Here’s What You SHOULDN’T Do When Long-Distance Investing

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast, show 472.

Nick:
We talked about ju-jitsu, where you get put in a tough spot and you go, “Hey what do I do? Do I roll over or do I find a way to get out of this and get back on top?” I’ve always prided myself on like, “I don’t care what happened, it was my responsibility. People, they don’t really know anything about the property, they invested in me because they trusted me, so I have to find a way to get out of this and turn this around.”

Voiceover:
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Brandon:
What’s going on, everyone? It’s Brandon Turner host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, here with my cohost, Mr. David Greene. What’s up, David? I didn’t have a good nickname for you. Sorry.

David:
That’s okay, because I’m having a really good day. I think I found someone that I’m going to hire to be the portfolio manager for my properties and I’m going to start scaling up short-term rentals, so I’ll be getting into that game a little bit.

Brandon:
Same.

David:
And a few other good hires have come in. Someone was asking me the other day, I just closed on that big Minnesota property, and they were saying like, “How do you feel about it?” And I said, “At this point, I’m just so much happier if I get a good person than I am if I got a good property, because one person can manage 100 properties.” That’s the stuff that gets me excited now.

Brandon:
Yeah. People are the asset.

David:
Yes, that’s a great way to put it.

Brandon:
All right, man. Well, very, very cool. Yeah, the short-term rental thing, I just closed on my condo and beginning to be doing some rehab stuff on it here.

David:
Oh, the one we went and looked at or that complex?

Brandon:
Yep, same place.

David:
We’re both short term of Maui.

Brandon:
We’re playing with that. We have coordinate our attack a little bit, so it’ll be fun. All right, well, with that said, let’s get today’s quick tip.

David:
Quick tip.

Brandon:
If you’re listening to this show when it comes out, it’s coming out in the spring time, which means there are probably a number of preventative maintenance things you should be doing on your rental properties, if you own rentals. And I know a lot of you’re going, “Ugh,” cringing right now because you know you need to do it and you haven’t done it. In fact, I’m even going to put a list on the show notes page, you go to biggerpockets.com/show472, again, biggerpockets.com/show472, there’ll be a link there to a blog article called 27 Interior And Exterior Preventative Maintenance Tasks For Rentals.
I want you to take that list, I want you to print it out, and I want you to go through and do a half of them right now over the next couple weeks. You don’t have to personally do them, you can hire someone if you want to, but get it done because that is going to extend the life of your property. And a lot of us just go years without thinking of this stuff, but it’s better to do it a little bit at a time. So there you go.
Today’s guest is Nick Lamagna. It’s like lasagna, he told me to say, but not quite. And he is an awesome dude. He’s got a podcast, but he’s also a legit real estate investor. He’s done over 100 deals, routinely makes six figures on a single deal, like on a wholesale or a wholetail. You’ll learn more about that later. So he talks about how he’s done that. He talks about investing at a distance. We spent a long time talking about how to invest at a distance, whether it’s flipping, BRRRR, rentals, wholesaling, you can do all that at distance if you just follow some of the key principles he brings up today.
We talk a lot about failure, some of the problems that he’s had where he’s lost money, and the lessons he learned that can make sure you don’t make those same mistakes. So that and more to come. And with that said, I think it’s time to get into our interview with Nick.
Hey, real quick, if you’re watching this on YouTube, do me a favor, don’t forget to click that little thumbs up button to let the world know this is a good video. Leave a comment below for Nick if you have questions so we check in the comments. And subscribe to our YouTube channel, that helps us reach more people. The more people subscribe, the more YouTube is like, “Oh, they’re a good channel.” And we want you to be aware of all the good content coming out on our channel as well. So hit that Subscribe button. I think that’s all I got. So with that said, let’s move on.
Nick, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast, man. How you doing?

Nick:
Doing great, man. I’m really excited to be here. A big fan of both of you guys. And I appreciate everything you guys do. Thanks for having me on.

Brandon:
Well, thanks man. Well, I got to tell you, I was on Nick’s podcast. What’s your podcast called? Give it a shout out.

Nick:
The A Game Podcast.

Brandon:
All right. The A Game Podcast. I was on there and you did this intro, you read this intro for me, and it was the best intro anybody in any podcast I’ve ever been on has ever done. It was so good. I felt like I was at an MMA fight and I was fighting. It was awesome.

Nick:
Nice.

Brandon:
So ever since then, I’m trying to replicate. So if people have noticed an uptick in our intros, that’s that’s all because of you. So thank you.

Nick:
I appreciate that. I’m glad I could have some sort of positive impact.

Brandon:
Yeah, there you go. All right. Well, with that said, let’s get into your real estate. We could talk MMA, black belt ju-jitsu, all that all day long, but I want to know about how you got into real estate investing. What was your life before that and how did you decide, “Yeah, I’m going to do real estate”?

Nick:
Like most things in my life, I think it all fell by accident. I was screwing around, just went to college to hang out and drink and party with my friends. And then I didn’t really have much of a purpose. And then after September 11th, I went upstate to college, to SUNY Albany in upstate New York and I decided I want to switch my major to criminal justice and I want to do something that’s going to serve some purpose, like David, be a police officer. I wanted to be an air marshal, do something federal, something with counter terrorism. So I tested for everything you can think of with three or four letters, FBI, DEA, NYPD, ATF, anything like that.
And when I graduated, there was a process to go in, so I started doing construction, hoping that I would get into the Corps of Union and help rebuild the Freedom Tower at that time. And while I was doing construction, I suffered, it was on faulty machinery, a permanent hand injury and it sidelined everything. And I went through about a year, two years of physical therapy, occupational therapy. And then all of these jobs started calling me back and they said, “Hey, your numbers up.” I scored pretty high on most of these, so it should have been like an easy thing to get in. And then because of my hand injury, they made me retest.
And then after all that, they disqualified me saying that there was like a 0.01% chance because of my injury, I was a liability on paper, so I would never get a job in law enforcement. At that point I was just bumming around and depressed. I had lost my identity, I had lost what I thought my path in life was, my purpose. I had no money coming in. I felt like a physical and emotional and financial failure. And then my mom forced me to read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is how a lot of people just start out. And I saw that you can get into real estate with no experience, no money, no credit. I didn’t have any of those things.
So I started just going into different classes and seminars and dug right in. And I accidentally decided that real estate was the way I wanted to go. Because when that happened, everything was taken away from me and I really just got it beat into my head of, if I want to do something with my life, I never want to put myself in a position that if something happens to me, it’s up to somebody else how I’m going to make my money, and wound up just digging in full-time and never looked back.

David:
Let me jump in real fast. Nick, do you feel like your hand injury had a big role in that feeling of, I don’t want to leave my life up to chance?

Nick:
1,000%. It’s interesting because looking back, there’s definitely a lot of things in my life that I feel like I would have changed, and I think most people think that that would be one, that I could be like, “Hey, I wish I didn’t use that machine that day.” But I think the amount of doors that it’s opened for me, the way it’s shifted my mind. And even looking back, I wasn’t really happy with who I was as a person and how I acted and where my morals were. I feel like it was obviously a very important lesson, but I feel like it was necessary. And because of that, it shifted things and changed things that weren’t even about me.
You fast forward six, 12 months after I started getting into real estate, both my parents lost their jobs and there was no income coming in except for what I was doing, so there’s been a lot of other people along the way that my real estate journey has helped with whatever, inspiring them or helping them financially or helping them get them into it. So that 1,000% was responsible for, I never would have met the people in my life that are some of the most amazing people, some of my closest friends, some of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. I don’t know if I would’ve gotten into ju-jitsu. I’d probably be just be a cop in New York City, miserable. Who knows.
It’s really responsible for everything that I’m about today. Everything good in my life has come from that terrible experience.

Brandon:
A powerful reminder too that sometimes the things that we go through in life that we’re thinking, “Oh, that’s going to hold me back,” or, “That’s something that’s going to hurt me,” those are the things that actually lead us toward the future we were meant to have anyway. So it’s a good picture of that. So what was real estate like? What was the first deal? What’d you do?

Nick:
Again, no money, no credit, no experience and I was trying to get involved in real estate in New York City and it was super competitive and very expensive. So for me, I felt like it was a little less risky, a little more possible if I started going to these other markets. So I started investing virtually before it was like the cool thing to do because from my own mental belief, I said, “You know what? I don’t feel like I can do a $600,000, two bedroom home on Long Island, but I do feel like I can buy a $45,000 home in Atlanta and put $25,000 and then sell it for 150, or I could buy a $30,000 home in Detroit, put 25 in and then refinance out.” So I was trying to do the BRRRR strategy a lot when I first started out, but I couldn’t get approved for any loans because I was on disability, so I had to go and find other people.
It was interesting because I’m always trying to find the way to use things to a positive, which I think any successful person does. But I had a couple of friends that were bragging. They were the big mouse at the bar all the time, “I got money, I got credit, I got this, I got that,” like they were members of The Sopranos, and I was like, “You know what, I should see if they want to fund one of my deals.” And I kind of like trapped them. And I was like, “Hey, you got this credit, you got this money, you’re not scared of anything, right? You should sign on this deal and we’ll partner and I’ll do the whatever and I’ll pay you.” So I wound up starting LLCs with people that did have money and they did have credit, and then the hard money lenders would give us loans based on the LLC, because now that it was part of that, it wasn’t really about me, it was about the package as a whole.
And I had the experience and the resources, so I would do the work. I would pay them either out of the refinance, out of the sale or out of the cashflow. And I wound up doing a few… Again, it was like at the worst time to get involved in real estate because it was right when all those anything goes types of deals were going on. But then within the six months after that, they were shutting doors on me. So I did like three deals in Vegas that they cut me a check at closing for money back. And it was all the stuff you would never want to do now with like the liars loans in the stated income, but I took the money that they gave me as the down payments on those houses and used them to get into what I needed to get into the BRRRR properties, with the hard money loan.
So I had eight deals going like that, there were three rentals, and then five rehabs. And then I was going to go pull the cash out, but then all of a sudden, they said, “No, the economy’s in the dumps now, we’re not going to let you do a cash out refinance, but we’ll let you do a rate-and-term. And then they started going, “Well, no, we’re not going to let you do the rate-and-term anymore because you guys got money based on this LLC as a whole, but Chase Bank wants to give it based on you and you still don’t have any money, any credited it.” So it was really tough and I had to do a lot of restructuring and get creative with stuff. But that’s when I started getting into wholesaling because I had a mentor at the time and he was like, “Man, stop trying to keep buying properties when you’re not able to pull the cash out yet, get some cash.”
And so, begrudgingly, I wholesaled a deal to show him that it couldn’t be done and I wound up making money on it and I just got into that and started wholesaling portfolios and that. But those initial first like eight deals were just money back at closing basic rentals and then BRRRR properties that I got into with some credit partners, some cash down and did some rehab on them.

David:
What was the first city that you started investing in and why did you pick that city?

Nick:
I think I was doing Detroit, Vegas and Atlanta all right around the same time, I just jumped in. But the way I was doing it was, there was other people I knew that were investing in those cities and they had given us like 10 to pick from, which actually all wound up being outstanding. And I was like Kansas City and like Colorado and Denver and a lot of these markets before they were really big, so in hindsight… But I just started picking all of them and just bombing them with offers. Because I was home on disability, I remember like eFax came out and I was like, “This is going to change technology. It’ll never get better than an eFax.” And I was like, “I can eFax offers, this is amazing.”
But I was putting out like two, 300 offers in each of these markets just dealing with nothing but realtors and brokers. I was getting angry letters back. People would write like curses on the contracts and fax them back to me and tell me to go screw myself, so there was a ton of rejection, but the way I wound up actually picking the markets, it was because those were the ones that I call efficient. So I think it was just like, “I’m going toss out these fishing lines, as many as I possibly can in all these markets, as much as I can, and I’m just going to basically see what I catch.”
And then based on what I caught, I started digging in a little bit deeper and say, “Okay, I got one under contract here, let’s dig in now, let’s put the teams together now, let’s really look at the market now. Let’s see if this is something we can repeat.” And that was really how I did my business until very recently, was just throwing stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks and then hyper-focusing once I had something stuck.

Brandon:
So what did the next few years look like? You started buying these properties, you said ’07, ’08, ’09 came. So through the recession, how did you… I heard how you pivoted, so you started wholesaling a little bit. Is that what you did all through the recession till we got out of that? Or what did the next five years look like?

Nick:
Yeah. I got out of those, I negotiated some deals with the hard money lenders, which was like very interesting at the time, they were taking like pennies to just get out of the deals because I guess whatever’s going on with the investors they had borrowed the money from. And that I started getting into wholesaling, and we started wholesaling some single family stuff. It was a lot of like cashflow properties, nothing like really big wholesale fees to write home about. And then we started, me and a couple of partners of mine, what we were doing was finding packages of properties and then trying to sell them off to cash buyers as portfolios, so we did a few of those, got that going.
And then within, I think around like 2009-ish, maybe 2010, all of a sudden we started seeing, I remember I linked up with this guy and he’s like, “Man, we’re flipping properties all over Southern California.” And I was like, “But you can’t flip properties, that’s not the way the market is.” And they was like, “No, no, no, things changed. There’s these FHA loans now. And all the people two years ago that lost their homes can basically buy the same home now for half the price that they couldn’t get the loan mods on two years ago, as long as they have a 660 credit score or both, they can get in for 3.5% down.” So that really started switching it back to really pivoting and picking up some of these properties and just getting back into flipping for a couple of years.
So I went from like trying to BRRRR and do creative deals and then went into wholesaling and then pivoted back into flipping single family homes to get some cash and some experience back up. And then from there, over the last three years, I just transitioned into accidentally into like multifamily and some mobile home park wholesaling and some land development stuff. It’s been an interesting life, but it’s all really happened by accident, just naturally falling into these deals because over the of doing so many different things and meeting so many different people, I’ve always just been open and people saying, “Would you want this? Would you look at this? Would you look at a mobile home park?”
And I go, “Well, today, I’m not looking for that, but you go and send it to me, man. If it’s a great deal, let me look at it, and who knows, maybe I know somebody that’s looking for it.” And that’s what always happened was, some guy would call me and say, “Hey man, I don’t want your portfolio, or I don’t want your multifamily, or I don’t want your single family home, I only buy mobile home parks.” And like that morning, somebody goes, “Hey, I know you don’t want mobile home parks, but I got one.” And I’m like, “Well, hold on, hold on.” And then I just like, well, I’ll pair him up here and I’ll do that. And from there, every time I would move a property, I would just advertise it.
And then you get 100, 200, 300 people that call you on it through whatever website you’re posting it on, a lot of tire kickers, but you’ll get five or 10 people that make solid offers with proof of funds that know exactly what you want and they give you their criteria. And now it’s like, “Okay, well, I sold that one, but now I have nine other people that have cash that know exactly what they want for this deal. I’m going to go out and I’ll find them those deals and anything I negotiate past to the return that they want is profit in my pocket.” So that’s really been, my focus for the last couple of years from there, is just off of one or two bigger deals.
You want to put these serious buyers, the people that are going, “Find me another one of those.” And there’s a lot of money to be made there. And I feel like it’s easier because instead of me just saying, “Hey, this is a deal, who wants it?” The term a deal could mean anything. Now, I have somebody that I know is qualified that’s serious that’s giving me their exact criteria so it gives me more of a target to go after and helps me not waste my time or theirs.

Brandon:
I love this. I just want to point out this concept that you’re doing is, you’re finding deals, you’re doing some wholesaling in this process, and then as you get a deal that you want to wholesale, you market it all over the internet or all over wherever you can get it, and you’re basically building your buyers list by doing that. And now you’re able to connect with the serious people and say, “What are you looking for?” And now you can go out and hunt for those people. So it begins like you’re walking in the woods with a gun and you’re like, “I don’t know what’s out here.” And then you find something, you find a deer, you kill it, you bring it back to the lodge, and there’s a bunch of guys like, “Well, I’m not looking for deer, I’m looking for rabbits.” You’re like, “Okay, I’m going to go find you a rabbit.” You go out there and find that rabbit.
David, on a scale of one to 10, how good was that analogy? Was that pretty terrible? I feel like that was a seven in my mind.

David:
It’s good. It put an image in my mind of Elmer Fudd walked around with his little pop gun.

Brandon:
Yeah, nobody wants that.

David:
That was good. I thought that was really good. Yeah. But I guess what you’re getting at here is the skills required to get a deer versus a rabbit are very similar, that it’s just a different target you’re looking for, you maybe change a little bit about your strategy to take it down, but if you’re good at one, you’re probably going to be good at the other. So when you’re out of the woods, looking at deals, why not be able to take down different deals?

Brandon:
I want to shift in a minute over to the larger deals, especially the wholesaling, the bigger deals, I’m fascinated by that. It’s something I have not done a lot of. When we’re talking like the pre-current Nick, so when you were doing the flips and the wholesales and the single family and the portfolios, if you had to guess, how many of these did you do over that span of when you got started to, when you got into the larger multifamily? How many are we talking here, like dozens?

Nick:
I’ve done definitely over 100 total. I don’t really know. There was a little bit of a point that I slowed down in that transition because I was taking some beatings when the market turns. I call it property traumatic stress syndrome from when everything went south, but then things started picking back up. We were at one point, me and a couple of my partners, we had at some point like 20 at a time per month in different stages, from whether they were under contract or being flipped or being sold, and some fell out here and there, but we had a pretty good pipeline going of the actual single family flips for awhile in multiple different markets, which is pretty cool.
But I think part of what, and you and I had talked about this too, but it was good for being a real estate strategy that I could say, “You know what, I have three to five flips going in Delaware, three to five flips going in Pennsylvania, three to five flips… ” And that’s pretty cool, we can have like 10, 15, 20 flips going at a time. But then when those are done, you have to rebuild. I was basically, again, deal specific, not market specific, wherever the deal popped up is where I would go in. But as you and I were talking about really building a business, I’m starting to realize more and more that I want to build a deeper hole, not a wider hole, because then I don’t have to keep training new realtors and training new contractors and building new teams and learning new markets and figuring out the good and the bad pockets.
So that’s really why I tried to pull back a little bit and restructure to focus more on one area for the single family homes, which is what I’m doing now in the Chicago suburbs. But while that’s building, I take a lot of my time to really dig into some of those bigger deals because that takes a lot more of my time, but it’s got a lot of a bigger pay, and I enjoy it more too.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s cool. So were all of these long distance, or were you doing any where you lived?

Nick:
No, everything was long distance. I think we only did one flip ever in New York while I lived there and it was an upstate New York and I never even saw it. So from the beginning, it was always easier to me. And my tendency, like everybody else, “Hey, I want to do the first one in my backyard. I want to go see it,” and then I’ll go, and no, you’re not going to break those habits. So for me, I was really upset when I first started investing and I realized like, I can’t go see these houses every day, I can’t try and do the work myself, not that I was good with it anyway. But that wound up being a blessing in disguise because I learned to have to put processes in place to manage remote teams who knew the world was going to turn into this however many years later.
So I learned to look at data and I learned to put things in place to really keep eyes on things without having to be involved in it every single day, which has helped me huge in business and in real estate now since then. So even if I did have a property that was around the corner right now, I most likely wouldn’t be taking the time to go see it or do it because you have those processes in place and those systems and checks and balances. We had a multifamily and it was just… I try and train people to do very, very basic things and have a system of checks and balances for like, can you handle the most basic of tasks? Because if you can’t handle the simple stuff, you definitely can’t handle the more complicated stuff, and I need to make sure you can have those details.

Brandon:
That’s smart. That’s smart. So let’s dive into a little bit deeper on this topic of long distance investing. Obviously, David here wrote a book on it, but I want to know, what were the keys to success with long distance investing, whether it’s flipping or whether it was rentals? What were those things that people, if they’re listening to show right now going, “I live in New York City or I live in LA and I can not do what I want to do here,” what do they do? Give us some step-by-step instructions.

Nick:
Communication is going to be the biggest thing. I think anytime you try and trick yourself into getting emotional and thinking you have a good deal just because it’s out of state, it’s very easy to get tricked into that. And so I think having the right area is super important. So doing some diligence on that and getting some… I try and get a lot of feedback, same thing, I’ll send out a wide net. So if I’m going to go into a new area remotely, I’m going to start reaching out to wholesalers, I’m going to start reaching out to brokers, I’m going to start reaching out to realtors. And then I’m going to just test it and see what the market’s doing.
And again, this is a little bit different because of what we’re doing now and people going direct to seller, but I’m just going to say, “Hey, I’m looking for deals. I’m looking for areas that houses are selling in under 60 days,” which used to be a thing. I mean, now, everything’s moving, but I’ll start to get their feedback because they’ll open up. And half of them will say, right off the bat, “It’s too competitive. You’re never going to get a deal. There’s nothing out there. Good luck. Did you just take some class?” I start to know very quick who I don’t want to work with and I’m just thinning the herd.
But I will wind up with like five or 10 wholesalers or five or 10 brokers or a couple of key people that are doing a lot of deals there, and they’ll tell me like, “Hey, if you’re looking for an area that things are selling in under 60 days, that are at an average price point, that you can get a good conventional loan on, where things are moving to middle-class buyers, you don’t want to be on this side of town, you do want to be on this side of town. You don’t want to be in this zip code, you want to be in this zip code.” So just reaching out to local people and first off, figuring out who is going to have the patience to deal with you breaking into a new market, because you’re going to need a lot of information, but it’s all there.
But I find most people are lazy or they don’t want to put the work in, so when you get a couple of them that you prepare like, “Hey, it’s going to take a little bit of time, but I’m here to stay, we’re going to close some deals, I’m going to do my part.” They’ll start to guide you to where you want to go and then the data will tell you if they’re right. So I try and like, “Hey, you’re the best, you guys know what you’re doing, you tell me where the best place to go is.” And then when they start to send me a deal, I’ll say, “Hey, sent me the comparables.”
And when I look at those comps, if I’m seeing that there’s nothing really selling in fixed up condition in the last 30, 60, 90 days, or that the price is like price drop, price drop, price drop. And then you look at what the conditions are and it’s mostly rentals and nothing really… I’m going to be able to tell that nobody’s really buying there, things aren’t really selling at or above asking price in the last 30, 60, 90 days, which could make me think either it’s a place to rent, not to flip, which maybe that’s what I’m looking for, is a rental, or that it’s maybe a place that there’s high crime or an area I really don’t want to be in.
So I’ll adjust it based on that and say, “Hey, you know what? The spread could potentially be here, but based on the data you gave me, things really aren’t moving here. Nothing’s really sold that’s like a three bed, two bath, 2,000-square-foot home in like the last nine months. So let’s find this a similar deal, because these numbers would look good, but let’s find that in an area where I can have something that I can show.” And generally, off of that, I’ll pull a comp and say, “Hey, look at this house. This house is in two zip codes over, but it’s perfect. It’s totally fixed up, it has all the things that it’s going to look exactly like my house when it’s done. A wrench for the amount. It’s got the sale price at the amount. It sold in 30 days, let’s look up for some distress properties within like a mile of this house.”
And I’ll guide them to where that new area is. So it just really becomes setting up communication. And the biggest thing, which I’ve heard you guys say a lot on your show, but giving feedback on why something works or something doesn’t work and getting the same from them, you will find a handful of people that will be down for that ride with you. And when you guys find it, it’ll click at some point. That’s what it is, it’s a lot of just making those calls and those connections until you guys really know how to communicate and say the same thing. And at some point, when you go, “Yes, this house, 123 House Street, this side of town, this condition, this area, this is what I want.”
They’re going to go, “Oh, bro, why didn’t you say so from the beginning?” And it’s what what I was trying to get to, but now we’re on the same page and now you’ve trained them to just go out and do that. That’s what I do, is I go out and I try and just find a handful of people who can go out, I can get on the same page with, train them exactly for what I’m looking for. And then I can sit back and they’ll just feed me the deals and I just need to verify stuff and put out offers.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s awesome. So having the right team, having that communication, that open communication is so important. A lot of times, people I think just rely on like, “oh, they’re a real estate agent or they’re a wholesaler or they’re whatever, they’ll be fine, they’re professionals. But I know like David, I’d love to have you speak to this as well, you’re an agent. Somebody contacts you, let’s say from out of state, and they’re like, “Hey, David, go find me a deal.” And then you don’t hear from them anymore, it’s just a mess. But if they can give you, I’m assuming a little bit more clear criteria.
So what do you want, David, from an agent’s perspective, if somebody contacts you, what kind of ideal buyer, an out of area buyer are you looking for that you’d be excited to put with your team and to work with and help them find something?

David:
You want somebody who already knows what they want or is willing to work with you to figure it out. I think what a lot of people do when they reach out to an agent is they’re like, “I heard that this is a good area to invest in. I’m interested in it.” What that really means is, “Tell me everything about the area, make me feel like I should go forward with this, and then send me a bunch of information. Give me a free education.” That’s the wrong method to take. Another thing would be someone who has a pain point, that’s really what motivates people to do anything. Nick talked a little bit about when he hurt his hand, it changed his life, it stopped him from taking the path he wanted to go into.
There some pain associated with, “I want to take a career in this direction and I can’t, so I’m going to make another path for myself,” which is what led to this podcast. If somebody wants to buy rental property but they don’t have a pain point, they’re very comfortable where they are, they’re not going to do it. That hurdle is just going to feel like too much to get over, unless there’s, “I got to get out of my job. I got to make something happen. I got to get some momentum going. I have to do something, otherwise I’m in pain.” So when I’m talking to somebody who comes from out of state, if they’re like, “Yeah, tell me about the market.” And the minute they hear that houses get multiple offers, they’re like, “I don’t want to deal with that.” Well, then you’re just not in enough pain.
But I know a lot of people said that in 2020 in legit where I live, houses have gone up $150,000 in a lot of areas. They’re in pain now. I would say that’s a big thing. And it goes both ways. When you’re talking to an agent, if that agent doesn’t have any kind of pain, they don’t really need your business, they wanted a business card and a fancy picture to put on there and they want to feel like they have a career, but they’re really not motivated to make it happen, that’s the wrong agent to work with. You want an agent that’s like, “No, I want to be the best, I want to be the top. I want to help more people. I want to get a better deal.” I want to go find you the best deal that I can, because if I don’t, you don’t think that I’m good, and that would put me in pain.
So just in general, I think there’s some wisdom in, when you’re developing a relationship with somebody else, if there isn’t already some pain in the situation they’re at currently, they’re usually not going to take the steps that they need to get over that.

Brandon:
All right. Well, Nick, back to you again. So you did all the flipping, did some wholesaling and did all that stuff on the smaller deals. Why did you make the transition into the larger properties?

Nick:
I think like anybody else, you get into it and then you start to realize that you always think the next thing you’re getting into is the thing that’s going to get you more money with less time, and then you realize that it’s a bigger deal now, so now I’m looking for more. But I remember thinking like, “Hey, why would I go get 30 houses when I can get one building with 30 people in it? And now I can hire one babysitter, all my kids live under one roof, and I can have you focus on that?” Because I think a big problem that I’ve had and had is trying to do too many things at once and then I wound up dropping the ball a little bit on everything and that starts to cost money.
And when we first started looking into multifamily, we were like, “You know what, this is something that I don’t need to be spread across all these different things, because there’s enough money coming in as the cash flow or the refinance or the sale on these that I can put all my eggs into one or two of these and that’s all I can focus on for the year.” And that was really exciting to me to say, I don’t have to be looking for different deals in different markets and talking to all these different teams and all these different realtors. So that was the first thing, was just the quality of life for being able to just focus on one or two things and really be dialed in on that, was a nice change of pace.
And then the numbers on it were just exciting to me. So that was the thing of like, “Hey, man, you can stabilize a multifamily asset and sell it or refinance it in a year and make just as much as you would maybe flipping five or six or seven properties, and you do have the option to potentially take that cash out, still hold the asset and still have the money to go play with and buy another one.” That I liked. And I like when things get creative there. And the other thing that I thought was interesting was the value on it became a lot more straightforward because it’s less subjective, I found, than single family where you hear a lot of like, “Well, a single family value, it’s more of an art than a science.”
I found that valuing multifamily, especially for people that were like going to lend or that we’re going to buy it from you, it was really all about math. And I was like, “Well, this is something I can do on a calculator, and there’s not all this interpretation. It is what it is, so it doesn’t matter what I think and feel about it. It’s a deal or it’s not a deal based on if the calculator goes green or red.” So that definitely excited me about it initially. That got me involved.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that anybody say it quite that way, and I really liked that. Commercial real estate is much more… And when I say commercial, for those who don’t know, I’m just talking about anything larger than five units, could be a warehouse, could be a retail center, it could be a apartment complex. It is much more objective with the math, it’s like, “This is what the math says is going to be. Now, this is what the rent and this type of property rents for, because, hey, this is what the 80 other two bedroom, one bathroom apartments in this area rent for.”
So, I feel like you can get a little bit better idea of what a property is worth and what it could be worth and what you can do with it. Which is why I hired a few super brainiac underwriters. One of them, Walker, who runs my whole company now, he’s just a wiz when it comes to math. It’s because it’s a math game that we’re playing. So that’s cool. So what was your first multi-family? What was your first venture into that?

Nick:
We bought a 66 unit. Both of the deals that we initially bought were seller financing, 90%, we had to put 10% down and then they needed some heavy stabilization. So my BRRRR’s private funding for it. I jumped into those deals and had a mentor on those deals that was going to help me, talk me through the whole thing, walk me through everything. So I was going to learn on the job and then we were going to split some profits up, and it turned out that the guy really did not know what he was doing. So I had borrowed money very confidently from people thinking that these things were a slam dunk based on what I had been told, and then the phone rings one day and the guy’s like, “Hey, I know these were supposed to be getting stabilized, but I haven’t been doing anything and now the sewer lines about to collapse and the water’s about to get shut off and I don’t have any money, so good luck.”
So that was awesome. And because of that, it caused me to focus on… Like any thing else, we talked about ju-jitsu, when you get put in a tough spot and you go, “Hey what do I do? Do I roll over or do I find a way to get out of this and get back on top?” I’ve always prided myself on like, “I don’t care what happened, it was my responsibility. People, they don’t really know anything about the property, they invested in me because they trusted me, so I have to find a way to get out of this and turn this around.” So, I really, again, just with my back up against the wall, dug in and figured out how to start to get those numbers set, find out what the real things were, get things back on track, figure out where we went wrong.
And the process of learning from that was priceless. The things I picked up, the contacts I made, the way I learned to really look at the ins and outs of what could go wrong and multifamily was a huge eye opener. There was weeks that you have to cut a 30, $40,000 check to catch up on whatever went crazy or the sewer line popped. So it was very stressful, but lessons and things that I’ve learned from them that I’ve taken to deal after deal, after deal after deal. I wind up selling them off, getting them somewhat stabilized and passing them off to another investor, but making enough that I could pay back the loans on them, get the experience and be in the clear and make everybody square.
So I didn’t turn a ton of profit on it, but again, the experience I got on it and the relationships I made now led me into other properties. And people, they only hear the good stuff, but when people start to hear, “You know what, hey, these deals went bad.” What happened when they went bad? What did you do? What happened to the lender? It’s like, then I got in there, I busted my butt and I found a way to get them paid back. And that’s when they come back and now they want to reinvest. So because of the problems that I had going through that and getting left, because there’s been tons of times over my life that I’ve paid for mentors and the mentors just didn’t really pan out and they didn’t do what they say they were going to do, but it hadn’t been that catastrophic on a multi-level where it’s like hundreds of thousands of dollars that are coming in and going out.
So that really made me feel responsible when I was selling properties to other people of like, “Hey, I know you might not know, but here’s the things you should look out for. Here’s the things that nobody helped me with.” And that’s how it started, separating myself from other people that were selling things was all the things that I never got from people that were supposed to be helping talk me through that process and give me the realistic things that could go wrong or right, I started doing for other people and saying, “Hey, I’ll help you screen these teams, I’ll help you with some due diligence. I’ll help you with some area information. I’ll line up some contractors, I’ll interview them and then I’ll pass them off to you to make the difference.”
So again, pros and cons and life lessons from everything, but they’ve all gotten great since those two, but those were very stressful times, but very meaningful in my path in general.

Brandon:
From the deals that went wrong, from anything that you’ve done that’s ever gone wrong, especially with multifamily or where you didn’t make the profit you thought you were going to, what were the mistakes or what were the lessons that you learned that could help people listening to the show right now going, “Oh, I’m not going to make that same mistake”?

Nick:
Definitely one of them is just, don’t don’t trust anybody, trust, but verify everything that you get because I definitely would’ve done more homework, but I’ve always been a little bit naive on that level, I think, of just trusting people and thinking that they’re going to be honest and they’re telling me the best of what they did. But I would definitely look into whoever you’re going to get partnered with, making sure that you have a good track record of what they’ve actually done and how they’ve handled things when they went wrong as well as right. Because if they’re going to tell you things have only been great, that’s maybe not somebody that I really want to do things with.
Over communication is another thing. I have something called the rule of 72 hours that I use that no matter which team member it is, I never want to go more than 72 hours without communicating with that person. And I think that that was a big thing that I was getting told when those buildings were getting fixed, “Oh man, we’re in there this week, we’re getting this done, we’re getting that done. We’re renting out this place. we’re fixing this unit up.” And not really getting solid pictures and videos and communication every few days to make sure that those things are really happening. If you do those things, and again, I think part of it for me was just lack of emotional maturity at the time that I was having a hard time with it anyway and I just didn’t want more bad news.
So you tend to blind that out and go, “I don’t really want to ask what’s going on because maybe I don’t really want to know.” And I think getting past that and understanding that like you do want to know, you do want those problems because that’s what real estate is. And when you learn to just take them head on and address them and fix them, that’s where there’s a lot of money to be made. And they’re going to pop up, it’s just a matter of how are you going to handle that? So I would say, teach anybody listening to get a solid lot of communication and make how you like to communicate. So if you’re a phone call person, make sure you’re working with people that are okay getting on the phone. If you don’t like to get on the phone, you only like to text message, make sure you’re getting teams in place to help you.
There’s that other thing too, that somebody there might be trying to do a good job on the house, but they’re not relaying what’s going on or the things that they need from me because we’re not communicating under the same mediums that they want. So constant communication with proof, not just telling me things are done, but if you did those three units, again, every day, I want pictures, I want videos. I want data showing at the end of the week, which units got rented, which didn’t? Why didn’t they get rented? Why didn’t they get fixed up? And having conversations to figure out, is it something I’m doing wrong? Is it something they’re doing wrong? Or is it something with the property we’re doing wrong?
And really just having solid, open communication on how to solve those problems. And I would say definitely, another thing is, the biggest lessons I got from all of this is, and I think I’ve heard you guys say this a bunch of times, but be slow to hire and be quick to fire. Not firing people quick enough, not getting problem tenants out of there quick enough, not getting bad, crooked property managers out of there quick enough, leaving maintenance guys on who are not getting the job done and you find that they’re like doing drugs or sleeping in the units, and just, “Hey, you know what, I’m afraid if I fire them, things might get worse, or what if I get… ” That has to just go. And I think learning to identify these key things right off the bat of, “It’s been two weeks now, this person’s not working out. I’m not going to wait until this becomes something detrimental and terrible and this person like has now given my phone number out to all the crazy tenants in the building,” which happened, I’m going to fire them and move on and get somebody in there.
Any time I’ve done that and I’ve gotten the toxicity or the poison or the problems out fast, it has drastically changed the way I handle the deal from there on out and it’s turned to a positive experience.

Brandon:
This is so convicting to me. I bought this property a few years ago in Cincinnati. And the deal was a good deal. I still think it was a good deal, but I hired one property manager, then another one, and I did exactly what you said. I didn’t want to talk to them. I talked to them like once a month, and I didn’t want to deal with it. I had a lot of stuff going on out here in Hawaii, I was moving to Hawaii and all that stuff. And so I kind of just let it go. And I just hoped that it was going well. And that never is a good strategy. Today I say oftentimes like, “We will move at the speed at which we meet,” Open Door Capital, I say that a lot. I don’t like meetings, but the more we meet and have a good meeting, the more we move forward, the more we do things.
And so then, I just never met with the people. So a month would go by, finally, I would talk to them and I didn’t want to talk to them, but I finally get on the phone with the property manager and they hadn’t done anything in a month. Nothing changed. They said that we’re going to get a unit turned over, they didn’t. But if we were talking to every 72 hours or even everyday, like you were saying, call them at 9:00 AM, “What are you going to get done today?” I think I would have gotten a lot more done then. So I buried my head in the sand at that point. I ended up selling that property to another BiggerPockets member, actually, the agent who brought the deal to me. He’s like doubled the value of that property in past like two years, hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity. He’ll become a millionaire off that one deal. And I’m like, “Good for him because he could handle it.”
But when I was trying to do, especially long distance, it didn’t work because I wasn’t there and I didn’t have the skillset at the time to be able to take down a long distance. I didn’t want to do it. Yeah. All that stuff, super, super important stuff. Because I think we can learn almost more from the deals that go wrong and than do deals that do right. So hearing from other people’s mistakes, yeah, solid, solid stuff. All right. I want to move toward, you mentioned wholesaling the bigger deals, the larger… First of all, can you explain, for those who’ve never heard that even the term wholesaling, what is that? And then how does that apply to these larger deals? What kind of profits are possible? How do you make that happen?

Nick:
The wholesaling in general is you’re getting a deal, a good deal under contract, and instead of you actually closing on it, your leaving some meat on the bone, whether it’s equity or cash flow or upside value potential, and you’re selling it off to another investor who basically wants to put the time and the work in, like you were saying to that other guy that you picked it up, you sold it to them, you made a little bit, they made a lot. So that’s the premise of wholesale is buy low, sell low and leave it for somebody else that can make the bulk of the profit on at the end.
What I’m doing in multifamily and mobile home parks is the same principle, it’s just that the numbers are so much bigger because the end-user has hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit versus like an on a flip, maybe it’s 30, 40,000. The difference there were just much bigger and beefier. And again, it happened by accident. I put a couple of these properties up for sale, and then I started just paying for some extra advertising, boosting posts, putting stuff on LoopNet, and then you start to get these prospect lists of hundreds and hundreds of people who call you that are interested in them.
And again, a lot of them are not serious are the jokers, or it’s never going to be the right deal, they want unrealistic returns, but you do wind up with five or 10 of them. And I remember that just being like, “Man, five or 10 people that want exactly this type of deal or have now told me the type of deal that they want. And I know that they’re serious just based on the way the offer was structured or how they communicate with me.” You start, like you said, rock stars, no rockstar. So you start to be able to tell quickly like, “This person knows what they’re doing. This person’s serious. If I can get them what they’re looking for, they’re going to perform, they’re going to close on it.”
For instance, the Arkansas idea we’re doing now, it’s a smaller one because there’s people that are like, “Hey, I want to get into multi-family, but I only have single family money.” So we have it under contract for 250 from the seller, and I have it just to close actually this Friday to another buyer for 325. I’m sorry, 275 and 325. So there’s a $50,000 net on there. And it’s the same type of thing where people go, “Well, I’m scared, but why would you buy those single family home when look what you can do on the multifamily? And here’s the things I can do for you. I can help line up the title company. I’ll get you three contractors, three maintenance guys, three property managers. I’ll give you my opinion of them. And then you can pick the one you want.”
So just making that a little bit less scary has made people want to gravitate towards coming to me and saying like, “Hey, can you find me a deal?” So on the wholesale side, I just find out, what do they want? What’s a realistic cap rate that they want? What’s a realistic average per door that they want on the cash flow? What are they looking to refinance out? Or what do they want to make when they sell it? And then I look at it and say, is this something I can actually get them? Because if somebody is like, “Man, I want something in an A-class area. I want a 15 cap when I buy it and I want an upstate,” it’s never going to happen, but when you get somebody that’s going, “Hey, you know what, that deal that you had, if I can get something to look just like that, I’m good.”
And then you can go out and you can negotiate that. So that last one that we’re just closing on Friday, it was like a $50,000 net. And then there’s another one closing in a week or two, it’s a mobile home park in Florida, it’s about 18 units. And I knew that the guy was basically looking for something that was going to stabilize around the nine cap. I knew he had a few hundred grands to put into it, and I know he wanted something that had a little bit of value potential, and it had some cash flow in place. So he wasn’t doing like a heavy value add that when he bought it, he was going to be negative for four or five or six months.
So this one hit all those marks. And based on that, I set them up on, I asked them very upfront like, “Hey, well, how much cash do you have because you might be looking at a mobile home park or a multifamily that’s two or 300 grand and you don’t realize that we can set you up with a lender with your situation. You can put 25% down and now we can get you into a million dollar building that’s going to make you a lot more money.” And that’s what we did is we just reverse engineered it for, “Okay, I know what I can get you approved for. Let me go out and find that.” And at 800,000, this deal made sense for that, for what I had it for.
And I could market to him, literally I just run all the finances and say, “Hey, at 900,000, this deal gives you everything you want.” So I had it under contract with the seller for 800, I’m selling it to him for 900. I’ll make $100,000 fee on that, and he’s getting a great deal on all the numbers that he wanted to check him out. So it works for everybody that I made some money, he’s going to make more money. And the seller who sold it to me, I don’t know what they’re making, but it doesn’t matter to me, everybody’s happy in the deal,

Brandon:
A couple of things I want to point out here. First of all, when we think wholesaler, David, when you think of a reputation of most wholesalers, it’s not great. What comes to mind when we think most wholesalers that are out there?

David:
They’re like-

Brandon:
Yeah. They just want the sale, they want to make some money, they want to get on with it. I think the same thing. And most of them, they don’t know what they’re doing. They offer you no help, their numbers are all over the place, they’re irresponsible. That’s their reputation that a lot of wholesalers have. So the opposite, Nick, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “Let me walk you through this. Let me find out your real pain point. Let me find out your real problem. Let’s explore different possibilities. Let me get you set up with the property managers. Let me get you set up with some contractor interviews. Let me hold your hand and help you through the entire process.”
I just want people to take note of that, the different approaches. I don’t think anybody’s going to look at Nick and say, “Oh yeah, that guy just wanted to make a quick buck and he is out of here” You made a reputation for yourself as somebody who’s going to walk… maybe on a $10,000 house in Detroit, maybe you can get by with just being a jerk wholesaler and just trying to take some money, but if you want to make a lasting career or good money or get into the larger wholesale fees and larger wholesale deals, I think that copying Nick’s model is a really smart move. Nick, what do you say though to when you’re wholesaling larger deals, first of all, I want to know what you’re seeing…
Actually, let’s start with this one, how are you finding them? And I want to go into how you’re talking with the seller. Do they know you’re wholesaling? How’s that? But first, let’s go, how are you finding these commercial properties to wholesale?

Nick:
It’s been really interesting because on the residential side, I’ve gone deep into SMS and texts and cold calls and RVMs and hitting the list and all that stuff, but on the commercial side, it’s been strictly relationship based. So I’m in different masterminds with people and again, just from years of traveling and just telling people, “Hey, send me whatever you got.” And then social media, same thing, the deals has just come to me. So you sell a deal for somebody and I’ll post that. So this new mobile home park that came through, when I sold another mobile home park in South Carolina, I forget what we made on that one, I think it was maybe another 50,000 or something like that, but we sold it and I’d made a couple of posts in some groups like, “Hey guys, here’s a deal we just did. Here’s the money we made on it X, Y, and Z.”
And then there’s always people that either say, “Hey, I’m looking for deals like that too. Can you find them?” But then there’s also a bunch of people that go, “Hey, I have deals that too, can you help me find a buyer for it like you did for yours?” And then we’ll JV on it. And that that’s really what started happening is people went, “Oh, you wholesale some multifamily. Do you think you can wholesale mine?” And I’d be, “Yeah, send it to me. If it hits whatever from my buyer’s criteria, I’m happy to give you whatever you want for it or split the fee, whatever I make for it.” And it’s really happened organically that the people that see that you performed will then give you a shot to perform with their deals.
And that that’s really what’s happened, then it’s just a matter of scrubbing through because like you said, there’s a lot of wholesalers out there that I’ll have conversations and I’m going, “Hey, you’re going to talk to me because I need to make sure that this is a deal that I would do before I go give it to somebody else.” And people, “Oh no, no, no, trust me, trust me, this is the deal.” And I go, “Well, but where’s the information? Where is the columns? Where’s the reports?” They will say, “No, this is just what I do. You’re just going to… ” And they start to strong-arm on you and those deals never check out. So like you said, there’s a lot of them that we did have to back out because I have to go through a lot of them because people are just not honest with the numbers.
They don’t really know how to run the numbers. They’re saying it’s a certain return and it’s not. But then when you scrub through and you get something that’s close, I usually just go back and have a real conversation of, “Hey man, what am I missing here? I know you sent me this deal, for my guy to want it or for it to make sense for me, I would need it at this price, unless you can give me some reason that there’s something I missed.” And again, it just goes back to the communication, maybe it is something I missed and it’s a better deal than I thought it was, or maybe they’ll now take into consideration what I said and we can figure it out. And then it’ll just be situational for, is this one still worth doing? Or do we want to find something else?
And generally, the people that I’m getting these deals from have other deals. So like my buddy that I got the one of the mobile home parks from, he owns six or seven or eight of them in the same area. And this is really all he does is gets really, really good deals on, however he gets them and then he stabilizes them. And I have a bunch of people that are looking for ones that are half rehabbed to rehabbed. And so he’s like, “Hey man, you moved two of them for me in the last month, here’s the other ones that are coming up. See if you can get them going before they’re done.” And so he gives me first shot at it. And though you don’t need a lot of those when you’re making six figure paydays on them.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s awesome, man. Let’s talk a typical wholesale deal like a commercial property like the one you said you made you made $100,000 on, I don’t know if you did or you’re expected to, but what does that typically take in terms of time? How many weeks, how many months, how many days, is it years that goes into this a single deal? What’s the timeframe look like to make that?

Nick:
I’ll say years is probably accurate in the fact that the things that I’ve been able to do now quicker have taken me years to learn the things that are important and the things that are not. But initially, it’s going to take probably a day or two for me to get all the information, run all the information through my calculators, figure out if it’s a deal that makes sense, do some area of research, runs in different scenarios. And then what I’ll do is I’ll actually put a whole investor packet together and then I’ll make a video and a Dropbox file with all the financials that I had and I’ll talk them through like, “Here’s the deal. Here’s why I think it’s a deal. Here’s what all these numbers mean. Here’s the things that I think are a risk to you. Here’s the things I think are a benefit to you. Here’s what I would do. And here’s what I would need from you if you want to move forward with this.”
And then I basically set all that up and then I start to send it out to those people. And I have usually one or two people in mind that that deals for, but I’m still going to go and kick it out to everybody to keep again, growing that list and seeing who’s going to come in with things. So that part I would say, usually a day or two is really all it takes to get that done. And then it’s just a matter of really fielding questions. So I have a great assistant and what she’ll do is she’ll start to field all the calls that come in because there’s going to be people that just aren’t serious, want ridiculous things, they want to Daisy Chain it, and she’ll start to throw me the questions that come back.
And based on those questions, I’ll start going back to the seller. So it’s an hour here, an hour there, but it becomes something you just do throughout your day, that she’ll call me up and just say, “Hey, this person is worried, is this in a flood plain? Or this person wants to see a T24 or whatever.” And then you have a little bit of back and forth. You call the seller, “Hey, I have somebody interested. I think I missed this when you sent it over or this looks like it’s a question that came up I didn’t know the answer to.” And then what I start to do is I keep a Word Doc in that Dropbox file or a frequently asked questions, and anytime something comes up from investors that they want to know that I don’t have the answers to, I populate that list.
So if it’s somebody that hits me up today and they go, “Hey, I’m interested.” They have all the things everybody else had, but they also have a whole flyer there with like 20, 30 really good questions that I didn’t think to ask that will now go into every other deal after that of, “Here’s things you might be thinking about or wondering about.” So I try and give as much upfront so the people that are serious can say, “I am serious if this checks out, let’s lock in an ROI and do some due diligence and then you can help me from there.” And then again, it just becomes once they say yes, it’ll probably take me another day or two to start to figure out, “Okay, what are we going to do here? What do you need? Are you going to require a walkthrough or are you going to go down yourself?”
Because now I have to find how to work with the seller and explain the situation who am I? What’s my role? How are we going to access this property? Does the seller that you’re getting it from not want the people to know? You know what I mean? So it’s a lot of just communicating and figuring out ways to get through the hoops, but I will say there’s always weird stuff on commercial that somebody else you find out is involved, that’s actually the owner, or actually has it under contract, or the units really aren’t rented. So working through those problems and figuring out how to just get those answers for the person that’s buying them, but not involve them in all the back and forth that I’m doing to get them is really the key.
So it might take me two days to find three good property managers, or find a way that we can get creative and get access or put the loans together or whatever it is, but they’re only going to get, “Hey, this is done. Monday, two o’clock, your guy can be there. Let me know if you need me to Zoom and record it back.” So it’s hard to gauge, the process overall will be like 60 to 90 days, but it’s usually a few days heavy upfront lifting, and then just an hour a day throughout the process for the rest of the time, then there’s days that there’s nothing. But as the deal comes along and it gets closer and closer to the finish line, it’s little things that the lender might need, little things that the buyer might need, little things that the title company might need, but it doesn’t become too time-consuming at that point.

Brandon:
Well, I want to make this point here and I hope people are picking this up what you’re dropping here is wholesaling is not a passive activity. It’s not like, “Oh yeah, I just found a buyer, found the seller, bada-bing, bada-boom, I’m done.” Especially the larger deals. We found that in getting into mobile home parks and self-stores that we were getting into and apartments that were doing, there’s so much more with due diligence than there ever was with the single family. We did a wholesale deal, I think we made 150,000, maybe 100,000, something like that on a wholesale deal last year. It was a mobile home park that we put under contract with the intention to buy it, found that some things that didn’t fit our model perfectly.
And so we were like, “Well, we could let them go and just back out.” But we were like, “What if we tried to wholesale it?” So we did. We found another buyer, we talked to a bunch of people. We ended up helping them through the whole due diligence process. At the end of the day, I think when we calculated is we made about $9 an hour. The amount of work that we put into this deal, it was terrible. Just hundreds of hours went into all these little things over the course of about three months. And so I don’t want to say that to scare anybody, but I want people to have a realistic expectation. If you want to do this, you’re getting paid because of the value that you bring. That’s just how economies work.
So you’re getting paid because you’re dealing with all of that crap. Now, the seller’s going to deal with their crap, the buyer’s going to deal with yours, but you get to be therapist in the middle sometimes. And that’s a lot of fun too. I think it’s just a good reminder, just that it is not overnight success, it’s not you’re just going to start making six figure profits in 90 days starting tomorrow, but the light at end of the tunnel is that it does work, you can find good deals now. How do you talk with sellers? Do they know that you’re a wholesaler, that you’re going to help bring them a buyer? Why are they just not listing it with a commercial broker? Why would they talk to you? And then, what’s that process look like?

Nick:
Most of the ones that we’ve been doing have been coming from other guys that are either picking them up in mid rehabbing them or they’re under contract with them. So they’re dealing directly with the seller and I’m usually dealing with my point of contact that brought me the deal. So I don’t have to deal with them directly a lot of the times, which is nice, they’re handling a lot of that. But one thing I actually thought was amazing from you guys last week is it clicked, is I don’t work for any of them, I work for the deal. I thought that was such a genius thing that you guys dropped in that.
And that’s really the way I look at it is, if I’m dealing with somebody that’s come through one of my masterminds or a business guy like my friend who’s doing the mobile home park, the guy understands real estate, he understands people, he’s been in the business a long time, he can handle the seller, but if I’m not getting anywhere, which happens sometimes, the person who’s involved in the deal, they might’ve just stumbled upon it, they had a friend or a family member, somebody kicked it to them they don’t really know what to do with it, I’ll ask them to step aside and then I’ll handle it just to keep the communication with less people than between the game of telephone.
But generally, on a lot of the ones I’ve done recently, I haven’t had to talk to the seller or if I do, I just say I’m a partner on the deal, which is true. There was an older couple that we just dealt with with the mobile home park we sold in South Carolina, and they were just old school, everything we have to drive there, we don’t do anything virtually. We want to show this stuff, we’ve been managing the park forever. They didn’t do really well with email. So it was just keeping them in the loop and letting them know, they’re afraid you’re calling them out of nowhere, they don’t even know where you got the number, but just being patient with them and letting them know, “Hey, I got a partner who’s going to take this down, a loan is going to be in his name.”
“He’s going to be the person you’re dealing with after this is all done. My role here is just getting this going and getting it to closing. And then that’s going to be the person that’s really taking it over.” And they don’t really ask so many questions at that point. They will usually go with it as long as you’re moving forward, you’re making things happen. I have found that they care less about what your role is and they care more about the fact that things look they’re moving and they’re going to get paid soon.

Brandon:
This has been fascinating and it’s really good. We’re not done quite yet, but I just want to say the whole idea of how you’ve transitioned, as the market’s changed, as strategy’s changed, you just keep navigating this crazy real estate world going from everything from the flipping, the wholesaling, the rentals, the long distance stuff, now, the commercial stuff, buying your own apartments, wholesaling them. It’s cool to see the whole picture of a real estate investor’s career. It’s not just a deal by deal thing, it’s you are a real estate investor in a big sense. So very cool, man. Actually, before I get to the deal, deep dive, we have one question for you, as a black belt ju-jitsu person, how has that impacted…
I know you mentioned that kind of a connection earlier, but maybe there’s no more than that, but is there any other ways that you can say that ju-jitsu has impacted your real estate?

Nick:
Oh yeah. I think it’s definitely countless ways. I think ju-jitsu is probably aside from my accident been the most defining thing in my life from the people I’ve met to the values it’s taught, just about hard work and dedication, but I think the principle that I got from ju-jitsu and real estate is when things are tough, finding a way to stay calm, analyze the situation and figure a way out or exhaust all options until there literally is no way like if I’m going to tap out, it’s going to be right before I’m about to go unconscious, I think that mentality and tenacity has helped me huge in business because again, every single day, at some point in the day, I am being put in bad positions in business, this one wants to back out of the deal, this one doesn’t want to do the loan anymore, this one’s mad at this one.
And it’s a matter of “Okay.” My initial reaction is like, “Okay, I’m mad at this person, I just spent 30, 60 days in this deal, I want to fire off.” And it’s like, “No, no, you’re going to waste your energy, stay calm, see what they’re going to do. You work around that. You wait for them to give you openings. And you’re going to find that little in and you’re going to get in and you’re going to get back on top and you’re going to win. It’s how bad do you want it?” And I think that has just taught me countless lessons in business for most of the maturity and just finding a way out and looking for solutions instead of just taking the easy way out.
And on top of that, I think just being around so many professionals, we mentioned Chris Weidman, and seeing guys that are just champions that you train next to every day and seeing that there’s really no substitution for just time and hard work. And if you put it in, you’ll get results. And I think that that has taught me a lot from the people around me that have encouraged me to keep going. And you see other people’s successes and you see people that are getting their black belts and they’re winning fights and they’re winning championships, not because they were born a rich or had some crazy circumstance, they got there by just not listening to people that said they can’t do it, or it was too hard or it wasn’t for them, going after it, working hard for it every single day, showing up, putting the time in, and then just winning those small battles every day, got you to win those big wins.
And I think that’s really what it’s taught me, is all these things I get to talk about, this land development deal and all those things, that didn’t happen by one big decision, that happened by multiple decisions every single day, every single hour for years and years and years and years and years, and that’s what gets you on top. And I think that that’s a huge lesson that I’ve been taught through ju-jitsu.

David:
Brandon, let me ask you, has your perspective on business changed since you started training?

Brandon:
I don’t know if I’d say perspective changed, but there’s similar to what Nick said, there’s these little lessons that I’m like, “Oh, I totally see how this applies to real estate.” I’ll give you one example. One thing Jerry says, Jerry’s our ju-jitsu instructor, he always says, get comfortable with being uncomfortable or get uncomfortable being in really awkward, terrible pain-filled positions because if you start to panic, that’s when you start to breathe heavier and everything. He always says he starts by putting himself, whenever he does a roll, he’ll start in the worst position possible. What does he really like not to be?
He doesn’t to be on his back. Okay, that’s where he’s going to start, because he wants to be comfortable, low pulse, breathing normal in that horrible position, because that’s when your brain can actually come up with good decisions. And so I applied that to my real estate in terms of things do go bad sometimes, there are deals that fall apart or whatever. So it’s just a reminder, don’t freak out, get comfortable in these situations because this is where the money’s made just like in ju-jitsu. So that’s probably the biggest lesson. What about you, David?

David:
I don’t think I’ve done it long enough to be frank.

Brandon:
That’s all right.

David:
One thing I’ll say that I’ve learned, I’m getting to the point where I know what I don’t know, which is good. I’m recognizing if I had any idea what to do here, this would be different. And something that clicked last night was that it’s really a bunch of little tiny pieces, and you learn a little piece at a time like puzzle pieces. And at a certain point, I’m sure it’s all going to click and you’re going to actually have a puzzle. And business has been like that too, I would say. Real estate investing is very difficult if you do a three out of the five things right, you make zero money. You have to get all five in order to make this work.
And so when you’re training in something new like ju-jitsu, you might do three things right, and then the fourth thing you don’t, and that’s all it took, and now someone takes your back and your result is you got choked out. And so you don’t feel a progress happening, but it is happening if you’re learning these things. And then when it does click, all of a sudden, boom, you’re making 100 grand on a wholesale deal and you’re this overnight success. So that’s something that strengthened my understanding of that, is it’s okay to just drill and drill, and drill, and drill and have faith that this is going to make you better, and then when it all clicks, it’ll be fun.
It’s not it’s going to be this linear path where, “Oh, I did this and now I’m going to have fun tomorrow.” No, you’re still going to get strangled, it’s going to be horrible. That real estate feels like that all the time too, but that’s why you got to keep going.

Brandon:
Yeah. And like you said there, David, you don’t necessarily always feel you’re making progress, but you are making progress just like in real estate. But it doesn’t work, you can’t just show up and do a martial art or do anything for a day and then not show up again for a month and then try and do it again, and then a month later, you come back. And that’s what so many people when they get into business or real estate investing, they do is they get excited, they go analyze a couple of deals and then they’re done. And then they come back a couple weeks later because inspiration strikes again and they do it again. And then they wait for inspiration to strike again.
And it reminds you of what Steven Pressfield said when we interviewed him, he said that quote about, “I only write when inspiration strikes. It’s a good thing inspiration strikes every morning at 9:00 AM on my desk.” It’s otherwise like you show up regardless and do the work, do the drills over and over, and over, and over, and over. And in real estate that might mean you might have to analyze 50, 100, 200 deals before you make your first offer. And that might sound overwhelming, but do a couple every day for a month or two when you’re there, and then you may need to go to a lot of open houses. You may need to go check out a lot of properties, talk to 50 agents, talk to 20 property managers.
Those are the drills of a real estate investor, like a black belt real estate investor. And the more you drill, the more you practice, the more you try, the more offers you make, the more you’re going to learn, the more you get tapped out, but then eventually, you start tapping other people out and you start the win. So yeah, ju-jitsu has a lot of a lot of connections to the business world. It’s cool stuff. All right, guys. Well, let’s shift gears here and head over to the World Famous Deal Dive.
Hi, Nick. We’re going to throw the Deal Deep Dive, actually this is a part of the show we dive incredibly deep. No, not that deep, into one of your deals. So tell us what you were having now. We want to dive into the actual specifics, the math behind one of your properties. So is there a deal that we can pick apart here? You got something in mind?

Nick:
Absolutely. There’s a deal we just did all it did, just closed on it last week.

Brandon:
All right. Perfect. So we’re going to ask you a series of questions, kind of a quick question-answer section here. First one, what type of deal is it and what kind of property is it? And where’s it located?

Nick:
Single family home in the Chicago suburbs.

David:
How did you find this deal?

Nick:
This was an inbound lead from Facebook marketing.

Brandon:
Facebook marketing. What does that mean? Facebook ads you’re talking about, or are you doing other Facebook stuff?

Nick:
Yeah. Facebook ads. Facebook ads.

Brandon:
Okay. Very cool. How much was the property, what did you buy it for?

Nick:
I bought it for 260.

Brandon:
260K. All right.

David:
And how did you negotiate that price?

Nick:
They called us first. It was probably back and forth for a few weeks of him just saying, “Hey, I owe over 280 on this, I can’t take less than 300.” And then us going back and saying “Well, we’re sorry, there’s no way we can do that.” And then a month later, they call back and say, “How about now?” And they’d come down a little bit and a little bit. And eventually I was like, “Hey man, there’s just no way I can do this for less than 255. And that it’s probably going to be less than that when I actually dig in deeper to this deal.” And he said, “Well, I think we’re done talking here. Thanks for wasting my time.” And he got really mad, hang up the phone.
And then called me back an hour later and was like 260. And I was like, “Let’s do 260, and if something surfaces just be prepared that I might have to come down again.” And they were like, “Okay, great.” And also he told me no deal, no way, no how. And then within a few more phone calls, all the sudden we were right back to what I wanted anyway so it was interesting.

Brandon:
Why did they sell to you and not they just listed on the MLS at a market like this?

Nick:
I ask myself that all the time and I think it’s so crazy, you can get so in your head about why me? Why didn’t they just do these things? But as they play it back, whatever it was about the Facebook ad, they seem to gravitate towards me for some reason. And then I think just having the conversations, when we first started talking, we were just having a nice conversation. Maybe he appreciated that. And then at the end of the day, their biggest thing was that they had moved. And I think somebody else might’ve bailed on their deal and left them hanging, and now they were paying double mortgages and they had this huge, massive house.
And then after COVID and everything happened, now they have to figure out not only how to pay both mortgages, but now how to clean out the house, because it was, I don’t want to say a hoarder house, but it was pretty close to that. There was just stuff everywhere. And it was a like 3,000 square foot home with a full basement, and there was stuff all over this massive property it was on. So I was like, “You know what? I’ll take it like that and I’ll just move all this stuff out that you don’t want. I’ll get it thrown out, I’ll get it cleaned out.” And to them, that was the deal clincher for them.
She was like, “Man, you have no idea how much stress that takes off my shoulders the fact that you’re willing to do that.” So they literally went in and they did a clean scrub of all the family stuff that they wanted to keep. And anything that was left, that was like, “Just give me the thumbs up when your stuff’s out, I’ll clean everything else out. You never have to worry about it again. You never have to show up at the house again, I’ll take care of everything.” And she was like, “I owe you one. Thank you.”

Brandon:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome, man. Well, how’d you fund the property?

Nick:
I’ll use private funds, so 100% private funded. Again, you have just people that are constantly saying “Hey, let me know when you have an opportunity.” And then when you do, then you make the money and you pay them back. There almost as always somebody else that was watching, and now you have two people that go, “Hey, I saw you pay Brandon back. I was waiting to see if he was going to get screwed over or not. He made money, I’d like to lend on the next one.” So I just reached out to a few people, like anything you can get discouraged. I had a few people that say they were in and then switched the terms last minute, and then they were out.
And then a couple people who said they had the money and then last minute they were like, “I didn’t get paid back from the deal I thought I was going to close.” And then I got somebody that was like, “Send me the wiring instructions.” So I had at a 10 people, I only needed one. So we got that funded with private funds and went pretty well. And they’re looking to do more now.

David:
All right. What’d you do with this property?

Nick:
Initially, I was like, “I’m going to wholesale this to an investor who wants to fix and flip it.” And again, it’s just so funny the way you look at the market and just try and find out what’s happening because right now, there’s just no inventory. So I was like, “All right, well, investors were telling me when I was floating out the numbers during the negotiation, there’s not enough spread, there’s not enough spread. I can’t buy it, I can’t buy it.” And I’m going, “It looks it’s a pretty good deal to me, but you know what, maybe if we just clean it out and throw it on the MLS and see what we can get for it, I’ll take whatever. I have it at 260, if I can get 280 for it, I’m happy.”
I only figured I was going to make 15, 20 grand on it. And all of a sudden, a comp popped up and my partner’s talking to me and she’s like, “I don’t understand why you keep saying this 280 number.” She’s like, “Look at this comp.” And there was literally six houses down, smaller, crappier, worse location, smaller lot, no pool, 383, 90, something that, and it just sold. So I was like, “Huh.” And it’s not fixed up, I was like, “Well, do you think we can get that?” So I started calling a bunch of realtors in the area and I was like, “I have this deal. What would you list it at? If we were just going to throw an open house this weekend, all I’m going to do is clean it out, it’s not going to be fixed up at all.” And they were like, “Oh, you can easily get 360, 370, 380.”
And I was like, “Throw it on the market for 370 and let’s just see… I’ll be happy if somebody comes in now at 300.” And sure enough, by 9:00 AM Monday, we had an offer at 380, 9:30, we had an offer at 390 with escalation calls up to 410. And closing in two and a half weeks, I was like, “That worked out really well.” So I went in, we cleaned it out, we cleaned it up, probably cost five grand between the dumpsters and the cleanup crew. So we’re rolling through 265 and sold it for 390 in three weeks.

David:
I will say, I think in today’s market where we are right now in 2021, people should expect to see this a lot more often. I think the amount of stimulus has been printed and the lack of supply if you think about the fact houses have not been built for a really long time, that you’re going to see really big jumps in comparable sales. One sale could happen that could increase the comp of your house by 100 grand, relatively easily in today’s market. And so I just want to bring that up that for a long time, home prices were just very scattered steadily. That’s how it usually works, they just creep, creep creep, and then they crash.
Well, we’re seeing geometric progression as far as home prices. So now we know also why the seller was a little irritated like, “Thanks for wasting my time.” Because his house, it’s worth 360, but this is a great thing to highlight for anyone else who’s got a deal that they’re looking at, or they don’t want to pay over asking price so they have a chance to land something, take that last minute to go look up last comps or talk to a realtor, just say, “Hey, what are you seeing in the market?” Because I think this is going to happen much more often than it used to.

Nick:
I hope so.

Brandon:
What was the final outcome then? What was the final profit at the end of the day?

Nick:
There’s some realtor commissions on there that I think came out to, I think I paid the guy eight grand realtor commissions, about $5,000 to fix it up. I paid the private lenders 1%, because it was only for a month. So it was a gross at 130, but we probably came right around 100.

Brandon:
That’s awesome. Six figure… It sound like a wholetail in a way.

Nick:
Exactly. It was a wholetail. And completely restructured my business model because I was like, man, I don’t want to have to babysit contractors for really 30, 60, 90 days on every rehab when I can literally get it, just show ready and sell it to somebody who’s just looking for a home and they’ll make their husband or wife fix it up on the weekends.

David:
Okay. Other than I don’t have to do the rehab, did you learn any other lessons on the deal?

Nick:
Yeah. It was the first time… That was the biggest one to me. It was just looking through and realizing that there is a whole other buyers pool, so just because it doesn’t work for an investor who might be taking it as a cash flow property or a fix and flip, it doesn’t mean that it’s not a deal because you can still get it market ready for a primary homeowner. So that was a big thing that I look at all my deals now when I’m running the numbers, I go, “Okay. Does this work as a deal I can wholesale to an investor? Does this look like, deal I can wholesale to a flipper? Or does this look like something I can just clean up and wholesale and throw it on the MLS?”
And I try and weigh out all those options to see what’s going to make me the most amount of money and the least amount of time. But it also taught me that you overthink things, how many people I call or I have my team call every day that’s gotten 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 other calls from people and your immediate thought is, I’ll never get a deal because there’s 40, 50 other people that this person’s calling? Same thing happened to this guy, but for whatever reason, it was just my day, and he said yes to me that day. And I think that’s what the game is everybody’s going to have a lot of nos, but you’re going to have those days that for whatever reason they aren’t going to say yes to you, and it’s just a matter of staying persistent and staying in the game until you get that, and just plowing through the nose, makes it worth it.

Brandon:
Well, let’s move on toward the end of the show. Before we get to the Famous Four though, I’m wondering what’s next for you? Where do you see your real estate headed and what are you looking for? What can our audience bring you?

Nick:
We’re about to sell off this land development out here that we have a cell tower on, which is pretty cool, but as for your audience, if you guys are looking for a multifamily, whether it’s small multi-family, large multifamily, or mobile home parks, and you’re looking for somebody to help you just make that process a little less scary, feel a little bit more efficient and have an honest set of eyes to help you analyze it and put those teams together and figure out if it’s a good fit, and if it’s not, find you something that is, that’s definitely the best value that I provide right now is just helping people get into multi-family mobile home parks.

Brandon:
Very cool. With that said, let’s get to the end of the show. This is our last segment it’s called our-

Voiceover:
Famous Four.

Brandon:
This is the part of the show we ask the same four questions to every guest every week. I’m going to throw them at you. Number one, do you have a current favorite real estate related book or all-time favorite real estate related book?

Nick:
It’s not 100 % real estate related, it’s the Urijah Faber, book. I think it’s called The Laws of the Ring or Laws of the Cage. But it taught me a business lesson, and he is real estate investors. So I’m going to try and say that it counts, but one of the things he said and it that’s helped me huge in my real estate business was that they asked him to go and do a speech when his dad was getting his 19 years sober pin. And they said, “Hey, can you please come and talk about the times when your dad was drinking and all of these bad things were happening?” And he goes, “No, I can’t. But if you want me to show up and talk about all the good times when he wasn’t, I’m happy to do that.”
And that mentality, just to switch of, I have a choice to focus on the good or the bad, and that’s what I’m going to highlight and focus on, helped me in business because again, you start to go, “I can spend my whole day saying all day long, I had these bad things go wrong with my deals.” Or I could say, “At the end of the day, I had some good things happen.” And it’s just keeping your mind right for business to keep you going for the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, to get that deal past the finish line, that book taught me to embrace that and focus on the positive.

David:
What about a favorite business book?

Nick:
I would say the Gary Keller, The ONE Thing, just because focus has been a massive problem for me. And every time I start to think about going into something else, I just remember opening up to that first page where it says, “Chase two rabbits, catch none.” And I’m like, “This needs to be my lesson every single day. I need to read that page.” And that’s been really big for keeping me in track.

Brandon:
So good. So good.

David:
That’s going to be on your tombstone someday, Brandon Turner, so good. All right. What about hobbies?

Nick:
Brazilian ju-jitsu, eating pizza, and playing with my dog.

David:
Have you managed to do all three of those at the same time?

Nick:
Well, my dog will never let me, if there’s any pizza around and he’s around and he’s going to be wanting that. But no, I haven’t managed to multi task.

David:
Rolling with your dog over who gets the pizza, that’s how you’d have to put out there together.

Nick:
That’s pretty accurate. Yeah.

Brandon:
What kind of dog do you got?

Nick:
He’s a rescue dog during Hurricane Sandy, a little 30 pound, brown, mix, but he’s awesome, his name is Ralph.

Brandon:
Last question from me, what do you think sets apart successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail or never get started?

Nick:
I think it’s the same principles we talked about with ju-jitsu. I think people look at real estate or business and they go, “I want something better out of life. I want more money. I want more time.” And then they start and they go, “Oh, this is hard. This takes work. This is going to be not as easy as I thought it was going to be.” And then when they get put in those tough spots or they have those lumps that they get taken or they get put in those bad positions, they quit and they go, “You know what? I’m just going to try and find something else that’s easier. So I’m going to play the lottery.” And I think the people that can take a breath and stay calm and not keep jumping from business to business or whatever the thing they’re chasing is when things get hard, is the key to success.
It’s sticking with something when it gets hard, finding ways to find solutions in places, and then taking those solutions and those lessons you’ve learned onto the next venture and the next deal, and the next deal, and the next deal. And you build up your muscle memory, your Rolodex, but I think that’s really all it is. I think people quit when things get tough, and I think if you can learn not to and stay tenacious and persistent, you’ll find success in everything.

David:
Man, you just gave me chills. I just realized, that is the source of so much frustration in my life right now is I’ve got these goals, business goals, relationship goals, fitness goals, whatever, and I believe exactly what you said, take what you learned at this era of life, apply it into this world, you’ll be more successful like a snowball that keeps picking up steam as it goes down the hill, and then you get this more momentum. And the people that are working for me or are involved in these goals that have a different attitude, which is, “Let me just go find something easier. I don’t want to do that, where’s the next magic pill that I could go take that’s going to make this happen?” I’m constantly clashing with them.
And you saying that all of a sudden, put a light bulb off in my head, but that’s really what my problem is, is I just need to get people around me that think like you do, that are like, “We hit an obstacle, what could we do to get over this? Instead of, “Oh, there’s an obstacle, let me go look for something that doesn’t have obstacles.” And then you end up at a $9 an hour job and you’re trying to figure out a way to make a million bucks at it. It doesn’t work. All right, last question of the day. Thank you very much for this, Nick, where can people find out more about you?

Nick:
If you go to nicknicknick.com/links, my website is www.nicknicknick.com, but if you go to slash links, it has got all the ways to listen to the A Game Podcast, and to find me on all social media. And if anybody’s interested in the due diligence stuff I do to help out, I made a due diligence checklist of all the things you can do to bring more value to your buyers. If you’re selling properties, it’s the same things I do, I made a free checklist for anybody listening. If you go to nicknicknick.com/biggerpockets, it will be on there for free. So hopefully, it can help you get some more people that want to buy deals from you and you can stop giving, like you said, there’s a lot of bad wholesalers out there, so the more good ones out there, will help the business as a whole.

Brandon:
Awesome, man, I appreciate it. This has been a phenomenal show. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom, and your strategies, and your story. It’s been fun. So thank you.

Nick:
I appreciate it. I know David you said just to give Chris Weidman a shout before we tapped out.

David:
Please keep him in your prayers, everybody. Chris is going through a pretty gnarly recovery. I’m incredibly impressed with his attitude, both with how he handled it when it happened, the measure of composure Chris had, he had a very gnarly broken bone in a fight that he was just in. And then how he’s been documenting his recovery. So a lot of respect for Chris, please keep him and his family in your prayers. And thank you Nick for bringing that up.

Nick:
Thanks for having me, guys. This was awesome. I love everything you’re doing and it’s really an honor to be on.

Brandon:
Thanks, man.

David:
This is David Greene for Brandon, “Get comfortable, being uncomfortable,” Turner, signing off.

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