $70,000 home. Holy

Henry:
Crap. $70,000 single family, $10,000 renovation, which includes sweat equity, which is fine. And you’re able to bring in 850, 900, and 1250 for a total of $3,000 a month in rent on an $80,000 all-in purchase? Right. That’s a good stinking deal. Wow. Congratulations on that. That’s impressive.

Kent:
Thank you. Thank you. We always want to hit that home run in the first one.

Henry:
All right. So how did you structure the financing for this? Did you pay out of your pocket? Is it a conventional loan?

Kent:
It was a 30-year conventional loan.

Henry:
So you put down 20%, 25%? Yeah,

Kent:
14 to $20,000.

Henry:
What’s your debt service? So what are you paying the mortgage on that property? It’s

Kent:
So

Henry:
Low, he doesn’t even know, guys. He was like, “I don’t know. 50 bucks eyes.”

Kent:
All of my loans are between four and $600.

Henry:
$600 a month mortgage, bringing in $3,000 a month. Even you put $14,000 down after a few months, you got your money back.

Kent:
Oh, yeah.

Henry:
What a deal. What a deal. Now, I’m very curious now as to what the numbers look like on this second deal, and we’re going to dive into that after this quick break. All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets podcast. I am speaking with investor Kent Long, who has just shared his very first real estate deal with us, and it was a banger. So Kent, tell me about this next one.

Kent:
So first property, fix it up, basically added two units because it was a single family, turned it into a try. Because I turned it in a try, I got to be able to pull, I mean, it’s 80% of the appraised value, so then I was able to pull out a $78,000 HELOC.

Henry:
Well, I want to caveat one thing though, because I just want to make sure that we’re clear on the terms. I love this strategy, by the way. So you essentially did a burr, except I call it a modified BRRR. It’s a BRR. Instead of a refinance at the end, it’s a HELOC at the end. And so you actually didn’t pull money out, you just got access to a line of credit. I like this strategy more than the BRRR. And the reason I do is because when you refinance, you’re getting a new loan at a higher amount, which then lessens your cash flow. But because you just pulled a line of credit, you gave yourself access to the equity, but you didn’t get a new loan at a higher amount. Your loan stays the same and you only pay more when you borrow the money against the HELOC.
So he was saying he pulled money out. He didn’t necessarily pull it out. He got access to it. I think it’s a fantastic strategy. I’m glad you went that route. So you’ve now got access to this $70,000 line of credit, and so that gives you buying power, right? So what did you do with that?

Kent:
I bought another single family right around 1700 square feet, and I was going to turn it into a duplex, but I bought it for $30,000. So

Henry:
You paid cash from your line of credit. So you pulled out 35,000. Again, why I like this strategy? Because he didn’t refinance, he didn’t get a new loan. He was able to use $35,000 of the 70,000 he had access to. So you’re actually only paying interest only payments on 35,000 versus having, if you did on a refinance, you’re essentially paying for all the money at once. So you pull out 35,000, you pay cash for a house that you want to convert from a single to a multi. Now, were you specifically targeting single families that had the potential to be multis or was this just coincidence?

Kent:
Ideally, I wanted duplexes or tries. They’re the easiest to renovate. I mean, the whole BRR process is easier for. The whole idea of duplexes and tries is I like one renter to pay the mortgage and one renter to pay me. So when you look at multifamilies, it’s just a cash flow and that ideally has always been my goal.

Henry:
So 35,000, how much did it cost you to renovate this one?

Kent:
20,000 all in.

Henry:
What are you getting in rents on those units?

Kent:
A thousand for the two bedroom on the upstairs and then 900 for the one bedroom.

Henry:
So $30,000 purchase, $20,000 rehab, all in for 50, bringing in $1,900 a month. Again, that is a fantastic cash flowing deal. Did you finance this one the same way or did you do it a little different?

Kent:
So when I went to get that refinanced, that’s when I went the commercial loan route, which I really, I love it. It’s just so much simpler, so much quicker. So then it got reappraised at 110. So I pulled an $85,000 loan out on that and was able to pay off $20,000 of credit card debt and pay down that $30,000 that I initial investment.

Henry:
Okay, because you paid cash and you probably funded the renovation out of your own pocket. So you’re all in 50, but it’s 50 cash. So then you went and you got a loan on the property itself for 80. That gives you some cash in your pocket to pay off your debts. And an $80,000 loan bringing in $1,900 a month is still phenomenal cash flow. Plus you were able to pay off credit card debt, which essentially increases cash flow too, because now you’re not paying those credit card bills. That’s awesome, man. And I know a lot of people are listening and they’re thinking, “Man, well, I can’t buy $30,000 houses.” Well, A, you can because you can invest out of state if you want to. And B, there’s markets like this all over the country. So don’t just believe the lie of if you’re paying less than $100,000 that you’re getting some piece of crap that is going to cost you more to fix it up than it is to sell it.
There are plenty of markets where the price points are lower. There’s obviously risk to those things. Usually markets with lower price points like this don’t have a ton of appreciation. So I’m curious, is that what it’s like in your market? Do these properties appreciate with the national average or do they kind of just sit flat? It

Kent:
Would sit flat. I mean, when it comes to risk, I like to think of it as lower risk than anything else because – It is low risk. The money that I’m putting into it, the amount of money that I would invest into a $30,000 house compared to a $300,000 house, I’m just mitigating risk just in the initial price point.

Henry:
It’s a sliding scale, right? It’s a seesaw. Typically, if you’re in a market where you’re getting tons of appreciation, cash flow is none, negative, hard to find. Inversely, when you’re in a market where you can get phenomenal cash flow, I mean, we’re talking a debt service of 600 bucks, bringing in $3,000. That is phenomenal cash flow, but you’re not going to get a ton of appreciation. That’s just how real estate tends to work. So you need to figure out, if you’re listening to the show, to figure out what your strategy is, you have to set your own goals and then buy properties in a market that allow you to meet those goals, right? There’s going to be ups and there’s going to be downs, there’s going to be risks, and you want to be rewarded for the risk. I think that this is a decent strategy if you’re trying to build up cashflow, heavy cashflow market.
Before we move on to this next deal, Kent mentioned that he used a HELOC on his first house to fund his second property. And if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member, we have a new perk with our HELOC partner, Avan, that can get you a $400 statement credit. So go and check that out if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member. All right, Kent, I love these deals. I think this is a good strategy in what seems to be a very highly cashflow heavy market. You’re from the market, you live in the market, so you understand that market. I think that that’s a smart investment plan. Paint us a picture here in terms of time. The first deal was 2024 in July. How long was it between that one and this deal?

Kent:
I got this deal done in February of 2025.

Henry:
So about seven months later you did this next deal. Okay. That’s a reasonable timeframe. You did one deal, you learned some lessons, you go and do another deal. That’s great. Okay. And how long did it take you from deal two to deal three?

Kent:
It took a little bit longer because that’s when I got my son involved into this real estate journey. First one was a home run. The second one was going really well, and I knew that it was going to work out because I already had the cash. And another duplex while I was working on my second property, another duplex came up for $44,000.

Henry:
Okay. This was on the market listed?

Kent:
This is on the market listed for 44,000. All

Henry:
Right.

Kent:
I had to get there immediately because I knew when duplexes come up in Altoona, they go quickly.

Henry:
How old was your son at the time?

Kent:
19.

Henry:
Okay. Okay. Awesome.

Kent:
So he’s a 19-year-old. He was in college, but over the summer, he was going to fix a duplex up, basically do the same thing, pull equity out of it, and then do one property a year for the next four years while he was in college. So I got the house for $44,000. So I put 15, $16,000 down on it.

Henry:
Okay. Did you use the HELOC to put the money down or did you?

Kent:
Yeah.

Henry:
Yeah, at a boy.

Kent:
I did a commercial loan on this as well because I’m working with a local bank. So again, I think it’s benefits to be working with your local banks because they know the area. They know how to make things work.

Henry:
So typical structure of a loan for a local community bank, if you’re doing a fix and flip or some sort of construction loan, it’s 85% of purchase, 100% of rehab. So you got to put 15% down. So that was your 15% down payment you were talking about. You borrowed that from your line of credit on deal one. How much did the renovation of this duplex cost

Kent:
You? I think we took a $15,000 renovation loan with this commercial loan. So as you’re doing the work, they’ll pay you back, but we really needed about 25,000. So it was, again, a big property and the flooring is what we didn’t figure it out right. And then the caveat to all this, we’re lucky as in my dad as a union carpenter and would come down two to three days a week and help him fix this property up.

Henry:
So you got the whole family involved, grandpa, dad and son all working on this property. That’s super cool. So total budget was about $25,000, it sounds like, on the renovation of this duplex. You paid 44, you’ve got 25 in it, so you’re all in for just under $70,000. And what are you renting those units for?

Kent:
1,200 and 1,200.

Henry:
That is awesome.

Kent:
Yeah, it was fantastic. And then we refinanced this and he was able to pull out $72,000 out of his first property.

Henry:
As a 19-year-old.

Kent:
Yeah. Wow. Wow. He turned 20 till he refinanced it. But at 20 years old, we went to a lawyer and they wrote him a check for $72,000.

Henry:
How scared did that make you?

Kent:
No, he’s the most frugal kid you’ll ever meet. I knew he won’t spend a dime of it.

Henry:
Oh, I can’t imagine getting a $70,000 check at 19. I

Kent:
Was

Henry:
Not that responsible.

Kent:
No, he does great with his money. So he did pay me back. So I put the initial investment in and had to fund some of the flooring and some of the kitchen renovation. So he was able to pay me back $18,000. But then he’s still sitting in the bank with over $50,000.

Henry:
So what made you want to pull your son into this deal? What brought that about?

Kent:
Just financial security. It’s financial future. It’s making, one, giving him the opportunity to be successful later in life. I mean, he’s going to have this property for the next 30 years, just cash flowing 1,500 to $2,000. He can pay it down. He could sell it.You’ve always talked about having multiple exit strategies, and that’s what you have when you buy these properties. As long as you think about different ways of, do you want the cash flow? Do you want the HELOC? Do you need more cash? Are you going to do another deal? So we kind of talked through all that, but because I was so fortunate on my first two deals and because the price points are so low, we’re kind of mitigazing that risk, which is great.

Henry:
What was it like working on this property with your dad and your son, seeing something go from what it was when you purchased it to this investment property that’s producing income?

Kent:
It’s fantastic. I mean, it’s nice word of my son and then my dad comes out and helps out. I mean, we just have a good time. My nephews would come down and do some painting. So almost have a party and just hang out and then we just feed everybody and get free labor. It’s fantastic.

Henry:
All right, Kent, thanks for sharing that story. That’s super cool, getting your family involved and still pulling off another amazingly well cash flowing deal. I’m assuming there’s some more and we’ll dive into those deals right after the break. All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m speaking with investor Kent Long, who has pulled off some pretty amazing cash flowing deals. Now we’re onto what looks like deal four-ish, if you want to count deal three. It was your son’s deal technically, but you helped him with that. So deal three and a half. So what’d you do with deal three and a half?

Kent:
Found a duplex, I believe it was on the market for 65 and I got it for 55 in pretty good shape. The kicker was there was tenants on the first floor already, so ideally I’m going to keep them. And then I actually, you’re not going to love this, I paid a contractor to do the work.

Henry:
No, I love that. I think you should absolutely do that.

Kent:
So I got a $25,000 renovation loan with my commercial loan. The $25,000 paid for the second floor renovation, so painting, putting in a kitchen and flooring.

Henry:
Did you leave the tenants on the first floor at market rents or did you have to raise rents?

Kent:
So their rent was $450 a month.

Henry:
Okay.

Kent:
So I came in and was like, again, I took this from one of your previous podcasts is not just jump them up to market rate. So I just slow rolled them, I’ll increase you a hundred bucks a month for multiple months and I need you to eventually get to 750. 750 is still a little below market, but they’re paying all utilities. And while that renovation was going on, they were covering the mortgage

Henry:
Because

Kent:
It’s a $55 loan.

Henry:
Tenants aren’t stupid. They understand that you have a mortgage and taxes and insurance. Now they may not want to pay more rent, but they understand. And I have always found that if I just sit down and am honest with people, share the plan and give them a say in how we get there, they’re so much happier. Market rents are X. That’s the first thing, right? It’s to show them. If you move, you’re going to be paying 850 a month for the same property, or I can let you stay here for 750. That’s where I got to get you to. Can you help me come up with a plan to get you there? If I’ve got to tweak your rent every month, how much can we afford to go up every month? And when I give them a say in it, they don’t feel like I just did something to them.
They feel like they got to work with me to keep them in their home, which is always a better strategy. So purchase price, 55. Renovation, 25. So you’re all in for $80,000 and you got the one tenant on the first floor up to 750 a month in rent. And what were you able to get in the second floor?

Kent:
$1,000 for the second floor, two bedroom.

Henry:
All right. So 1750 gross rents on $80,000 of debt. This is a recent deal that you found in an affordable market that produces a ton of cash flow. There are markets like this all over the country. I love that you’re using strategies like lines of credit and community banks to grow your business. That is exactly how I grew my business. And I like the pace at which you’re doing these deals because it seems like you’re doing about a deal every six months or so. Is this your only job or are you working some other job at the same time?

Kent:
So my nine to five as a regional manager, as an occupational therapist, I oversee 18 skilled nursing facility therapy departments.

Henry:
So you’re doing this part-time with a full-time gig where you’re traveling a ton. How much time you’re putting in on a weekly or monthly basis into your real estate business?

Kent:
I wouldn’t even say an hour or two a week. If I do three or four a month maybe.

Henry:
Yeah. I like this. I like the story because most real estate investors are mom and pop folks just like you and just like me to some level where you do a few deals here and there, you get them stabilized, and then you move on to the next one. You do it in your spare time. It’s not something that you’re taking all of your focus and you’re able to still produce good income and cash flow when things are done the right way. I love that you’re leveraging the community banks. I love that you’re leveraging HELOCs and lines of credit, but this is just basic real estate investment strategy. This isn’t new. This is literally things that have been around for decades. Anyone can do this kind of strategy. So your goal getting into this was to buy assets, produce passive income. Where do you feel like you are on that roadmap?
Because you’re still self-managing, so there’s some work involved there. You’re doing some of the renovations here and there, so there’s some work involved there, but you’re also producing a good amount of income. So how many more deals do you think you need to do before you can really start to remove yourself from some of those things?

Kent:
My initial goal was to do 10 in five years, and I think I’m going to get eight done in probably maybe three and a half years.

Henry:
Before we get out of here, let’s kind of give everybody a recap of your portfolio. So how many deals have you done? How many doors do you have? How much cash flow is it producing?

Kent:
I have four properties, two duplexes, two triplexes, and then they’re cash flowing $5,500 a month currently right now. And that’s in a two-year timeframe.

Henry:
That’s pretty cool. And that includes your fourth deal, which looks like you bought a duplex for around 90 grand and you turned that one into a triplex?

Kent:
Correct. That one was the biggest renovation and then the biggest workload for me for sure. The duplex was already done. There was new floors, some carpeting. Both of those rentals were ready to go when I bought the property. I put two renters in there immediately, and then I’m getting 950 each for both of those. And then the first floor was an old corner store and it was a disaster. It was dirty. There was an old deli fridge still sitting in there that I had to use a sledgehammer to get out of there because it was so big. And then I took about two dumpster fulls of garbage to even get that first floor cleaned up, and I converted into a three bedroom, one bath on that downstairs unit.

Henry:
And what was the budget for that renovation?

Kent:
About $30,000 I put into

Henry:
This. So you’re all in for 120 and you rented that back unit for how much?

Kent:
1200.

Henry:
So that puts you at total gross rents of about $3,100. $3,100 on $120,000 of debt is phenomenal cash flow. And so this one was an on the market duplex again as well.

Kent:
Correct. Yep. I just got it refinanced and I’m able to pull 83,000 out of it, and then I’m paying my HELOC down to zero with that. Oh boy.

Henry:
Yeah.

Kent:
And you start all over again.

Henry:
So after all of these deals, what’s the goal going forward? Are you going to try to get to 10 in your timeframe or are you going to evaluate yourself after this eight?

Kent:
Ideally, I would love to get four more in the next year and a half.

Henry:
Okay.

Kent:
And when I turn 50, a year and a half from now, just kind of be done and then retire my nine to five

Henry:
Job. All right, Kent, thank you so much for sharing this story. This is such a cool story. What amazing deals. I love that you’ve done this in a recent timeframe. I love that you’re buying the properties on the market and I love that they’re producing cash flow that is getting you to your goals, seems like ahead of time to where you can actually leave your nine to five. I love that you were able to bring in your son and your dad and have everybody work together to build wealth because that’s truly the dream. Those bonds and those memories last forever, and it’s pretty cool to be able to share that with your family. So thank you for sharing that story.

Kent:
Yeah, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Henry.

Henry:
Thank you very much. And thank you guys for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Again, if you have a story you would like to share on the podcast, then you can go to biggerpockets.com/guest and you can apply to share your story with us right here on the BiggerPockets Podcast. As always, thank you for listening and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Abby, a 13-year-old from Poulsbo, Washington, went to a Seattle Mariners baseball game expecting nothing more than a fun night. She left with a trading card worth $20,100, the Seattle Times reports.

The card featured Jimothy, a raccoon with an unusually short, round shape who went viral this summer after videos of him wandering a Seattle neighborhood spread online. In his honor, the team gave out Jimothy cards to the first 20,000 fans through the gate.

Abby, a 13-year-old from Poulsbo, Washington, went to a Seattle Mariners baseball game expecting nothing more than a fun night. She left with a trading card worth $20,100, the Seattle Times reports.

The card featured Jimothy, a raccoon with an unusually short, round shape who went viral this summer after videos of him wandering a Seattle neighborhood spread online. In his honor, the team gave out Jimothy cards to the first 20,000 fans through the gate.

Like much of the rest of the country, I just finished devouring HBO’s gritty medical drama, The Pitt. As much as I love Dr. Robby and the rest of the show’s day crew, around whom the series revolves, it always thrills me when their grueling, 15-hour shifts start to wind down and the night shift shows up. 

It takes a specific kind of person to become an emergency room doctor, and an even more specific kind to become one who particularly loves working overnights. As the night shift’s attending, Dr. Abbot, tells his staff in a pre-shift pep talk, “We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because — ” and here the group says in unison — “we are the weirdest and wildest of them all.” 

This delightful scene got me thinking, and not just about how grateful I am that there are men and women out there who are staffing our hospitals in the wee hours of the night. It also reminded me that everyone has their own circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs when they feel their sharpest. 

As a founder, I used to assume that productivity was mostly a matter of discipline — that if someone wasn’t doing their highest level of thinking during core business hours, they simply needed better habits. I was wrong. What I’ve learned, both from building Jotform and from watching how our team actually operates, is that peak performance times are something you have to discover and build around.

The science behind circadian rhythms

Contrary to the perception that people are either early birds or night owls, it turns out there’s a whole range of hours when one may be predisposed to do their best thinking. For me, I’m sharpest in the morning; by 3 p.m., I have to fight to stay focused. That’s hardly the case for everyone — in fact, recent research from the Journal of Sleep Research found four discrete circadian profiles, including but not limited to those who hit their stride in the afternoon. 

What determines which profile you fall into? Largely genetics, though age plays a role too — teenagers and young adults tend to skew later, while older adults are often at their best earlier. Light exposure, exercise and even meal timing can nudge your rhythms, but nothing you do will fundamentally rewire them. You are, to a significant degree, born with your clock.

Why should leaders care? Because understanding how your employees operate best has a direct impact on their effectiveness. When we schedule our most demanding work without any regard for when our people are at their cognitive peak, their performance is going to suffer, and your bottom line is, too.

Building around your teams’ best hours

Presumably, you already know when you, personally, work best. If not, I suggest keeping an energy journal to note the times of day you feel alert and motivated, and when you start to flag. 

But leaders tend to have more flexibility than their teams — as a CEO, no one is raising any eyebrows about my comings and goings from the office. I can head out for a midday walk or have a long lunch with a colleague, and not worry about what my supervisor will think of my absence. It’s one of the perks of being the boss. 

Your employees don’t have that luxury. And many won’t volunteer information about their peak hours unless you make it explicitly safe to do so. Writing for Harvard Business Review, management professor Stefan Volk suggests using a free tool, like Munich ChronoType Questionnaire, to learn more about your team members’ most productive hours. “Used thoughtfully, those assessments reveal where energy levels align and where they diverge, helping leaders decide when to schedule demanding discussions, assign complex tasks and hand off less demanding work,” he writes. 

Obviously, it’s not possible to completely redesign the standard workday. But it is possible to be more conscious about what tasks are completed when. If you know your lead engineer is most focused in the late morning, for example, that may not be the best time to schedule your weekly check-in call. For collaborative projects, an awareness of everyone’s chronotype can help determine how to determine when the bulk of work gets done. 

At Jotform, I find it’s helpful to lead by example. Aside from having some necessary overlap during the day, I am agnostic as to when employees do their work. For me, mornings are my deep work time, and I don’t schedule anything superfluous during the hours when my mind is at its sharpest. When leaders model this kind of self-awareness, it gives employees permission to do the same.

Dr. Abbot’s night crawlers thrive in the wee hours, and that’s great for them (and anyone with a 3 a.m. emergency). It’s highly likely that some of your team members do, too. By building around when your people think their best, you’re encouraging them to perform at their highest level. And who doesn’t want that?

Like much of the rest of the country, I just finished devouring HBO’s gritty medical drama, The Pitt. As much as I love Dr. Robby and the rest of the show’s day crew, around whom the series revolves, it always thrills me when their grueling, 15-hour shifts start to wind down and the night shift shows up. 

It takes a specific kind of person to become an emergency room doctor, and an even more specific kind to become one who particularly loves working overnights. As the night shift’s attending, Dr. Abbot, tells his staff in a pre-shift pep talk, “We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because — ” and here the group says in unison — “we are the weirdest and wildest of them all.” 

This delightful scene got me thinking, and not just about how grateful I am that there are men and women out there who are staffing our hospitals in the wee hours of the night. It also reminded me that everyone has their own circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs when they feel their sharpest. 

Most executives believe they’ve done their part on artificial intelligence. They’ve approved the tools, announced the initiative and moved on. But the adoption numbers tell a different story.

According to Slingshot‘s Digital Work Trends Report, 86% of C-suite executives believe AI usage is required in their company operations. Yet fewer than half (49%) of middle managers are reinforcing that expectation with their teams. This gap between what leaders announce and what employees actually do isn’t a technology problem. It’s a leadership one.

I’ve spent more than 35 years leading Infragistics, and one lesson which has remained true through every major technology shift is that the success of any new initiative depends less on the technology itself and more  on how leaders introduce it. The organizations that see lasting change are the ones whose leaders create an environment where people can adopt new tools with confidence.

AI is no different. If leaders want employees to embrace it, they need to do more than roll out a platform or issue a mandate. They need to create a safe space where people feel comfortable learning, experimenting and building new habits. Here are three ways leaders can do so. 

1. Coaching creates the confidence to experiment

Real AI adoption requires employees to experiment with the tools. But people won’t take those risks unless they feel safe doing so.

That’s where coaching becomes far more effective than command-and-control leadership. Rather than simply telling employees to use AI, coaching-oriented leaders work alongside their teams and ask what’s working, what isn’t and where people are getting stuck. 

Anyone who has spent time with an AI tool knows that getting genuinely useful results takes practice. The first prompt rarely gives you what you need. Over time, though, you learn to ask more specific questions, provide the right context and test different approaches until the output actually fits your workflow. 

That kind of learning is personal and iterative, and it looks different for every role. A marketer figuring out how to use AI to track KPIs is going to take a completely different path than a salesperson using it for outreach. Employees need room to go through that process, and that only happens when leaders create an environment where figuring it out is part of that job and not a sign that someone isn’t ready.

2. Model the behavior you want to see

One of the fastest ways to encourage AI adoption is for leaders to use it themselves. 

Employees pay far more attention to what leaders do than what they say. So, when leaders openly incorporate AI into meetings, planning sessions, decision-making or content creation — and are honest about both the successes and limitations — they normalize learning. And that transparency gives employees permission to experiment without feeling like they need to be experts from day one.

One simple habit leaders can implement is to open team check-ins by sharing how they used AI that week, what they tried, what worked and what didn’t, then inviting employees to do the same. Conversations like those are an opportunity to exchange ideas, uncover successful use cases, encourage collaboration and help employees learn from one another instead of experimenting in isolation.

3. Position AI as growth, not compliance

How leaders talk about AI matters just as much as how they implement it. When AI is framed as another mandatory technology rollout, employees often see it as another box to check or, worse, as a threat to their jobs. 

Slingshot’s Digital Work Trends report found that nearly 1 in 5 Gen Z employees (19%) and 17% of millennials worry AI could eventually replace them. A company mandate does nothing to address that fear. But when leaders position AI as a way to remove repetitive work, improve decision-making and give employees more time for higher-value thinking, that conversation starts to look very different.

Employees don’t want to hear that AI will replace what makes them valuable. They want to understand how it helps them become even better at the work they already do well. That means being clear about where AI adds value and where human judgment remains essential. AI can analyze data, summarize information and automate repetitive processes, but people still provide strategy, creativity, relationship-building and accountability. When those roles are clearly defined, AI becomes less intimidating and much more useful.

Ultimately, the organizations making the most progress with AI are the ones whose leaders make it safe to learn, model the behaviors they expect from others and consistently reinforce that AI is an investment in their people, not a replacement for them.

Most executives believe they’ve done their part on artificial intelligence. They’ve approved the tools, announced the initiative and moved on. But the adoption numbers tell a different story.

According to Slingshot‘s Digital Work Trends Report, 86% of C-suite executives believe AI usage is required in their company operations. Yet fewer than half (49%) of middle managers are reinforcing that expectation with their teams. This gap between what leaders announce and what employees actually do isn’t a technology problem. It’s a leadership one.

I’ve spent more than 35 years leading Infragistics, and one lesson which has remained true through every major technology shift is that the success of any new initiative depends less on the technology itself and more  on how leaders introduce it. The organizations that see lasting change are the ones whose leaders create an environment where people can adopt new tools with confidence.

Does saving $1,000 in a month seem impossible? Personal finance expert Jade Warshaw, who co-hosts The Ramsey Show, a popular financial talk radio program and podcast, says it’s not as difficult as it seems. 

Warshaw recently said in an interview with Fox Business that most Americans can put aside $1,000 if they are willing to sacrifice the little things and view their finances with a “scorched earth” mentality. “It’s more realistic than people think,” she said. “Most people are able to do it in 30 days.”

Warshaw said to start with building a budget. “If you don’t have a budget, it’s not going to work,” she said. That means calculating net monthly income, tracking expenses and making sure expenses are less than income. 

From that point, Warshaw suggests addressing the problem from two angles by both spending less and bringing in more. That may involve picking up extra shifts at work, starting a side hustle such as driving for Lyft or Uber or selling items online. 

At the same time, cutting back on routine spending, from streaming service subscriptions to dining out, can free up additional cash. 

Warshaw, who claims to have paid off $460,000 in debt, said groceries and dining are often among the fastest areas where households can reduce spending. Frequent restaurant visits and delivery fees can add hundreds of dollars to a monthly budget. Packing lunch at home instead of buying it during the workday can make a meaningful difference, she said.

“For the average person, they could spend anywhere between $12 to $15 going out for lunch, but making that same lunch at home, you could save half and only spend $5 or $6,” Warshaw said.

Baby steps

Ramsey Solutions, the financial education company founded by Dave Ramsey in 1992, recommends seven baby steps to help people take control of their finances. The first step is what Warshaw described: Saving $1,000 for a starter emergency fund. After that comes paying off all debt, saving three to six months of expenses and investing 15% of household income in retirement. 

Warshaw said that people trying to get out of debt could consider temporarily pausing their retirement contributions until they pay everything off. She also recommended being realistic about expenses, especially during the holidays.

“If a family says, ‘I’d like to save $1,000 in the month of December,’ well, it’s going to be tough because you’ve got Christmas going on,” she said.

These baby steps are difficult for most Americans to follow. According to a Bankrate survey released in February, only 47% of Americans said that they had enough money to cover a $1,000 emergency expense. Around 30% indicated that building an emergency fund and decreasing their credit card debt were equally important to them. 

“Most American households want to grow their savings, but few are making meaningful progress right now,” Stephen Kates, Bankrate financial analyst, said in the report. “Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, I recommend focusing on the single most important financial priority in 2026 and making consistent progress there first.”

Does saving $1,000 in a month seem impossible? Personal finance expert Jade Warshaw, who co-hosts The Ramsey Show, a popular financial talk radio program and podcast, says it’s not as difficult as it seems. 

Warshaw recently said in an interview with Fox Business that most Americans can put aside $1,000 if they are willing to sacrifice the little things and view their finances with a “scorched earth” mentality. “It’s more realistic than people think,” she said. “Most people are able to do it in 30 days.”

Warshaw said to start with building a budget. “If you don’t have a budget, it’s not going to work,” she said. That means calculating net monthly income, tracking expenses and making sure expenses are less than income. 

A few years ago, a candidate who had a poor experience during recruitment might tell a few friends. Today, they post about it. They leave a Glassdoor review and share screenshots. Hiring has become public in a way most organizations weren’t built to handle.

What I’ve seen, both through building a company and through analyzing how people find and evaluate jobs, is that trust has become the deciding factor in hiring. Job seekers evaluate employers by how clearly and consistently an organization communicates before anyone has been offered a role.

The cost of getting that wrong is measurable: Companies with a poor employer reputation pay at least 10% more per hire, and that’s before accounting for the offers declined, the referrals lost and the reviews that don’t stop.

The hiring process is part of your reputation

Those signals start earlier than most organizations realize. By the time someone applies, they’ve already formed an impression — shaped as much by what a company hasn’t said as by what’s written in the job description.

The data supports this — 66% of candidates say a positive hiring experience influenced their decision to accept an offer. Poor communication or unclear expectations led 26% of job seekers to decline offers, and up to 72% say they’ll share a bad hiring experience publicly. The numbers reflect a pattern, and patterns compound.

The specific ways unstructured hiring damages trust

Ghost jobs are one of the most visible symptoms of broken hiring communication. When organizations post roles that aren’t actively being filled, or allow listings to sit long after hiring has paused, they erode the credibility of everything else. People apply, hear nothing and draw conclusions about the company, its honesty and its regard for people’s time.

Ghost jobs are only one piece. Vague timelines, repeated interview rounds without explanation and inconsistent updates between stages all create the same corrosive effect: uncertainty. And uncertainty, for most candidates, reads as disrespect.

A 2023 survey found that 40% of applicants were ghosted after multiple interview rounds. Another 35% didn’t receive any acknowledgment of their application. The frustration this generates becomes the story people tell about your brand.

What transparency looks like before the first interview

The recruiters who consistently close strong candidates tend to operate from the same principle: Clarity before the interview is more valuable than a polished pitch during it. What applicants want to understand early is how the process works and what the company genuinely expects. Vague or overly optimistic job descriptions tend to omit all that.

This has practical dimensions, too. Nearly half of job seekers expect to learn about salary before applying. Organizations that include compensation ranges, realistic role descriptions and defined hiring stages self-select for hires who already understand what they’re walking into. The rest of the process gets faster and more honest as a result.

Keeping candidates engaged when decisions take time

Here’s a dynamic recruiters understand but rarely say out loud: Someone can be strong enough to stay in consideration without being strong enough for an immediate decision. Business priorities shift, or budgets change. A role that was well-defined three months ago may have evolved significantly by the time a finalist is being evaluated.

This creates a genuine tension because candidates expect clarity, while recruiters are often working against a moving target internally. The organizations that handle it best are the ones that communicate openly when priorities shift, rather than allowing candidates to sit in silence. A brief update that says the timeline has changed does more for candidate trust than a polished message delivered three weeks late.

Where automation helps and where it doesn’t

Fifty-five percent of candidates hold a negative view of AI in recruitment, citing bias risk and the dehumanizing effect on the process. The concern is the loss of human judgment at moments that feel significant.

Automated systems that handle scheduling or send status updates are useful, but the ones that replace human contact at moments candidates consider meaningful tend to damage trust faster than no communication at all. 

First contact, feedback after interviews, rejection — these are often the moments that define how someone remembers a company.

The long-term business case for getting this right

Candidate experience doesn’t end at the offer — it shapes what comes after. Employees who had an exceptional candidate experience are 3.2 times as likely to feel connected to their organization’s culture long-term, according to Gallup. That process isn’t separate from the employee experience. It’s where it begins.

Those who say they’re unlikely to apply again after a negative experience represent a shrinking future talent pool. The reviews they leave, the conversations they have and the referrals they don’t make are real costs. They accumulate slowly enough that they’re easy to ignore until they aren’t.

Only 14% of organizations have fully implemented their pay transparency approach, according to Mercer’s global survey of over 1,600 companies. For most, transparency is still an aspiration.

Organizations that close that gap build a reputation for being worth working for. That reputation is gained one hiring process at a time. And right now, most companies are leaving it to chance.

A few years ago, a candidate who had a poor experience during recruitment might tell a few friends. Today, they post about it. They leave a Glassdoor review and share screenshots. Hiring has become public in a way most organizations weren’t built to handle.

What I’ve seen, both through building a company and through analyzing how people find and evaluate jobs, is that trust has become the deciding factor in hiring. Job seekers evaluate employers by how clearly and consistently an organization communicates before anyone has been offered a role.

The cost of getting that wrong is measurable: Companies with a poor employer reputation pay at least 10% more per hire, and that’s before accounting for the offers declined, the referrals lost and the reviews that don’t stop.

I try to maintain a growth mindset. That means taking constructive criticism seriously, because I want to properly consider every opportunity to learn how I can improve my business.

But not all criticism is constructive. Sometimes, unsolicited opinions are intentionally shared to disrupt or distract you. And sometimes, advice is simply bad — no matter how good the intentions behind it may be.

The question is: How do you tell the difference between the feedback that helps you grow and the noise that will throw you off track if you pay it too much attention?

My company, Roof Maxx, exists in a highly competitive industry, so we’re used to hearing other people’s opinions. We sell a roof maintenance solution for asphalt shingles that can extend their usable lifespan for years by restoring the flexibility they naturally lose over time. Most of the feedback we receive from customers is overwhelmingly positive; we have over 20,000 online customer reviews with an average rating of 4.9/5 stars. But every so often, we come across misinformation or a divergent opinion about our service and the restoration product it uses.

Here’s how we decide whether these cases are worth addressing, and how you can do the same if you ever find your company receiving confusing or counterproductive feedback.

Any feedback that comes from customers is worth paying attention to

First, let me clarify the above by saying that whenever one of your customers — or potential customers — has questions or concerns, it’s always in your best interest to address them. You never blow off the people you serve. That should be rule number one for pretty much every business.

That’s why we have always remained committed to ensuring dealers respond to customer inquiries quickly. If a homeowner wants to know whether Roof Maxx is right for their roof, a dealer goes to perform a thorough assessment and provide their honest opinion. They only recommend Roof Maxx when the roof is a good candidate, with shingles that are aging or brittle but still in decent structural condition.

Our warranty also guarantees that the asphalt shingles our dealers treat will stay flexible and serviceable for five years from the treatment date. So if a customer ever informs us that their treated shingles are losing flexibility within that window, our dealers are trained to investigate right away and re-treat the area in question if necessary. This doesn’t happen often, but the fact that we demonstrate this kind of accountability to customers is still part of why our reviews are so positive.

Not all feedback comes from customers — or even real people

Like many other businesses, we’ve learned that it’s important to consistently monitor AI platforms for brand mentions. Most of the time, platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini seem to present accurate information about Roof Maxx’s approach to maintaining asphalt shingles. But every so often, I can tell that the data it’s collecting for its responses isn’t entirely accurate.

Here’s one recent example that stuck out to me: that “most consumers love it, while some contractors question it.” This was hugely telling to me, because it speaks to both our stellar reputation among homeowners and the resistance that we’ve occasionally faced from other professionals in an industry we’ve successfully disrupted.

When you think about it, it actually makes sense that some contractors would have a vested interest in criticizing maintenance solutions that make roof replacements less necessary. After all, roof replacements are the highest-margin service a typical roofing contractor can sell, so it’s common for contractors to recommend them — even in cases where a homeowner’s current roof can still be saved.

That means the more homeowners who learn that Roof Maxx is a viable alternative, the fewer unnecessary replacements these contractors are likely to sell. Of course, some of them are going to question it.

What to do when your brand is misrepresented online

It’s always disappointing for me when I see these kinds of results show up in our AI brand mentions, but I also understand that it’s not because we’re doing anything wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite: We’re facing a degree of resistance within our industry precisely because we offer an innovative solution to a common problem, and that’s inconvenient for contractors whose business model depends on customers not having a better option.

Chances are that your AI brand mentions won’t always be perfectly accurate. But they can still be valuable, because studying the discrepancies can reveal a lot about how your competitors perceive you and the messages they’re putting out about your brand. This can set you up to control the narrative.

I use any inaccurate information about Roof Maxx that I find online to update our marketing strategy accordingly. We address false claims head-on in our blog and on our website. Our dealers make speaking to those points a priority when educating potential or existing customers.

What we’ve found is that the best strategy is not to fight misinformation at the source when the source has a clear ulterior motive. We just make sure we’re being as clear and direct as possible when putting the truth out there.

Telling the truth always gives you an advantage because reality will eventually back it up. In our case, that means more glowing reviews and referrals from people who have actually seen the results of our solution firsthand. Eventually, that information outweighs the noise — improving brand awareness among both AI and potential customers everywhere.

I try to maintain a growth mindset. That means taking constructive criticism seriously, because I want to properly consider every opportunity to learn how I can improve my business.

But not all criticism is constructive. Sometimes, unsolicited opinions are intentionally shared to disrupt or distract you. And sometimes, advice is simply bad — no matter how good the intentions behind it may be.

The question is: How do you tell the difference between the feedback that helps you grow and the noise that will throw you off track if you pay it too much attention?

What would you study if you were in college today?

For many college students, majoring in computer science is no longer a job guarantee. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s labor market data, recent computer science graduates have an unemployment rate of about 6.1%, slightly higher than the 5.7% overall rate for recent graduates. 

Not all hope is lost. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that software developer jobs will grow 15% from 2024 to 2034, about five times the average for all jobs. So long-term demand for computer science is strong, even as recent graduates face an uphill climb trying to enter the field. 

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, experts recommend three alternative majors instead of computer science for students who want to thrive in an AI-dominated workplace: anthropology, mathematics and philosophy. The commonality between these different areas of study is that they thrive where AI falls short. 

For example, anthropology is “the study of what makes us human,” according to the American Anthropological Association. That inquiry feels newly urgent as AI reshapes work and forces people to consider which skills and qualities remain uniquely human. 

Alec Litowitz studied mathematics and anthropology at MIT before adding both a law degree and an MBA to the mix. Throughout his career, including as an early partner in global hedge fund Citadel, Litowitz has repeatedly relied on the insights into human behavior that he gained from anthropology.  

“The beauty of anthropology for me is that I can telescope out and try to understand what’s happening to society right now,” he said in an interview with the Journal. 

Math and philosophy are also strong contenders

Bert Bean, chief executive of Insight Global, a staffing and consulting firm, told the Journal that he brings candidates for AI jobs in for an interview and puts them in front of a whiteboard. Then, the interviewers “throw crazy technical problems” at the candidates to see how they think. 

Math majors excel at this type of assessment. They usually have experience with manual problem-solving, having grappled with hard questions and practiced working them out by hand. 

However, Litowitz, the math-anthropology double major, said that if he were to do it all over again, he would pick philosophy. Ana Prestamo, a recent graduate from the University of Notre Dame, agrees that philosophy is a useful major.

“Studying philosophy, or any of the humanities for that matter, has given me something that artificial intelligence cannot replace: a closer understanding of what makes us human,” she wrote in March in The Observer. “And in a time when AI can solve almost any technical problem, understanding what makes us uniquely human becomes all the more valuable.”

Notably absent from the list of recommended majors is AI. Peter Miscovich, executive managing director at real-estate giant JLL, told the Journal that majoring in AI is “too narrow.” Eventually, saying you majored in AI will “sort of [be] like saying you majored in Excel,” he added.

What would you study if you were in college today?

For many college students, majoring in computer science is no longer a job guarantee. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s labor market data, recent computer science graduates have an unemployment rate of about 6.1%, slightly higher than the 5.7% overall rate for recent graduates. 

Not all hope is lost. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that software developer jobs will grow 15% from 2024 to 2034, about five times the average for all jobs. So long-term demand for computer science is strong, even as recent graduates face an uphill climb trying to enter the field.