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How to Attract Deals and Earn More Through the Magic of Networking With Travis Chappell

The BiggerPockets Podcast
89 min read
How to Attract Deals and Earn More Through the Magic of Networking With Travis Chappell

Would getting more deals through your network help your real estate business? Today’s guest specializes in just that!

Brandon and David sit down with Travis Chappell, host of the “Build Your Network” podcast, and dive into how to create success through other people.

Travis shares strategies for using his network to find deals, mastering the art of giving to increase your success, and becoming a leader in any space you are passionate about—no matter who you are! You won’t want to miss his “anchoring” negotiating strategy, his advice on the right way to reach out to mentors/influencers, and his five tips for starting off an effective working relationship!

This is one of the most value-packed shows BiggerPockets has done. Download it now!

Click here to listen on iTunes.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 323.

Building a platform is like so important because the number one thing to become a better networker, the number one thing is to add value. Learn how to give with out the expectation of receiving anything in return.

You’re listening to the BiggerPockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you are here looking to learn about the real estate investing without all the hype you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon: What’s going on everyone? This is Brandon, host of the BiggerPockets podcast here with my cohost Mr. David Greene. David Greene, tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how are you feeling today?

David: I am feeling 11 after today’s episode.

Brandon: Yes.

David: This guy is really good.

Brandon: Yes today I know we say this all of the time, but this is again one of my favorite shows we’ve done in a long time. We interviewed a guy named Travis Chappell. He runs a podcast on networking. We’ll talk about that on the show a little bit later.

It’s called The Build Your Network Podcast, but we talk a lot about he’s also a real estate investor. We talk about his real estate, his flipping, why he’s getting out of rentals, but then we really dive in to how to network with influential people. How to build mentors in your local market. How to get people that you consider your heroes like online or in your local market and how to get in touch with them.

How to have coffee with them. A few things that I have just pulled out from today’s show that just kind of to I guess tease you with is coming. Make sure you guys listen to the key to successful in partnering on a real estate deal with family or really anyone. There’s like one thing that we pull out there that’s really really important.

We talk about the most important skill that Travis has pulled out of over 200 interviews with people. Like when it comes to networking and being able to find success, he pulls out one skill he’s found over and over and over. Works really well and then towards the end of the show we go into five key elements of an effective reach out message. In other words when you call, text, email somebody that you want something from, you want to go out to coffee with somebody.

You want to network with them. You want to whatever right. There’s like five key elements you got to include in there and in fact Travis actually did this. We actually like laughingly like it was pretty funny.

He did this exact thing to me, which is how me and Travis became friends. Like I looked back in the very first message I ever got from Travis and he totally did this on me and it totally works. If you want to learn how to get in touch with people you got to listen to this show. You’re going to love it.

Hey before we go any further I want to take a second to think Blinkist for sponsoring today’s show. If you follow Travis’s advice today and you take action you’re going to be busy running around building your network and you won’t have a ton of free time right, which is why Blinkist would be a perfect fit for you. If you’re a busy person that’s awesome. It’s an app that summarizes a ton of great books into just 15 minutes and you can read or listen to them.

It really works for me when I’m working out or when I’m traveling or you know hanging out at the beach here in Hawaii. It’s awesome. Blinkist has thousands of titles in dozens of categories. I mean let’s just take the topic of like today’s show networking right so I searched Blinkist and these are just some of the titles that came up.

John Hall, Top of Mind, Use Content to Unleash Your Influence. Gary V, Crushing It. The 11 laws of Likability and it goes on and on. Look 8 million people are using Blinkist to find books like those so listen. You can start a free seven day trial today. Just go to blinkist.com/pockets. Just do it from your phone right now.

I’ll wait. Go ahead again you can start that free trial by going to blinkist.com/pockets. Spelled BLINKIST.com/Pockets. All right big thanks to our sponsors always and now I would don’t want to forget the best part of the entire BiggerPockets’s podcast and that is the Quick tip.

David: Quick tip.

Brandon: I didn’t know if you knew where I was going there David, but you caught on quickly. Well done.

David: Quick tip me.

Brandon: All right.

David: Quick tip me.

Brandon: Today’s Quick Tip is simple. We talk a lot about from the show today about not working at local events so I’m just going pull out again. I know we talk about this a lot, but I’m going to say it again if you’re not going to a local BiggerPockets event you’re missing out on one of the most important things you can do as a real estate investor so go to biggerpockets.com/events. Find an event in your area and go to it If there isn’t an event in your area coming up or you don’t like the ones that are there go start your own.

Right like it’s just such a good way to build connections with people and to really drive your business, your success forward. Again biggerpockets.com/events and now I want to just go right into the show because again today’s show is fantastic. I’m not even going to let you talk anymore David. Okay I’ll let you say something, one more thing.

David: Yes the one thing I want to say is make sure you listen to all the way to the end because it gets really.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Good at the end.

Brandon: Yes, yes, really really solid so if you’re like driving to work right now and you’re not going to have time listen on your commute home because this is just powerful. Oh also I didn’t say this earlier, but make sure you guys listen to his negotiation tip. That was one of my favorite things he said all day is how he negotiates a lower price on properties. There’s like one tip he uses on price anchoring. You’re going to love it so stayed to tuned for that, but without further ado let’s get to today’s interview with Travis Chappell.

All right Travis welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast how have you been man?

Travis: Yes, what’s up guys? How is it going?

Brandon: You know not too bad, not too bad. You know I was on your show a little while ago and we got to talking you know all about you know networking and how to build your brand and like get people to you know like you essentially right and it was a ton of fun and afterwards I didn’t know this while we were recording really much, but you were a real estate investor as well so I was like well dude we had a great time. I got to get you on the BiggerPockets podcast and make this happen so.

Travis: Yes dude.

Brandon: That’s why you’re here.

Travis: Every time I talk to you I got to stop doing it on video because I always see the background of Hawaii and.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Yes, yes it’s just.

Brandon: Yes that is from now on so just.

Travis: It’s just audio only.

Brandon: Yes it’s not too bad, it’s not too bad. I always tell people when they’re like you know what’s it like in Hawaii. I even said it to you this morning. I’m like oh man it’s been really rough lately. Actually, I mean the winter is kind of cold out here. Like normally in the summer it’s like mid 80s and now it’s like mid 70s. It’s like it’s hard you know and all my friends.

Travis: It’s like a Game of Thrones winter right there.

Brandon: Yes, exactly winter is coming. Alright so let’s jump into this thing. We’ll go through your real estate story first and I really want get to later talking about I mean you’ve interviewed over 200 people on your show about networking and about building your you know the people around you right and it’s so good, but before we get there I want to go through your real estate story is so let’s start at the beginning. What did you do before real estate and let’s talk about how you got from there into your very first real estate deal.

Travis: Yes, good question man so I did nothing before real estate because I grew up in a real estate household so.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: My dad is has been a real estate agent since I was like three or four years old so I was walking properties on Saturdays and Sundays since I could walk you know what I mean so basically as soon as I graduated high school I was in my first deal. My parents helped me out tremendously with that one. Me and my sister did it together, but I will say that during that time before I really got into you know knowing what I was doing, I did a lot of door-to-door sales so I was actually in college. Grew up in a super traditional let’s say strictly Christian home so.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: I went to college actually for church ministries. I have my degree in Bible.

Brandon: Oh I didn’t know that.

Travis: In church ministries. Yes so.

Brandon: I actually have— I have a degree in biblical studies.

Travis: Oh no way.

Brandon: Yes, I do know that.

Travis: You want to talk theology then instead of real estate.

Brandon: Yes we could talk theology all day to that. This is great. All right.

Travis: Anyway, but yes so during college a buddy of mine started knocking doors for the solar company and I remember it being super intriguing to me because he had told me that he had made more money that week than he did the previous summer when he was working two full-time jobs and he only worked 20 hours that week and so it kind of caught my ear and I asked him if he could get me an interview with the supervisor and he did so I started in door-to-door sales right then. Sold solar for about a year and a half and then got recruited into the alarm ministry and then got recruited into the water industry and then it wasn’t really until I was in the water business that I started doing a little bit more with the real estate and actually starting to look to do deals just because I was making some good money and I wanted somewhere to throw it and I always believed in the long term of real estate and I personally genuinely believe that if you ever desire to build any sort of wealth that real estate has to be a part of that. I basically joined up with a mastermind where I learned a little bit more about it. I started consuming a lot of content. That’s when I first started listening to your guys’s show. This show BiggerPockets is like one of three shows that I’ve actually listened to from when I first started listening to podcasts and that I still currently listen to today so.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s an honor to be on bro it really is.

Brandon: Well thanks man. I’ll take that as a win. You know it’s funny you mentioned you were in door-to-door sales so we had a guest Andressa Gidelli from back and like to show 314. She talked a lot about how door-to-door sales helped her get used to rejection and get that mindset right. The you find the same thing like.

Travis: Instrumental.

Brandon: You just got good at. Okay yes can you talk about that from like what is that mindset that you have to get into that you learned to deal with that.

Travis: Yes, it’s instrumental bro. Look I so much believe in door-to-door sales. Really direct sales of any sort in terms of learning how to communicate. That’s just a question that I asked a ton of people on my show recently what’s the number one skill that you think is important two really develop as an entrepreneur or to be successful in whatever area of life that you’re trying to be successful in. The number one thing, the number one answer, I was expecting more specifics, but the number one answer that I’ve been getting is communication because most of the things that we need to master as business people, as investors, as agent whatever you are that most of those things while under the communication category.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: You’ve got at sales, negotiation, marketing, networking like persuasion, all of that stuff falls under the category of communication and there is no better crash course and how to communicate with people then door to door sales. Because we all know that, maybe not we all know, but our communication is 7% the words that we say, but you don’t know that and you don’t hone the ability to learn how to read between the lines unless you just go out and do it. You can read as many books in the world like as many books as you want to listen to as much audio as you want to, but the number one thing that’s going to sharpen that skill set is just by getting out and doing it. By going out in talking to people and door-to-door just got your teeth on that kind of stuff man like it was a really really big crash course for me and all of the above plus I got to get enter the recruiting of new reps.

I got into training reps on how to sell. I got into managing reps and so there were so many lessons then I took from that and now have used in a variety of the senses especially coming into the podcast because man that’s just a whole different type of rejection. Like with door-to-door you know like I’m knocking on Joe’s Schmoe’s door down the street and trying to sell him an alarm. You know if he tells me to get the F off of his porch, which happened multiple times.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like I don’t really sure. Like it doesn’t really bother me that much. Like it hurts a little bit for me like one of the things that I did just to kind of cope with it was I would just turn into a game so anytime anybody was like remotely mean to me, I would just like really challenge myself to see how long I could hold them on the front porch without closing the door on my face. I would just like flip it around and turn it into something fun and then when I left I was pretty much done with it. Like I would I left ahead and had that like continuous conversation going in my mind like you do. You know what I mean? Like.

Brandon: Yes, yes, yes for sure.

Travis: F me, F you, and you have like all these like different back and forth, but the time we knock on the next door like minds cleared and you’re ready to go. That kind of stuff has been super valuable, but coming into the podcasting space like now I’m reaching out to people that like I respect and I admire and like I want to have a relationship with. Like I want to learn from and be mentored by. You know what I mean people like—honestly people like you, people like my one of my other podcasting mentors John Lee Dumas or my buddy Jordan Harbinger now and even people like Grant Cardone and J Pappassan and some other those people were.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s just like man I look up to these people. Like they’re—they’re like the people that I want to be like. I want to model certain parts of my life after so reaching out to them was a lot scarier than like knocking on somebody’s some random person’s door, but having that experience behind me when I started reaching out to these people help tremendously in my ability to be persistent without being super pushy so yes it’s been instrumental for me.

Brandon: Yes, that’s awesome. Alright so I want to dive into that actually a little bit. I’ll go back to the real estate right now and then we’ll go back to the networking because I think that’s fascinating so to go you said you started making some money because you were doing this. Walk us through your first deal you did by yourself then. I mean like I know you said you did something with your sibling back when you were.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Younger with your parents, but what was the first deal you did on your own?

Travis: Yes, the first deal I did on my own with just a little bit of a house hacking situation.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: I basically just tried to find a deal. It wasn’t like a technical house hack because we weren’t renting out a room or anything like that, but it was basically like we just wanted to get into we knew that the market what’s going up. This was like 2014 or so still like right in the middle of when you know everything was on the increase and so we had just gotten married. My wife and I had just gotten married.

We just graduated college and just moved out of Southern California up to Fresno Central California and when we were moving there I really wanted to get into my first deal. I wanted to buy a house. Like own something, but I was 21 years old. I didn’t have the commission income that I had was not the two full years which obviously after the crash you have to have two full years of hundred percent commission or 1089 income in order to prove.

B Yes.

Travis: To the banks that I can pay my mortgage.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I literally took an internal transfer in the solar company that I was knocking doors for so that I could get a salary for a certain period of time just so that I could get the house under contract and then literally that was the longest time by the way that I’ve ever held and 9-to-5 was during that week that five-week period of time. That was the only time I ever like had to actually go and like stick to a schedule and like work for somebody else and so literally a day or two after we closed escrow on that property I quit that job and went back to what I was doing, but it was a small it was like a it was in a planned unit developments so a really small like 4000 square-foot lot—15-1,600 square-foot house that we picked up for it was listed for like $180 and we picked it up for like 163-164. I didn’t know a ton about real estate at the time, but I knew that looking for foreclosures what’s typically where you’re going to get a better deal so when I was looking for properties I told my realtor like only pull up foreclosures because I’m not interested in buying the house in like an emotional state to you know raise my family in. I’m looking for a deal here so I want to make sure that if I can buy it it’s in decent condition so I can move in immediately, but it’s not imperfect condition because by while we’re there I want to be able to fix it up so that when we move away will actually be able to have some increased equity in the home and that’s exactly what we did.

Brandon: Yes that’s great and you know we talked a lot about house hacking and it’s kind of a loose term that doesn’t have a perfect definition, but since I invented the term I’m going to given the definition right now. Like I mean like the way I look at house hacking it could be it’s like any real estate deal that you can combine an investment with primary residence right. That could include a single-family house like my buddy Connor who is work set BiggerPockets, he helps with all the ad sales. Connor bought a single-family house, rented out the bedrooms. He even did my trick of like buying like finding a two-bedroom house with over a thousand square feet so then he was able to add a third bedroom in there and now he house hacks that way right.

Other people like I bought my first thing was a duplex. I lived in one unit, rented the other out. That’s probably the most common way to phrase it, but the third way we don’t talk a lot about but it’s very powerful it’s that buying a really good single-family house. This is for people especially if you don’t want to live in a duplex, you can’t find a duplex, triplex. Find a really good deal on a single-family house. Live there especially if you live there for a couple of years and then tell it. If you get a great deal when you buy and the prices go up you can make a ton of money that way that can then propel you enter further real estate stuff so.

Travis: Yes definitely.

Brandon: I would include that as house hacking. That’s cool.

Travis: Perfect. Cool. As long as the person who invented the term includes it I guess it counts.

David: You just got blasted by The Godfather. The Godfather of house hacking.

Travis: Perfect.

Brandon: Yes, no actually that term came from an article I wrote like 5 and a half years ago called how to hack your housing and get paid to live for free. It was all on like. I was like you know bought a duplex. It’s like everybody does stuff and then nobody has a name for it.

David: Yes right.

Brandon: When you put a name to it like this post to marketing right.

David: Now it’s a saying now.

Travis: Yes, exactly.

David: Yes when you put a name to it it’s nothing and now like.

Travis: Words like BRRRR.

Brandon: BRRRR investing. Like BRRRR house hacking yes. We got all these terms we throw around.

David: Isn’t that a good point to illustrate Travis’s point that like communication is so important. Because all you’re doing is taking a word and applying it to a concept, but because now it’s being communicated well everybody feels like oh I can go do it. It’s been around forever, but no one was doing it because it wasn’t being communicated well.

Travis: 100%

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: 100% bro. 100%.

Brandon: In fact, this is a good tip in general like if you’re going to go ever pitch a deal in front of an investor, a lender or partner, your own spouse, your husband or your wife like manlike get clear like get like like people like use all this jargon of like I’m going to do and this, but like when you just get clear it’s like a I’m going to house hack. Like it’s like people just like the simplicity of that, kind of like when you present a deal. Be simple in your presentation skills and your PDF document you give people and the way you describe it.

Travis: Right, right.

Brandon: All of those things, simplicity is important.

Travis: Plus that was speaking of selling your spouse. That was a much easier sell for me, a single-family home.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: That we got a good deal on that we put sweat equity into.

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Travis: Why we lived there and then selling it in a year and a half rather than because in the in certain parts of California it’s difficult to find like multifamily that aren’t.

Brandon: Sure.

Travis: Really sketchy parts of town.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: We initially moved, we were actually looking for a duplex because that was my initial thought and it was just kind of sketchy. I didn’t super like feel comfortable bringing you know my brand-new wife to this like here’s what I’m providing for you babe. You know so moving to a single-family home it was in a little bit of a gated—it was in a gated community and all of that kind of stuff and finding a really good deal on that home and then just it was livable, but it wasn’t perfect so we just moved in, put a bunch of sweat equity into it and then year, a year, a year and 1/2 later we picked it up four 160, 165. We sold it for 205 I think like a year a year and half later.

Brandon: That’s awesome. That’s very cool. Were going to coin a new term today. Were going to hit all of that BRRRR hacking. Kind of like.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: You buy a little bit of a fixer upper, the foreclosure or oh as Kevin said BRRRRn key instead of turnkey it’s BRRRn key.

Travis: BRRRRn key there you go.

Brandon: We can go that, BRRRR key all right. I was going to say BRRRR key, but that sounds like turkey. Anyway, all right so you bought this house. You sold it, what came next?

Travis: Yes so next was when I made the mistake of thinking that that was what I was going to do for a long time and.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: The second house, remember the first house I said I wasn’t emotional about it at all. It was just.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: A house. I was going to sell it and make some money. The second house we got a little bit too emotional about it and.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: That is when I officially made the rule that I am not going to buy the house that I live in unless it’s like I stellar deal. There’s always exceptions, but for the most part I made a rule that for where I lived I’m probably just going to rent and that then I can buy where I can rent out and so we bought that second house. It wasn’t a bad deal, but it wasn’t a good deal. Like we still owned that property and will probably well were putting it on the market actually in the next couple of weeks and this is like three or four years later, but and will make a little bit of money on it, but it wasn’t great. We had to put some work into it. It’s been more of a nightmare to manage it.

What would you have been better is if we would have, if we really wanted to move we should have just moved into like an apartment rented somewhere and then bought multifamily out in the same area that we were living in. Like looking back is what I would want to do, but that is not what we did. We went back to the single-family route an, but yes you live and you learn.

Brandon: Well let’s talk about this for a minute because this is something that comes up a lot I hear on the forums or at meet ups. People ask the question should I like is it weird for me to rent, but still invest in real estate. Like can I rent somewhere. Isn’t that wrong? Doesn’t that like violate some kind of 11th commandment like to rent and to invest in real estate. What do you think on that?

Travis: Yes, I don’t think so at all. When I first I think it was actually Grant Cardone, the first person that I heard say that and it like blew my mind because it went against everything that we’re taught. You know like that’s the American dream is like you buy a house so like when I bought my house at 21 I was like yes I’m killing it. I’m 21. I own my own house and then afterwards I realize, after I bought my second house that it’s really not a great deal all of the time.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like unless you’re planning on owning it for the next like two or three decades then it might not be a good move because your money can make you more money in other areas so the reason is that when you buy a house to live in it’s no longer an asset. It’s no longer the definition of an asset. It doesn’t pay me any money. All it does is cost me money.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like I’m the one paying the mortgage. Like I’m the one paying the interest on the mortgage. I’m the one that’s paying for any repairs. I am the one that fixes stuff if like now in a rental property like if something goes wrong I don’t fix it. I don’t have to pay to fix it. I call the landlord and they come out and fix it.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Then you still invest enter real estate, but just not where you live because you want to own assets. You want to own. You want to own cash producing assets not liabilities that cost you a bunch of money and then you know hold you down to a certain location for a long period of time. Because you like you can’t ever time the market. You know what I mean so like you might think the market is going up, but then what if it doesn’t anymore and now you have a mortgage payment on a house that’s worth less than what you paid for it.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Now like market rents go down a little bit and now your barely covering your mortgage or maybe you even have to come out of pocket every single month to make the payment on that house if you put a renter in there or you’re going to stay in that house forever like are you going to be chained to a certain location even though there might be an opportunity that may be you have like came up across the country or maybe down the street or something like that where you could have gone to this other thing and done way better and made more money, but you’re going to be chained to this one single family little location because that’s the decision that you made a few years back and then if you do move you’re not going to get a good deal on rents. You’re barely covering your mortgage you got to come out of pocket in tax season like all of those different things. Like you don’t really think about, but they’re definitely there where is if you just buy an asset that’s for the cash producing part of it that stuff is like a non-issue. Like you can weather the storm if you get a good deal because you’re making money the whole time regardless if the market goes up or down during the time that you own it.

Travis: Right.

David: You’re renting now instead of owning. You’re pretty committed to real estate it sounds like if you’re willing to do that. Can you give us an idea, a big picture of how many rentals do you own now. Where you’re making money, how many houses you’re flipping, stuff like that.

Travis: Yes so my real estate stuff is all a side hustle for me. I currently we in the last year or so we’ve started off loading all of her rentals. We had four, we had a duplex and then three single family homes, but we’ve sold two of them in the last three or four months. One of them is on the market and we’re putting the last one in the market in the next couple of weeks so right now I am cashing out on all of my rentals and then last year we did about four or five—five flips and then this year we just put one under contract.

Brandon: Cool.

David: What’s causing you to want to cash out on the rentals?

Travis: Whispers I guess. It’s mainly just the fact that I see interest rates starting to go up a little bit and they’ve leveled out. I’m not expecting like a crash or anything like that, but I mean you got to know that there’s some sort of a correction coming. It’s just history. It’s facts like it’s going to happen at some point and for me personally I’m in a position where the money would be better served not sitting in an asset, but more producing income in my main business like in my main hustle so I am pulling money out of investments so that I can use it right now to pull more—to put more money into my brand equity and build more of a build more into my main source of income.

David: Very interesting so I’m assuming you’re not doing a 1031. You’re not exchanging the money into another asset class.

Travis: No.

David: Yes, and that’s this is okay right like a lot of people just think the idea of paying taxes it’s just so horrific it’s like unfair they shouldn’t have to, but I mean if you’re paying a lot of taxes.

Travis: Yes, it wasn’t fun.

David: No it’s not fun, but right you made a lot of money, that’s why you have a lot of taxes to pay. Right there’s something to be said for that.

Travis: Another way to look at it, yes.

David: If you look at the money that you would pay in taxes and you compare that to the return you think you’re going to get investing and yourself. If the return investing in yourself is better you’re making the smart financial move by paying taxes and I just want to highlight it’s easy to get into a mindset of like this is the only way you do stuff. This is what other people did. This is all I’m ever going to do rather than take kind of take a step back and look at the big picture and say well for the opportunities that I have available to me what’s the best option.

Travis: Right right I think people get confused and think that money is the ultimate asset and I disagree with that. I think that time is the ultimate asset so whatever I can do to give myself more time and a lot of times that’s going to be real estate investing, but at the moment currently for me I would rather take that out and put it into my brand equity. Especially like if I’m going to try to if you’re going to look for an exchange on a deal and then like put yourself in a not great deal just because you don’t want to pay taxes like I just don’t see the point.

Brandon: Yes yes there’s definitely danger in that. I mean I even look back on the deal that I bought you know I had a 1031 exchange. People who have listened to the show for a while will know that like I was in the middle of one. I bought something like honestly like I know that I probably overpaid for at least one of the properties. One of them I think I got a home run on. The other one like I probably overpaid because I was emotional at the time. Now it will turn out fine I’m sure and I’ll make money on it, but like had I had more time and not been under the gun of the 1031 exchange I probably would have spent more time looking for something better or you know maybe just like held the money for a while and then done something else. You know so like there is definitely a pro and con of the 1031 there.

David: Yes, yes, yes, exactly. I think every deal.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Every deal is different you know I mean like.

Brandon: Yes.

David: This works for me specifically may not work for you. If you’re listening just evaluate, do your research and figure out what options can be best for you.

Brandon: Yes.

What’s going on everyone? It’s Brandon, hey I’m going to take a quick break from this podcast episode to invite you to this week’s upcoming webinar, how to analyze rental properties for maximum cash flow. I mean look I think you all we all know rental properties can be one of the best ways to build wealth and passive income, but if you don’t have the right math ooh scary word go into a deal you’ll never get the right profit coming out of it so level up your analysis skills by attending this free webinar. Just go to biggerpockets.com/analysiswebinar. That’s analysis webinar and we’ll talk all about how to estimate the current and future value, income, expenses, repairs, cash flow, cap x, and more. Again biggerpockets.com/analysiswebinar and that is free. I’ll see you there.

Okay let’s talk about the flipping then so last year you did five flips. Was that purposeful where it was live in flips. I mean kind of walk us through that journey a little bit.

Travis: Yes none of them were live in flips.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: They were all purposeful. My dad was my partner on those so.

Brandon: Okay that’s cool.

Travis: I’m blessed to have direct access to somebody who has a lot of knowledge on the real estate markets.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: For me it was more about finding connections to people. I’m the networking guy.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Finding connections and kind of sourcing deals and then he had a lot of market knowledge to be able to like tell us hey this is a good deal. This is a bad deal. This is where we should spend money on the rehab. This is where we shouldn’t spend money on the rehab. He’s more kind of like the managing partner and then I was always responsible for securing the financing as well.

Brandon: Okay well let’s talk about a couple of those things. First of all where are these flips at?

Travis: Southern California.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: Southern California so.

Brandon: You can’t invest in real estate in Southern California. I hear it all of the time so.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Clearly you’re doing something wrong. No, that’s great okay so Southern California.

Travis: Almost every big investor I know is in Southern California right now and that’s just me personally just from the network that I’ve built just because I’m.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: In a high-level mastermind of a bunch of Southern California real estate investors and there’s.

Brandon: Okay yes.

Travis: A lot of people killing it right now so that’s just a you know misnomer. If the deal is good enough you can make money anywhere.

Brandon: You don’t live in Southern California. You live in Vegas.

Travis: Right. Correct.

Brandon: You also can invest in real estate in a distance. I hear that all of the time as well.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Clearly you found a way to do that too and that was through a partnership right?

Travis: Correct. Yes, yes, exactly.

Brandon: Very cool. There’s just every deal man like every deal is going to be different. Like everybody is looking for these overarching rules like can’t invest in a distance. You can’t you know you can’t invest in LA. You can’t make money here. You can’t make money there. Like the deal is the deal. Regardless of all the other like cloud stuff the deal is in the dirt. Like the deal is the number so if it’s a good deal it’s going to make money regardless of all of the other stuff.

Brandon: Yes, I like that the deal is in the dirt. I’m going to totally make that into an Instagram quote.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: The deal is in the.

Travis: I’ve made it.

Brandon: I’m writing it down. I’m literally going to do it. I’m going to get a nice picture of you and put you know a quote card over your face. It’s going to be great.

Travis: Awesome.

Brandon: You’re going to be a meme before you know it. All right how did you find like how do you find properties. Like what’s you guys’s kind of strategy? MLS are you doing anything more creative?

Travis: MLS yes, but also I think this is huge and this may kind of sound like hokey or like magical or whatever, but I think that there’s a lot to be said for just putting something out into the universe and then using your existing connections to like make sure that that comes to fruition so what I mean by that is like if you’re an investor or if you’re looking for your first deal or if you’re thinking about doing a first deal, but you’re not sure where to start and you haven’t told like everybody that you know that you’re looking for a deal then I think that you’re making a mistake.

Brandon: Yes like hundred percent agreed.

Travis: Because you’ll be surprised like what you put out there is going to come back to you and what you focus on you get more of and so a lot of our deals I’ve just found by saying like hey we’re looking for a bunch of deals and then we tell everybody. Then people bring us deals like it’s.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Just telling the right people you know having the right connections meaning that you tell you know people that are in houses every like handy like one of our good deals last year we found from a handyman who was just like fixing somebody’s stuff and then she was like oh yes I’m thinking about selling my house, but I you know it’s it was in really bad shape and I’m not sure anybody’s going to buy it so he came to us and was like hey I have this person who might want to put a deal together and then that’s where the deal came from. We didn’t go searching for it. We didn’t put out a ton of postcards or like yellow letters or anything like that. Not that any of those things are bad, but I’m saying like if you’re looking for deals and you haven’t told everybody then like start there because you’ll be surprised on what you can farm out of that.

Brandon: You know I think I told the story when I was on your show and if not you know well either way. I’ll tell it again real quick now and I know I’ve mentioned it here before, but you know a year and a half ago or when I was on that 1031 exchange or a little over, yes a year and a half ago and I was looking for this property right. I was telling everybody I knew that I was looking for deals. I flew to New York to hang out with a friend of mine.

Went to his local meet up. Daren Sager has a meet up, I went there. I was speaking to the group about just whatever the topic was, but of course I mentioned because I mentioned everywhere I was looking for a mobile home park right. One of the gentlemen sitting in the audience that day happened to be my friend Ryan Murdoch who we had kind of known each other because he was on our podcast.

That was it. Anyway two weeks later he gets an email from someone who wants to sell their mobile home park so then Ryan is like oh yes Brandon wanted one so he contacts me. We ended up partnering together and now I mean like fast forward a year Ryan lives out in Maui with me and we’re running our like kind of a real estate business together. He’s also on board at BiggerPockets. Like all just because like all that started and the mobile home park’s printing money like an ATM machine. It’s awesome.

Travis: I was going to ask you how you like that deal.

Brandon: Yes, oh my gosh I love that deal so much.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: I mean no everybody listening to this mobile home parks are horrible. Stay away from them.

David: Yes.

Brandon: Absolutely horrible and leave them for me. No I really really like it a lot. I mean it took a year. It took a year to transition and there was a lot of rehabs in there, but like it all came from that telling people what I wanted, networking, and you know building that you know again everything your teaching, everything your talking about it’s like a perfect example of that.

David: Do you guys mind if I run Travis through a little exercise here to illustrate Brandon’s point.

Brandon: Oh really.

Travis: Go for it bro.

David: Travis, if you’ve already seen this, which you may have please just go along with it. What I want to do is I want to make an example of brand awareness and how important it is. I’m going to say the name of a product and then Travis you’re going to jump in with the first two brands that you can think of so if I said shoes, you’d probably say Nike and Reebok right. The very first two things you think of. All right let’s do it. Ready.

Travis: Go for it.

David: Toothpaste. Toothpaste.

Travis: Colgate and Crest.

David: Okay so as you can tell Colgate clearly owns the brand awareness in Travis’s head and Crest is a close second. Now here’s the cool thing. I’ve done this to about 50 people and I have never heard an answer that wasn’t Colgate or Crest.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Really.

David: Those are the only two things when people are under pressure that’s what they say every single time right. They’re dominating that space now here’s why that is important. When you go to the grocery store and you have to grab some toothpaste for somebody, you’re just going to as soon as your brain sees Colgate or Crest you’re going to grab it and you’re going to go. Right. That’s how most things in life work. When Brandon told the world I want a mobile home park he was basically saying I need some toothpaste and when people saw oh there is a mobile home park they immediately thought of Brandon because he’s Colgate or crest.

Travis: Totally.

David: He’s telling the world here’s what I want and everybody sees a mobile home park they immediately think Brandon Turner because he associated his name with what he wanted which is really what networking or branding or marketing is in its core right. It’s associating you with a product and that is where I think like the point Travis is trying to make of how branding and networking gets you deals. It’s not handing out business cards to as many people as you can find. It’s joining your name with real estate or mobile home park or a house to flip or whatever you’re looking for. Getting your sphere to recognize all right that’s what Brandon wants so how do I tell him and that’s how Brandon got the deal. Travis, I’m going to let you run with it from there. Like what are some things you’ve learned that have led to you using marketing knowledge to get yourself deals?

Travis: Yes man first of all that’s really really great insight. Appreciate you bringing that up. One thing on that too really quick is that it’s not, it wasn’t just the fact that Brandon was putting out into his network that he was looking for this particular deal. It was also the fact that Brandon has like now become the real estate guy. Like he’s the host of the BiggerPockets podcast, the largest real estate podcast in iTunes right. Like all of that it’s going to attract all of those people right because if let’s say that three people told that same guy that they were looking for a mobile home park than the same guy that Brandon told.

David: Yes.

Travis: What like what are the odds that they’re going to tell Brandon first? Probably pretty high because typically people of people that are know how to put themselves in a really good position get access to those types of deals and that kind of information first because other people are looking to add value to those people. If you can become a person who is a valuable person who has been set apart from a bunch of other people because of a platform that you’ve created for yourself then you’re going to create deals where deals aren’t because people are going to come to you first. Like people are going to actually do the legwork for you just to be able to connect with you and add value to you. I think that that’s a huge differentiator right there. Not just putting out something into the world, but making it about who you are and like telling people that this is who I am.

Brandon: You know who does a really good job of this. Joe Fairless, he’s been on our show before. Joe Fairless has a podcast called The Best Ever Podcast and it’s a daily real estate show and it’s really good. I’ve been on it a few times. I don’t know if David have you been on it before?

David: Yes. Twice.

Brandon: Okay yes. Okay yes so it’s a great show right, but here’s how we I mean Joe owns $500 million or you know controls, whatever you want to call it because the syndicator now. $500 million of real estate and how does he raise money? Through his platform and like you know indirectly through his platform.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Building relationships right. How does he get deals filtered to him? Indirectly through his platform. Like he just does this probably better than almost anybody I know. Maybe Grant Cardone is up there too right?

Travis: I was going to say Grant is the same way, yes.

Brandon: Yes, Grant is the same way right. Massive platform uses Joe saying now. Now let me focus in on the newer investor or the newer you know I’ve got my first deal. I don’t have any deals yet. I can’t go build a real estate platform. I can’t be Grant Cardone. I’m not that crazy right. Like what is like how does this apply to the 90% of the people that don’t have that platform right now?

Travis: Yes, I think that I honestly like I’m going to go a different route than probably you’re asking.

Brandon: Sure.

Travis: I think that that’s kind of a limiting mindset if you’re sitting there thinking that about yourself because the coolest thing about all this online stuff bro is like you don’t have to be the expert right off the bat. Like when I started my show I was not a networking expert at all. I had never been to a single networking event before I started my show build your network. In a year and a half my name is associated with networking because.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I’ve built a show around that, but I have just been an investigator.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: All I’ve done is brought people along with me on a journey of discovering how to network the right way and how to teach people how to build and cultivate genuine relationships with important people in their lives and how to do that the right way. I’ve like I’ve been learning along the way just like an audience member. I’m just the one like captaining the ship right like so and I’ll give you another example I have a couple of friends, a shout out to Stephen Randy who have this company. They invest in multifamily real estate. They didn’t know a thing about real estate when they started, but they started at a meetup group so not a podcast, not a YouTube channel.

Brandon: Yes, yes, yes.

Travis: Started a meet up group just about real estate. Started with like three or four people. They had a thousand people at an event recently that they did.

Brandon: Wow.

Travis: Did a joint venture with another real estate company and had a thousand people at an event recently. They now like control a few million dollars in real estate from people from private money giving like people giving the money because they created a platform even though they weren’t the experts.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I would say that I would say to somebody like that who is sitting there like man I’ve never even done a deal before. You don’t have to position yourself as the expert. Like there’s somebody in your market guaranteed right now that will be willing to come to and speak to a group of four people totally for free. Like go find a mortgage professional. Go find a real estate agent, a top producer or an investor in your area and say hey I’m putting together this real estate related meet up. It’s going to be on you know at the end of this month and to be honest with you there’s probably not going to be a ton of people.

This is the first one, but I would love it if you came out and spoke to us and told us something valuable about the real estate market right now or something like that. First of all you’re adding value to a number of people. You’re adding value to yourself because you’re connecting with other people. You’re adding value to the person that’s coming to speak because you’re putting them in front of other people who they may be able to do business with and you’re adding value to any attendees that might be coming because they have the ability to learn something about real estate that they may not have known before. Plus during this entire time you’re learning.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: You’re learning everything that you want to know about real estate directly from the sources that you have around you so I think that if you’re thinking that way that there’s really no limitations. Like you don’t have to be the expert and you don’t have to lie about it because I hate when people do that too.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Because some people will start their own platform and then.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Lie about it and pretend like they are the expert just to get people to like them and to get people to trust them and then they sell these crazy packages to them that actually have no value because they’re not actually good at what they do. They just built a platform around lying about it. I’m not encouraging you to lie about it. Like be honest, tell people like look I’m at the beginning of this journey.

I just wanted to create something where I we could have a bunch of us could come together and we could all kind of learn from each other and really take the next step in our real estate career. If you do that for a long period of time like if you create that consistent to valuable content with context so consistent.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Valuable content with context. You put it in front of the right people, if you create that over a long period of time you will build some sort of a following. You will build some influence. You will build a platform and you will start attracting a lot of those deals that most people are never going to be able to get their hands on.

Brandon: Oh man. That’s so good.

David: I think one point to make in this is is that Crest and Colgate aren’t necessarily known as the best toothpaste. I have no idea if they have like a better fluoride count than like Aqua Fresh or something right.

Travis: Right.

David: All I know is that’s what I know. If you’re that person to your sphere when a house an old junky house comes up and there’s an opportunity to get it off market you just need to them to think of you and if you’ve been doing meet ups.

Brandon: Yes.

David: To four people to those for people you the Crest and the Colgate right. Like that’s just the point I wanted to make.

Travis: Yes, and another thing to I have another buddy out here in Vegas they do a lot of business, maybe I can make an intro to you guys actually. His name is Luke and they do like I want to say they’re doing like 300 flips this year so they’re.

Brandon: Wow.

Travis: Cranking out deals. He puts together real estate meet up and he’s told me several times he’s like bro I know that there’s people that do stuff during my meet ups that I never get any money on.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like I host the meet up. I pay for the meet up like it’s free food, free drinks. I bring everybody together and I know people are doing business without me ever getting a slice of any of that, but guess what I don’t care. Like.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I’m like if you’re in that motive like what if I bring people together and then that guy does a deal with that guy and I don’t make any money on that and that could have been my deal like.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: If you’re thinking that way, you got to fix your broken scarcity mindset to begin with and you got to like get more in that abundance mentality of like look there’s deals for everybody out there. If you create that platform you become a person of value and you’re going to get your hands on more deals plus you’re going to help source more deals for more people and you get and you know what the number one way to build influence is? With people add value like John Maxwell.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Blew my mind. He came on my show and I asked him like about leadership because is all he’s the leadership guy right and I was like hey what about influence? Like you’re an influential person, how did you build influence? He’s like, Travis the number one way to build influence is adding value. If you add enough value to people you will have influence with them because as this is the age of the quote on quote.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Influencer right. Everybody wants to be an influencer, but most people go about it the completely wrong way. They position themselves in this like lofty area where like they try to be untouchable and be a celebrity and stuff like that, but it’s not about any of that. It’s simply about adding value to people. If you add value to people you will have influence with them and so for somebody like this guy who is hosting this meet up and all of these deals are getting done and this person is doing a deal with that person.

He didn’t have anything to do with it, but he helped those two people connect. He’d just added a ton of value to both of those people and now are they going to come out to the next meet up? Yes probably. Are they going to buy his book? Yes probably. If they find a deal again and have the opportunity to work with him are they going to bring it to him? Yes, probably you know what I mean like it’s just.

Brandon: Yes. Yes.

Travis: Good everybody.

Brandon: Yes, that’s so good. To take this to even more tangible for all of our listeners out there you know BiggerPockets we actually have a place on the site where we like people can host meet ups and so if you go to biggerpockets.com/events or just click the word networking in our toolbar. I mean we even have networking in our toolbar at the top right or at the top anywhere you go on BiggerPockets. Anyway go there and there’s a map and you can or you can just look down below at the actual individual cities.

There’s probably a 100 at least a 100 meet ups going on every single month somewhere in the country. Now there are a lot more than a 100 cities, which means that I would say 99% of the cities out there do not currently have a BiggerPockets meet up right now happening on a regular basis. Now there are I mean all the big cities yes you’re going to find a bunch in Seattle and a bunch in New York and Las Vegas probably, but even if they are there I mean go to them and if you don’t love it go start your own. Make it find a unique way to build something you know different.

One guy who does this really well is David, my buddy, David Peret. He is a he’s been on the podcast actually before and he’s been on some BiggerPockets live videos, but this guy is like he’s in the Marines. He lives over in Oahu in a very expensive market yet he started on a local meet up there just in Oahu for people and the first time had a couple 3-4-5 people showing up. Now he consistently has 20 or 30 or 40 people showing up.

Me and him have become friends because I see him as kind of a leader in that space and that market and then now he’s doing a bunch of real estate deals and he’s getting confidence. Getting all of the stuff and so anyway if people want to go and host their own meet ups just go to biggerpockets.com/events, E-V-E-N-T-S and yes host something. I think you have to be a pro member to actually host an event, but you don’t have to be a pro member to go to an event. Just to actually post in that forum to host something so anyway I love that you said that because like I’ve seen that work over and over and over and over and over again, the meet up thing. People don’t have to go be the next Grant Cardone and start a massive podcast and live tweet their entire day right or live Instagram their whole day.

Travis: Right.

David: Yes.

Brandon: But just by doing that event.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Easy.

Travis: That’s one reason that I love podcasting too.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: By the way Brandon because like you don’t have to invest in this expensive studio. Like all three of us right now are sitting in our home offices at a desk with a boom arm and a mike plugged into our computer.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: And like we’re all podcasting now. You know what I mean? Like there is almost zero like there’s.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: There’s no production cost. Like it does not cost you a ton of money to have a quality show. If you’re going to do like.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: A YouTube channel or something like that it might cost you some money. That’s why I always recommend to start with a podcast or something like that or a meet up group. Something that doesn’t cost you a lot of money, but still.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Gives you the platform that you need to like voice your opinion and learn like learn while you go. You don’t have to learn learn learn learn learn and then implement like a year later. You can learn while you’re doing all of this stuff and that’s the coolest thing about this.

Brandon: Yes that’s so so true. Very very cool all right so let’s shift back again and I want to wrap up a couple things more about your real estate then we’ll move in to the Deal Deep Dive, the and the Fire Round and Famous Four, all that. I’m curious about like the flipping that you’re doing there with your partner, your dad on that. A couple of questions first of all what’s that like partnering with a family member? I know a lot of people have problems with it and I’ve done it, but what’s that like? What are some things to be aware of? What are some things that have worked really well and what are the things that people should consider?

Travis: Yes, good question I think that people should consider if they should do it. Because there’s tension you know what I mean? Like there’s tension.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: In any partnership, but especially when it’s family so I think that there’s a lot of sitting down beforehand and managing expectations that needs to happen before you go into any deals. Don’t make anything just a handshake deal and stuff like that. Now we don’t have any drawn up contracts or anything, but we did sit down and hash it out and say okay if we do a deal here where you guys live like you’re probably going to be the managing partner so if you’re not going to be the one like if you’re going to be managing it then we need to bring more money to the table so if you’re managing it we’ll secure all the financing and we’ll pay the debt on the loan and all that kind of stuff so I think it’s just important to hash those kinds of things out before hand and then if you feel that in the future there’s going to be too much contention just don’t do it. That’s just my opinion. I don’t think that it’s like it’s not worth causing a lot of tension at the Thanksgiving dinner table. You know what I mean? Like if you think that.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s going to be a lot then come up with a different, come up with a different partnership structure. Maybe you don’t split things 50/50 and maybe it’s more like a hey if you find a deal out there, but you you know want some outside financing letting you do all of that, but we’ll make it a different split. We won’t be equal partners like it will just be like a different type of a commission or a different type of profit split on that. Profit share on that so I think that you just have to like be really upfront with everything and then if you do a couple of deals and it starts to go south then you can sense that there’s going to be future contention about it and it’s going to put a lot of stress in your relationship then I would just say you know it’s time to probably just back out and reevaluate.

David: I think the number one source of hurt feelings or damaged relationships is unmet expectations.

Travis: Exactly.

David: That usually stem from uncommunicated expectations and it’s usually not like a bad motive. People just don’t even know.

Brandon: Yes.

David: That they need to do this right.

Brandon: Yes.

David: They just haven’t thought this could ever come up and when you sit down and you say okay here’s what we both want let’s make sure we’re on the same page. A lot of things pop up that you weren’t even thinking you needed to worry about. It actually becomes like a business plan. It could really benefit you in a lot of ways when you do that and you know that you didn’t do that when someone does something that hurt someone else’s feelings and they didn’t even realize that that could hurt their feelings or somebody feels like they got screwed over when they really didn’t, but they feel that way because it was never communicated upfront this was the way it was going to work. I just I don’t think I could stress that enough that when you’re in the beginning and it’s all just new and shiny and cool and you just want to jump in to it you got to sit down and talk about all the things that could happen and get a feel for what the other person’s going to do and how they’re going to respond and how you’re going to split that up to make sure that you actually do want to be in business with that person.

Travis: Yes totally 100% agree with that.

Brandon: Yes, really really good there. Alright so let’s move to your financing I mean like to finance these flips and we’ll dive in to one of them I’m assuming in the deal deep dive, but how are you typically financing these deals?

Travis: A combination of hard money, private money, and credit cards strategic.

Brandon: Credit cards?

Travis: Credit cards. Yes.

Brandon: How so?

Travis: So now we’ve worked to obviously got to have good credit.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Typically you’re going to build really good relationship with a bank that you currently bank at and they’ll probably give you larger credit lines, but we put one of our last rehabs entirely on credit cards and paid zero interest on it because we’ve basically opened up a couple of credit card lines at the beginning of the project and every time that we paid for anything on that we threw them out on those credit cards, but they’re zero percent interest for a 12 month period at an intro APR. We have access to zero percent financing instead of having our hard money finance the rehab and then.

Brandon: Sure.

Travis: Paying interest on that we just throw them on these credit cards. I don’t know why more people don’t take advantage of that to be honest. We have now like a 100 I don’t know estimating right now, but $150-$160,000 in like in credit card line just unsecured debt. Some people might disagree with me on that because they’re like oh they’re credit cards and those are bad you know.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s another one of those blanket statements right. Kind of one of those.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Overarching statements that it’s like well yes if I go put a freaking Lamborghini on it’s probably.

David: It’s bad.

Travis: Not a great idea. Like if I go buy 12 flatscreen TVs like probably not a great idea, but to use it as zero percent in like interest debt to help me like make money, yes, 100%. Why would I not take advantage of that? I think that’s one of like the different tactics that we’ve used. My buddy Bill Jennings is a master at all of this kind of stuff. He helped. He’s the one who kind of helped us like figure out which cards are good ones to get. Which ones are good to use and you know how to structure them. Where to put them and all of that kind of stuff so I would definitely look into that if you’re not already using those.

Brandon: Yes, fantastic fantastic yes I’ve used them for similar purposes. There the benefit is you sometimes if you get the right card you sometimes get reward miles.

Travis: A ton of rewards.

Brandon: And get free flights. Yes.

Travis: A 100%.

Brandon: Get a vacation out of every flip.

Travis: Yes, like I’ve been flying for free for the last year because we put a bunch.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Of rehab stuff on all of our credit cards. Man like it’s like it just totally makes sense.

David: I love hearing that. This just came up last night when I was talking with a client who wants to buy a new house and he doesn’t want to have to sell his house and buy one at the same time because that’s I’ll save the time and it’s very complicated to try to do both. We kind of dug in and we looked at his options and I realized he has a ton of equity in his home. The only reason he’s selling is to get that equity, to put it in the new house right. I said well what if we just took out a HELOC. We use that money as a down payment for the house you want to buy. Once you’ve bought it then we can sell your house and you don’t have to worry about trying to do both and it was like that’s incredible. I always thought HELOCs were bad. That’s what they said right like HELOCs are bad. that’s how you lose stuff and they can be bad if you go buy a boat.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Or an RV or a Lamborghini or some liability that doesn’t make money, but to go buy a house you were going to buy anyways you’re just accessing your equity earlier and very cheap. I just love that point you’re making Travis is when we get into that fixed kind of mindset that just thinks the good and bad and that’s all there is to it. Credit cards are bad, debt is bad. HELOCs are bad. Real estate is bad. We close down to all the opportunities that’s out there. I mean there’s even people that think networking is bad because when they hear the word networking what they think is like oh multilevel marketing scammers who are out there trying to get me to give them something for free.

Brandon: Yes, yes.

David: Right as opposed to bringing value to as many human beings as you possibly can and trying to live a good life and knowing that’s going to get you back. That’s a whole different way of looking at it, but when they hear networking they just have a closed mindset way of thinking about it.

Travis: 100% man. Yes debt like not all debt is bad. If you’re going to err on one side maybe err on the safer side of that, but.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Again do the research for your particular situation and find out if it’s going to be a good or bad deal or opportunity for you. Figure out like say like ask yourself is this a project that I’m going to be in for a really longtime. Do we have a renter in here? Is this a long-term project? Is this maybe a short sale and the bank is going to take way longer to approve the deal and what happens if I’m coming up on my the end of my introductory APR period. You know what I mean? Like what if I already.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Use six months of it and now I only have six months left and I’m putting this offering on the short sale and like the last time we did that this has honestly happened actually. The last time we did a short sale flip it took almost 10 months to get the bank approval on it so we were just sitting there. Had the tenant in there like you can’t just throw stuff on a card willy-nilly because one as soon as the interest kicks in I mean those cards are even if you have good credit, 16-17% interest so you don’t want to be paying that kind of interest so as long as you have a way to get out of that debt if worst came to worst. If push came to shove and then I don’t see why you shouldn’t be trying to utilize it.

Brandon: Yes, that’s really really good. Really good. Alright so I want to move on in a minute to the deal deep dive. Before I do, I want to I mean you’ve been interviewing people about networking and building your relationships for a long time. I know you’ve interviewed over 200 people is there any other things that you’re like yes like this is just gold. I want to share this. Here’s something I’ve learned. Here’s something a mistake people have made. Anything else you want to add? I just don’t want to leave anything off you know off this episode that would help people if you got something on your mind.

Travis: Yes, I think that there is 10 episodes on just the networking topics.

David: Yes, yes.

Travis: It is a good question it’s just trying to think of just like a couple of them off the top of my head. It’s sometimes difficult.

David: Sure.

Travis: I will keep going back to the platform thing.

Brandon: Sure.

Travis: Because I don’t like the number one thing so if you look at and I’m not saying this to like you know be arrogant or whatever. I’m just like just to throw out a couple of people that I’ve brought on my show and keep in mind too I launched this in August of 2017 so it’s been like a year and a half and since then being able to interview like literally my heroes like Grant Cardone and John Lee Dumas and J Papasan and you know Chris and Lori Harter and Jeff Hoffman the cofounder of Priceline.com and you know like multiple billionaires, multiple multimillionaires and up to the point like before I started my show like the richest person I knew was like making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. Like the richest like the one that was doing the best of everybody that I knew so as soon as I started my show like my network has literally exploded in the last year and a half and that’s just from the podcast man. Like building a platform is like so important because the number one thing to become a better networker, the number one thing is to add value so learn how to give without the expectation of receiving anything in return. There’s a great book on this by Adam Grant called Give and Take. I don’t know if you guys have read it or heard of it.

Brandon: I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it.

Travis: Okay so he goes into this very into this concept on a really deep level so just to kind of give you like a quick synopsis of what he’s saying. Basically he’s a professor at a really prestigious school so everything he says is backed by loads and loads and loads of research. He basically goes okay so the research says that on the success ladder there’s three different types of people. There’s givers, there’s takers, there’s matchers. Like you can figure out what they mean. You know givers are people that give without expecting any return. Takers are always looking to take things more than they give and matchers are only willing to give if there’s something in it for them. On the success ladder like where would you put the givers on the success ladder? Like off the top of your head where would you put the givers? Probably most people would be like oh.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I mean probably at the bottom.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I mean like.

Brandon: Wait.

Travis: The givers, people give.

Brandon: Oh yes, yes, yes.

Travis: People who give without ever like.

Brandon: Yes, yes, yes.

Travis: Making anybody give to them right. Like.

Brandon: Yes you would think they would have anything.

Travis: Because they’re doormats. Right like that’s how.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: The people look at them is just this person.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Is a doormat. Takers you would think are like oh well they got to be at the top because they’re always looking to get get get get. You know maybe you might think matchers might be at the top because like they help people, but only in a transactional manner. What was interesting is that they found that givers are at the bottom, but they’re also at the top. Givers fill out the top and the bottom of the quote on quote success ladder and takers and matchers are right in the middle so based on all this empirical data that they’re going through they’ve found that giving and giving and giving without the expectation of receiving anything in return with the caveat like with a couple of caveats to make sure that you don’t become a doormat you will always like rise to the top level in your field.

That was something that was like a mind blowing thing for me. I’m probably more of like a matcher this my reciprocity style naturally is more of a matcher. Like I’m more of like a you know tit for tat kind of a guy, but ever since like really learning that in implementing it with just the expectation that things are going to go well and hopefully they do. It has been literally life-changing.

My buddy Jordan Harbinger who hosts the Jordan Harbinger show in iTunes, which is a fantastic podcast he always hits this point home and he’s one of the best like living you know proofs of this particular concept is he adds value to so many people and he gives without asking for anything so that whenever you haven’t asked like you’re going to have a bunch of people that are willing to come help you out and support you and they’re rooting for you the whole time because you’ve helped so many people along the way. One of the easiest ways going back to my first point, one of the easiest ways for me to add value to somebody who I have never met before is by bringing them on to the platform that I’ve built and created for myself.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Bringing them on my podcast like when I reach out. Well a perfect example bro like when I reached out to you like if I didn’t have a platform, a show, like a way for you to get in touch with people who you may not have ever had the possibility of getting in touch with like the reason that you were willing to come on my show was because I had spent the last year, year and a half whatever it was at that point building up this credibility, building up this platform and building up this value adding excuse just to reach out and connect with the people that I want to talk to. Like because I’m a pretty simple guy. Like I just like having relationships with cool people. Like I just really like to spend time with people that are super cool and just get to know people. There’s no better way to do that. Like if you’re going to do if you’re going to try to do that anyway you may as well just record it and throw it onto iTunes and call it a podcast. Like it’s just.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s such as simple, simple thing and it doesn’t have to be BiggerPockets. It doesn’t have to be at 3-4-5 million downloads a month. Like it doesn’t have to be to those numbers in order for it to be.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: A quote on quote success. Like all it is is an excuse for you to reach out to people that you really really want to connect with and it’s the perfect way to add value to those people. You’re not asking them for something. You’re not saying like hey come on my show because I want to do well. It’s like come on my show because hey I really believe in your message. I really believe in like helping you get this out to more people and I have this audience here that I’ve put together. They would love to hear from you and I’d be happy to feature you on the show. Like it’s a value adding excuse so I know that was a long winded answer, but to me it always.

Brandon: Oh that’s great.

Travis: Goes back to it always goes back to how can I add value in this situation? How can I bring something to the table and help other people without you know marking it in my head and being like well Brandon owes me because I put him in front of my audience so like.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: You better do this this and this for me. You know what I mean? Like it’s not that at all. It’s just a genuine desire to help people and like I said at the beginning of the show when you put out good stuff you’re going to get good stuff back like when you.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: When you focus on you get more of so you put out that good stuff and put out helpful things for people and it’s just always going to come back to you. You just got to trust that.

Brandon: That’s cool. You know another guy that does a really good job of this of just giving giving giving and like it’s paid him back a ton, Noah Kagan. I don’t know if you know Noah at all from.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Sumo. Right like Noah Kagan is just always like I mean he’s the one that introduced me to Tim Ferris, which is how we got Tim Ferris on our show. He is just like, yes here, here’s Tim. Here’s my buddy Tim let me introduce you. Like there was no like tit for tat. There was no like.

Travis: Right.

Brandon: Expecting anything. It was just like let me provide value to you because you’re you and because I like providing value. That’s just so good.

Travis: I’m sure you get that all of the time with people reaching out to you like hey man let me introduce you to this person for your podcast and then maybe you know.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: If it works out, you can.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Introduce me to this person or I can come on your show maybe.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I don’t know question mark. You know what I mean?

Brandon: Yes yes yes yes yes.

Travis: Actually you’re probably going to be in the bottom of my inbox now because like I don’t want to do like I don’t want to accept your help if it comes with if it’s conditional.

Brandon: Conditional yes.

Travis: I guess you’re. If it’s already something that you’re expecting me to like have this virtual contract in my brain to like deliver something for you whenever you ask for it. Like no man no just keep it to yourself.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like I’m not interested.

Brandon: Alright so one more note or question on that topic and then we’ll move on. When people want to reach out to somebody who is an influencer in their area and I don’t mean like you know they’re Instagram famous, but I mean like they’re a real estate investor in their market who’s just crushing it. They’re the guy doing 300 you know flips a year right. How do they approach that person? I mean if they don’t have a platform, if they don’t have a podcast or a meet up yet what are some like what kind of emails are going to get responded to and what one is just going to be deleted to the bottom in the inbox or whatever. You know what I mean? Like.

Travis: Yes, yes, yes.

Brandon: This is something that people have struggled. I mean honestly like let’s be really like I delete and can’t answer 80% of the emails that I get from people.

Travis: Right, right.

Brandon: Even podcasts that I’m asked to go on I don’t do 90% of them. How did you get me on your show. I don’t even know. I mean like for whatever reason something you did made me go oh yes I like that guy. That sounds like a fun show or yes I would love to talk with him.

Travis: Yes, that’s a fantastic question man. There’s five things that should be in any of your email reach out. Any reach out in general there should be five pieces to that. Let me actually just pull this up so like I can like just go over really quick.

Brandon: Sure.

Travis: If we got some time.

Brandon: Sure yes that would be great. Yes go ahead.

Travis:  That way I can just kind of show you exactly what I’m meaning by this.

Brandon: Well while you’re looking that up. Let me ask David Greene here the same exact question because David you get hit up all of the time as well. Like what makes you respond to somebody and actually want to go to lunch with them or actually want to go get coffee or whatever. You know what makes them rise?

David: When you asked it to him I immediately started thinking the same thing like yes just logistically speaking there’s no way we can get to everyone and I started thinking of the obvious things that will make me not get back to you. Right? A really really long detailed message that you’re asking me to read when I don’t.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Know you first off.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Just like negative. We’re done right there. Right? Another one would be a very vague proposal. Hey I like kind of want to mentor by you, but like just let me know how I can help you and I’ll help you back. Like okay. You started on the same path, but you put zero effort into thinking about how you could even help me so you didn’t paint a picture I could get into right.

I think the people that get a good response from me are the ones who have said I know what you’re doing. I’ve researched what it takes to be good at what you’re doing. I’ve matched that up with the skills I have. I am willing to do this and I’m only asking for this in return. Like you want something. You want mentorship.

You want friendship. You want a relationship. You want you just think I’m cool so you want to be around me. Whatever the case maybe, that’s okay. If you don’t tell me what you want at all I’m probably not going to trust that you just want to bring value and don’t want anything back in return. Right like maybe that is who you are, but it’s very difficult so just say I’m hoping that being around you will help me improve my own game.

That’s fine like I at least I can understand that and then I can make the decision on if I think you’d fit in. Most people don’t put the work in ahead of time to even give me a proposal to know if this is a good idea or not they’re making me figure out like now I got to interview you and figure out if I want your help. I feel like we say this all of the time, but when people reach out they still just don’t do it. They just want to throw something out there and just shoot their shot. Like hey let’s just you know just email this guy, but when you’re reading it like it’s very obvious you didn’t even it’s like submitting a job resume when you don’t know anything about the company you’re going to work for.

Travis: Yes.

David: They’re not going to hire you.

Travis: Right. Yes so I totally agree with that. Let me these are just. If we got time Brandon.

Brandon: Yes, please do it. I love it.

Travis: Five quick things here that I put. These are just like the five key elements of an effective reach out message especially if it’s cold. Number one lead with value. If you can’t tell I like to add value to people so number one lead with value so this doesn’t have to be like offering to do something insane for them like if you’re like a you know, a ghost writer. You know what I mean like you don’t have to reach out and be like hey I would love to write a book for you.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like you don’t have to do stuff like that. I just mean start with like a compliment. Start with something about them. Start with thanking them, complementing something that has had an impact on you so I don’t remember exactly what I said to you Brandon, but when I did reach out it probably sounded something like hey Brandon, really appreciate what you’re up to. I’ve been following your stuff for a long time and this and then I gave probably a specific example of something that BiggerPockets has done for me that has to directly impacted my life, but I keep it really quick, succinct. Lead with value, but be specific. Don’t just say like hey love your stuff. Anyway like you know that’s so generic and then also I’ve had people like literally copy and paste the title of an episode of one of my shows from my website and put it in their email. Like the formatting is literally different. Like it’s my website formatting and they just copied and pasted it.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: And put it in their email without even like worrying about like to hey paste and match style you know what I mean? I was just like okay you obviously have never consumed a single piece of my content or like people will reach out to friends of mine that don’t have interview shows and ask1 them to come on their show and it’s like you don’t know anything about my show because I don’t interview people like.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s a solo show so like clearly you have zero idea what I’m doing so be specific and do a little bit of research and help yourself lead with value so start the message out by leading with some value. Number two give some information, but do it in a limited amount of words so whatever information that you can give keep it short, sweet, and to the point, but give them the opportunity to like go somewhere else if they do want to read more about it so like I’ll just put a hyperlink on my show. For me, specifically it’s just like hey I have this show it’s called Build Your Network and then I will hyperlink build your network to my website so if they want to go look at more information and figure out everything about me and my whole life story they can, but I’m not going to throw that in the email because like David just said you got to keep it short or else it’s just going to be filtered down straight to the bottom.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Of the inbox to the deep abyss of the dark inbox so get information. Number three build a meaningful request I have an entire separate training on this because this is like really where the rubber meets the road and it’s difficult to say one blanket statement because it’s going to be different for every single person. You have to have a meaningful request and I’ll say two, like I’ll say one hard no on this stop asking people if you can pick their brain.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I don’t know a single person that has like limits on their time that responds well to that question.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Not one single person so like if you’re asking people to like pick their brain or asking them to a virtual cup of coffee you know.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like stop that. Knock that off.

David: We’re not a pick and pull.

Travis: Like and.

David: I really want a carburetor. Can I look for one inside your brain somewhere?

Travis: Yes. You got to realize like look people are strapped for time like if—like Brandon is a nice guy. Trust me. I’m talking to him right now. Like he’s a nice dude, but like he doesn’t— he doesn’t have time to hop on 20 minute pick your brain phone calls for every single person that reaches out.

David: Yes.

Travis: Or he would never do anything with his time other than that so, yes.

David: Like you said Travis, time is the most valuable asset there is.

Travis: A hundred percent.

David: When you’re asking someone for that a couple of minutes to pick your brain it’s probably more valuable to them than asking them for $100.

Travis: Right.

Brandon: I was just going to say that. If somebody asked for 100 bucks I’d rather—I mean I’m not.

David: Yes.

Brandon: Going to give it to them anyway, but I would rather do that spend 30 minutes.

Travis: Yes. Yes. Exactly.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Build a meaningful request don’t just say can I pick your brain or can I get you a virtual cup of coffee over Zoom or whatever. Like don’t say stuff like that you have to build your meaningful request and I have a bunch of ideas on how to do that in my training anyway. Number four offer credibility. This is I think probably the piece that I focus on the most Brandon because the more credible that you are the more likely.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: You are to get a response.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: If you personally don’t have any credibility then you can borrow credibility from people that you’ve associated with which is like the magic for me. That’s where the magic happens on my show because like so literally when I reached out to Brandon, I probably did this because I do this for every single person I reach out to. It was most likely on Instagram and what I most likely did is I probably went to the people that you follow on Instagram and I listed every single person that you follow that I’ve had.

Brandon: That’s funny.

Travis: On my show and put them in my reach out message on purpose. Even if there’s like 17 people or 23 people I will list every single freaking person because I think the credibility piece is the biggest piece of the whole puzzle.

Brandon: That is so good.

Travis: Like I literally will go to like your profile and be like hey he follows J Papasan, he follows Grant Cardone, he follows this person, this person, this person, this person. Everybody that’s been on my show like he follows these 11 people so in my reach out message after I’ve lead with value after I’ve given some information on myself, built a meaningful request I’ll offer a little bit of credibility. Hey just FYI here’s a few people that have already been on you know and I’ll list all the people that I know that you know because you follow them and then I hit that point home and then at the end I’ll say something like would love to add you to this you know awesome lineup or something like that. If you don’t have an incredible list of contacts to impress people with then start small. Any sort of social proof here is really the credibility so maybe use a recognizable brand that you’ve worked with in the past or maybe use or if you don’t have any of that just list off a few people who’ve worked with you because even though they may not be recognizable names just the fact that they worked with you speaks to the psychological principle of social proof and it will say like okay people in general have a good feeling about working with this person.

Even if you don’t have an impressive list of people still list off a few people that you’ve worked with or you know partnered with or whatever. Even if they’re not recognizable just because the principle of social proof is such is such an important and valuable principle so offer credibility number four and number five always finish it off with thanks in advance. I always anytime I’m asking for something in a message, reach out, an email, Instagram, whatever it is I always finish it with thanks in advance and here’s why. My dog, Snowball encapsulates this better than like anything so I always use her as an example. She’s this 140 pound Great Pyrenees Anatolian Shepherd mix. S1he looks like a giant white lab. She’s like the sweetest, dopiest, like huggable teddy bear of a dog that you’ve ever seen. Sometimes when I walk by her she will like not move her head at all. She just like looks up at me like glances up with her eyes and like catches my eye and as soon as she catches my eye she starts wagging her tail before I do anything and even though I probably wasn’t even intending on leaning over and scratching her.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I feel like I kind of got to do it now because she’s already wagging her tail.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Am I really going to be like disappointing her like that? Like it makes me feel bad so it’s the same exact thing when you say something like thanks in advance. You’re thanking someone in advance for already acquiescing to the request that you made earlier. What it does is it subconsciously creates a desire to like finish that loop and perform that task that you’ve already thanked them for. I don’t know that that’s not something that’s going to like increase your response rates exponentially, but like for me I’m all about those incremental like little things and coming from a door to door sales background this is what I taught. Anything that can help me get a percentage of like one or two points higher, closer to a yes like for sure I’m going to do it so every single time I finish off with thanks in advance just to let them know like hey I’m intending on this happening and I hope that you are also intending on this happening. Yes those are my five things.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Lead with the value, give information, credibility, meaningful requests, thanks in advance and then toy around with it, play around with it.

Brandon: All right so while you were doing that I pulled up the original message I got from you. Let me.

Travis: Okay.

Brandon: I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’ll sum up right.

Travis: Okay.

Brandon: I’ll tell you how you did this so beautifully right. It’s like, “Hey Brandon, my name is Travis. My buddy Jared Butterfield said he told me you’d be reaching out.” Right so now I got a guy that I that you basically pulled in somebody I already knew and trusted. I don’t even know how I met Jared originally, but we’ve known each other from years back, I think we were Facebook friends whatever anyway you brought in his name so now I am instantly like oh okay it’s a recommendation. It’s connect right.

I think he even he said he told you I’d be reaching out so you got at some point he connected me to you right probably in Instagram. Then, “Two reasons I wanted to reach out first of all I’m a huge fan of your show. You’re one of the first podcast I’ve ever listened to.”

Travis: Lead with value.

Brandon: Right lead with yes and then, “I have a podcast called Build Your Network where I interview people in the show.”

Travis: Give information, yes.

Brandon: Yes, “Some people in the past, Grant Cardone, Kevin Harrington, Ed Mylet, Lori Harter, JP Sears, John Lee Dumas, Jordan” yes. I mean all these people like “Chris Gilabo, I follow all of them as I’m. I currently have Amy Porterfield, Jack Canfield, and J Papasan on the schedule. Right like love to add you to the lineup. All people that I follow and like.” Then you went into “I have my recommendation for your show as well. One of my mentors has made millions in real estate. I think he’d be great. Let me know when a good time the talk is. Thank you in advance, Brandon.” Right and you know how I respond to that I don’t even know if you remember this. I said, “I can’t do it. I said I’m too busy. I’m moving to Hawaii right now.”

Travis: That’s right.

Brandon: I can’t do it.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: I said can you follow back up in a few months.

Travis: And I did.

Brandon: Guess what two months later you followed the back up with an email that you took a screenshot of your show being ranked like number 151 on all of iTunes. It was just like a subtle like hey you know my show is a big deal. Right like that credibility.

Travis: Right yes.

Brandon: Just wanted to follow-up with you.

Travis: Got to pack that credibility in there man.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I have a whole thing on follow-up too because the follow-up is the bread and butter.

Brandon: The follow-up is huge, yes.

Travis: So huge.

Brandon: Yes, so good, so good.

Travis: I actually had a guy one time real quick. I had a guy one time.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: I forget who it was. It was a prominent influencer and I reached out and I reached out the second time that I reached out he agreed to come home I show and we were talking about it and he told me he literally says no to every single.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Request that comes across his desk the first time. He says no.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: To every single one no matter how good or bad.

Brandon: Yes, yes, yes.

Travis: Whatever he says no just to weed out people we don’t do it. He’s like bro probably 20% of people to actually reach out again. I was like.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: What? That’s mind blowing. Like 80% of people.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Just are like oh no. Okay bye. You know like okay I’ll never reach out again. Sorry to waste your time. You know it’s like whoah whoah like no no if you really believe in your message you’re going to want to get it across. Reach out again. Do that follow-up, but don’t do it in like a pushy annoying way because then that’s going to just turn people off.

Brandon: Yes, alright  well that was fantastic. I really enjoyed that a lot because yes again I live in that all of the time and there are people I want to reach out to, the real estate investors that are just rock stars and I think this is so important so again if you guys got a lot of value to that go back and listen again to that last five or 10 minutes. It was so good so, but before we get out of here I want to move over to the last couple of segments of our show. Next let’s get to the Deal Deep Dive.

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All right let’s get to the deal deep dive. This is the part of the show where we dive deep into just one particular deal that you’ve recently done or something that you you know whether good, whether bad, whatever we just kind of get our audience more familiar with a specific deal. Number one I got a list of questions to throw at you about a deal. First of all do you have a deal in mind? Something that we can.

Travis: Yes sure.

Brandon: Pick your brain on.

Travis: Yes. Let’s do it.

Brandon: Number one what kind of property was this? Like what was the plan? What was it?

Travis: Single-family home for the purpose of fix and flip.

Brandon: Alrighty.

David: Okay go ahead.

Travis: This one was through a network. This is the one I actually referred to earlier in the show that was through the handyman that was just out fixing somebody’s stuff and knew that we were looking for a deal and hit us up as soon he figured out that she might be interested in selling.

Brandon: Perfect. How much was this property?

Travis: $246,000 was the actual—like the actual purchase price. They wanted I think $255 for it.

Brandon: Okay.

David: How did you negotiate him from $255 to $246?

Travis: We always go with like whenever I do anything in negotiation I always anchor the conversation based on something that’s not me setting the price. Whether it’s like a comp or something that I can refer back to, the value and the area or even like and if those two don’t support what I’m asking for it might just be the fact that like I only do deals at this certain percentage. Like hey look I only do deals if I can ensure at least a 10% net on the ARV return. Like so if I can’t get it for this price then it’s not going to make sense for me so it’s always something that’s like out of my control. It’s got to be something out of your control because if you just name a price that’s when you get in the haggling mode and you don’t want to be haggling with people. You want to talk terms not price and so when I throw that out there it’s more like a hey yes this is you know this is the price that we have to pick it up for. Like we just don’t have an option here. Like if it’s not for this price it just doesn’t make sense.

Brandon: That’s great. That’s gold. How did you fund this particular deal?

Travis: This one was I believe just hard money so we borrowed.

Brandon: Okay.

Travis: At like 8% and two points.

Brandon: All right and by the way I didn’t mention this earlier. I could have. For those who don’t know what hard money is just go search BiggerPockets for hard money lenders, but also if you go to BiggerPockets.com/hardmoneylenders we have the web’s I believe I mean I don’t think anybody else has even close to as large as ours I think we have the web’s largest hard money lender directory right there. Organized by state and a little bit of a description of what they do and what they don’t do. Anyway check it out ya’ll. Next one.

David: What did you do with this deal?

Travis: We put about I think it was 41-42,000 or so into the rehab. Held for about 90 days and then got rid of it.

Brandon: All right what was the outcome then?

Travis: We made little bit less than that 10% that we usually go for. We made about $30,000 on it so we ended up selling it for I think like $350-$340 so made a little bit less than what we typically shoot for, but overall it was a good deal.

Brandon: Yes, solid. Last one.

David: What lessons did you learn from this deal?

Travis: Yes, probably one of the bigger lessons was making sure so the guy that brought us the deal, we had a little bit of a little bit of trouble with because when he found out what we were going to make on it he like you all of the sudden wanted more, which is an interesting thing on negotiation too.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: By the way like anybody like people will agree to a deal that they think it is fair, but if some other outside circumstance tells them that it’s not fair like the fairness matters more to people than the actual deal itself. Like countless studies have you know proven this to be true where people will look at it will be okay with a deal, but then find out that somebody else did the same thing for a little bit better of a deal and then all of a sudden they’re are up in arms and they’re upset even though they were totally okay with.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: And possibly even happy about the initial deal that they did.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It was a lesson to make sure that we hammered that stuff out before anything happened just like hey you understand that like this is like the finder’s fee and you’re not getting like you’re not a partner in the deal. You’re not getting equity on.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Like based on the profit. Like but also means you don’t have any of the risk. Like this is not a bad deal. This is still a good deal, but because it turned out well he wanted more and so it was a lesson to make sure we get that stuff hammered out before hand.

David: Brandon you look like you have something to add here.

Brandon: Well I was going to say we talked about the theology thing earlier. Do you remember like there’s that story in I don’t know one of the Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John or the Bible right where they I think it was Jesus tells a story about like these workers in a field right and there’s like.

Travis: Yes. Yes.

Brandon: The one guy shows up at 8 o’clock and he says I’ll pay you $20 bucks. The other guy shows up at 10 and he basically he like he gives them the same amount of money.

Travis: For like less and less.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Work. Yes.

Brandon: Exactly yes. At the end of the day the guy goes and pays all of them starting with the guy who showed up and only worked for an hour and he gives them his $20 bucks. The first guy is like well I better be getting way more than $20 bucks right and then he gets to them and he gives them his $20 bucks and he’s like well you know I worked way longer. It’s not fair, but he’s like you agreed to it. Like it’s like the exact principle right. Yes.

Travis: This is what we agreed on. This is what’s happening. Yes exactly.

Brandon: So he says like who cares. The message there right. He’s like who cares if I want to be generous right. If I want to give the last guy the same as you like why does that affect you?

Travis: Right.

Brandon: That same principle applies to people constantly.

Travis: Exactly.

Brandon: This is not fair. Yes right.

Travis: They wouldn’t have because if he wouldn’t have seen them give the other guy the 20 bucks it would have been totally fine. Everything would have been fine. He would have been happy with the deal.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: But because somebody else like the fairness of it actually like prevents them from wanting to be a part of it.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: In the future so yes it’s super interesting.

Brandon: Yes, yes super interesting. All right well that was supercool and that was the end also of the Deal Deep Dive. You know I really love that segment of the show and before we transition the over to our next segment of the show, a quick word about WizeHire. You know we’ve been talking about networking and connecting with people today and that is critical in business right? Because in order to grow we have to 1hire people.

BiggerPockets is actually going through this right now. In my own personal life I’m going through this. David Greene here is going through this. This is where WizeHire is so valuable. You know they use a tool called the disc personality assessment.

It’s a survey David and I have talked about it on a lot of the shows and I’m telling you take this survey and you will understand yourself better. WizeHire uses a disc profile to help you find and handpick the very best candidates to help you write job descriptions and then post them on 60 plus networks like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Zip Recruiter. When a candidate applies Wize Hire gives them a personality assessment and stores the candidate’s score and resume so you can review them any time. Like this really can help you find the right person for a job and that’s why more than 3,000 small businesses and teams trust WizeHire. What could be more important than hiring the right person for your team? Head over to WiseHire.com. That’s Wize, spelled WIZEHire.com and with that let’s move on to the segment that we love to call the Fire Round.

It’s time for the Fire Round.

All right of course let’s get to the Fire Round. These questions come direct out of the BiggerPockets forums and we’re going to fire them at you right now. Nice and quick and we’re only going to do a couple of them now because it has been a longer show and already there has been so much stuff in here so we’ll shorten this. Let me go to the first one though. I like this one from Simon in Oakland, California I’m trying to get started flipping in one of the hottest markets in the country. I’ve been looking for almost a year now. I have not found anything. I’m not having any luck with wholesalers. I’m not getting response from direct mail letters. I’m making low offers in the MLS and nothing’s working. A1ny advice on finding a deal to flip in this hot market.

Travis: Yes, for me the first thing that I would do would be to look out for the top investors in that market and then offer to add some sort of value piece to them and get around them to help them with their deals and this goes for anybody. If you’re a beginner in anything like if you’re a beginner, if you’re trying to get started in whatever it is get around to people who are doing it the best and volunteer your time in exchange for rubbing shoulders with that person because I guarantee you if you get around one some of the top investors in Oakland you’re going to find some deals. Like you’re going to rub some.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Shoulders with the people who are finding all of the good deals and doing all of the good deals you’re going to finds. It’s literally exactly what I did with the podcasting thing was getting around somebody like John Lee Dumas. I volunteered my time to work two events for him. Totally for free. Didn’t ask him for a dime in return. I sold a bunch of journals for him using my years of sales experience. Didn’t ask for any commissions. Just did it to add value, but I rubbed shoulders with somebody who’s made millions and millions and millions of dollars podcasting and it was a huge experience that helped me to be able to find and fund everything that I wanted to do so if you’re in that situation find the people who are doing the deals. Find the people who are producing like crazy and just offer to add some value. Volunteer your time or some connection or something to just get in that same circle of people.

Brandon: Yes, you know we’ve talked a lot lately on the show about modeling success and that’s one of their benefit. Of not only are you going to maybe get their help by helping them. Like maybe they’ll give you something back someday. Right but like also you just have to see what they’re doing. Whenever somebody says I can’t find any properties to flip in Oakland or whatever right my first question is like is anybody flipping in Oakland at all?

Travis: Yes, exactly.

Brandon: Has there been one flip in the past year? Well yes there’s lots of people flipping. Okay so they’re doing something that’s working. They’ll figure it out and one of the best ways to learn from somebody is to go and provide value to them.

Travis: Yes. Exactly 100%.

Brandon: Yes, model what they’re doing.

Travis: If somebody’s doing it you can do it.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Just got to figure out how they’re doing.

Brandon: Exactly. Yes. I love that’s another Instagram quote right there.

David: We actually just put one of our clients under contract on a house in Oakland for $70,000 less than the appraised value.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Like that person was going to live in it, but now they’re like shoot I’m going to flip this thing and they’re going to use the money to pay their down payment for the house they’re going to live in so they are out there and you should come to one of the meet ups that I’m doing. We’re doing how to flip a house meet ups every month through BiggerPockets so yes that’s great advice you guys gave. Find someone who’s doing well and learn, but don’t give up because it can be done.

David: Okay next question here. I’m starting to look at investing in real estate. I live in southern California, but I grew up in Michigan where starter homes are closer to my price range. My question is this for those who started investing in real estate did you stay local do you think it’s a mistake to think about investing out-of-state given my lack of experience at this point.

Travis: I think yes. I don’t think that investing out-of-state is a bad idea. I just think that if you’re first getting started you should probably stick to local and my the first thing that I would do if you’re first getting started is like your first deal I think should be some sort of a house hack like what Brandon talks about a lot because it’s going to familiarize like you’re going to get really familiar with the process. It’s something that you can’t touch, feel like with your hands. You can walk through plus you get an FHA loan at 3 and a half percent down.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Instead of having to come up and fork out a ton of cash on a deal that you may or may not know if it’s like super good or not so if you can like limit the amount of cash that you’re putting down on that deal that’s probably a better idea to begin with. I would start with the house hack and start in a local market.

Brandon: All right now I said I would limit it took two, but I’ll do a third cause I like this question. Last one Aubrey from Knoxville what’s the single best piece of advice you got when you were starting out in the real estate and do you still follow it? I know it might be hard to pull up the, yes it might be hard to pull up the single best, but what’s a good piece of advice that you received early on?

Travis: Yes, probably that real estate is like this is going to sound super rudimentary, but when I was first getting started you know I kind of had to be convinced that was the thing to put my money in. You know there are so many different things that you can put your money into and so the biggest piece of advice for me was just like don’t give up on real estate. Figure out real estate like if you have a bad deal, if you lose a little bit of money don’t worry about it. Like again like we talked about on the show a couple of times time is the asset. Money is not the asset so don’t get so worried.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: About losing some money on a deal that you’re afraid to pull the trigger. Like pull the trigger on a deal get started and don’t give up on real estate like just learn. If you mess something up learn why and do it better next time. I think the best advice would be don’t give up on real estate because it’s going to be the thing that really sets you apart and allows you to build the life that you really want.

Brandon: Perfect perfect all right well let’s get on to the last segment of the show. This is our Famous Four.

L1et’s get to the Famous Four. Number one you have a favorite real estate specific real estate related book.

Travis: Yes, I’m going to give a shout out to J Papasan. We talked about him a couple of times on the show.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: Millionaire Real Estate Investor.

Brandon: All right. Fantastic.

David: Awesome. What is your favorite business book?

Travis: There’s so many, but because we talked a little bit about negotiation today and because it’s fresh in my mind because I finished it pretty recently I’m going to talk about I’m going to say Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, fantastic book.

Brandon: Yes, that is a great book. Great book.

David: Very nice, what are some of your hobbies?

Travis: Hobbies I like comedy so my hobbies include consuming any forms of comedy of standup comedy and sitcoms. I basically just like consuming things that put me in a good mood, but in terms of activities I like doing pretty much anything. I like golfing. I like snowboarding. I like playing basketball. I play pick a basketball a lot because that’s basically all I did.

Brandon: Nice.

Travis: Growing up and honestly I’m kind of blessed to do a hobby of mine for a living now so now that I’m a full-time podcaster with something that was a hobby that turned into something full-time and so I love spending a lot of my time doing those kinds of things and then I had always just enjoyed sitting and having a good cigar. A little bit of whiskey and enjoying a nice view whatever that may be.

Brandon: Nice, nice we’ll have to do that some day on my island out here in Maui.

Travis: For sure man.

Brandon: I’m curious, favorite comedian. Do you have a favorite? Standup comedian?

Travis: I’m going to say this guy because he’s like was like in my blood growing up and especially growing up as super Christian as I did like we had to find superclean comics.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: It’s hard sometimes.

Brandon: Yes, me too.

Travis: To find clean comics that are like actually funny.

David: Still funny. Yes, yes.

Travis: So Brian Reagan is.

Brandon: Aw I was going to say the same thing.

Travis: My go to, yes, yes. He is my go to man.

Brandon: That is mine.

Travis: Did you see his new Netflix special yet?

Brandon: I did not yet. I  just saw it was out though. Like I didn’t I don’t know how I missed it, but I just saw it the other day.

Travis: He did a special, but then he did another like like key and peel type comedy series where like she does a little bit of standup and then they show like a video.

Brandon: Oh cool.

Travis: Clip of like whatever he was talking about in the standup routine and it’s actually pretty funny. I think it’s called standup in a way, but there’s like six episodes on there and it’s pretty funny.

Brandon: Alright, I know what I’m doing tonight.

Travis: Yes.

Brandon: Very cool.

David: All right last question.

Brandon: What do you think separates successful real estate investors from all of those who give up, fail, or never get started.

Travis: Access to the right knowledge, which comes with access to the right people. You’ll hear me say this a lot just because I’m I’ve become an networking guy, but I truly believe it because I’ve seen it like flesh itself out. I think the biggest like like it just makes sense right. If you think about it if you knew everything to do why would you not be doing it? The reason that you’re not doing it confidently is that you don’t have the knowledge that you need to do it confidently and how do you get that knowledge in a much faster way than just like reading a book about it. That’s not specific to your situation. Go get around.

Brandon: Yes.

Travis: People who are doing it. Get around people who are doing it well and learn from them and then implement what they do because it’s not enough just to learn. A lot of people stop the learning piece and they can riff about real estate all day, but they never even bought a deal because they’re so afraid of taking action and pulling the trigger. You got to learn from people who are doing it the best and then implement what they’re actually saying to do.

David: Brandon has quote.

Brandon: Fantastic.

David: When he does his webinars. It’s really good that says if more information what is the answer we would all have six pack abs and be billionaires. Right it’s not just the information.

Brandon: Yes, it’s like.

David: Derik Severs quote. Like Brandon’s who says it.

Brandon: Yes.

David: Yes, it’s like that thing where you quote someone else and it’s your quote. Like I was saying how you do like.

Brandon: Mike Scott.

Travis: Yes, exactly.

David: Michael Scott quoting Wayne Gretsky. Yes, that’s exactly.

Travis: You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take—Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott.

Brandon: Michael Scott.

David: It should say Brandon Turner. He could have like three levels of that. When I was on the podcast for the first time Brandon quoted himself on the podcast. He like said a quote that he thought was very inspirational, but he didn’t tell anyone it was his. Josh caught it.

Brandon: I did not say it that way. I said and a line and you made fun of me because it was like anyway we’re not going to revisit that comparison.

David: Go listen to episode 169 and listen to Josh just jump in and rip you apart like an eagle on a salmon. That it was bad, but it was actually really funny. That was when Brandon did that. Brandon’s great at quotes. He just isn’t so great at being humble about them. Okay last question. Tell us where can people find out more about you?

Travis: Yes man, my website TravisChappell.com. I have links to all of my social stuff. If you are interested in that training yes it’s totally free. You can just go to it’s at TravisChappell.com/hero. It’s basically everything I know about how to get in touch with your heroes so those five elements.

Brandon: Cool.

Travis: Of an effective message is one of the lessons that I teach in there. Also like follow-up, what platforms are the most effective ones to reach out to people on. How to build out your platform. Like all of those types of things. Totally free training. Don’t ask for anything. It’s just TravisChappell.com/hero her to make it easier you can just go to meetyourherocourse.com, but either way you can find it.

Brandon: I love it I love it. Well Travis it has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. You know we’ll have to see you around and you know good luck on your real estate in the future and your podcasting business. That’s very cool.

Travis: Yes, I appreciate it bro. Thanks a lot for having me on. I had a blast.

Brandon: Alright thank you. Alright everybody thank you so much for joining us today. We’re going to head out of here and you know go listen to another episode of the show or go over to Travis’s show and listen to that one. It is called The Build Your Network Podcast. All right thank you everybody David Greene you want to take us out?

David: Great job Travis. Thanks for being here. This is David Greene for Brandon, the Colgate of real estate Turner. Signing off.

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In This Episode We Cover:

  • How Travis uses his network to source deals
  • Why he rents his primary residence
  • The power of creating a platform like a podcast or meetup
  • The key to successfully partnering with family
  • Why givers are more successful
  • How his networks really affect his net worth
  • The reason why he’s selling his real estate properties
  • The beauty of adding value first to others
  • His five effective tips for reaching out and connecting with anyone
  • His “anchoring” negotiating tactic and how he used it to land a deal
  • Why house hacking is his favorite way to get started in real estate
  • And SO much more!

Links from the Show

Books Mentioned in this Show

Fire Round Questions

Tweetable Topics:

  • “Most of the things that we need to master fall under the communication category.” (Tweet This!)
  • “You don’t have to be an expert to start a podcast or a meetup.” (Tweet This!)
  • “Every deal is different. What works for me may not work for you.” (Tweet This!)
  • “The deal is in the numbers. If it’s a good deal, it will make money regardless of all the other stuff.” (Tweet This!)
  • “What you focus on, you get more of.” (Tweet This!)
  • “There’s deals for everybody out there!” (Tweet This!)
  • “Not all debt is bad.” (Tweet This!)
  • “The number one thing about networking is giving value.” (Tweet This!)

Connect with Travis

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