Getting Started Investing in Real Estate - An Interview with My Real Estate Mentor

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All right, hey everyone, My name is Brandon with BiggerPockets.com and today I am bringing you guys a special treat. In fact, I'm doing an interview, my very first video interview in the same room with somebody with a guy that I've looked up to for a decade who is largely instrumental, if not the number one instrumental force in everything that I've done so far with real estate. This is Kyle Bisa. I like to say he's my mentor. How you doing, Kyle?

I'm doing well, Brandon. It's nice to be here.

Thank you. Thank you. Also joining us today here, as you see, is Charlie Barkin here. This is my dog, Charlie. He's gonna be hanging out with us today as well. So today we're pretty much just talking about how Kyle here got started in real estate, what he's doing to do that and kind of get into a little bit of our story of how we met, how we started working together a little bit, and hopefully at the end of the interview or throughout the interview, you'll come away with some good tips for how you can build your own real estate business, how you can work with other people and hopefully learn some good stuff from Kyle. So you ready?

Absolutely.

Alright, so why don't we start out with the question that we always start out the BiggerPockets podcast with is how did you get started with real estate?

You know, it's, it's not as easy as just saying, you know, on this particular day I started to do this.

I have to say it became, it's a bit of a process and it was unexpected at the time. My wife and I, when we moved out of the area and when we moved back to the area, we decided to buy a particular house. And this house came with property. And for all intents and purposes, we ended up buying the house. And on the property, our vision, I guess our dream was to build a house on this, this property adjacent to it. So we progressed on that road and at the end of the day we ended up having two houses on this property. One being a manufactured home, the other being a stick built home that we, that we built. So guess what? Instantly I was a, as a landlord, I had a, I had a place to rent and that's kind of how it started. And not really having, you know, did. I've never really did the math and sat down, figured out, well, what advantage would this be for me and my wife. But you know, it wasn't something that was really significant. You know, the mobile home, what did it rent for? I think at the time it was probably only running for, you know, $350 a month. But that was $350 a month that I wasn't getting before. And that went directly towards my mortgage. And that's, that was initially the first aha moment if you want to use that term. You know, that's when I realized that this is, this could be something very significant if I could grow it.

Nice. So I use this term a lot. I don't know if you've heard me use it, but I call it house hacking. It's this idea of like using your primary residence as an investment as well. And there's a few ways you can do that and obviously you're doing it right now. Even still, I'm doing. Well, I'm not doing it so much here anymore. But this idea of, you know, maybe buying a duplex or for you was building that extra house, you were an accidental house hacker.

Absolutely. I would agree, I would agree.

Okay, very cool. So you started out with this accidental house hack or whatever. You became a landlord. Like, how did it trigger to. I want to do more of this. You know, like a lot of people end up with one property, whether it's by accident or they can't sell a property or whatever. But how did you say, I want to buy more and do this over and over and over again?

Honestly, it boils down to dollars. When you sit down and you look how somebody else, just by happenstance. And for me, you know the house hacking scenario that you just mentioned, somebody. Somebody else was helping me pay for where I live. And I was thinking, how can I make this grow or make it bigger or, you know, in simple terms, how do I get more money out of it? And at the time, there wasn't a good answer. I didn't know. I mean, we, you know, we were.

I was new in my job, which, you know, I work. I work as, you know, I work for the airlines and at that time. As pilot, right? As a pilot, yes. And I was working for a commuter airlines. So, you know, we didn't have a lot. We were starting out. We were a young couple, not unlike you and Heather when I first met you guys. And so I really didn't know where to go from it. But we did know that at some point we wanted to grow it. And I think the next step for us was we were living in this new house that we had built. And one day we had a knock at the door, unexpected knock. We hadn't even been in the house a year. In fact, I didn't have all the trim up on the walls yet because I did a lot of the work myself. And it was a realtor. And basically they asked us the question, is your house for sale? And I'd always learned I was a kid trying to sell anything and everything. I'd sell my toys when I was done with them. So I said, yeah, absolutely everything's for sale. What are you willing to pay? And of course, the realtor wouldn't tell me that, but they did ask. They said, well, we have somebody who might be interested in your home and if you guys would be agreeable, we'd like to drive them by and let them see if they indeed are interested. And it would be. At the time, I didn't know what the term a one time showing. Didn't even know what that meant. They had to explain it to me. But anyway, so we agreed. And actually at the end of that day, they called and said, can we come by tomorrow? And they brought this Couple with the family by and they liked the house. And then we had to come up with a number. And so we came up with what we thought was an astronomical number. And they looked at it later that day they made us a full price offer. So in essence I just sold our house from underneath of us. So now you're homeless now we are going to be homeless in three months. And so that was what I think was the real catapult that got us into the property looking for property again because now it put me in the market because I had a timeline, I had to find something out there. And so that I guess. Is that answering kind of your question?

Yeah, definitely. I mean like I like to hear at the beginning of like how people kind of got that mindset, you know, because like it's not just like you said. I love how you phrase that. It's not a one time event. Like I read a book and I became a real estate investor. You know, it's like it develops over time with like, you know, this worked, then this worked and then I sold this property and I realized this. And you start putting together these pieces in your head, it leads you to there. So how did you get from that point then to owning a lot of property?

Actually it's not magic as you know. I mean there's not a one stop shop that you can learn at all. I still learn today. I mean if I learn from, I learn from people like you, I learn from others. I have to admit I don't read as much as I used to, but that's for. I've gotten busier. But what happened is we were in the house, we were in the house hunting market and we ended up finding a house that we really liked that was in the town that we wanted to live in. And it turned out that it had a mother in law house. Another house hacking, another house hacking. And again now I'm looking at, okay, I knew what this did for my previous property. It's already built in and I get more house, more property and I get a second house and guess what? They pay for part of my mortgage. So we ended up executing and going on this. And so now I have my first. And this was actually a house. You know, the first one was I was a manufactured home and, and so but this was a real stick built house and it seemed to me it meant more. Well hello there. It meant more to me at that point. Okay, so fast forwarding ahead a little bit now. Now I see the true value. That's when after the second Time stick built house. Property. I'm thinking property. That's an interesting concept because the house that I had bought with the mother in law house on was sitting on five acres and.

Friend of mine talked about subdividing. I'd never done that before. So I went down to the county and I started asking questions. You know, everybody wants to help the guy that doesn't know anything.

Yes, that is so true.

So you go in there and you know, you're humble and you don't act like you know it all because that can become insulting because they know you don't know anything. And I just start asking questions and it's amazing that the people that want to help you or they'll point you in a direction. And that's where I learned that this property was subdividable.

Interesting. So for those people don't know what subdividable mean. What does that mean?

It's when you take a piece of property and it's actually large enough that you can cut it into other pieces so smaller parcels and you could for the purpose typically of like building another property on it. And of course I didn't have the money, you know, I didn't have any money at the time because you know this, we're still getting started. We're a very young family and I didn't have money to build a house so I wasn't thinking about buying or building anything because I, I just, I just bought this other house and you know, we were, we were in essence tapped out. And so. But how could I, how could I extract money from what I already had? And the key for that for me was I can take this land that I already own and I can cut it up. And typically when you cut up a piece of property, it builds in value that you didn't. A five acre parcel might be worth X amount of dollars, you know, might be worth, I don't, let's use the hundred thousand dollars. But now if you cut it up into five pieces, each of those pieces might be worth 50,000. And of course I couldn't sell my house again. My wife would, wouldn't have it. So, so what we ended up doing is I was able to cut my five acre parcel into three parcels and the minimum parcel size or lot size was one acre in the area that I was in. So in essence I had three or I had two one acre parcels and then I kept the other three which my house and the mother in law house sat on. So now I have three lots or three pieces of property. One which I have to keep because that's my home. Sure. I decide, well, time to sell those lots. And I ended up putting the lots on the market and I was able to sell both of them to one individual who wanted to put one big house right in the middle.

Okay.

And they did. And so they paid me.

They actually, they paid my asking price.

Okay.

And not, not playing, not, you know, not disclosing all the numbers because, you know, it really doesn't matter at this point, but it ended up paying over half of my mortgage for my house. Wow. So. So, you know, so now just selling those two pieces of property, which would have been nice to keep the five acres. Yes. But is three acres almost as good? Yes, Especially when it's half the price. And that's in essence what we did. So now I have a house that has a very low mortgage on it and I have a rental which is paying rent and is paying for two thirds of my mortgage.

That's cool. So tell me this, how did, how did it work when you, you know, you originally bought the property, five acres with one loan, you got a loan on it, Right. You didn't pay cash?

Correct, I got a loan on it.

Right. So you have this loan and then you want to subdivide it. Now it seems to me a bank would be like, ah, you know, you're getting rid of half the, or, you know, a good chunk of our collateral. So did they yell at you? Did they make you refinance it? How did that work?

Yeah, very, very good question. That's exactly what they, they wanted to do. But what we were able to do is we could. We. I bought the house. And you've heard me say this, I bought it right? In my mind. I bought it for. The house wasn't pristine when we bought it. It needed work. And so I was able to buy a house that needed some rehab work done. Not a lot, but enough that I could raise the value of it. And so what happened is even, even carving off those two, those two one acre lots, I was able to get a new appraisal on it and a new loan to support the value. Plus I had, now I had rental income because in the time it took me to subdivision or the, you know, the parcel it off, I actually had it, was able to find a tenant and sign a lease. And that lease is worth its weight in gold because they see, you know, you're bringing in, you know, $600 a month on that particular house. Sure.

That's cool. I like that. So you went From. You went from, you know, just kind of getting started. You bought that house with the trailer, the trailer house, and built one. You sold that, bought the other one house, hack it a couple times from there. Now, like, kind of fast forwarding to today's world, you've got numerous properties now, I don't know how many do you have or like.

Should they. Units?

I think we have like 45 doors or so. Yeah.

So, I mean, that's a. That's a bit of a stretch. And you didn't just buy them all at one time, right? You just built them over time.

Yes.

Now, when you say we, what do you mean by we?

Well, initially it was. It was. It was me, my wife. My wife and I, and we created an llc just because that's, again, inexperienced, didn't know any better, but I'd heard that that's the way to do it.

That's the number one question. I get number one of every question for real estate. It's, do I need an LLC Right now, people think that, like, they stop and they won't invest, they won't do anything until they have that llc because that's. It's like the gate or something.

I started without the llc. I didn't have an llc and then. But I ended up going and doing it because I felt as our family was expanding and growing, that I had to protect. It was. For me, it was a protection thing. And I just, in my mind, whether or not it' it's a valid concern or not, I felt that if I could keep my properties in a different entity, it would protect the livelihood of the family. Sure. Because ultimately that's why we do this.

And I think it is a good idea for most people, probably. Of course, we're not CPAs and Dr. CPA or lawyer or whatever, but yeah, I still use LLCs. And I'm guessing you probably still use some kind of corporate structure.

I do. We do LLCs as well.

Okay. So, yeah, there's definitely reasons for it, but obviously, you know, my cpa, my lawyer told me what I should be doing based on my income, based on my location, based on all those things. And yours did the same, I'm sure, for you.

Yes.

And so it's different for everybody. But typically speaking, most people I know do have LLC today to hold their properties in, so. So you started out with just you and your wife, and then later you. You added some more people in, right?

Yes.

Okay, and why was that?

Well, you know, as it's interesting, because believe it or not, folks, this Isn't scripted. We're sitting here just chatting. And.

As I think through it, you know, I mean, no one has sat here and actually asked me the questions you're asking for a long time. And I'm thinking there was a. There was the beginning, which we've talked about. There was a middle, and then we're to where we are today. The middle was a time when I decided that, okay, I still. After. After buying these, you know, the mobile home with the property, building the house, selling it, making some money on it, and then using that money to build to buy the second home, subdividing, selling the lots, getting more money to pay down the house, and now having a rental with rental income. I still didn't have any. I didn't have any money in the bank. I mean, my. It lowered my payment, but it wasn't like I had, you know, $100,000 in the bank to go invest and buy things. So I dabbled in the market of flipping. Okay, So I had a flipping moment.

I don't think I knew that.

Yeah, well, again, I don't know if you ever asked. It has never been a secret. So I. The first house I flipped, it turned out it was a bank repo. And a friend of mine.

It was a contractor. So he brought in the expertise. I'm a handyman type of guy. You know, I can fix just about anything. But I needed somebody with the confidence. I needed somebody to say, hey, you know, his name was Doug. Doug, what do we do here? Or what should we do here? And having the construction background, he was more confident in his decisions. And so we're. He had the. He probably had more experience and he had more confidence, and that's what I needed at that point because, you know, it was still hard to sign that paper that now I, you know, even though, you know, at the time. Now it doesn't seem like a lot of money, but at the time, it was. It was a lifetime worth of money for me. So I find this. This little house, it's a bank repo. And the folks that left, they left angry. Okay, they were disgruntled, and so they. They did some damage to the home, but it wasn't nothing to the structure. It was. I was, you know, having done a lot of tinkering, I knew that it wasn't anything that we couldn't fix, so was able to borrow money. I had. I think we had a little bit of savings, and. And then we. And then Doug had a little bit. And then I think I was able to Borrow a little bit on, like, a line of credit.

And we went in and we rehabbed the house.

Did you just do it as a partnership?

It was. It was a partnership, absolutely. We went in and it was. It was supposed to be a 50, 50 deal. It turned out it was more 70, 30, but again, that's lessons learned. But that was okay because without him, I wouldn't have done it and I wouldn't have been able to take the next step. So, anyways, long story long. We ended up. We rehabbed it. We were able to sell it. We ended up making, you know, I don't remember the numbers. Let's just. I'll throw out. We probably made 60,000. Wow. So we split it. Now, guess what? First time ever, I got money. I've got real money. I've got $30,000 in my hands that I never had before. So I'm thinking it worked once. Let's do it again. So it started looking again. And it turns out that, you know, and I say looking. How did I look? Well, I live where you live. You know, we live in a very. I don't know, I would say specific or eccentric. Not eccentric, just a different. An area. An area that we're comfortable with. You know, I was born and raised in this area. I know the good areas, I know the bad areas. And I learned over time, just looking at the, you know, in the newspaper, online real estate ads, kind of what things should be valued at and what they rent for. So I learned my market. Yep. Yes. And critical. It's critical.

People try to come into our market sometimes and flip or buy rentals, and we just laugh at them because they're like, they don't. They don't understand that that side of the street is not where you want to buy, and that one you do. And they just don't get that. And that's just the importance of knowing your market.

Know your market. Know your market. It's key because not only.

What may appear as a good deal isn't a good deal, and there's a reason why you and I haven't bought it.

That's very true. Yeah. A lot of times people will send me deals in my area, and they'll say, what do you think of this deal over? And I'm like, it's been on the market for four months. There's a reason. It's been on the market for more months, and I didn't buy it. You didn't buy it because there's a reason for it. Now maybe there's still A maybe it's an overcomeable reason. Maybe we just don't like it because it's not our style. But still, like there's a reason. It's not like there's secret properties that I never knew that was listed. You know, we know what's on the market.

Yeah. We gravitate to our favorites too. I mean, you get to a point where, I mean, when you start out, you'll do anything that you can make money on. And most, at least I would, but now I'm picky, you know, you know that one, I really don't feel like doing any foul work. So.

Steve, this other guy I know that invests, he'll, he likes foundation work, we'll just let him scoop it, you know, and so we just, you know, and there's a group of us, I mean, you learn the people who, who are your competition within your area and you kind of know what they look for as well. And typically I know you, you know, Brandon and myself, we have a lot of the same tastes and interests and so we, the same type of properties, we, we don't typically compete because one will find it before the other. And so we, we have a mutual respect.

Yes.

I know that if Brandon's looking at something I don't, I'm not going to even be interested in it because he's interested in it. If he, if he bows out, then I might be. And there's times when I see something that I'm not interested in, but, or I like, but I just, the timing is not right. I'll pick up the phone and call Brandon and say, hey, you might want to take a look at this. It's a good deal.

Yeah. And I think a lot of times people think in real estate that you're just, you have these competitors and you're fighting against them and it's very like, you know, this, but I've never really found that in our area. Like almost everybody I know, we like, we talk about real estate and we, you know, talk about good deals. Hey. Oh, you got that deal. Oh, I was bidding on that one too. Like, it's almost like a fun competitive versus a, like head to head competitive. And I think that's probably likely across a lot of areas.

Yeah, I would hope so.

I hope so.

Yeah. Because. And the other thing is we can, we can either help or hurt each other.

Yeah.

Working together we can help establish the comps in the area and do. In doing so, it really, it supports both of our businesses and our livelihoods.

Yeah.

So it's a good thing to know who you're working with and try to, I guess, nurture that relationship because it's important. It's all about relationships. You know that.

Very much so.

But anyhow, as far as the flipping thing, now I had my own money, so I figured, well, I had to split it with Doug last time because I needed his expertise and I needed some of the money. Well, now I've got enough money to go in and maybe do this by myself. So I started looking around and I would drive around. We just drive around, look for for sale signs, look for houses that look vacant with maybe a little 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper in the door, which usually means that they're bank owned. And do a little research from at the county or from a title office, start making some phone calls. And I picked up my second one.

Nice. So we call that driving, or I call that driving for dollars a lot. And I. It's probably the number one thing I recommend people do. If you have no money at all and you're like, I really want to buy a deal and I don't have time to, you know, send out direct mail letters. And the MLS is too competitive. I'm like, well, get in your car, put your kids in the backseat, you know, put on a Barney video for them and just go drive up and down the streets and look for something. Like you did.

Yeah, it works. Yeah, it works. And typically I find that when you're not looking is when you find them. Yeah. You know, it's. You'll be going out to dinner with your wife and you'll decide, hey, I'm just gonna. Let's cruise over here because we're 15 minutes early. All of a sudden you go, hey, look at that. And then you're late for your reservations. Yeah. Because. Yeah, so. So anyway, second one we ended up doing on our. On our own. Okay. And again.

The market was relatively good at the time and we were able to. To fix it, flip it. I mean, we're talking not a lot of. A lot of stuff.

When I first started out. I mean, if it needed, you know, a couple new doors, some trim, some paint, maybe windows and then floor coverings. And then you've got a house that is. That is far better than it was when I drove up that first day. And what does that mean? That means, you know, sometimes 25 to $50,000. Yeah. So now we sell the second one. Guess what we make? Like, I don't know, 40, 50,000. You put with that. With the 30 that I originally had. Now I'm up to 80. And so now I can either get one bigger one or a bigger project or I can do two. Well, all that to be said, I ended up flipping 1, 2, 3, 4 houses. So.

So why'd you stop then?

I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. It's a good question, but I don't know because I think, I think I got tired of, of always doing the work, because I was, when I started out, I, I did as much as I could if that wall needed painting, and it would cost me $50 to have someone come in and paint it, but I was capable of doing it, you know, and I was working a full time job at the time too. So this was evenings and weekends. And it got to be such a draw, a lot of draw on the family. But starting out, you had to do it. And so I would go, and I would go do that work. Well, after the fourth one, I was getting tired just in the time element. So I figured, okay, well, what if I were to buy one now? Because now I have enough money, I might be able to just buy a house, you know, something, nothing fancy, but let's say I can buy it for cash for, you know, 85 to $100,000. And now I can rent it for 700. Okay, now it's paid for. So now I get $700 a month coming in. And that's, that's how I bought my first house. I got tired of working on stuff.

That'S pretty, I mean, it's pretty common to like, people start out flipping houses and everyone tends, it seems like they navigate into rental properties eventually because they get tired of working, you know, dollar per hour sort of thing. You know, you, you go show up, you work, you make money. If you stop showing up, you stop working, you stop making money. Yes, and people get very tired of that because what they figure out very quickly is that flipping is a job. It's a business. I mean, it's a great business, it's a great job, if you like that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, it's just like everything else. It's just like selling Tupperware, going door to door, selling vacuum cleaners or whatever. It's a business that you put time in and you can make a good profit. And you know, so I still do a little flipping, but not as much either. And I would rather put all the effort in to get the long term benefit rather than just, you know, make the money now and do that. So, yeah, I'm kind of probably similar to you.

Yeah. The flipping was a big part of my education though, and I think it was yours as well because that's what got us underneath the houses on the roofs, you know, and doing the things that, that maybe we didn't want to do, but it stretched our knowledge base. So when we went and looked for that house to buy as maybe a buy and a hold, we were buying something better and something that required less. And it was a good thing. Yeah. And I. Really good thing.

I think both of us end up like, we both like the idea of fixer upper rental properties. Like almost every property I've ever bought, most of the ones I think you probably bought needed work done to them. They had some problem with it, a new roof, whatever, in because you can get a better deal on those ones. And our flipping experience, it helped us to be able to do that as a renter as well. So it just like you said, the education you go through.

Right?

Yeah. And I like how you said also like when you're, you said this earlier when you starting out, like you, you have to do those things, you have to sacrifice in your nights and weekends and you're struggling and like we all do that. Like I, you know, you've been under houses, I've been under houses. And it's not always fun, but it's almost like the tuition you got to pay. And it's not a bad thing. I mean that when you don't have a lot of money, especially you have hustle and that's what you have and you have to use that.

Yep. You have your hustle and you have your time. And then if you, if you're willing to, to sacrifice now, it will pay dividends later. It truly will. But that goes to say for everything. I mean, it's a commitment. It is a commitment. It's nothing. It's the people that say it's easy, it's not easy, it's not easy. But the reward is significant and.

It'S somewhat instant because once you finish the project, you can sit there and go, wow, I did that. And then when you sell it, you go, wow, it really was worth it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So that was my middle stage.

Okay. So we went from beginning, middle, then what's the end?

The end was my realization that single family dwellings were great. But if you wanted to make.

A sustainable a business that would support something more than just kind of an added income or a part time income, you had to go bigger and bigger. For me was in the form of multifamily dwellings. So with larger properties usually requires larger investments. And I have a couple close friends who had always. They had seen my. My business grow from, you know, from, you know, living in a piece of property and selling it and subdividing it and then flipping houses to going and buying, you know, a couple single family dwellings and some multifamily. And they'd always joked that they wanted to get into this. And I said, okay at one point. I just finally said, okay, fine, now's the time, you know, it's time to put up or shut up. And.

They, to my surprise, they put up. And now we started looking at properties again. Like everybody else. They'd seen the shows on tv, the little infomercials, and they've seen some of the books that, you know, hey, this is the get rich quick thing. And so I sat him down and said, no, guys, it's not like that.

That's the world of Oz. This is the world of is. And the world of is is it takes work or it takes money. You can have one of two things. You can either work really hard or you can have a whole bunch of money.

Yeah. And so if you have a whole bunch of money, then don't do the work. And it takes money to make money. You've heard me say that a million times. So we started looking around and we found a six plex. And you know it well, Brandon. I do know it well, because Brandon and Heather, they were instrumental in helping us with it because there were times when I was away and I needed, hey, I need you to go take a look at the something because I'm not in town. And Brandon, because of the relationship that we had built. And I knew what his experience level was because Brandon had helped me on some of the projects that I had worked on. If I were underneath the house and I needed an extra set of hands, Brandon was there to help me. And so, you know, we helped each other. And so when I needed somebody that I could trust, I would call him and he would at least be the eyes on the ground. Because sometimes I didn't have the eyes on the ground because my partners. Partners come in many different forms. My partners. What do they offer? They offer support, financial backing. And.

With the financial backing, it helps distribute the risk and defer the risk. And as I went into. And we started looking at properties and going into things that cost more money.

I was keen to that idea. And so we went in initially just thinking, okay, well, we're going to test this out because with partners they can. Sometimes they don't go so well and you really don't know what you're gonna have until you actually, it's unfortunate, you almost have to jump into the pool before you actually know if you're gonna get wet. And luckily for us, this partnership has been ongoing now for over five years. And in the five year period.

We have grown significantly to the point where, I mean, it was beyond our expectations and dreams. So now we have compiled, oh.

I think over 10 properties and somewhere in the neighborhood of over about 30 doors. And that being said, you know, that's where we are with it. But now the fact is, is I'm not here all the time. You know, like I said earlier in this interview, I do have a full time job and I had an opportunity to move out of the area. Moving out of the area.

Actually presented us with a whole different.

Batch of challenges because I think what we did is we kind of figured out what our, what our strong points are. For me, I was always, at least I feel my gift is finding the properties and then evaluating the properties, determining if they're viable. And then I was kind of always the operations guy because you know, again, look at my background. I was the guy underneath the house with you, who.

But now and then my other partner, he's an attorney, so we have built in legal advice.

And then the third partner is a financial advisor, financial planner. And so he's kind of the money guy. And so we kind of broke up our roles. But when I found myself doing a lot of it because operations take a lot more time because, you know, when does legal really have to take, take, you know, take hold of anything? It's usually when there's an eviction involved or something along those lines. So when it happens, you really do need it. But operations happen every day, 24 7. Yep, 365 days a year.

The tenants were calling you every time?

Yes, I took, I took all the calls. I did a majority the maintenance or I coordinated the maintenance. And with a full time job, it can be when you start getting into the numbers that we were getting. It took too much time. So it was kind of a blessing in disguise. When I had this opportunity at work to move out of the area. We're talking like, you know, from the west coast to the, you know, to the Central America, Central US and so I was a long ways away. What did that require? It required that we have some processes in place. And.

It'S hard to find good people. It's hard to find Good people who you can trust and that understand kind of what your business model is and what your, what your goal is and what your level of expectation is as well. And fortunately, you know, you and Heather helped us along the way. You were part of us building, you know, what we have today because you were somebody we could trust. But again, you know, you started doing your own thing. You know, you start buying your own properties and it took a lot of your time and you started to be presented with the same struggles that we were presented with.

Yeah, we were kind of both having the same issues at the same time. So it's fun to talk about those and try to brainstorm how do we get out of that.

Yeah. And we still haven't come up with the perfect idea. I mean, we've discussed some things that we think might work and I think we'll probably travel down that road, but we haven't implemented everything that we need to. But what I have done thus far and with my partners is we had found a couple good people to help take care of the properties for me. I needed to be offloaded, I couldn't take the calls anymore. I couldn't physically go out and do the maintenance anymore. So we needed a handyman type of individual and someone who just to take the calls. And it took basically two people, but one guy's retired and the other guy has a full time job. But he has enough flexibility in his schedule to allow him to go and address some of the issues that we need addressed at times and with the help of them. So again, it takes good people. It doesn't take just. Well, good people are money. Yes, you can always throw money. Money fixes just about everything.

But that's where we are today. So now I'm kind of an absentee.

Partner, yet I'm on the phone a lot because I am still the guy that when an issue comes up with the advancements in technology that is, you know, we have, you know, FaceTime and all these things, it's like me being there and I can make the big decisions that need to be made. But as far as, like, if a tenant or if a unit becomes vacant, you could ask me right now, Kyle, do you have any vacancies? The answer is, I don't know. If you were to ask me, kyle, do you have any roofs being put on? I can say with confidence, no, we don't. But I'm putting a roof on this spring and I have another one that needs to be, you know, this, this. I know the big things, but I've shied away now from the little things because the little things take as much time as the big things. Yes. So you have to focus.

Yeah, I feel like I'm in the exact same spot. Like, I have no idea how many vacancies I have right now. You know, I can ask my wife who's around the house somewhere, but, you know, she'll. She'll know exactly and when they were vacant and what the status is, but because that's her. Her part of it, and that's just part of running a larger business as you start outsourcing those pieces to different people. And it could be your own family, it could be somebody you hire, could be a friend that you hire those things out. And it enables you to be able to survive and not just, you know, freak out of being busy all the time. So I want to transition back a little bit. Something you mentioned, you know, you and I got to know each other. You mentioned that we helped you out a little bit. And you also helped me out a lot. I mean, significantly. So I want to go back and tell that story real quick, just so people know where this whole thing started with me and Kyle. I actually met Kyle because he was the landlord of my best friend. My best friend's name is Adam. And me and Adam had been friends for a while. And he started doing some work for you. I think he was gonna paint a house for him. And, I mean, we were 21, I think somewhere around 21 years old. Yeah. So we were painting this house. And so Adam was. And then Adam called me and said, hey, I need help. This is a big project. I can't do it alone. Can you come help? So I went over to the house, and at the time, you owned three single family houses. You still do, I think. Three single family houses in a row. So we were painting the middle one and doing all the work to paint it. And you were over there. There was a vacancy at the other house, and so you were over there just checking on it. So I went over and I'm, you know, I had bought in a first couple properties. I think I had two at the time. And I had flipped a house, I think one or two houses at the time. And so I wanted to talk to you because I knew you were a real estate guy, and I didn't know anybody else that was involved in real estate. The entire, like, our entire county. I didn't know anybody. And so what I did is I, you know, I left my friend out to paint, and I went in, and I think we Talked for, like, I don't know, hour and a half that first time, just sitting in the kitchen, just about real estate. So I guess I'll formally say right now, thank you for all the help and the wisdom and the, you know, just the advice over the years that you've given me. Like, I honestly believe I would not be where I am today, even close to where I am today without your help and all that. So thank you.

Well, you're welcome. But.

I don't feel as if I did anything. I really don't. I mean, if I had an impact and it was positive. Thank you.

Yeah, you did, definitely. So let's talk about that a little bit, because this is an area a lot of people struggle, and they're in my shoes. Back when I was, you know, 10 years ago, and I was just getting started, I was excited about real estate, and I wanted to find somebody that knew what they were doing or at least pretended they knew what they were doing. And so, like, I mean, you were. You were buying all these properties, and apparently you had been flipping houses that must have been around the transition between flipping and buying the more rentals, I'm guessing, because you had the three.

Yeah, I think that was the transition. I moved from flipping to that. The little yellow house was the first one, and that was the big step.

Okay. Yeah. So that's. So I want to know, like, what. I'll put you on the spot here, but what attracted you to me in terms of, like, a lot of people probably ask for advice and they want free things, they want help, whatever. Why did you help me? Like, why did you take an hour and a half to talk with me? A lot of people out there that are watching this are probably like, well, if I went and asked a landlord to sit down and talk for an hour, like, what do I bring to the table? So why did you help me? I guess at the beginning.

It'S a good question. And, you know, I didn't.

Now, and at the time, I didn't really give it a lot of thought. But now, you know, you forcing me by asking me the question, you know.

I guess there's a couple things that I look for, and this isn't. This has nothing to do with real estate. This has to do with people. And I think it's the same thing that draws you to anybody. First of all, you want to find something that is common between you. You want to. You want to have that feeling that. That it's somebody who's genuine, someone who maybe is even trustworthy. I Don't know if you can figure that out in the first time you meet somebody. But Brandon, obviously there was something there that I saw, but I can say maybe not that first particular day that we met, but certainly within maybe the second or third time. You know, there's so many people that just talk, you know, it's basically, you know, talk is cheap, you know, action for me, action. It means something, you know, if you want, if you want to impress me personally.

Sorry about that. If you want to impress me personally, don't, don't tell me everything that you're going to do. Show me. And I think that's what really got my attention with you is, you know, you, you had a strong desire, you were self admitted. You were the one that went in there and said, I don't know this and if you could help me, I would accept that.

It's kind of like you said earlier when you were trying to subdivide that property, you went into the county and you were just like, I don't know what I'm doing here. Can somebody help me? And people like to help people who are sincere about asking for help.

It's human nature. We want to help. But the thing is too, we want to see that they truly want to work. I mean, everyone thinks that you watch, like I mentioned, you watch on television and you go to these seminars. Everybody makes it sound so simple. And when you came to me, you knew that it wasn't as easy as is the book that you had read, because I know you, you know, at the time you were reading a lot of books.

That was in my, like, I think I read 100 books in over a summer. That was a lot of reading.

Yeah, but the thing is, you took the things of value from it and then you knew the rest. Some of it was garbage, you know, and fluff and you kind of, you were able to sift through that. And so when you came to me, you were asking legitimate questions. You had an idea of where you wanted to go and be and whether I could help you get there or not. I don't know. I mean, you know.

I don't, I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you what worked for me. And I think that the best, the best part of it is I think you took the things that you felt just like when you read the book of. You saw the pieces that worked for me and you tried to replicate them and you probably had some success and other things maybe didn't work for you. But I think your motivation Your drive, your sincerity, and the fact that you were willing to walk the walk and just not talk about it. Because if I talk to everybody who just wanted to talk about real estate and I've talked to, I don't make, I don't make it a common practice to sit there because again, you know, my life, I try to keep it somewhat private.

Yep.

It just wastes a lot of time. And that's one thing that, you know. You know, why do we do this? Why didn't I want to crawl underneath houses anymore? Why didn't I want to flip houses anymore? My time is valuable, so if you can value from my time, I will give it to you. If you're just going to sit there and go, oh, that's great. Yeah, I thought it was easier.

Or.

Okay, I'll let you. I'll let you know when I have, you know, a little bit of money. Because again, we all know it does take money. People that says you can do it with zero down. Yeah, maybe one out of a thousand people can. I couldn't. And. But if you have something to give or something to contribute to your effort, then step right up. I'm your biggest fan.

And at the time, you know, I, I didn't have, you know, like, I didn't have anything to offer you. I felt like. And so one of the very first things we ever did is after that painting job we had painted the first house, you said, hey, Brandon, are you interested in painting another one? Remember the blue house?

Yep.

So I went and painted the blue house and you offered me, I think you asked me. This is your, like, you taught me negotiation. You taught me a lot about negotiation. But you said, how much do you think you can do this house for?

Ruby's jealous. She's not here.

200.

You didn't, you didn't whittle me down that time, I don't think. But, you know, So I, for 300 bucks, I said I would paint an entire house. Which today I'm thinking, that's absurd. Like taking advantage of a poor 21 year old.

Wait, wait, wait a second.

No, I don't. I did it in one day. I did it in 20. It was like half of one day. The next morning went back and I finished it. I painted the entire house in a day. And I made, I think I figured out, yeah, it was a total of 10 hours. I made 30 bucks an hour. And for a guy that had never made more than eight bucks an hour in my entire life, I was floored at how much money that Was. But today I'm thinking, I wish I could find somebody to paint a house for 300 bucks.

But, Brandon, I did. Did I? Again, you said what was important. I said, you asked. You do it.

Exactly.

Yep.

And I do that same trick today now. Trick. That's. That it's so smart. I do that all the time now, is I ask people what they can do it for, because I'm the one that said that number. I couldn't be mad at you.

I could. Why should you negotiate against yourself? Yeah. Yep.

That's very true.

And. And the thing is, is, you know, I said, well, I think there's a little bit more to the story, though. I said, you have to look at. I said, because I remember asking you, how long do you think it'll take you to paint this house? Because, yeah. I led you through where I wanted you to go, and I said, okay. Based on that, you figured it'll take you. I think you said, two days is what you originally thought. And I said, okay, two days. And I said. And then we figured out we broke it down per hour. And then I said, well, you know, you're using all my equipment and so forth. And the fact of the matter is, I think you left happy, and I was trying to find more houses for you to paint.

That's funny.

And I think I painted a lot of houses over the years now. And, I mean.

But why? You have to ask yourself and ask, you know, your friends out there in viewer land.

Why did you look to paint more houses after you painted that first house? For me?

Well, I mean, for me, one, because I made good money at it. But two, because I wanted to continue that relationship with you over and over and over, I wanted to because, again, I couldn't provide a lot of value myself. I didn't have money. I couldn't just go and teach you anything. So what were you gonna do for me? You know, like. Like, what was I gonna do for you? Because you were doing all this stuff for me. You were helping me figure out how to buy properties and all that. And so I had to give what I could, and what I could do was I could do this with my hand and spray a building, and, you know, that's why I would have paid you 500.

That was. That was the. That was the number in my head.

That's funny. Negotiated too low. Yeah, it's.

I don't know.

I like that story. And I don't. You know, I didn't ask you that question about why you worked with me. You know, to build up my self esteem. But like, I just think it's so important that there's so many people out there watching that, that want somebody like Kyle in their life to help them and to give them advice. But, you know, I get asked every day, hey, will you be my mentor? Will you be my mentor? I don't think I ever said those words to you. Will you be my mentor? It was purely an organic thing. It just developed over, you know, hey, let's talk about this property. Let me paint this house for you. Want to get some coffee together? You know, give me a. You know, we call each other on the phone and like, you know, for the past almost decade now, we probably talked. I mean, up until you left for the Midwest, I mean, we're talking two, three, four times a week on the phone.

Yeah.

And even, you know, since then, we talk occasionally about, you know, here's what we're working on. Here's a struggle we're having. And it became a little bit less of maybe mentor, mentee to a little bit more of a friendship. I mean, in partnership, almost colleagues. Yeah. So we were in the same industry together, working together. And I know it's been fun.

It's been awesome, you know, and you bring up something that's interesting. On Sunday, we were on our way to church and I told Terry, that's my wife, that we were. I was going to come, you know, visit with you and Heather. And she says, you know, you don't hear from Brandon as much as you used to. And. And.

I just, out of reflex, I said, because he doesn't need me anymore. And it wasn't meant as a derogatory statement yet some people could take it that way because I don't feel used. But it was almost a sense of accomplishment because at the time, and I feel as if I don't feel. I used you. You used me. I think it was a journey that we traveled together. Yeah. And at the end of it, it's similar to raising kids, you know, and my kids are, you know, I have a one that's already out and married. But, you know, what is our goal as parents is to have our kids and to have them be able to stand on their own two feet, make good decisions and just be good human beings at the end of the day. Well, what do you expect when you have somebody that you're working with who wants you to help them? You want the same thing. So when I said, he doesn't need me anymore, that was. That's a success story because you have you? And Heather, you have moved your business to the point where you don't need me to help you. You know, I mean, there's times when I ask you questions because, you know, you're knowledgeable in areas because you do this full time. For me, it's still part of my life, not my life. And so you bring a lot, you bring things to the table that I don't offer. Yeah. And so it's a shared, it's a shared goal.

That's cool. That's cool. So, yeah, I hope, like, people like watching this. They see, like, I don't know, this is like. When I encourage people to get a mentor, people ask, should I go pay for a mentor? Should I go pay for some guru who says he'll, you know, for 20 grand he'll mentor me into being a real estate investor. And, you know, yeah, if you've got 20 grand just sitting around and, you know, you're on a bed full of money and cash lying around, great, spend it how you want. But for most of us, we don't have that money or we'd better off using that money for a property. And so, I mean, this was such an ideal situation because it was so organic for me to learn. And I definitely, like, you know, will still, I'm sure I'll still call you in the future and ask your advice on stuff. But yeah, I mean, the fact is, like today, like, we're, we're at very similar levels. We have almost the same amount of properties. We, you know, generally face the same issues. We've been through almost everything. Like, it's very, very rare nowadays to have a problem that I don't like, that I haven't faced before. Like, it's very, it's very unusual for something to happen that I've never heard of. You know, like occasionally a tenant will do something that's really weird and then I'll ask your advice on it, in your opinion. And, and that's what's fun. I mean, that's kind of the whole spirit of bigger pockets. Anyways, let's just talk about what we've done, what we've gone through, what we've been through, and maybe we can help each other. You can glean stuff. You know that forever it's been like real estate's been like this top down thing, right? Like this one guy says, this is how you should do it. And then people are like, okay, I'm gonna follow that exact blueprint, that exact strategy. It just doesn't work. I mean, I don't know you. I mean, I barely know you. You barely know me. I mean really, like, how do you know it's gonna work for me or whatever. So instead it was just us helping each other. And I mean, how many countless hours of brainstorming have we done? And just like thinking of ideas and I wonder if this would work and hey, you should try this. And I don't know, I think that's the value of a mentor is just that relationship, like you said early on, it just, it's all about relationships in real estate.

It is. And, and that has brought us to, you know, where we are today. You know, we are, I feel that we are equal levels. You know, you guys have grown the business to the point where, you know, I'm proud, I'm proud of what you guys have done and it's nice to have somebody that when I have questions, I can call and, and if nothing else, we sure have. We laugh about a lot of different things too because you just can't make a lot of this stuff up.

Yeah, I know. I sat down yesterday, I was going to write a blog post. I haven't written it yet, but I want to tell you something like 10 things only landlords will ever hear or ever understand. Because there's a certain things that we just laugh at that is like, like, or tenants that we know. We're like, oh yeah, we dealt with them and it's, it's fun. There's a camaraderie there that we get in real estate. That again is one of the reasons I think people are so attracted to the, the idea of like community based education and learning from bigger pockets and like being on the forums and those things. Because it's not like your family and friends don't care that much about real estate. My family and friends don't care that much about real estate. But when we're together we love talking about real estate. It's just we want that camaraderie.

Yeah, well, it's a natural, it's a natural topic. It's something that we understand and it's a lot people that haven't lived it. It's difficult because, you know, you can't believe a lot of people are interested in, you know, wow, you have properties. Wow, you know, how did you do it? Yet they're, that's as far as it ever goes. And so even, even you know, close family and friends, you know, they, they know that you have properties but they may not know. They don't know your day to day struggles. We've walked in each other's shoes.

Yeah, that's true. Well, before we get out here, I want to transition a little bit more to the, the future where you are today. I know you transitioned recently to commercial. You bought a commercial property, is that right? Now can you tell us a little like why did you do that? Like what, what's kind of the story behind that? How did you get that and what is it?

You know, I never really, I never started thinking that someday I'm gonna get in commercial. I never really did. And you know, the residential was, has been very good to me personally and to my, to my family and to my partners. But an opportunity came up that there was a, it was a four suite building in the town that we live in. And the thought behind the commercial for me is right now I typically like to sign, you know, one year leases and you're dealing a lot with tenants, you know, day to day issues, concerns, non payment and those sorts of things. It's about people. You know, you deal with a lot of people when you go commercial. It, it doesn't, it's no longer about really the people anymore. It becomes more about the business. And businesses are non emotional and they sign longer leases and they pay for more of the things that they want. So when you're talking build outs and stuff, well, yeah, I'm happy to, you know, add these walls and this sort of thing for you, but this is what it's going to cost. And I think the expectation of a business is far different than a tenant. And that was really what was appealing to me. So when this opportunity came up.

We had to take a look at it, a close look at it and we started running the numbers and it's. Well, come on, it's about making money, right? It's about making money and this property made money. And so we took a swing and it's been a hit. I mean we've been very happy and probably one of our best income producing properties on a percentage basis right now.

And I know it took a while to get them all rented out. Is that right? Commercial, Slower.

Oh boy, oh boy. Yes, that's a true statement. But again, it's buying smart. And we were able, you know, just, just because it was commercial, it wasn't like a, you know, a knee jerk reaction. We looked at that knowing that things don't rent that quickly in the town that we live in. Yeah, I knew my market. Imagine that. Okay, so that being said, what's my payment going to be? You know, what are the costs of holding this building. Well, how many rent, how many tenants do I have out of the four I had two. What did to do for me to paid for the building, you know, made the mortgage payment, paid all the, you know, all the costs associated with. So now when I could get those other, those other suites rented, then that's going to just be profit. Right. And it took, oh boy, we were able to rent one of the small offices for. It was 400 bucks a month, but it was $400 more than, than I had before. And you know, you start doing the Math, you know, four times 12 is 48, that's $4,800 a year. That's a good deal. Well did we after over a year we were able to rent the, the bigger suite. It was with a major insurance company and they signed a five year lease with an escalation clause. And so now we're in good shape. I mean and we don't get, you don't get the late night calls that my drain is plugged up because this building, you know, there's only a couple, two, three bathrooms in the entire building. And it's a good deal. But that being said, that's the only commercial property I have. And would I, would I do it again? Yes. Would I do it a lot more? No.

That's funny. Let's talk about the future. Then we kind of transition to that. Where do you see yourself going now? The next 5, 10, 15, 20 years?

I told you when we met, you know, you asked me, you know what, what's your plan? It may not have been the first conversation, but I've always had the same plan and I stick by it. My plan was to buy a bunch of properties. I had no idea how many or with who or how it was going to work out someday have them paid off and then sell them on contract. On contract.

So how does that work for people? Don't know what that means.

Well, at least for me, in the most simplistic terms that I can come up with is I buy it, I make the payments or someone makes the payments for me, right? And then, you know, 20 some years later, I now have a property that's paid off. Well, I can do with it what I want. I can continue to rent it and let's just say it's a house that rents for a thousand dollars a month. I can get that thousand dollars a month every month. Yet they're still going to call me for a plug drain, broken toilet, leaky roof, all that other stuff. Well, as I get older, I don't want to do that anymore. I think I made it pretty clear. I'm tired of that. And you can help, you know, you can have people in place that will do it for you. For me, it's a personal choice. At some point I want my out. I've always talked I have to have an out. When I buy a house, I have to have an out. Yep. I need to be able to look 30 years out or a week out if something were to become catastrophic and I need to get out of this house. How do I get out of it?

That all being said.

I will look for somebody who wants to buy this house. And let's just say, for instance, Brandon, it's you. If you buy it, I will sell it to you. Typically, you know, most people, when they go buy something, where do they have to go? They go to the bank and they have to, you know, have come with their 20% down and they have to do the credit reports and all those different things. Well, if I own it, I can now become the bank. So you come to me and you have, you know, we work out a deal and instead of you paying the bank the mortgage payment, you pay me the mortgage payment. Now what, what does that do for me? Why would I do such a thing? Well, I get the interest for however many years I want to do it. And I only own the property anymore. You do. So if you live there, it's your house. Or if you decide to rent it, the tenants now call you.

Yes.

And, but is there risk in that? There's always risk. There's risk in everything. But my plan is this is I'm going to ask for, you know, let's, let's just say it's a hundred thousand dollar house. Well, what if I were to ask you for 20% down? So you give me $20,000. If for some reason you decide not to pay me, what will I do? Well, I have the same rights as a bank. I can foreclose on you and I will eventually get the house back. I don't know what condition the house will be in when I get it back.

And that's why you get the down payment.

But that's why I get the down payment. I've got $20,000 that tells me that hopefully I can rebuild it if it's left in shambles. But at some point you can continue to buy, buy, buy, buy. And you know, with, with time, as you pay off the properties, you can probably buy with cash so you're not accumulating a lot of debt.

But you're never ever getting to the point, at least in my mind, in my comfort zone where I just. There's comfort in owning something. You know, when you make the last payment on your car or you make the last payment on your house and you go, the bank doesn't control me anymore. And I think that's where I'm at. And it's interesting that we're sitting here talking today because I just came out of a meeting earlier today with one of my setup partners and I asked him, you know, where do we go from here? You know, we've grown this to the point where I think we have all. It's exceeded all of our, our dreams, expectations. I personally want to stop buying. I want to start reducing debt because at some point I want to have the out. I want to be able to sell these properties. And if we keep buying, we're not paying down our loans and it just becomes more and more difficult. So. And, but I'm the oldest of the group.

That's true. So, like they're there. They maybe want to buy it maybe outside your partnership at some point.

And yeah, strongly I've suggested that, I've said, you know, if you guys still want to do this us, then by all means, don't let me be the speed bump in your way. You know, I've. You've learned from me, I've learned from you. If, if you find something or if I find something that you guys are still interested in, you should buy it. But I want you to create your own entity without me being a part of it. And then if you need me to help or come in and do what I've done in the past, I'm happy to do it as a friend, you know, as a consultant type thing, but, but nothing more than that. So that's my out.

Okay. And it's kind of funny when thinking about in this terms because earlier we talked about how like there's this transition that a lot of people go through as they start with flipping and then they go into rental properties because it's easier. But then the, the final part of that transition that a lot of lenders get into is they go from, you know, they go from nothing to business flipping to investor and then they go to lender. That's the last. That's like the ultimate goal is your lender. Now whether or not you're private lending your money or whether you're selling on contract or whether you're just lending money to a company in the stock market. But like, ultimately that's the most passive way you can typically invest in real estate by being lender. And so it's kind of fun to see your whole story from beginning all the way to the end of becoming that lender, which is the most passive, that will carry you to, you know, forever, hopefully until you die.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, that's where, you know, that's where strangely enough, that's the discussions that we're having. You know, I mean it's not the die part but the part where, yeah, you know, where do you go? How much do you need? You know, I mean, what, what do we rely on? You know, like I've said before, you know, I have a job right now and I'm putting it into my, you know, I'm putting in my roth and my 401k. So I have all that. But in addition to, you have Social Security, well, this is just another entire independent income stream in retirement. And there are people out there that you can go and talk to and they'll tell you, you know, based on all these numbers, you know, how much do you think you're going to need to live on? How much, you know, I know we're getting into the advisor world and that's there's professionals for that type of thing. I'm just telling you what, you know, what I've done. And so you get out there and you know, I mean the numbers, when you start looking at what, when all these properties are paid off and he's figuring out what the rents are coming in and then you figure out, you know, what the costs are at that time. If you're not making a mortgage payment and you're not paying all this interest, it can be a pretty big number.

Yeah.

And it's almost staggering. And so, and if you don't, if it turns out you don't need it because you're, this is something that you've done, you know, kind of on the side.

It's something that you can really leave for your family, your kids, whomever, or you can use it for your day to day life. I mean, you can make yourself very comfortable.

Yeah, that's very true. I like that. Like, you know, a lot of people get into real estate, they're like, I just want to get rich and I want to get, I want a billion dollars, I want 10,000 units or whatever, you know, and there are people that, that is their ultimate goal. But you don't have to do that in order to be secure and have a good retirement. You said it to me before, I Got what I want. This was my goal. I got what I want.

And I love that I've got more than I want. I mean, it has grown to something that I never expected it to grow to. And now not only is it going to be helping me, it's going to be helping my partners. I brought two people in who had never dreamt of doing this, and we played with the numbers today and saying, hey, when these things are paid off and this is the income stream that each of us can expect from these properties when, you know, starting maybe in the next few years. And they were, you know, all of us had kind of had that jaw drop moment going, wow. And I'm not saying we're not talking millions, but we're talking, you know, we're talking thousands a month. Yep.

Yeah. That's awesome. And that, like, you just have that freedom forever or at least until, you know, that's cool.

Well, and you figure out if you can do it till, you know, whatever age you want to stop at. But, you know, for me, and there are guys like you said that want hundreds and thousands of units and, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's great for some, but for me, I scoped it to what I needed it and what I wanted it to be. And I'm very happy, very content, and I'm ready to start executing. I mean, I had my beginning, I had my middle. I've had my. My end. I guess the end is I don't want to buy anymore. Now I'm transitioning from the end to the long term, and that's the. Which is the sustainable long term, I guess I would say.

There you go. Well, very cool. Very cool. All right, well, before we get out of here, in the tradition of the BiggerPockets podcast, which we do on every episode, I'm going to ask you four questions. We call this the Famous four. And so I thought I'd throw them at you as well. Yeah, you don't know this is coming. So they're pretty easy. But they're going to put you on the spot. Number one, do you have or what would it be? Your favorite real estate related book?

It's not my favorite. I don't think it's related to real estate, but my business next.

You know what book? I'm gonna say maybe, I don't know. Well, my favorite. One of my favorite books is the Tipping Point.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Malcolm Gladwell. I've not read that yet.

The Tipping Point is probably one of my favorite books.

I need to read that you told me that, like, four or five years ago.

And. And, well, then there's one other thing. A friend. I was probably 16 years old, and I don't even know who the author is, but I remember that it was a series of cassette tapes because CDs weren't around yet. I'm surprised it wasn't on 8 Track the Art of Negotiations. Okay. And I listened to those tapes. I borrowed them from this guy. It was like a series of, like 10 tapes. And I would listen to him in the car all the time, and I. And I borrow them, give them back. And then, you know, a year later, I go and ask Eric, hey, Eric, can I borrow them again? And I listen to that series of tapes probably three or four times.

That's cool.

And I think it helped mold who I am. Yeah.

You are one of the best negotiators I've ever known. And, like, a lot of what I've learned in life has been from negotiating with you on things. And so, like, I'm always like, dang it, I gotta try that next time. And like, he did it again. $300 to paint a house.

No, I love it. Okay.

All right.

So real estate related ebook would be like the tipping point, maybe. Even though it's not real estate. Yeah, but helped in your real estate.

It helps in my real estate business.

What about other. Just other business books. Anything else you recommend that you're reading that you.

You know, I used to read quite a bit. I. My job doesn't allow me. I mean, my job requires me to read so much now I don't. I typically do not read for pleasure anymore, so I really don't have anything current other than maybe. I've got a couple books over there that have the Turner name associated with them that I will read. And I'm sure I'm gleaning. Gleaned some information from them, I hope.

You will. I think you'll. You'll. You'll be reading. He's talking, of course, about the book on rental property investing in the book on managing rental properties, written by myself and my wife. And I think you'll find a lot of the information is you're like, hey, I taught him that.

Yeah.

All right, so we got. Third one would be hobbies. What do you do for fun?

Fish.

Fish.

That's right.

Which. We've never gone fishing together, but we're going to.

Yes, we have. It was on the ocean with your father.

Oh, that's right. Oh, that was the worst. That was the worst experience of my Entire life. Like, I almost cut my thumb off the other day. And I would take the thumb cutting off over that fishing trip any day.

I don't know why they called it fishing, because Brandon didn't do much fishing.

That was, that was messed up. I mean, those waves were like.

It was huge. It was rough. It was. We went on a charter boat and Brandon and his father, they were sick. They were miserable sick.

I've never been that bad in my life since then. I mean, I was just over the edge of the boat the whole time. Luckily, it was so bad, they ended.

Up turning the boat around and they refunded the money. It was that bad. It was that bad.

So I ended up only having two hours of misery, not eight that were planned. I thought I was gonna die. Like, that was the worst thing I've ever done. But okay, so you have a boat, you go fishing in the rivers around here.

Rivers, ocean, Bay. Yeah, the fish. Fishing is my sanity.

Very nice, very nice. Alright, so hobbies, fishing. And then the last question is, the one I ask every time is what do you believe sets apart the successful real estate investors that are out there from those who, you know, pretend, or they never get started, or they get started and they fail? Like, what sets apart the successful ones?

That's a good question.

I don't know if this is the element, the one thing, the one cell that differentiates them, but I think it plays a role in it. Is humble. I think you have to be humble. And humble can mean a lot of different things. Humble is the ability to say, I don't know. Humble is the ability to ask for help.

Humble is being.

Compassionate. That's kind of the same word. But I think you kind of see what I mean.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

I think that's the difference. I mean, you run across a lot of people that are very aggressive or very forceful or they read a book and they feel they know.

You know, that's a good way to turn at least me personally off. And I think that's why we have the relationship that we do. You know, I think that it's okay to say, I don't know, I think it's okay to say these other things that we've mentioned throughout this whole interview. And at least for me, I think it's just being a good human being. Treat people the way that you want to be treated. I know it's so cliche, but really, I think for me, and I don't know what other people say, I don't know what the Right answer is. But that's my answer.

I like that answer a lot. I mean, I don't think anybody's ever. In 150 some shows that we've done on the podcast. I don't think we've ever had anybody say humility, But I like that. I think that's good. I think, yeah, it's that ability to ask, you know, ask for help. I mean, like the people that I see that succeed in real estate, I see that in every one of them, they ask for help. They go and they ask people out to lunch or ask them out to coffee, or they go and post a question in a forum or they're reading because they don't know everything. It's the ones that think that, oh, I got this, you know, I went to a course or a boot camp. I went to the weekend seminar and now I know how to do this. And they're the ones that struggle.

Yeah, we don't have all the answers. We don't. We just don't. And we never will. But there are people out there that may. They don't have all the answers either, but they may have the answers that we don't. And that's what you need.

Yeah. I find real estate is largely like a puzzle piece. You know, like you're just trying to put together this big puzzle and you'll never get the puzzle finished. But a lot of times, like, I'm missing this one little part right here. Then you happen to have that one part that we do together. And then I figure something out. You learn, I learn, and we both grow. And then we go on and add more puzzle pieces. And I think that's a cool way to look at real estate. So. Alright, well, Mr. Kyle B. So working people, I mean, if you. They wanted to connect with you, do you have anywhere they can connect with you at the. I don't know. You don't have a website or anything, do you?

No, I'm a nobody.

All right, well, we'll put your phone number and your home address on this.

Maybe an email. I'll just throw an email out there for me.

Okay, we'll do that. So. All right, well, thank you very much. I want to thank you not just for the interview, but for the past decade of your help on everything we've done.

Brandon, my pleasure. And thanks for the friendship.

Yeah, thank you. We'll see you around. Thank you, guys.

Thank you all for listening to the Biggerpockets real estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calico, Content and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. the content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose, and remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets, LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.