The real estate investor who doesn't like real estate?

I've never had anyone on who's just like, no, it's just money. I'm like, okay, nothing. Nope, it's, it's money.

Because everyone's full of crap. Everyone's full of crap.

They're like, oh, I'm doing it for my legacy.

It's like, dude, no, you're not.

Oh, and welcome back to another episode of Multifamily Strategy. I'm your channel host Christian Osgood. Today joined with Brian Davila, host of the Wealthy Investor Podcast. If you haven't seen him, I don't know what rock you're under because this guy is Everywhere, all the time. Fantastic pod, dude. Absolute privilege to have you on today.

Thank you for having me on, bro.

I appreciate it, dude. So you are, uh, you're an investor, you're a podcaster, you're a wholesaler, you're a flipper. There's gonna be a ton to unpack here, but tell me a little bit about you, what your portfolio looks today, what your business looks like. Give us a 30,000-foot view of Brian.

Yeah, so yeah, like the, the high-level view. So I am a 33-year-old real estate investor. I currently live in Las Vegas. I flip houses wholesale and buy rentals in Southern California and Las Vegas. I think I'm at like just under 30 doors, a bunch of long-term rentals, and then I have a handful of short-term rentals. I've done about 375 to 400 real estate transactions so far in my career.

Dude, that's crazy. In the transactions, are they, uh, Bigger focus on wholesale or flipping? What does the ratios look like between, you know, what you're buying, what you're holding, what you're wholesaling?

I would say it's like 75 flipping, 25 wholesale.

Okay, so a whole lot of flipping. How long have you been doing that?

Yeah, a lot of flipping. I've been flipping houses since like 2018.

Okay. So wow, dude, that's, that's a ton of transactions. You do a lot, lot of volume. How large is your team to pull that off?

Right now my team is me, my content manager Brianna, and then I have an operations person named Justin.

And you guys are just knocking out the whole rest of it with just coordinating contractors and rolling on projects?

Yep. Yeah, I have a project manager, but they're not like a full-time employee. And then I have like a transaction coordinator. So they're not like an employee. They just, you know, facilitate the transactions when they come in.

Dude, that's a pretty lean and mean team for the amount of volume you're doing.

Yeah, yeah, I've always been super lean, and, um, I don't like big teams or like big overhead.

Oh dude, I, I get that. I like— well, especially because I like your team being all A-players, and it takes a ton of time and a ton of effort to manage a bunch of people and to build an elite team. So if you can build a team, then get through the volume, that's the way to do it. Why did you get started in real estate? Like, what was, what was the motivation for you and what was your starting point when you started buying real estate?

Um, so I started buying real estate in 2018 also. I think that's when I bought my first house. So at the time, my mom's house was in like pre-foreclosure. And I needed to get her a new house because, um, her house is going to foreclose, or we're going to try to short sell it before foreclosed. And, uh, so I bought a house, moved her into it, and then short sold the house that she was living in. And then I ended up buying another house and then moving her into that house and renting out the first house. Um, and then slowly just kept buying like single-family properties and burying them as I got them.

Okay, now in that first year, how many properties did you end up buying and eventually BRRRRing?

Um, the first year I bought like one. Yeah, so like I didn't have like this like fast growth. I bought one, one year, and then I bought two the next year. And then I think the third year I bought like five. And then like I probably bought 5 to 10 the next 3 or 4 years.

Okay. And then when you're going through like the hundreds of transactions where you're starting to fix flip, how— what is your process for that? Because that's a, that's a lot of volume going from like, hey, you know, I was borrowing these, buying a few houses here and there. As you're building the rest of your business, how do you get that started?

Um, so my flipping and wholesaling business has primarily been very like social media based and then very, um on-market wholesaler-based. So I really didn't spend that much in marketing before this year. So most of my leads were just coming from Instagram, Facebook, and then on the MLS, and then people just kind of like knowing who I am. Even now, like, most of my deals are still the same, but the marketing just kind of amplifies, um, you know, sharing my brand, I guess.

And you've built quite a brand. It feels like you've shown up fairly recently. I mean, I know you've been around, but I see a ton more of you. So either I just fall, fell into like a fantastic retargeting campaign that you're running, or you've really been ramping up over the last year or so. What does it look like to go from, hey, I started a business, I'm building a team, we're starting to get traction. What started you focusing on the marketing side and like where did it start and where did it end up today?

Yeah, so, well, I've always been very, uh, popular like locally, so I've always marketed myself, but I was very hyper-focused when I first started on just Southern California. So I would tag, I would use California tags and hashtags, and I would talk about like Southern California things and I would, um, target Southern California. So I didn't care about being like known across the United States. I just wanted to be very known in my specific market. Um, and then later on I started making more like education videos, and that's what kind of like got me more, um, known around the country. But I still think that I'd rather be very known in Las Vegas and Southern California than anything else because I don't care about views or any of that stuff. I care more about, you know, like raising money and then getting deals from people that know who I am.

Oh, and that's such a fun way to let people know who you are, right? If you're really good at storytelling and branding and social media, it's not about getting the views. I think you nailed it. It's about connecting with the people who you want to connect with and moving forward. What I have found in my investing career is I've never asked anyone to sell a deal. Like, that's not how I operate. All I've ever done is I've interviewed owners and said, hey, you've done something I haven't done, whatever it is in their career. How did you get there? And how would you proceed with the pieces I have? Like, if I have 2 duplexes, I want to buy a 20-plex. I met people who had 20-unit buildings and just said, how did you play the game? So building a brand around like, who do you need to know you and how you connect with them? I resonate with that. That makes a ton of sense to me. As you're going through and building transactions in your area and expanding an education brand, what have you learned on the education side of being a larger brand as opposed to just marketing locally to California? Has there been a part of that adventure that's been particularly interesting for you?

Um, I mean, so right now I'm partners with a guy named Ryan Pineda, so we have an education company called Wealthy Investors. Um, so I, I have learned how to scale an education company, how to do marketing for it, how to do sales for it, how to fulfillment. We've had lifetime through the event probably 2,000 students. We have a big event with 1,000 real estate investors, 800 to 1,000 real estate investors every like 90 days. So on the education side, I've definitely learned almost everything you could think of on the education side. But yeah, I think education is like It's, it's fun. It's, you know, it's more fulfilling. And yeah, faster moving than real estate for sure.

That's that. I do sell education. Oh yeah, we're in the education space. I have multifamily strategy. We've had about half that size. We have about 1,000 students go through, but courses and mentorship. So we're heavy, heavy focus on the education side. It's all about execution. Get in regardless of financial position because I've done so much creative finance. I end up with a lot of people of different financial backgrounds. But yeah, huge focus for us is how do you play the game with the pieces you have as simply as possible? I'm not the smartest investor in the world, but because of that, I built a model that's super simple and that's something that we share. I love that space. I, I, same thing as you. It's rewarding. It's fun. Uh, with Wealthy Investor, what is the overall mission statement? What is your and Ryan's goal, like end goal for Wealthy Investor?

Um, so the mission statement is we transform lives through real estate investing. So like, my ultimate goal is for people to just get into real estate, get time freedom. Um, that's it. Like, if someone comes in and they're like, hey, I started, I had a job and now I like flip houses, to me that's like the best possible scenario. I don't care if they make millions of dollars, I just care that like They have time freedom, they're doing real estate, and that's it.

What point did you hit time freedom in your investing career? Because we see all the content that you put out, so I assume at some point you're like, hey, this is a, this is a full-time show. Was there a point where it was like, oh, that switch flipped, or did you just kind of blend into like, oh, this is what I do now?

Um, yeah, I mean, I actually really don't spend a lot of time doing social media. Um, I'm not even like a big fan of social media.

Me neither.

Yeah, like my, uh, marketing manager, whatever I want to call her today, she's like, what's the vision with all this? I was like, dude, I just want to make money in real estate, and creating content helps, but that's it. But, um, but yeah, time freedom Uh, I would say in like 2023 is like when I had a lot of time freedom for sure.

Oh, so that's actually fairly recently.

Yeah, dude, look, but even now I'm still like getting back into the day-to-day of like running the business again. Um, so like, yeah, I'm not like financially free where I just never have to work again, but, um Yeah, I'm still, still working in the business today.

What's your, what's your overall motivation for being in business? I talk to people of all different success levels, all different backgrounds. For you, what drives you to grow and keeps you engaged in business building? Because as we all know, business is super easy and there's no drama. And, uh, but seriously, it's a hard thing to do. What keeps you engaged and what motivates you?

Um, a couple things. I think number one, I'm really motivated by like security. So I think the more money I make, the more secure I am, the more secure I could have my family and my mom and my kids and my wife. Um, the more I could like help secure other people's lifestyles. Um, so like money and security just motivates me. Um, I think also I'm competitive, so like I wanna, I wanna be the biggest, you know, investor in Southern California. I think there was a time where I was one of them and was like the most well-known, but that motivates me. And then I think just growth. So like I love growing myself, and then I think I love growing different things. So like right now I'm about to— I'm gonna keep flipping and wholesaling, and I actually want to start to really try to grow my, uh, rental portfolio. I, I really wasn't focused on it the last 2 and a half years, but now I want to see if I could like scale that and see if I could scale that profitably where it's like a good thing, not like I'm just getting a bunch of units for like ego or stuff like that.

I think that is a really important point. I see a lot of people who flex unit count And at the end of the day, unit count doesn't matter. And more than half the time they're like, oh yeah, by the way, I own like 4% of this. You see a lot of people like syndication models, like I got a little piece of it, but I've met that.

I've met those people. Yeah, I've met those people at WealthCon and stuff.

Yeah. They always word it as it's like, oh yeah, I have 10,000 units under management. I'm like, cool. So you're a property manager. They're like, oh no, I own, I own a percentage. But yeah, actually building a portfolio. That's yours. So when you buy a rental and you own a rental, what does that structure look like to you? Do you go in with a partner? Are you buying these by yourself? What does it look like today and where do you want it to go? I do everything by myself. All by yourself?

Yeah, I do everything by myself. I never raise money. I rather put my own money into the deal or I'll try to burr it, but I've never like, I don't own any real estate with anyone else. But yeah, I mean, You know, like the next goal is to get to like $20K a month and like pure net profit. Um, and then after that, just take it from there. But that's like the immediate goal.

That's awesome.

Like, what's, what's your rental portfolio looks like? Like, what's, what's your—

so I invest Central Washington and I invest in, uh, Texas, specifically in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, and then a little bit on the border. Uh, in those markets, I do raise capital, uh, but I come in only joint ventures. So I'll buy a deal by myself if I have the liquidity. If I find a deal, I follow a model that says, look, deal, then debt, then equity. I find the opportunity, and if it's an opportunity where I'm like, I love this, let's negotiate the debt product. I have a ton of seller financing. Of 30 transactions, about, I think, 26, 27 of them were purchased with seller financing. Um, if that's not the option, there's other ways to buy them. But I come in, negotiate the debt, and then if we need additional capital, I'll find one, at most two partners, and we'll come in together and close the deal. And I'll use capital partners for that. One thing I love about your strategy though, I hate variables. Everything I do, long-term cash-flowing fixed-rate debt. I want to buy a property and I want to pay me every day from the time that I buy it for a long period of time. The other variable in real estate is people, and I would argue it's even more variable than debt. And if you have a bunch of partners, a bunch of people, you have drama, you have stuff to report, you have a whole lot going on. It's, it's a stressful way to buy real estate. So I've scaled a little over 200 units in the last 4 years. All I do is I own a property management company, I manage, I'm an operator. That's all I do. Buy and hold, buy and hold, buy and hold. But I built that by negotiating deals. On average, I own either between 33 to 50%, sometimes a little bit more, of deals where I partner with people. So, I think it's really important that people share though. Like when you talk about your deal structure, it's like, "Oh yeah, 200 units." Like, well, if you own a third of your 200 units, that's not the same as someone who's like, "Oh, I only have 25 units, but I own 100% of it." There's an argument that that could be the stronger model. I like the way that you're building it and the fact that you're like, okay, it's, it's BRRRRs, it's— you have other business going on. I love it. What got you into wholesaling and flipping over— because, because I'm just like, I wanted buy and hold, so I bought real estate. That's, that's all I've done. Uh, you have with all these different facets and ways to pull money out of real estate transactions. What got you interested in that model at first?

Um, so I just needed money. So flipping and wholesaling is like fast, big chunks of money. So like the average deal is like minimum $20,000, like minimum. So I don't know how else you can go make $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $150,000 in like 3 to 6 months. So I was just like, this is great. Like, I love this business model. And then I needed to offset taxes, so that's also another reason why I always bought rental properties was to just do the cost segregation and stuff like that. It was never really for like cash flow or passive income or whatever. It's always been for like cost segs and like I buy a deal where it just makes sense, where it's like I could pull my money out and it cash flows and I got it for a great price. Like, this is— there's no reason to flip it. Um, so yeah, those were usually the deals that I kept. So let's say you were giving me advice, right? So I want to get to $20K a month. Yeah. How would you build this rental portfolio? Like, what would you do? And how much do you net on your rental portfolio?

Um, on my rental portfolios, my personal cash flow is about— it's about $25 $30,000 a month depending on the month. This month, for whatever reason, I had more delinquencies than I usually would. But I cash flow around $25,000 a month on my existing rental portfolio. I like to buy property.

So, you can teach me then. You know.

Yeah. I've hit your goal. My original motivation, by the way, I want to retire my wife from teaching because I'm in Washington State. So, retire my spouse, build house in Texas. My house is like 85% done being built in Texas. So, I've almost hit my goals. Um, first thing that I did that was a tweak is I bought 2 duplexes at first, so I was buying small rentals. What I found— my third deal was a 38-unit building, and what I discovered as someone who's also interested in making money, uh, 38 units pays you more than a duplex. Common sense, right? Um, I've actually met— so my first guy I ever partnered with, his name's Cody Davis, uh, he was 21 years old with 30 rental properties, and he had basically no income. He was a broker who'd broker heard like 2 small transactions in his life. I was like, I'm like, I know you don't have money. I know your family doesn't have money. How did you buy 30 rentals? He's like, I started with a 12-plex and then I bought another 12-plex and then the same guy sold me a 6-plex and I looked at the cash flow from that. His first 12 brought in $5,000. So if I was me looking at your portfolio, I'd be like, okay, you're good at house flipping, you're good at wholesaling. Don't stop doing that because you're already amazing at it. Cherry-pick the best deals there. As a— oh yeah, yeah. As an investor, look to place your money in a little bit larger deals. One, the cost segs are typically bigger on the multi-unit stuff because you have a whole bunch of more community things that you get a better cost seg per dollar. But two, it just scales faster. It doesn't have to be a huge building, but adding some 10s and 12s, easier to manage. It's a little bit more passive, I've found.. And you just scale faster. So it's like snag that benefit. You only have to buy 1 or 2 of those a year. Uh, if you could find a, a 12-plex, you season it.

Where do I buy 'em?

Dude, I did it. Where do I do this? All by meeting owners. That's all I've ever done is I just find the people who have that inventory and I'm like, hey, let's get coffee. You have a podcast. It's like talk to the people on the pod, like interview people in your area and be like, okay, I've, I've mastered this house thing. I'm super good at this. Communicate your story. Here's what I'm good at. Here's what I've rocked. I'm getting into houses. I want to get into multifamily. Figure out who owns the multifamily. Strike up a conversation. And I've never asked anyone to sell a property in my life. Uh, we go out, I just communicate, here's what I'm trying to build. You've already built it. Tell me how you got to where you're at. And then with my pieces, what do you think my next step should be? And that's essentially the framework for all my meetings. And I meet one person at least every week for coffee. So over the course of a year, for me, that's 50 owners who now know who I am, what I'm trying to accomplish. I know how they built their portfolio. And just like a game of poker, you're around all the people who play poker, around all the people who have the money. At some point, someone is going to deal you in because you're in their community, you're in their group. Someone's going to give you a hand, get you a seat at the table. And that's all my deal flow. That's all my relationships. That's how a lot of the creative financing, that seller financing stuff, takes trust. But if I was in my position looking at that portfolio going like, okay, if we want to scale, we should buy larger. And if cost segs— because you have some, I'm assuming, pretty darn decent active income out of that many flips and wholesales. You take all that active, get some larger write-offs. That would be the first thing that I'd focus on. Less transaction volume, bigger buildings, higher cost segs. That sounds like a win to me.

But where do I find them? So like I live in Las Vegas and Southern California, an 8— a 4-unit here costs about $550,000 to $650,000. Okay. Like it's, it doesn't count. Yeah.

Oh, a little, little cheaper than Seattle.

Where?

So, um, yeah. Yes. So the way that I do it, I've— So where should I go? I have found every single property that exists is on Google Maps. I have never used any software myself. I meet with the owners and if you're someone, because different people have different businesses, If you are one where you're like, huh, I don't have time just to meet with everyone because I'm running this company and I'm running this podcast and my schedule's full. That's where you— it depends on who you are. You can look at finding a partner who's really good at that step. Different people have different skills. Now, if you don't want that partner, that's where you find a wholesaler or someone else who's like, like, my thing is forming relationships with owners, figuring out the financing, because right now interest rates are high. A lot of stuff doesn't cash flow. I bought a lot of stuff with creative finance. If you can name your interest rate, all of a sudden the cash flow looks a lot different, especially in higher cost markets like Las Vegas, California, Washington State where I invest. Even areas of like Dallas, Texas has gotten quite expensive. But I'm in an area where, yeah, a 4-unit building probably going to be $600,000 to $800,000. So how would I make that deal work? I find someone who's like, hey, I'm willing to sell this. Maybe they're stuck on their price. I'm like, okay, well, price works here. It only works with this set of terms. I figure out what it is they want, write an offer that gets me long-term cash flowing, fixed rate debt, done deal. And we close a transaction about every 45 days in a very expensive market. It's just being around the people.

I mean, but how do you like talk to the sellers? Like, are these, are these just like investors like you and I, or you're calling up Like landlords that, like older landlords, and just asking to meet with them.

It is calling anyone who owns a property in an area I want to buy who I don't already know and striking up a conversation. It's low volume. I make, I probably make an average of 2 calls a day, 5 days a week. Of 10 people, someone's going to meet for coffee. People, I've found people in real estate know people in real estate and they like to talk about real estate. Found a consistent trend, especially with the older guys who also tend to have higher equity in their portfolios. You play the game long enough, but they'll actually sit down with you and they're like, dude, no one in my family cares about this. No one in your generation listens to me. They're like, I know so many things about so many things in real estate. I learned like property managers, lawyers, brokers, accountants. I built my whole team from references from people who've been playing the game longer than me. And I basically get to take their business, condense the time, and apply it to my own business. So, I've bought a significant amount of property, but I was only able to do that because I learned from guys who built a portfolio over a 50-year timescale and just condensed all their knowledge. And it helps you speed up, especially in the information era. We can just go faster than a lot of these people used to be able to because we have more access. But yeah, for me, it's just being around the people who own the stuff that you would like to one day own.

If you— if you—

if the whole point of your meeting is, hey, I want to learn what you've done, here's what I'm trying to build, you don't need to ask them for a transaction. They already know that you're in the market because you met them learning how to build. But when they find that deal that's not right for them but perfect for you, those people call me and they're like, look, this deal is a little small for me, but this would definitely move you forward. You should talk to this person. I know you don't have a lot of cash right now. I think they're open to carrying a contract. But just give this person a call. And that referral business has been amazing for me. And again, if you don't have the time to do those, because different people, different businesses, it's finding the person— could be a partner, could be a wholesaler, could be a broker— but find the person who's good at that skill. And that's where I start finding a lot of the deals. And I have a few brokers who work fairly exclusively with me that they understand how to put together a creative deal and a conventional deal. And when they call me, it's because there is a deal that needs some negotiating, needs some creativity, and we knock them out left and right.

Yeah. So you don't do traditional financing?

I do. I've purchased, I've purchased conventional. One of my last purchases was a $1.2 million bank loan. But generally speaking, I do creative financing to acquire, and then I'll BRRRR it later with conventional financing. And I do that pretty frequently. And the goal is always to own the real estate. So if I had to pick a market, what market should I I, yeah, there's only one rule for picking a market, uh, as far as like what I'm looking for in a market, population growth. What are, what are we offering? Right? We're offering housing for humans at the end of the day, supply and demand. So if you're offering housing for humans, it's like, okay. Um, do people like living here and are more and more people gonna live here? Check. Okay. Um, is there job diversity? That's also like, I don't want to, if there's like one employer in one area, I don't want that risk.. But other than that, the other question is, where do you have a competitive advantage? Like you have brand in these two places. You're physically located in Las Vegas. That gives you an edge over people who want to invest in Las Vegas who don't already live there. Like I wouldn't choose to invest in Washington State.

We hate living. I don't think I wanna buy in Las Vegas.

Oh, there you go. Oh, you don't wanna buy in Las Vegas then.

I don't think I, I wanna buy in Vegas. Yeah. The houses are like— the apartments here are ghetto, and they're just like expensive, and they don't cash flow, and the rent's low, and you guys don't have water.

That makes me a little bit nervous in the long-term investing in Las Vegas. You guys got to fix your water problem. So yeah, there are economic factors and personal.

What do you think about like Kansas City, Kansas? What do you think about Kansas City, Oklahoma?

Or Indiana? Okay, all of those high cash flow markets inherently, they're going to be lower appreciation, but that's fine because we buy for cash flow stability, tax write-offs. It hits all the marks. OKC, freaking awesome market. I have never talked to an investor there who, one, didn't love living there, two, didn't love investing there. Like everywhere, those are also areas where I mean, you're gonna traditionally. OKC, Kansas City, you're going to deal with higher drug problems. But outside of that, I think you have to have a great property manager for the asset that you're buying. Just in general, they have a little bit more of that going on, lower income markets. But buying for cash flow, dude, there's, there's a ton of deals there. I know a lot of operators, especially Kansas City and St. Louis. I've met some people there who honestly, they're, they're not even great operators. And they make a ton of money. Because there's just opportunity there.

Yeah.

And they hit the metrics. Population growth is crazy. People do love living there. It has a crazy loyalty to the area. Absolutely buy there. Yeah, I love them.

What do you think about like, if you had to pick one of them?

If I had to pick one of them, I would probably go with— oh, personally, I'd probably go with Oklahoma City. But I would choose that because I'm moving to Texas. I'm closer to it. I like the area, I physically like being there. I'm sorry, everyone from Kansas City, I am not a huge fan of Missouri. I get off a plane, my allergies, I'm literally allergic to your state. So I've looked at buying a deal down there. I don't like being there. I want to be able to touch my portfolio, not all the time, but I want to, I want to have a reason to go out and see the portfolio. Oklahoma City, somewhere that I would want to live, somewhere that I enjoy being. And it hits every metric for somewhere that you'd want to invest. So of the places you listed, I like OKC the best.

What about like, do you buy properties a certain age, or you don't care?

So when I start— I'm going to ask you the same question. When I started, I bought a lot of inventory from 1950 to 1960, and that is because in Grant County, Washington, that is where a bulk of the buildings were built. I am really good at that inventory. As I've matured as an investor and made my money in those, they do fall apart over time because they're the right at that age where plumbing's failing, electric needs to be replaced. You have so much more maintenance on them. When I leave Washington as my primary residence, I'm going to stop buying that age of building in Washington because I don't want to deal with the higher maintenance problem. It's like I started there. It doesn't mean that's where you stay. Like I made money there because there's a ton of opportunity in that asset class. The stuff that I buy today, it's usually if it's built after 2000, I like it a lot more. And so I'll focus— I'm pickier now because I built my base. If I was getting started though, I don't think I would be as picky. I'd be like, let's get the deal done. Let's build the cash flow. If it's harder to manage, that's fine. I'm the guy who's willing to do it. I'll outwork people and good to go. So it depends on what phase you're in. Build phase, don't care as much. Stabilization and optimization phase of the business, I'm liking 2,000. Or more, which is a lot of the new stuff that I'm, I'm purchasing. How about you? I mean, you do a lot of, you do a lot of flips, you do wholesales, you're holding stuff. What age of building is ideal for what you currently do?

Well, wholesaling doesn't matter because I, I don't ever own it. True. Um, flipping, I really— once you get older than 1950, it gets kind of really sketchy, um, where it could need literally everything, like electrical. I flipped houses where I was like knob and tube wiring, galvanized plumbing, and like the foundations on like wood. I've bought houses where the foundation is literally like rock. Oh, wild. So I try to stay above 1950s to own it. Um, I really try to be at like 1950s, 1960s, or newer. And if I'm buying it 1950s, 1960s, it needs to be really beat up so I could just redo everything so they don't have to worry about it.

You know what I mean? That's so important. That's so important for everyone who wants to do that renovation thing. It's like, I do like that when it's like, it's really beat up, I'm getting an excellent price because I actually do want to tear out everything. Needs new electric, needs new plumbing. Yeah, I've seen so many investors do half the project, you know, oh, I fixed half the projects, I did all the aesthetic stuff. And then it's like, Now you're signing up for expenses forever. If you're gonna do the project, do it all the way, right? Yeah. How do you determine what is a good flip for you outside of being, you know, the age?

What is the project that gets you excited? Honestly, I'm, I'm probably not like the normal house flipper where they're like, really into design or all these things. Like, I literally don't even care to go to the properties. I don't design them. I don't really like care. Like, I just, I'm just more like a numbers and like a transaction type of person. Yeah. So to me, my favorite flips are the ones that make the most money. Um, besides that, I don't really— it could be a big house or a small house or ugly house or a tall house, a blue house, or A red house, a banana house, an orange house, I don't care.

It's all the same to me. Oh, that's funny. I definitely resonate with like, I don't care about the design. All my units look the same all across the portfolio. The way that I manage, we call it functional. Yeah, all my flips look the same. Yeah, I call it functional flipping. It's like same pieces, same, like you're entering our rental as a tenant, everything is gonna be like, you move from one rental to the other, you're like, oh, I know where I'm at, I know what to expect, I know what the appliances are, I know what the flooring is. Everything is uniform, which saves on cost, which helps us with affordable housing. Like I can come in at a lower price and keep it full because I use replaceable pieces all throughout. So not sexy. I think that's one of the best business models that you can have is it's like, it is uniform. It is simple. The project is done, turn and burn. So I, I love that piece. The funny thing is I love having like a unique project. You really don't— no emotion at all for like— there's no project where you're like, oh, this one was super fun? No, I literally—

like I said, I don't— I literally have flipped houses where I literally don't go see them. I will go to most projects maybe once to film content there, but besides that, I don't pick the design, I don't look at it. I literally to me, I'm like, real estate to me is like, uh, it's not an emotional thing. I don't get any fulfillment from it. It doesn't excite me at all.

I actually, I, I love it. I love this episode. I love this episode. Uh, yeah, I talked to somebody.

Brian's the same way. I don't know if you know Ryan Pineda. Like, yeah, you do 100 deals a year. It's like, you're not— I'm not like excited about anything. I'm just like, all right, close. Okay, we close. My process is just close. So I get the contract signed, then I'm facilitating the, um, financing. I'm making sure we close before the day we're supposed to close. We close, project manager takes over, project manager finishes, he gives it to the, you know, listing agent, listing agent sells it, I make sure that it closes. And then that's pretty much all I'm doing.

Of all the business— flipping, buying, wholesaling— where do you get your fun? Because I'm hearing you like, you like making money, which is great. Security, fantastic. Yeah. What part, what part of this business gets you excited? Like, why are you doing the things that you're doing other than, other than like, yeah, flips make money? Money. Yeah. Is there a non-monetary reason?

I mean, if flipping— like, if I can make money doing pools, if I can make a million bucks doing pools a year, I would do that. But I don't see any other way to make liquid cash as fast as possible than like flipping houses and wholesaling. So I just like— it's funny because I was talking to one of my team members that are— that's in the room now. And then we were talking about vision and like motivation and all these things, and I was just like, dude, I'm like, just so you— I'm here to make money. I'm not here to like do anything else. Like, I get my fulfillment from my wife and my kids and my baby and playing golf. Like, this is strictly like a business to me. This is not like I'm not looking for fulfillment and joy out of my work. I'm trying to like make as much money as possible and then go do whatever I want whenever I want to do.

So I don't know if that's normal or not, but it's certainly different, which is why we like having different people on the pod. I, I— funny enough, this is the part that— is it? This interests me the most. I've never had anyone on who's just like, no, it's just money. I'm like, okay, nothing. Nope, it's It's money.

Why? Because everyone's full of crap. Everyone's full of crap. They're like, they're like, oh, I'm doing it for my legacy. It's like, dude, no, you're not. No, you're not.

No one's doing nothing for their legacy. Legacy is, that's what I feel. Legacy is a silly one because if you're not aware, uh, everyone listening, you are in fact going to die. Um, and, uh, you're not gonna be around for your legacy. So who cares? Um, though the same argument could be made for money. Yeah, exactly. But, but you gotta provide for your family. Yeah.

For me, I, I have fun, but while you're here, you can enjoy the money. Yeah.

Like I, I'm doing a hotel conversion right now and like for me in business, it is so freaking fun to be like, okay, this thing was a piece of shit. They just awful, awful failing motel. We're turning into multifamily. We're renovating it, going out to the project, seeing one thing, turning into something else that is actually mentally stimulating for me. So it's, it's fun for me on this pod. Being like, nope, doesn't do anything for me. Beautiful house, good flip, bad flip. What did it make? That's the thing. Does Ryan feel the same way about real estate? I'm curious. Is he the exact same operator? He's like, what's it producing? Show me the spreadsheet. Next project.

Oh yeah, no, he hates real estate. Oh, I wouldn't say he hates real estate. Yeah, like Ryan doesn't work in his business, in his real estate business at all. Yeah. He only talks about real estate because he has to, because that's what people know him for. We're not like— I hang out with Ryan every week. We're never there just sitting there talking about real estate. That's not like— I don't even watch real estate content. I don't, I don't follow real estate people. Um, I'm not like— do you watch real estate content, dude?

I only watch real estate content and business content. I freaking love— yeah, I'm a board game player. No, this shit— real estate is a freaking—

how long have you been in real estate?

I've been in real estate— I used to work for the CoStar group, uh, before I started buying. So I've been in real estate since like 2016. Uh, I've been buying real estate for the last 4 years, but I started playing this.

I'm like, oh yeah, that's crazy.

We're at the same time.

Yeah.

This to me, it's the same adrenaline hit that I get, like playing a board game and you move forward and you're playing against other people, but it's the competitive thing. It's like, I'm like, I'm taking the board and I'm moving forward and I'm advancing. I get all that satisfaction from playing the game. Which is funny. It's not what you have to do. And it's, I think that's the message of this podcast. It's real estate. You don't have to love real estate. And I don't think most people love it. Like I love it, which is cool. You don't need to. It's you. One thing that you've done really well, you've identified your goal. You've identified a path to do that. And you're willing to put in the work regardless of the joy level. It's not an endorphin hit. It's not legacy. You're like, I want to make money so that I could do the things that I want with my family. And I can golf when I want and I can do whatever the heck else it is that you want to do. And this is the most efficient way you've seen to do it. Yeah. And so you've learned the game and built the systems, which I think everyone's seen Pineda's content and he's done a fantastic job of branding. I, I, I just think he's done a really great job of storytelling. Mm-hmm. But when you're doing any sort of marketing piece, it's like, okay, I know it works. I've added systems around it. What you've done is you've done a fantastic job building a business that is simple, repeatable, scalable. Which makes money. I mean, that's, that is the name of the game. You've, you've kept it simpler than anyone else on this pod. Yeah. I want to make money. This is how I make money. The systems are good. Repeat. One more piece that I got from you in this.

Yeah. I think, yeah. The only thing I like is the only thing that I like is like, I like closing deals. I get a little bit of like a buzz when like you get a contract signed and we're like closing deals. Like, that gets me excited. But besides that, there's nothing else that I really care for.

Oh, this is so fun. This is, this is not what I expected. It's everything that I wanted. Uh, dude, okay, um, what's— what, what thing about you that just like— where do you think that your personality— because this is completely unique personality for me, so I'm having fun dissecting this, but with who you are, how do you think you being Brian, well, what makes the thing that you're best in the world at makes you you? How has that affected your business? Like, what is it about, hey, I'm Brian, I wanna make money, I have the drive, I'm gonna put in the hours, but what's the thing about you that's made your business work? If you had to choose one thing.

I think 'cause I, I think that, I understand what's important, and then I understand what's just like noise. And a lot of people can get stuck in like noise and just BS, and then at the end of the day, they're like, they think they worked and they think they were productive, but they weren't. And I actually can like focus on the things that actually— the levers that have the most return where other people are just doing dumb shit all day. And then before they know it, they wasted a whole year and they're in the exact same place that they were at the beginning of the year. And then they do it again and again and again until they eventually get out of the business. That's why real estate has like such a high turnover rate. Yes.

So that's what I think. Okay. So if we had to put a word to it, Brian's superpower is he is self-aware enough to know what things are a waste of time and what things are moving him towards the things that he wants. He knows money is his motivator. He can pursue that. Yeah. Even from day one.

You're not—

Even from day one. Yeah.

From day one. I remember my first day, the first day I was in the real estate office, right? I was sitting there and I'm like, and I'm coming in from scratch. I don't have nothing. Yeah. I have no real estate experience, no sales experience, no nothing. And I'm sitting here watching these other realtors And, you know, I come in at like 8 because I don't got shit to do. So I'm going to show up to the office at 8 and I'm there. No one's there. People start trickling in about 9, but the employees trickle in at 9, like the assistants, the admins. Those people trickle in at 9. The realtors show up around 8:30, 10. You know, they're there until 11 and then they go to lunch. And then they come back from lunch and then they're like, yeah, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to work on my social media and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end of the day, they go home maybe 4. The office is empty at 4. And that was like my first couple of days at the real estate brokerage. And I was like, bro, if this is what real estate is, I'm going to smoke these people because they're not actually working as much as they think they're working. They think talking about social media and blah blah blah blah blah is actually gonna do something, but it's not. So I immediately— I remember I started off— I have a picture. Yeah, and I could send to you if you want to post. Yeah, absolutely. I have a picture of my name at the very bottom of the board of 200 agents at zero, and within a couple months I was literally the number one agent in my office. Because I was just like, bro, you guys aren't even working. You guys think you're productive, but you have no idea what being productive is. You think talking to your escrow officer and your title rep about these new BS disclosures that are coming out are gonna get you anywhere when it's not. So like, that would be my superpower, and that's where I see most people fail or succeed, is they're rather stuck in the noise of the BS that doesn't move the ball forward, or they're only focused on the most important thing. That's what Ryan, myself, all the high achievers that I've met, they focus on the highest lever thing that makes the most amount of noise, and they get really good at that thing too. And then that trickles down into like all these other things.

Yeah. If you're trying to get into the real estate game or you're trying to start a business, I think this is some of the best advice that you can possibly receive. Identify the things that move you forward and do those. You can't skip steps, but there's no reason to add steps. I think that's what most people do. I think we're trained to do that. You go from like kindergarten to first to second to get to middle school, high school, get your first, second, third job, whatever. We're trained that, oh, I need to add things to this and I need to scale slowly, or I need to build. It's like you want to be a real estate investor. That's what you want to do. You're not there until you buy a piece of real estate. Fricking buy a piece of real estate and ta-da, you're forward. Uh, you're a real estate broker and you're stuck in the office. People are outselling you. Identify the steps to close a transaction and then just do those steps and you'll hit the top of the board. Yeah. It's, it's not rocket science.

And I— have you had students before, have you had students before that they're just like the masters of asking you questions and after a while you're like, dude, you shouldn't even ask me any more questions. Yeah. You're past the stage of asking questions. You need to go do something, dude. I like, Don't ask me about insurance.

You don't have any deals. Yeah. How would I structure this LLC? I'm like, LLC for what? What asset do you hold in that? Well, I mean, when I get there, I'm like, you're not there yet. Yeah. How do I account for this? Account for what? You have no income to account for. Yeah.

Yeah. What about taxes? It's like, oh, how much money have you made? Nothing. Oh, so you don't have to worry about taxes. Yeah.

I don't give tax advice, but if I did, I'm going to say your taxable income on this is zero. Yeah. There are people who want to be students more than they want to succeed. And I think that's a lot of people. They want to feel like they're moving forward. I see that. I freaking see that in church. I see people like, oh, I'm here because this is supposed to move me forward. I'm like, no, you're actually supposed to do something. You see it all over culture. People need to figure out how to be self-sufficient and coming and being like, well, I did the marketing thing. People told me it's like, You want to be a real estate investor, invest in real estate. You want to start a company, file the LLC and make your first hires. Like, do the things you need to do to move forward. Be efficient. And you don't have to do this to chase endorphins. This isn't a joy thing. You are the only person I've ever talked to though who— beginning this podcast, talking about real estate, I'm like, I'm not getting this dude to engage. I talked about not liking real estate and you just freaking lit up. Like, dude, I love not liking real estate.

Oh, really? You're to— Yeah, because honestly, yeah. I've been doing this for years, bro. I don't even I don't even like doing a real estate investing podcast. Ask my social media manager. I don't even like doing my own podcast, but I do it because it serves its purpose. But I'm not a real estate guy. I'm like a business guy. But it is what it is. But I do what needs to get done to get where I want to go.

This is an awesome example of yet another way to succeed in real estate. I've gone overtime because I started having a ton of fun with this because you are just So fricking, you're, you're just wired totally. You are wired the opposite of me and I fricking love it, dude. Brian, thank you for spending the time. Uh, everyone could find him on the podcast that he absolutely loves being the host of his passion project, Wealthy Investor.

Uh, check it out. I swear it's a good podcast.

It actually is phenomenal. If you see the guest list that this guy pulls, it, you do, you interview the best and the brightest.

You know, You should— what you should do, we're gonna drop the Pace Morby podcast. When do you think? This week or next week? Next week. Next week. Next week, listen to that podcast and you'll get more of an insight of what I'm doing. And Pace is the same way where he's, he's an entrepreneur disguised as a real estate investor. Yes. The same as Ryan. He— Ryan is not like, oh, let me talk to you about flipping houses on Saturday at the golf course. He's a marketer, just, you know, disguised as a real estate investor.

So it's just fun. That's an interesting take. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, dude, I had so much fun with this. I'm gonna— there's gonna be a lot of, a lot of fun moments in here.

So everyone, Grant Cardone's the same way, by the way. You think Grant Cardone's the exact same way. Grant Cardone's not a real estate guy. He's a marketer disguised as a real estate guy.

Yeah. Grant wants the write-offs. That real estate is a write-off for Grant. And he's got good at talking about it. And yeah, Grant is like—

I—

there are things like everyone, there's stuff I love and hate about Grant, but he is unarguably one of the best marketers out there. He's a freak of nature. Amazing personal brand. Just absolutely incredible. If someone else wanted to find, follow you on anything that you do, where do they go, Brian?

I mean, they don't even have to follow me, bro. There we go. They go to, uh, @thebriandeville on Instagram.

There we go. He's everywhere. Watch him at his podcast. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, uh, please like, follow, subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts or follow us on YouTube at Multifamily Strategy. That's a wrap. This is an episode. We will see you on the next episode of Multifamily Strategy.