141: 7 Ways to Find Incredible Real Estate Deals with Chad Carson

This is the BiggerPockets podcast live from Charlotte, North Carolina. Episode 141, Fincon.

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What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dworkin, host to the BiggerPockets podcast, here with my co host, the man, the myth. No, he's not the legend. That's somebody else. It's Brandon Turner.

What's up, Josh?

What's going on, man?

Hey, it's.

It's good.

I'm, I'm. I'm doing well despite, you know, some problems that I've been. I've been dealing with. Last week with my rentals.

It's been fun. Yeah, it's been an interesting week. An interesting week. Some quick context. This show that you're about to listen to was recorded live at a conference called fincon down in Charlotte, North Carolina. A bunch of us went down there to hang out and rub elbows with a bunch of our friends in the financial blogger community. It was a lot of fun, and the show's great. This is a fantastic show with Chad Carson, who has previously done shows with us, but this one was really, really good. But I've actually got a funny story for everybody.

Do tell. Yeah, do tell, Josh. Well, does this story involve me and flames and.

It does.

It does. It does. Yeah. Yeah. So we're in Charlotte. We're at a bar. It's, you know, 11 o' clock or so at night. We're having a few drinks, relaxing, having fun, and Brandon gets a text message. And this wouldn't be unusual because typically, through the course of any conversation with Brandon, he gets about 800 text messages, loses focus, and can't continue a conversation.

Wait, wait, what.

What exactly.

Just got a text.

Sorry, what?

So said text message said, Brandon.

It said, you need to call me. Your house is on fire.

Okay, so. So let. Let's get some context into the story here. This text message came from somebody who was one of Brandon's very first tenants. He's been a tenant for what, like eight or nine years, right?

Yep. Eight or nine. Yeah, I think eight, eight years.

Something like that.

Yeah. Very first tenant.

Back when you didn't really know what you were doing, you know, you kind of did everything wrong. He's got Your cell phone.

Right. He's got my cell phone, knows where I live, all that good stuff that you should not probably do. He probably was never qualified to live there in the first place.

Okay, okay.

And then what's tenant screening? Huh?

Exactly. And now you're in the process of evicting said gentleman for about a month and a half, Correct?

Correct.

Yeah.

He was on his way out.

He was. He was moving stuff out of the house. Finally got. Got. Got out for the most part. And in the process decided to set a box on a stove and then leave and must have bumped the stovetop and lit the box on fire, which then lit the kitchen on fire, which lit the house on fire. And while I'm in North Carolina, I get this call from the guy who I'm deliberately not talking to. And I haven't got any phone call.

Right.

So I got the text.

Yeah. And I have not been answering. I mean, he's been texting me for a month now, you know, with the occasional, you know, cussing me out for me being a jerk landlord for evicting a guy for not paying rent. And I just refused to talk to him. I just didn't. Letting the lawyer deal with it.

And you have a property manager and a lawyer and everything, right?

Yeah, yeah, they're dealing with it. This is one that I gave over to property management. Cause I didn't want to deal with this guy. Cause it was set up wrong in the first place. Anyway, so he lit the house on fire. On accident. I do believe it was on accident.

But, you know, and it was funny because we get the follow up. I mean, like this text message comes.

In there and we're sitting there like.

What do we do?

Is this guy like, you know, did he. Is he threatening to light it on fire? Is this a call for help? What's going on? Like, we're all trying to figure out how to help Brandon out here and. And the phone rings and it's not his tenant, but it's. It's the fireman, right?

It is. The fire department was there at the house putting out the fire. So. Yeah. So they're dealing with it.

They took it down.

I handled it from2025, maybe 3,000 miles away. And, you know, it cleaned up. Insurance is going to take care of everything. And, you know, the best news is the tenant can't live there anymore because the house is completely smoke and fire damaged. So I kind of killed a couple birds with one stone and.

Well, you did not kill any birds with one stone.

I didn't kill any birds with any.

So let's clarify the timing. The timing works very well in your favor. And you know, I mean, insurance company.

Is not going to like, not going to agree that this was a positive thing. But you know, that's one thing I like about real estate. The fact that, you know, people say, well, what happens if your house burns down? Okay, well, you deal with it. You know, you have, you have the right insurance. So that is today's quick tip. Get insurance on your properties because houses burn. And if you don't have the right insurance or something bad happens and you know, call up your insurance company today. Make sure you have good insurance coverage on your properties, people.

Exactly. Great.

Well, anyway, it's a tragic story, but.

But at the same time, it actually worked out well in the end for you. Thank God he, you know, even though you were evicting him, thank goodness he didn't actually get hurt. Although there was somebody killed in, in the home, unfortunately. His fish.

Oh yeah, that's right.

His fish was killed in the home. Which was sad, but at least it wasn't a person.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right, anyway, what if I told.

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All right, guys, as I mentioned before.

This is a live show. Not really, but we recorded it live with lots of people and interruptions and things happen and, you know, stay tuned. It's fun, it was exciting and the content was awesome. So let's bring on Chad Carson, a fantastic guy, a great investor from. Where's he. He's from. I'm blanking out.

He's from South Carolina, but what's the.

Carson.

Clemson.

Clemson.

Clemson, yeah.

Clemson, South Carolina.

Chad is going to teach us seven ways to find incredible real estate deals, and some of them you probably have never heard of before. So if you're looking, if you're struggling to find good deals, this show is going to help you.

All right, let's bring on finco.

That's what I'm talking about.

You ready for this?

I'm ready.

You ready?

I'm ready.

I'm ready.

This is the bigger part. Pockets podcast live at the Trade King stage here at Fincon 2015 Charlotte, North Carolina. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dworkin, your host, here with my co host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? How are you, man?

I'm good, I'm good. I, you know, it's been a couple good days here at fincon. Getting very, very little sleep and people who don't know what fincon is. Josh, what is fincon?

Fincon. Fincon is the world. World's premier conference for financial bloggers, financial writers, press, media, you name it. It's all about finance here at fincon Charlotte.

That's all.

That's it, man.

Oh, okay.

That doesn't sound as exciting as it really is.

It is pretty exciting. This is a conference this year. There's like 880amazing people networking some of the top talent and blogging and writing all about real estate finance, you name it. So I'm excited to be here. This is my fourth year. I think. It's your third, right?

Third year.

Third year.

And we recorded last year. We did a live show as well, which was episode. I'm not sure, but we'll link to it in the show notes@biggerpockets.com Show 1 41.

That's right. Show 141. Yes, yes, yes. So today we've got a great show. We actually have a bigger pockets.

Podcast, alumni, alumni named Chad Carson. And we'll bring Chad out shortly. For those of you who are here can see that he's sitting here next to us. But before we go there, man, like, how have things been going lately? Everything good?

Things. Things are good. I bought a new house. That's exciting. It finally closed. We've been talking about it lately.

We have. Congratulations.

I haven't moved yet, but I hired a high school girl to move all my stuff while I'm here at fincon. Like, she's been moving for the last couple weeks, but she moved my kitchen. So I left with one kitchen. I'm gonna come back and the new kitchen is gonna be stocked, all the dishes, all the food completely put away. I'm pretty excited about that.

That's great.

Outsourcing, right there.

That is outsourcing. And she's gonna live with you guys now, I hear.

She is not. I wouldn't mind a maid, though, like full time. That'd be kind of cool.

That's not a bad idea.

Alice from. What's that show? The Brady Bunch.

That's right.

My wife actually told me that a few weeks ago. She said, you know, we need an Alice just to hang out with us and cook us meals and do it.

Do it, do it. All right, man. Well, let's get to this. Let's make this thing happen here. So Chad Carson. Chad Carson is a real estate investor, I believe, from the Clemson area. And Chad, by the way, who many of you guys may not know was a professional college athlete or a college athlete, non professional, who played in front of tens of thousands of people, which is pretty fascinating to me, by the way. But Chad, you've been. Chad's been investing for how many years, Chad?

It's been 13 years.

So Chad's been investing for 13 years, and we're really, really excited to have him back on the stage. So, Chad, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here.

I appreciate it, Josh. It's great to be here with you guys. And fincon is a wonderful place to hang out and get to know people and really network and learn a lot. So this is all awesome to be here.

Very cool. Yeah, you were, you were last on the show back on episode 84, where we talked about getting started with creative finance and designing your ideal lifestyle. And so today we're going to shift gears a little bit and, you know, people can go back and listen to that, of course, @biggerpockets.com show84. But today we're going to talk, we're going to precede that, converse that conversation a little bit. Do a prequel, I guess you could say it is. We're going to talk about how did you get to that point? You had to buy real estate deals. You had to buy a lot of deals. So how did you do that? That's what we're talking about today. How do you find amazing real estate deals? Because not every deal in the world is going to work. In fact, most of them won't. So how do you find the best one?

Hey, Brandon.

Yeah?

How do I find really good deals?

I have no idea.

I want to be a real estate investor. What do I do?

We should ask Chad, because Chad's actually here. We'll ask him. How do you find good real estate deals?

Let's do it, Chad.

Awesome. Well, I love the topic and I think it's important, though, to precede that a little bit and say, and Brandon and I were talking a little bit in another conversation that you can, you can go out and try to find deals and you can do all this lead generation to find deals, which we're going to talk a lot about today. And I've got some tips for you guys to actually some specific things you can use to find good leads and deals. But I think it's important first of all to say just kind of, what do you have to do before then? So, Brandon, what do you, what do you think? What are some of the first things that you did? And I can bounce in there, too. But you know, what do you recommend people when they, when they first start, before they even start looking for leads?

Oh, look at that. You're turning the interview around to me. That's, that's exciting.

So I don't know when I did.

I know I was unprepared. Okay. So, I mean, the first I mean, I always tell people this mindset is probably most important thing. First of all, you've got to get in the mindset that I'm gonna go buy a good deal. Not just any deal, but you got to know, mindset wise, you got to buy a good deal. Would you agree?

Yeah, I mean, I wanted to ask you because you guys, I listen to your podcast and I know how it goes. But yeah, I would say first you have to get educated and you got to know kind of how to analyze a deal and you got to know what's most importantly, what's important for your niche. Because I think so many. When I first started, I was a wholesaler, so I was going out and finding deals that I would get under contract and assign to other people. And if that business model is completely different than somebody who is working a full time job and needs one or two rental properties on the side and they're about to retire. So I guess I'm just bringing that point up because these are some really cool tips we're going to talk about, but there's some other homework that you want to do to kind of find your specific place within the real estate investment world first.

Yeah, I mean, lots of people like, hey, I'm going to be a real estate investor and they're like, you know, get all excited and they're like, what do I do? You know, finding deals is one thing, thing. But if you don't know, and we talk about this in our beginner's guide, right? I mean. Biggerpockets.com UBG the Ultimate Beginner's guide. You've got to pick your strategy, you've got to pick your niche, you've got to know what you're going for. I mean, just now, granted, if you find a good deal, there's a whole lot that you can do with it, but you really need to know how to find that good deal. And you really need to know, you know, what are my possible exits? How do I, how do I get out of this thing? What do I need to do, do? So we talk about that elsewhere. We cover that right now. Let's get into this thing. How on earth do I find great deals? So you've got seven tips, the first of which is driving for dollars. So driving for dollars. Let's talk about that.

What is it?

All right, so this is a pretty cool strategy, first of all, because if you're, if you're low budget or if you have a big budget for finding deals, either way, this is not a really Expensive proposition. So basically you're going to get in your car car, you're going to fill it up with gas and you're going to look on Google Maps and say this is my target area and I'm just going to drive. And this could be on your way to work if you had an extra 10 minutes on the way to work. Or this could be a planned Saturday afternoon, for example, like if you're part time working on the weekends and you're just going to drive neighborhoods, but you're going to do it deliberately, you're going to be looking street by street by street in every little nook and cranny of a neighborhood, every little side street. And here's there's a few things that you're going to look for. And so I've got three typical or kind of main things are going to catch your eyes and these are going to be just flags that you're going to, you're going to stop when you see these things. You're going to stop, you're going to do something. So the first thing you're looking for as you're driving around would be these houses with grass that's up to your waist. There's newspapers in the, those are pretty houses and they're vacant. So you're looking for signs of houses where somebody has moved out. And for whatever reason, you don't know why they moved out. It could be that they moved out across the the country, it could be that they lost their foreclosure, it could be whatever. But you're going to be looking for those. And when you find one, you're going to stop, you're going to pull over and you're going to write it down on a notebook and say the address and maybe the address to the left and the right and then you're just going to keep on creating a list, doing it that way.

Right.

Right on. Yeah, that's a great way. That's a great way. And you know the, the great thing about finding vacant properties is anybody can do that. It costs you absolutely nothing. You get in your car, you drive around, you look for houses that look like crap and suddenly you've got a list of potential buys, correct?

That's right. And I don't know about you guys, but we sort of call it our vacant radar. Like my wife is in on this game and everybody I know in town's in on it. Look, if you're riding around, I want you to be looking for these vacant houses and everybody I've taught how to look for these. Now it's like a different driving experience. Now. You can't drive through a town without noticing these houses that before you were completely ignoring. But now that you're looking for them, you'll notice weird little things. Like, for example, a vacant house might not have any curtains in the windows or they might have something. There's no toys for kids in the driveway or something. But you find all these little things in your town that sort of indicate why a house is vacant. And they're all over the place. I mean, you wouldn't believe how many there are.

Yep.

Yeah, that's so true. My wife and I do the same thing. Like, I never heard vacant radar before, but that's exactly what it is. Yeah, it's like you just, you start to know. You're like, that looks like it might be a vacant house. And then like, sometimes if I have time, I'll like get out of the car and go kind of walk up to the house, maybe knock on the door and see if, you know, if it is vacant, if there's somebody there. But you know, as I'm walking by the front window, you know, take a look inside and you know, see somebody in there changing and they scream and call the cops and it gets really awkward.

That's a good idea.

I like that.

I like that. Yeah, especially when you're like eight feet tall and scary looking. It's a good idea.

You wear a hood and you run at night and it's like midnight and it's gets a little weird.

Yeah, that's weird.

I would sell Brandon my house if he walked up at night too. He's a scary dude. Give me your house.

Yes.

All right, cool.

So we got vacants. That's fairly obvious. What else do we have?

Well, the other ones, I'll just quickly say that you're going to see signs. And the sign I don't typically call are the realtor signs. That's the one everybody else is calling. I like to call for sale by owner signs because they potentially you can talk directly to the seller and not always work out a deal. But there might be some reason why they didn't list it with a realtor. They might need to sell it quickly. Maybe they hate realtors. I mean, there's no reason, no telling why, but I've bought some properties just by calling the for sale by owners. The uglier the sign, the better. You know, if they bought it, you know, they just bought a yellow sign and they handwrite it on there or they use the old for sale by owner sign they found in the dumpster. You know, you want, you want some kind of just ugly sign that's, that's really good because they're less, they're less apt to try to, they're just, they're just kind of amateur, to be honest. They're just, they're not, they haven't done their homework and they're, they're, they're more likely to, to be a motivated seller, which is what we're looking for.

Right on, right on. So we got the for sale bar owners, we got vacants. This is driving for dollars and a great thing to do. What you want to do is you want to create your quote farm, right? So you want to figure out what area do I want to invest in. And this is obviously not going to work when you're looking remote, this is going to have to be something. When you're looking in a relatively local area, you're going to scout out an area and you can literally just make a grid, right? Just go up, down the blocks, on your way to work, wherever kind of your pathway is that you want to invest in. And essentially over the course of time, things are going to change. What's not vacant today might be vacant in three months, six months. So you just keep doing it over and over again. And you've always got a constant flow of leads, right?

Exactly.

Yeah. And the other thing is exactly what you said. You got to pick a neighborhood and go after it and make that your farm. So. But the final one, I was going to say the final thing you want to look for when you're riding around are for rent by owner signs. And not a lot of investors think about this. They think, oh, it's for rent. That's not for sale. But I've had a lot of success and other people I know have had success calling the for rent sign. And you can, you can ask, you can just be honest and say, I'm an investor as well. I sell your houses for rent. You know, tell me about it. Maybe I could react, refer you somebody. But by the end of the conversation, if you can turn it around and say, well, I see you're renting the house, but have you ever considered selling it? Yeah, that one question has bought me a lot of houses and has bought other people I know houses. So if you just get practice, it's very simple. And landlords, you know, a lot of us are landlords. So it's a person you can relate to and talk to. And so that's pretty cool. You can you can have a conversation with them and you might even, it might even lead to other things. Maybe they're going to turn into a private money lender. Maybe they're going to be a referral source of other things for you. So it's just, it's a really good thing to call rental signs.

Yeah, yeah, I was going to add that. Like when you do that.

Yeah.

You might not get, nine times out of ten they're going to say probably not, maybe, but it doesn't matter. You might build that relationship. They might become a mentor. If you're brand new at real estate, I mean, what a terrific way to get into, to get a mentor and to get into it than by calling landlords who are doing exactly what you want to do and if nothing else, maybe you'll hear their horror stories of what they screwed up on and you can try to avoid those things. Yeah, I love that stuff.

And one of the things that we always talk about is, you know, taking out experienced investors for coffee or syncing up with them. And that's a great way to meet people. You know, one of the tips that we, the actionable tips we always tell people is, you know, every week you've got to try and reach out to at least one new person or every day or however often you want to do it. And that's a perfect way to do it. So. Right on.

All right, cool. Let's go to number two. So the first one was driving for dollars. What's your second tip on finding great deals?

Alright, well I'm stick with another free one because I want everybody to have some budget ideas that they can do without having to spend a lot of money. But the second one is just going on to Craigslist. So a lot of us use Craigslist to buy appliances. We use them to sell our old furniture and things like that. But you know, people sell houses on Craigslist. People rent houses on Craigslist. And so I've got a few ways that you can as you're. And you can do this from home at night, after you get home from work, you can look on Craigslist and I would start off going to the for sale by owners section. So on most Craigslist you can look in your area and you can just search for any house that's for sale by owner and you can make a list of those and just start calling them. And it's kind of like you said earlier about the calling for rent by owner signs. It's not necessarily going to be a high Success ratio. So you got to prepare yourself to get a lot of no's or maybes. But if you just, if you practice getting on the phone, there are all sorts of good things that happen. And one of those is that you might buy a house. And so this has been, it's a free way to do it and you can, can control it.

Right on, right on. But do you have any tips? Because calling people can be really scary. So for those people who are afraid.

To pick up the phone and actually.

Do it, you know what, what tidbits might you want to give those folks?

Yeah, I mean my heart always races even to this day. I've made thousands of calls and had hundreds of appointments with people. But I like to write the first thing I'm going to say down because the worst thing that can happen is you just kind of freeze up on the phone and say, oh, wrong number, bye, you know, and hang up. And so if you write down the first question or the first sentence and if you write down the last question or the most important kind of call to action question, which would be are you interested in selling your house or what are you going to sell your house for? If you write those down, then when you freeze you can go back to your paper. And I still do that sometimes. Just write it down. Here are the questions I want to ask. And that'll sort of be your little handmade script.

That's a great tip.

So what besides the for sale by owners, I mean, are there any types of ad titles that you are specifically going to be looking for? Anything to help save time, filter out and find these, these properties?

Yeah, there's a couple. One is an estate sale. So you know, I've had some people, some people just try to sell their house on their own and probate or estate, that'd be sort of an indication, you know, a lot of people put stuff on there. Not only houses. If you, if you can look at furniture sales, people have estate sales in your town and they put their stuff on Craigslist. So if you can talk to them about, hey, so you're having an estate sale. When is this estate sale? And ask about it. And you can say, well you know, with my family we sold all our furniture and right after that we sold the house. Are you gonna be selling the house too?

That's great.

Natural question. Because the person who's dealing with the estate is typically not that excited about it. I've known because I've had to help with my family too, but they're not that excited about it. So they, they want to sell their house. And so that's a good way to kind of segue and do that.

Yeah, I went to an, I went to an estate sale a few months ago and you know, I walked through and I was looking at the stuff that was for sale and all this stuff. But I want, I went up to the owner and I was just kind of talking to him and I really wanted to ask him if they would sell their house. But I was like, I don't know, I felt like weird. And I was like, ah, you know, that feels awkward to do that.

I don't want to, I don't want.

To bug them and ask them. So I didn't. And then like two months later, they sold their house for this like rock bottom price of some other investor who ended up flipping the house. And I'm like, dang it, like, why did I just ask them? It would have been a 10 second thing. I was just afraid of hearing no. So I talked myself out of it and I lost a deal because of it. So, yeah, I like that. It's just something you gotta do, you gotta just get over. And I liked your tip about the phone call a lot. Like writing down your first line, I think that's good. Even in person. You could come up with like a, you know, a phrase you always say and practice it ahead of time. I think that's awesome. So cool.

The other tip I'll give, and just final about any of these phone calls you're making, I mean, if you're, if you're an introvert and you're not really used to making calls, you're gonna have to psych yourself up a little bit. You're gonna have to think about why, why am I doing this? And so, you know, I like to think about the fact that I'm not calling, calling them to bug them about something, I'm actually calling to help them about something. And you know, for some of us who already bought houses, we know that there's some people we've really helped a lot and they were so happy the way they bought their house. But if you've never done this before, you might be thinking, I'm just taking advantage of somebody or I'm buying their house cheap. No, you're actually gonna, the person who's gonna sell it to you is gonna be very happy that you're buying it from them. And so you gotta go in there with that attitude that I'm looking for that person who I can help. And if I, if you the person who says no is just somebody you can't help. Don't worry, don't take it personally, you.

Know, and it's interesting because not just in real estate investing, but, you know, here we're at fincon and we got all these people who are little entrepreneurs doing their thing across the gamut. Fear is probably one of the most powerful things that stop us from accomplishing what we want to accomplish. And so whether it's making that phone call or whether it's getting out there and doing mailers or driving for dollars, you know, like, what do I do next? I found a property. Now what? I'm freaking out or hey, I've got this blog and how do I. All these things, it's fear and you have to get past the fear. And the key to get past the fear is to have a plan, is to have a map. And by knowing whether it's a script on who you're going to talk to or at least a basic map on how you're going to accomplish your task, you're going to have an easier time getting past that fear really quickly. Before, before we go on, you know, we've got you back. It's been a while since you're on the show. How many units do you have? How many properties do you own? How many units do you have? How long you've been doing this now?

Sure. I've been investing in real estate full time for 13 years. So I'm 35 years old and I graduated from college and decided that before I figured out how to do a real job, I would just go and start buying some houses and, and just do that for a couple years. And I look back now and I've, I've been doing it full time time. So I'm an entrepreneur. But we currently own 55 units and we're in a college town, Clemson, South Carolina. So some of those are college rentals, some of them are just your typical single family houses, duplexes, that sort of thing. And, but I like to tell people I'm a not. I'm a little big business. So I have 55 units, which for a new person is gonna sound like a lot, but for somebody who syndicates thousands of properties, that's very tiny. But I work out of my basement. We have a part, part time person who helps us out. Low overhead, that's kind of. I'm a lifestyle business. I like to travel, I like to do other things, I like to write. And, and so the real estate's really, I think, the most powerful Part about it for me has been the kind of flexible lifestyle that is allowed.

Yeah.

To do so many other things. And that's, that's what really I'm excited about.

So with 55 units, you don't really have the credibility to talk about finding deals, do you?

Not. Not at all. No. No.

Right on.

Cool.

All right, cool. So we had Craigslist, we had Driving for Dollars. Next thing on the list is the mls.

Alright, so this is one that probably a lot of people already do. So maybe we can go into some nuances of some different techniques. But you know, most properties sell in mls. Everybody knows the realtors list most of the properties and they put it on this big database called mls, which goes out on the Internet and syndicated everywhere else. And so it pays pay attention to that for two reasons. One, because there's a lot of properties there. Two, because it's free. Again, if you're getting started, you want to try to exhaust every free resource you can. And so my strategy with MLS is to kind of filter out the ones that actually have some potential for being interesting. And so one way I do that, you can hire a Realtor, if you're not a realtor yourself, to do a search for you and they have a computer where they can filter out and look for certain things. For me, one of the most important things is days on the market. And so I don't want to unless a property is priced really low the day it comes on the market, I'm not really interested. And even then it's because there's going to be five or six other people bidding on it with me. And I don't like to bid against other people. What I like to do is come back after everybody else has forgotten about the property and after they've had to lower the price two or three times and it's at 200 days on the market. You know, they might have been not motivated to start off, but for any of you, and I'm in this camp too, when you owned a property and had on the market, because 200 days you start listening to a lot of, a lot of different options. And that doesn't mean you're going to take the off the low offer, but there's a lot of other things that you can get done. And so I asked my realtor to search for those and then from there we'll start looking for ones that are listed within the price range or kind of close, you know, if it's within 10 to $15,000 of, of our target price that we Think it would be a good deal. Then we'll start making offers on those and just start following up. Following up, following up.

Do you have like a minimum time on market before you start even looking or is it just, you know, play by ear?

Not necessarily, no. But I might. I divide the search into two different kind of categories or buckets. One might be here the long day on the market ones, and then the other ones might be all right, it's only been 20 days on the market, but it's an REO, it's a bank foreclosure, it's an estate sale. And so you can get your realtor to use some other keywords like that. So fixer, upper, reo, estate sale. I was thinking about some other terms. Sometimes you can look for addendums required. That's sort of a back way that they might not list bank owned property, but they might all the bank owned properties, you have to sign addendums. And so you just, your realtor, if they really know their stuff in the local market, they know what the foreclosure motivated kind of sellers, typically how they list them. So ask your realtor to help you figure out a search that gets those into a category and then you just search down that list and find the ones that are in your target location that are already kind of below the full market value. And then you start going after those.

Yeah, and just because it's on the MLS obviously doesn't mean it's going to.

Be a good deal.

And just because it's been on the market for 280 days doesn't mean it's.

Going to be a good deal either.

Right, Exactly. Yeah. Some people try to buy a property just because it's in foreclosure, they think it's below market value. And that's not the case. And this sort of goes back to our conversation at the beginning is that this is all assuming that you've done some work on your business plan, you've done some work on what target, my target neighborhood is. You've done some work on what a good deal means. I mean, do you know the numbers? Do you know the market values in your area? Because you have to know the value that knowing your values is such an important thing. And I equate to people that this is like lifting weights. If you're an athlete, every single day you train and you lift weights in order to perform well.

Right.

Well, in the real estate business, we are our product, our commodity is a piece of real estate that has a certain value. So if you want to lift weights every day. You've got to know your values before you go out and start doing all this stuff to try to find deals, because that's how you recognize what a good deal is. Yeah, I love that.

I love that. The analogy of kind of like lifting weights, it's something that they do every day. Weightlifters work every day. And like, you know, I use something.

You do every day.

Right.

Well, you know, here, obviously.

Look at Brandon.

Yeah, look at me.

You're a beefy dude, aren't you?

No. I think this is my third day in a row working out there. You should be proud.

I know. I stopped. Stopped after like, five minutes.

Yeah, that's all right.

I'm working out with you guys tomorrow.

But I love this analogy of like, working out because it's the everyday process of doing every day a little bit. You know, you don't have to. If you want to start investing in real estate, you don't have to start out by buying a whole ton of stuff. Start out by one activity every day. That takes you 10 minutes. I mean, that might be analyzing three deals. I say that all the time on the Bigger Pockets webinars. I encourage people to analyze three deals every single day, every day, without fail. Right. Or maybe it's just meeting one new person that's investing in real estate in your area every week. Or maybe that's jumping in the forums on the bigger pockets and asking one question every day. You know, just that everyday action I just love. You know, there's that famous quote that says it's easier to work out seven days a week than it is to work out three days a week. Because when you work out every single day, you. You don't fail as often as you do working two or three days a week. So anyway, I love that stuff.

Cool.

All right, let's move on to number four here. What is that?

So our fourth one is, I call it referral prospecting. Referral prospecting. So this is sort of a bigger bucket of things that you do to try to get other people bringing you leads. And I gotta be honest, this is the one that sort of changed my business life when I realized, and I was actually looking at other businesses and I thought about it and I said, you know what? Most businesses, when they. When they're in business four or five years, they don't have to do a whole lot of proactive marketing. Like in a little small town, if you're the local. Small town attorney or the small town dentist. My mother was a dentist. So I kind of saw this behind the scenes.

You've got nice teeth.

Yeah, look at that. I wish they could see it on the podcast, but she's done a lot of work on those from all my football days, tearing my teeth up. But anyway, most local business people don't do a ton of marketing five years into their business because they get so many referrals to the point where most of their business comes from referrals. And so in my real estate business, I thought about that. I said, what can I do? It's almost like planting seeds. What can I do right now to start planting seeds with other people so that they'll bring me deals instead of me having to be out there hustling all the time? Hustle, hustle, hustle. And so I'll give you a few ideas on ways that you can do that. And again, they're really inexpensive. One is we're all on bigger pockets. And so one of the most valuable tools for me in my local market is to be in the local market forum on the bigger pockets. And so I'm in South Carolina, and I'm in the upstate of South Carolina. And so very. If you let people know on that forum that here's my location and for me, I'm the Clemson guy. I'm in the college town. I want people to know I buy Clemson properties. And a week does not go by when I don't have another investor in my area who's apparently my competitor. But they're always bringing me leads because either they don't have time or they don't have the money this week, or they don't have the inclination on this type of property. And so that's an often missed opportunity by telling other investors in your area, specifically through BiggerPockets, which is a huge network of people in your area, that you buy properties, what you're looking for, what neighborhoods, and just let them come to you.

So let's talk about that. I know we talk about that a lot, and I think it's important to stress every time it comes up. So I going to stress upon it again. You said these people are my competitors. I am an investor in this market. I want to get good deals. And they are investors in the same market and they also want to get good deals. They are your competitors. Why would you want to work with your competitors? There is a benefit to be gained, is there not?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's. I think it's counterintuitive for some people, but I mean, I just, I know for a fact the Last time, two years. The best deals I've bought the last two years have become from a referral from somebody who does something fairly similar, but he just had a little bit different niche. For example, it was a one guy referred me a duplex. He didn't want to buy duplexes at the moment. He was buying 20 unit buildings. And so that made perfect sense for him that he was looking for bigger stuff. He had bigger fish to fry. This is just a little duplex, which was an awesome deal for me. I was right in my wheelhouse. And it happens every single day that there's some. Some deal that another person is doing that they can refer to you. So, yeah, absolutely.

And not just if they're doing another niche. I mean, you might have a guy who does duplexes and you do duplexes, but he's tapped out because he's got too many deals and he doesn't have the cash or the resources to get the next deal. So, you know, if he can work with you. Get a small piece.

Exactly.

Yeah. And you can also start telling people, if you're somebody who has the capital to buy deals, like if you're a cash buyer or you have some sources of private money, start telling other investors that, hey, I've got money to loan. So if you, if you're interested in being a private lender, a lot of times that's sort of a back door to getting deals because the person who has the deal, your competitor in your town says, hey, I've got three deals under contract and now I've got a fourth one. I don't have the money. Can you loan me the money? And you could talk about it, say, yeah, I'll loan you the money at 15% with 4 points. And, you know, whatever the case might be, be. And they say, well, I'm not going to do that. I said, well, I'll buy the property from you for 50,000 bucks. They say, okay, I'll make 3,000 bucks and just pass it on to you.

That's a great tip.

And so, I mean, there's lots.

You're a terrible person.

No, but this is a common theme that Josh mentioned earlier, is that if you get out and you start talking to people, you know, there's so many people, I think, in the bigger pockets when we're talking on the forums, they think there's a technique or a trick that you're going to get some direct mail campaign or that we're talking about the MLS here, referral, prospecting. You know, you need to do those. But the common theme is you get. You need to start talking to people and you need to start pitching people about what you do.

Yeah.

If you do that every single day and whatever form that comes, then you're going to start having some opportunities. Yeah, I love that.

And you just mentioned, you know, you mentioned this idea of the local networking forums on BiggerPockets. Just in case people aren't familiar what that is, we recently introduced these sub forums in BiggerPockets that you can go to. And your area has its own sub forum probably. And so there's, you know, hundreds of them.

Yeah, we've got State and then we've got major Metro.

Yeah. And so you can go in there and just start networking in that sub forum like you do in the. In the. In the Clemson or whatever. You're South Carolina.

We need to get an upstate one, guys. We got. We have to network with all of South Carolina right now.

So there's, you know, everybody watching and listening. You just called us out. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, can we find another guest? Alexander, come on up, man.

You're an investor.

Productive feedback from your consumers.

Yeah.

All right, cool. So we talk about Bigger Pockets. I was kidding, but that's okay. What's up, everyone? This is Alexander, another Bigger Pockets member.

I'm Alexander from cashflow diaries.com.

Nice.

And you write about real estate? I do write about real estate.

I love real estate and I love Bigger Pockets. I've been a member for years, and.

Most of the information that I know.

Is from Bigger Pockets.

That's awesome.

I love that. Well, we're gonna get you on the.

Show at some point full time.

Is that cool?

Hell, yeah, man.

We're doing it.

Thanks.

All right.

All right.

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All right, let's get back to this.

Guy next to me.

We're talking about Bigger pockets. Referral, prospecting, local, local networking groups. There's other stuff too, right?

Yeah. So the other thing I would do, and I've had a lot of success with, is talk to all your professionals in your hometown. So you kind of back into this. I think about when somebody has to sell a house, whether it's, you know, they're in financial straits or whether they inherited the house or some reason they're selling this fixer upper house that you're trying to buy, you know where. Who do they talk to in the town to get advice? Well, you think about it. I mean, what would you guys say? I don't want to put you on the spot again, but who do they talk to when they go to in the town to get good advice? When they have a situation in their family or whatever happens?

The realtor, their pastor? They talk to you, don't they? You're a pastor, aren't you?

I'm not a pastor. I'm a youth leader. They're different.

He plays a mean guitar, though.

I play a mean guitar.

Ukulele, too.

Right, And a ukulele. I know three chords on the ukulele.

Nice.

I can do some damage.

I'll be doing that later on, guys. For everybody who's alive.

Yes.

I was gonna bring it, but I didn't.

For everybody who's sober tonight.

Yeah.

Come to the sweet what room.

All right. So. So, yeah, I mean, I was thinking, like, insurance. You might. If you have an insurance question, go to your insurance agent.

Yeah, real estate agent.

I would go to real estate agent. Mortgage, Mortgage. Mortgage person.

So what, your attorney, too? I was thinking. Yeah, attorney, your cpa, your financial advisor.

Yeah.

So I just found that all these people in town who. A lot of real estate investors don't. They don't go talk to them and tell them what they do, and that's a mistake because what happens is those people go. They're having their appointment with their financial planner, with their attorney. They say, you know what? I need to sell my house. I really don't know what to do at this point. And if they knew that you're a respectable person in your town who also buys property, properties, that attorney might say, well, you know, you can list it, but if you really need to sell it quickly, you could try talking to Chad. You know, he buys. I know he buys houses, but Chad.

They know you're not respectable.

Yeah, you need to be respectable first. So precursor to that. But if you're. I'm in a small town. You know, that's kind of another conversation. But everybody's in a small town. If you're in a big city, you have your village, you have your. I think it's Warren Buffett who said this in one of his books that, you know, if somebody. Somebody who's working for him loses money for them, he can forgive that. You know, he didn't like it, but he's gonna forgive it. But if he. If somebody loses one shred of reputation for Warren Buffett they're gone right now.

Yeah.

And I think if you run your business that way, I think that's, that's really important because that, that is your equity in financial terms and your business is your reputation. So in small town, that equity turns into referrals. Going back to this whole conversation about referrals. If you have a good reputation, if you deliver, if you over deliver, then people who know you, other professionals in town are gonna, are gonna refer business to you.

That's huge. That's huge.

And yeah.

And you know, so many new real estate investors come in and they're like, you know, I hear about these, all these marketing techniques and some of them might be kind of borderline. And you know, they're gonna try some, they may try some, you know, slightly shady stuff and think that, oh, you know, it's great because I got a deal for, from it, so it's okay to do. The problem is everybody else now knows that you did that. So you've kind of soiled your reputation to folks and they may not want to work with you just because you were successful one times, two times, five times, you've kind of just used up your ability to be successful and you don't have a long term business anymore. You've just screwed yourself. So you've got reputation is absolutely everything. I agree with you 1000%.

And that's, that's fantastic feedback.

Yeah, awesome. All right, so what else we got? We got referral thing. You want to go on the next one? You got anything to wrap that up with?

No, I think that's it.

So.

All right, so that was number four. Let's do a quick review. Number one was dropping dollars.

Number two is Craigslist. Number three is using the mls, but using it a little bit smarter. Don't just try to go after the whole mls, be targeted about it.

Okay.

Number four was referral prospecting. All right, and number five is we're going to talk about direct mail.

Now what is direct mail?

All right, so direct mail mail is instead of going out after the whole universe of people who own houses in your town, you're going to try to build a list so you can buy lists from different sources. There's online. If you search for direct mail lists in my town, you can, there are a number of people who will sell you a list for a few hundred bucks for a lot of names. So that's, that's kind of another story. And maybe we can link to some and I can give you a couple names.

Yeah, for sure.

That we can link to. But basically, once you get a list, you can search for certain criteria upon homeowners. So you don't want all of the homeowners. You want, for example, all the homeowners who live in a different location than where the property is. That's called an absentee owner. And that's one of the most common lists. I mean, so you're going to have to test these. This is a. I didn't put this first because this is. I think there's a little bit more advanced technique. Even though on the forums and different places, people talk about direct mail all the time. This is one of those techniques that you're going to have to spend money on. And it's a possibility that you send a thousand letters out because that's how many you have to send before you start getting results. You can't just send 2, 3, 4, 5 letters. You have to send a thousand and maybe get 10 calls or 15 calls. And there's a possibility, though, that in your market, if it's so competitive or this niche doesn't work, you might send them out to the absentee owners and you get no calls because there's 10 other letters going to that same person. That's just part of the deal. You have to experiment with it. So that's why I think it's a little bit more of an advanced technique, is that you have to be willing to spend and lose a little bit of money in order to make some money to find the right list. Yeah, but absentee owners is always a good place to start because if you just think about the motivation level, there are potentially people who live in another place who are having to take care of a property in your hometown. And that's especially if they're managing themselves or they inherited it. That's just not a fun situation to be in. I'm a local property owner. I like owning property in my backyard. And the people who own property out of town have to do a lot more work. If they do a lot more and take a lot more effort than I do when I. When an emergency comes or something happens, I can just drive by it. And so that leads to motivation for some people, especially if they haven't done their homework, especially if they don't know how to manage properties. And so that's a really good potential list.

Yeah, that's a great start. That's a great start. What else besides absentee owners? What other options do we have for direct mail or at least that you use?

Right. Here's one that is not talked about a lot, but it was the first one that I ever did when I first started investing right out of contract college, was I found the own. The people in your town who have filed an eviction to evict a tenant. So automatically, you've taken the whole universe of property owners and you've narrowed it down to just landlords. And from there, I built a list so you can go down. I used to have to go down with my laptop and kind of sit in this corner on this little desk on the edge of a. Kind of edge of a little desk in my courthouse, and I would type in my laptop for like three hours. And these days, things are on the Internet, so makes it a little bit easier. But look in your hometown and look for the clerk of court for the. In my area, it's called the magistrate court. But you want to look for the clerk of court and find wherever they have public records for every single court proceeding that ever happens in any court is public knowledge. And so you can. You should be able to narrow it down by just eviction proceedings. And so you get. You can build a list there, and from there you narrow it down even further. Though I don't send them out to all the properties, the properties that have property managers, because they're doing a little bit better job manager, typically. So I look for the people who have the properties themselves and they file their own eviction. They're the ones who are going to be completely frustrated by this tenant who's just torn their house up, who's probably not paying. Who's not paying them. If they're filing the eviction and you're just indicate they're indicating that they have a higher likelihood of being motivated. And so if you send them a letter or you give them a call, track down how to contact them, you have a pretty good chance of buying that property.

Great idea.

I said this before. I'm actually going through an eviction right now. Yeah, my longest tenant.

I'm not being evicted.

And this is.

This is the property that you've got, this fantastic property. Oh, my gosh, she's awesome, right?

I have a terrible property manager. Hope she's not listening. Actually, I hope she is listening. I have terrible property manager. I know you guys have been following along for the last, like six months about this terrible property manager. I have not fired her yet, but that's a whole different story. Why I haven't. But anyway, I want her to deal with the eviction. So we're evicting. This guy has been with Us for eight years now or whatever and my longest tenant and just destroying the house in the process. I mean, it's just like every day is costing me thousands of damage to the house. I'm just watching this happen and there's nothing I can do about it. So like, I know like this feeling I have right now. If an investor came to me and was like, hey, I want to buy your property that you're going through. I'll take care of the eviction, you know, or whatever, I'd be like, just take it. I don't want it. Like I just have that. I'm so emotionally drained by this stupid tenant that I just like, I'm. Yeah, I'm just one out.

So by the way, the address of Brandon's property is.

I'm going to get like 100 direct mail letter.

Brandon, you're going to be getting a letter from me. Yeah, tomorrow.

You know, you guys don't want this one. This is my very first property. It was beautiful. But apparently it's the property manager text me the other day and said she almost cried when she looked through the window.

Text.

That's a really good text.

Yeah, I'm not going to read that. I'll cry right here on the air. All right, so I mean, the point.

Is even somebody, I mean Brandon is an experienced investor who's bought a lot of properties and I know I could say the same thing that brand is saying on properties that in the past when whatever price you would sell for at the top of the, in your, when you felt best after you've been dealing with a tenant, you are going to be whatever that you will sell for a lower price. I mean it will be lower no matter what.

I didn't really want to make a profit on that property anyway. I'm good, I'm good.

I want to pay some people to take this property.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I, that's what I feel like, you know, and, and a lot of people, I mean, hopefully I have the, you know, experience and know that I shouldn't let my emotions drive my decisions. But a lot of people don't, like, they simply say, you know what? I've had enough, I'm done. I've, you know, had this guy, my brother in law living there for 17 years and he has never paid rent and you know, like. Yeah.

And you guys, you know this is Brandon talking here, right? I mean those of you who know the show have been listening for almost three years. Brandon's been doing this for of a lot long Time.

If this can happen to him, it.

Can happen to anybody. Evictions happen. They're exhausting, they're difficult. Hopefully you have a good property manager who's helping you out. But you can understand why this is a good motivator for a potential person to want to sell their property. The property is just a constant headache. The tenant, there's a pain in the neck or, you know, one tenants fine, the next one's a headache. Whatever it is, you know, it's time to move on, time to sell. And I don't think we've actually talked about this, so thank you for sharing that. That's awesome.

I just want to piggyback what you said, Josh. And there's a common misconception in the real estate world is that when you buy a property as an investor, that you have to take advantage of somebody else who's just going to let it go really cheap and they don't know what they're doing. Well, I think what we're getting at here is that there are intelligent people who have bad moments, but also there's intelligent people who make strategic decisions to get rid of a property because they might have a better opportunity somewhere else. So, Brandon, for example, this is the first property he bought. He might have a lot of. He might have another deal here that he can make a 20% return on. He might be willing to sell it at a loss in order to get rid of it, to get his capital back to go do another deal. And I've had plenty of deals like that where a very intelligent person chose to sell it because I would close in a week and pay him cash and he could be done with it.

So, yeah, you never know what people's motivations are. And if you don't, if you don't ask, you'll never know. So.

Right on. All right, number six, guerrilla marketing.

All right, so this is another big category, but we're going a couple little specific things. But guerrilla marketing means just low cost ways to get the word out about yourself. And so the first one, I'll say just kind of basic, you know, business 101. Get a business card and put something on that business card that about you buying properties. And so when I, when I first started, I got 500 business cards for like 15 bucks, you know, and every time I, you know, pump gas in my car, I put the business card on the top of the gas pump every time I went to a.

So you litter. That's great.

People always pick my car.

That's a really good technique.

I like that.

I know.

Don't tell the local magistrate, police. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that. And so I would put my car, where you get creative, on where you can put your cards. But you can go to the coffee shop and put them on the bulletin board. You can go to your, your local church or your organizations might have places to put them.

Yeah.

And those cards go around. So you know, get a business card, it's cheap, it's easy, that's.

And you also hand it to everybody that you meet, correct?

Exactly. Yeah. So again, we're talking about professionals. If you're going to an attorney's office, if you're going somewhere else, you're going to hand those cards out and they spread out.

Right on. Cool. So we've got business cards, what else?

So other, other inexpensive things like that, we can just list them. Things like flyers, things like magnetic signs for your car. At one point, when I don't do magnetic signs anymore because I don't really have to and I don't want to have to drive around with them on my car. But when I had to in the very beginning, when every single deal I bought was the difference between being able to put pay food, put food on the table or not, I put magnetic signs and stickers all over my car because I needed to pay the bills. And for every year for five years, I bought a property off of a sign I had on my car every year for five years. That's awesome. So it's like it cost me 50 bucks or 100 bucks and it put food on the table, so.

Right on.

Cool. What other techniques do you have for granted? Gorilla.

Well, you could dress up like a gorilla and stand out there with a sign, but.

Or you could look like my co host who was born that way.

I, I was nicknamed Sasquatch in high school.

Right on.

All right, I think that's it for the guerrilla marketing.

All right, so we're running out of time. We got five minutes left. Let's, let's go to number seven, the last on the list. Which is what?

All right, so this is really simple, but sometimes you just want to hand pick a property. So in my town there's, there's certain properties that, for example, there might be a 20 unit building. If you buy multi unit buildings, there might be a rental property you think is just a good location. Just hand pick that property, look up the address, look up the owner, send them a letter, call them. You just get a list of like 10 or 20 properties in town that you want to buy and just keep Bugging them for a long time. I bought one this last year that I'd been bugging them for seven years about buying their property off and on. I mean, we met, I talked to them, they knew me. But I mean, situations happen in life and they change and they need to know that you want to buy their property. Yep. And that, that works.

That's also.

You're like Scott, who works for us.

He bugs people too.

He does. He boomerangs them.

The last property I bought was that exact way. I've been watching it for two years and just waiting and waiting and waiting and watching it. And then it was a little different that it came on the market. It was like a foreclosure sort of. But I've been watching it for years and then it went into foreclosure. And then I knew I wanted that house. And when it came on, I watched it, I jumped on it, I got it, and I handpicked that house and I, I wanted it.

So let me ask you guys this really quickly because, you know, one of the things that we learn as real estate investors is not to get emotionally attached to a house. Are you guys not then emotionally attached to that property?

Well, I'll qualify. The reason I handpicked that property was there's, there's certain locations in town that attract better rents, that attract better tenants. For me, I'm in a college town. The closer you are to campus, the better. And so what I found is just there's a limited number of good properties close to town. And so it just pays to narrow those down and search. If you're in Clemson, send those deals to me, by the way. But in any case, in your town, it's the same way there, you know, the farther you get from the good places, the schools or the interior, the village center of your town, the walkable locations, the parks, the. It's not as attractive of a rental. So what I'm saying is go to the best locations. You still have to have a good deal. You're not going to be emotional and pay overpay for that property. But all you want is a call. And that's what we're saying. Send letters to people who own properties in good locations.

Right on. All right, so finding great deals, guys. Chad has been awesome. Let's run through this list really fast. Top seven tips are driving for dollars. We got Craigslist, we got MLS referral, prospecting, direct mail, guerrilla marketing, and hand picked properties. Chad, we got you. What do you got going on? But really quickly, what do you got planned for the, for the next foreseeable future with, with your real estate?

Well, we're sort of in a maintenance mode. You know, we have a certain number of properties that we're happy with. We sell off a few, we buy a few but you know, we're in a mode of trying to get our properties paid off free and clear. Buy a few strategic properties here and there. But you know, really my big picture when I first started was to have income, produce income producing properties that paid for my lifestyle. And we're getting closer and closer to that to where I can do other stuff like this and I can get talk with you guys, write on my blog, do stuff like that. And that's, that's what I'm all about.

Right on, right on. All right, so it, it's now time for the world famous famous four.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. We now have a recording that does that, but that was how we used to do it. So famous for.

So what is your. And we've asked you this before Chad, when you were on the show back in number 80, whatever it was number 84 but we'll see if it changed at all. So number one one, what is your favorite like real estate related book?

Yeah, I had a hard time with this one and so I hope you all allow me a little bit of leeway. But I like reading books outside of the real estate niche because I get a lot of good ideas that I can then apply to it. And so for me the bit the number one guy I like to study is Warren Buffett. And and so I really enjoyed the Warren Buffett way and good book. This is Robert Hagstrom was author and it just go. It goes through a lot of the fundamentals of what Warren Buffet is looking for in businesses. But for example I've known noticed that a lot of the same things he's looking for, if you, if you translate that to real estate language is very similar. Like I just mentioned buying them in good locations. I didn't believe that apparently when I first started buying properties and I bought a bunch of crap in bad locations and now I'm paying for it. And I've learned why buying good locations and maybe paying up a little bit for those properties can actually make you more money over the long run. And that's a, that's a classic Warren Buffett. He. But he buys good companies at good below market market prices. But he buys them.

Right on. I thought you were gonna say the book on investing with no and low money down.

But you know Josh, that was the first time you've ever said the title. Right. I want to give a round of applause to Josh.

Yeah, I've been studying really hard.

You got my book title, right?

Really, really hard.

I do like that book too.

That's a good book.

It's a book. All right, so that was a non real estate.

Real estate book.

How about other business books? Is there another business business book that you've really gotten a lot out of lately?

Yeah, I've got a kind of. I've got one I just pulled out last week that's a classic from again from my 80s or 90s, but it's called what they don't teach you at Harvard Business School. And it was by. He was a. He was an agent. He was an attorney and an agent for a lot of high profile athletes. But he talks to. The whole book is about street smart kind of business advice and that you wouldn't pick up in a business class. And it's things like how do you communicate with people? How do you write, you know, write the thank you notes and it's just a lot of really handy, practical advice that I think is awesome. And any whatever business you're in, you can really benefit from that kind of advice.

That's great. I never heard of that one, so.

Right on. All right, hobbies, what do you do for fun, man?

I've got a two year old and a four year old little girl, so my hobbies involve them basically. But we like to walk and hike and get outdoors.

Sing frozen songs.

Yeah, I think Let it go. I've got the whole frozen song memorized. We could do that for a postscript maybe.

Nice. Awesome. Awesome, Brandon.

All right, cool. Final question. I'm going to tweak it a little bit for today's show about finding good deals. So what do you believe overall sets apart investors who are able to consistently find deals from those who struggle and never find a deal to buy. All right, I'm going to do a.

Little plug for an article I wrote on biggerpockets. But to me, the number one thing is hustle. So I mean, we've given you techniques here. You could pick one one of these techniques and run with it. But really the difference between the people I know who get a lot of deals in my hometown are the people who just hustle like crazy. And what I mean by that is just when you get up in the morning, you're looking after deals. You're going after deals every single day consistently, without fail. And if you hustle, good things are going to Happen. And so I would say that.

Right?

Hustle, hustle, hustle.

I will also say those people who have don't read the blog very often. The Bigger Pockets blog, like, Chad is by far one of my favorite writers we've ever had on the Bigger Pocket blog. He's like the, like, one of the few people that, like, I have to read every post that comes out. And so, yeah, I'm going to link to all his posts in the show notes@biggerpockets.com show141. And so, yeah, anyway, Chad, thank you so much for being with us today. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hold on, hold on.

You want to ask him?

I got, I got one more request to Chad.

All right.

Where people find more information about you, man.

All right, so I'm on Bigger Pockets. You can find my profile there and as a link to all my articles. And I also write some kind of non real estate stuff at a blog called coachcarson.com it's about business, money, and life. Kind of how that all intersects and wealth building. So you can check me out there as well.

Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, fincon. Yeah.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us perform here on the Trade King stage. I'm Josh Dworkin.

And I'm Brandon Turner signing off.

All right, that was Chad Carson live.

On the Bigger Pockets podcast from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Pretty, pretty cool.

Pretty cool interview, man. Lots of. Lots of great tips, huh? Chock full of information.

It was. It definitely makes me rethink, like a lot of what I do, you know, in finding deals. I'm like, I should do this and I should do this and, you know, maybe I'll start to incorporate. I know I will start to incorporate a lot more of those in my business because today you have to be creative. Deals are hard to find, so.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. Let's get out of here.

Big thanks to Chad for. For coming on. Yeah, let's do this. All right, guys. Well, hopefully you enjoyed show 141 of the BiggerPockets podcast. Definitely. Make sure to check out the show notes@biggerpockets.com show141. You can also find all of the rest of our podcast@biggerpockets.com podcast and that's it. If you're not yet a member of our amazing community, I definitely encourage you to get involved. Jump on biggerpockets.com sign up, create an account. You get to hang out and network with guys like Chad and Alexander who came in and so kindly interrupted our show earlier and it was awesome. It was awesome. But yeah, jump on the site. We we hope to see you there. Thanks for being a listener and we'll see you next week. The Bigger Pockets Podcast I'm Josh Dworkin, signing off.

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