BiggerPockets Podcast 122 with Chris Clothier Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 122: 5 Myths Holding Investors Back From Real Estate Greatness with Chris Clothier

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets podcast, show 122.

Chris: You are exactly right. It does not take a lot of time to engage.

You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place.

Stay tuned and be sure to join the million of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

Josh: What's going on everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host of the BiggerPockets podcast. Looks like Brandon lost his best friend. Oh there he is.

Brandon: Hi.

Josh: What’s up Brandon? Welcome to the show man.

Brandon: Thanks me and Charlie just hanging out here. You know, doing our thing.

Josh: Is Charlie your imaginary friend?

Brandon: Charlie is my dog. He’s a Yorkie and he’s the cutest dog on planet Earth and he likes me to hold him during podcasts so.

Josh: Yes. That’s real interesting man.

Brandon: Sometimes I hold him like a baby, rock him back and forth. Look at this if people aren’t.

Josh: For those of you who can’t see this.

Brandon: Who can’t see.

Josh: It means you are not watching us on Youtube as well. We’re putting our podcast out on Youtube. Not immediately, but they come out a week or two or so later. You’ve got to see this. It’s embarrassing.

Brandon: It’s cute.

Josh: Not for me.

Brandon: It’s cute. No, look at this guy.

Josh: Yes, anyway. How are things Brandon?

Brandon: Things are good. Refinanced on the apartment complex.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Went through today so.

Josh: Congrats.

Brandon: Thank you. It’s a good day so yes, we’re excited. Made another offer on a property like ten minutes ago. That was great too.

Josh: Aw. Look at you.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Getting fancy, showing off again.

Brandon: Yes, there’s a Quick Tip for everyone make sure your agent can do digital offers because it’s sure is nice to not have to leave my room because it like took me a minute and a half to like click a few times.

Josh: Click sign.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Click sign. Click sign. Of course, Brandon click, click, clicks without reading his contracts.

Brandon: I read every word. I’m just a fast reader, 10,000 words a minute. Well, that’s the nice thing too though about being like my agent and I are like that. You know.

Josh: They can see you.

Brandon: Yes so he knows exactly what I want and we do the same offers every time pretty much so.

Josh: That’s great.

Brandon: There’s something about that.

Josh: Also.

Brandon: Consistency. Works well so.

Josh: Well congrats.

Brandon: Anyway.

Josh: Do read your contracts please.

Brandon: Yes, I read them, yes. It’s important.

Josh: Yes. It is. It is. Cool. Cool.

Brandon: That is not our Quick Tip today. Our Quick Tip today actually is.

Josh: What is our Quick Tip?

Brandon: Alright so our Quick Tip today, I talked about this a little bit in the show today, but so well, Quick Tip number one. I should say Pro tip number one post ads in the marketplace when you need things like private lending or if you need a deal or you need a partner. I did that actually. I needed a private lending on a deal so I posted it and I got a bunch of people to reach out to me and we talked.

You know, built relationships with a bunch of people, but in that process somebody else reached out to me who was not a very good person. They were a scammer and you know, there was some—there was some obvious signs I could tell, you know, just they way they phrased things, made me, you know, and it was like too good of an offer to be true. I talked to him on the phone anyway and they wanted a, you know, large up front fee and then I searched their IP address, where they’re from and found out they’re not from America. It was just, you know.

Josh: Nigeria.

Brandon: Yes, yes, they were a Nigerian scam and so anyway, my Quick Tip today is everyone just be safe out there. You know, if things sound too good to be true. If you know, there’s red flags, definitely research, dig in, you know, there’s nothing wrong with asking a even a private lender for references. Nothing wrong with that at all so.

Josh: Absolutely.

Brandon: Quick Tip.

Josh: Yes, I mean, yes listen. We at the end of the day do everything that we can to keep BiggerPockets safe, but at the end of the day, you know, we cannot vet all of our users. There’s no way. It’s impossible. Facebook doesn’t do it, LinkedIn doesn’t do it, you know.

Brandon: I tried to go to all their houses and knock on the door, but people come out with their shotguns and get angry and it.

Josh: There you go.

Brandon: It’s weird.

Josh: There you go so. You know, just be careful, I mean with anyone you meet, whether you meet them in person, if you meet them at a REA, or him meet him on BiggerPockets or anywhere else, you really want to be very diligent in vetting people and you know, it’s just a smart thing to do. You know, I wish we were immune to it. I mean, you know, but at the end of the day, we are not the police, we are not a court room, we’re not a court of law, we do not have the capacity to do that job for you so you really must do it yourself. Just be smart. That’s all. Ask your friends, ask other people who you know for recommendations and definitely be careful and not—you know, I’m glad Brandon did his vetting and when that this Nigerian scammer was on the site, they obviously got the boot.

Brandon: Yes, they did. Cool.

Josh: They did. They did. Anywho, moving on to today’s show.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: We are—we have a really cool show today. We’ve got a—another repeat guest. We’ve Chris Clothier.

Brandon: You know, every time we talk to Chris, whether it’s on the podcast or in person when I, you know, I saw him in person awhile back or on the phone, every time I talk to him, I walk away feeling smarter because he’s like one of those guys that just knows how to communicate things so well.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: To help you become a smarter person and I love that so that’s why we had to have him back.

Josh: Yes, yes, I mean, you know, Chris spoke at our conference a bunch of years ago. I mean, I have known him for many many years and what I like about him is amongst other things, his mission is to build a thriving business.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: His mission is not I’m going to be the best real estate investor on the planet. He’s going to build the best real estate investment business on the planet and those of you who can’t tell the distinction, you should listen to show because you know, there is something very different about hey, I’m going to buy ten rental properties or I’m going to grow a real estate investment business. It’s a mindset.

There’s a certain way that you think about a certain professionalism that you’re going to put into things when you build a business versus just hey, I’m going to haphazardly buy a bunch of properties so this show is pretty cool and part of this show, you know, primarily, the goal here is to talk about these five myths. It’s the five myths holding investors back from real estate greatness. There’s just a whole lot of great stuff in here. This show is really for anyone whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been doing this for a long time and we definitely recommend you listen up. Before we get to the show, why don’t we bring on today’s sponsor?

Brandon: Alright, this episode is brought to you by RealtyShares.com. Realty Shares is a real estate crowd funding platform that allows accredited investors to invest in pre-vetted real estate deals online so investors can browse and invest both residential and commercial properties that yield returns of 8% to 16% annually. As a realty shares member, you can also passively invest in professionally managed real estate investments in a variety of asset types and geographies for as little as $5,000. All from the convenience of your living room so to learn more and to get started a free account, visit RealtyShares.com/BiggerPockets. That’s RealtyShares.com/BiggerPockets.

Josh: Alright, big thanks to today’s sponsor. Alright guys, let’s get this show started. We’re going to bring him in. Alright, Chris welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast man, it’s good to have you here.

Chris: Thank you sir, glad to be here. Glad to be here.

Brandon: It’s been awhile, when was the last one, do you remember? It was a—I should know that.

Josh: It was earlier. It was one of the early shows.

Brandon: Something 20 something.

Chris: 26 or 27.

Josh: That was the show had like six, six , six listeners. I think.

Chris: Yes, put in the order.

Brandon: Show 26.

Chris: Of the fewest listeners and you’ll, you just go to the bottom.

Brandon: Oh yes, there it is. There it is, yes, BP podcast so go to BiggerPockets.com/Show26 if you want to hear Chris’s entire getting started story that we’re going to hear, you’re not going to hear that today. Today, we’re going to talk about some other fun stuff. Cool.

Chris: That was fun.

Josh: Exactly. Awesome.

Chris: I enjoyed that.

Brandon: Yes, that was fun. That was actually a really good show. I mean like, joking aside that was an awesome show. It was all about like building your business, not a, you know, I’m buying a house here. I’m going to buy a property there. It was about building a scalable business. It was awesome. I learned a lot.

Josh: That’s what I think—you know, Brandon and I talk a lot about you, Chris and I think, well not a lot, not like you know.

Brandon: Oh all the time.

Josh: Not like when we talk about you.

Brandon: You know what Chris is saying this case.

Josh: When we talk about you we talk about you know, like, hey this is a guy who thinks like a business person. You know, it’s not—he’s not thinking on a house by house basis. He’s thinking on an enterprise level and I think that’s why you’ve become so successful. That’s why your company’s doing so well and you know, that’s why we got you back because you know, you’re here, you’re crushing it and you know, I think you got a lot to teach people.

Chris: It’ll be fun knowing what we’re going to talk about today because some of the things that have made me kind of who I am come from you know, part of our topic, part of family. I mean I owe a lot to my dad, my older brother, and having worked with them since I was young. I mean a lot of my success is due to them so.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Oh yes.

Chris: The way I think and that kind of stuff.

Brandon: Let’s talk about that.

Josh: Awesome.

Brandon: Today, we’re going to talk about—I’ll kind of introduce the topic of today. A little bit different again because we’ve had Chris on the show before. We decided to go kind of with a more topical approach and the topic today is five real estate myths that are holding investors back from greatness. We’re going to talk about five myths—this is kind of a little bit based off of a blog post or two that you’ve written in the past. Kind of looked at those and I really really enjoyed so at that, why don’t we just you know, revamp and talk about it today and find a way to help the listeners so yes, should be fun.

Chris: Great idea. I like it yes.

Brandon: Cool. Alright why don’t we start.

Josh: You want me to take the lead on this thing, Brandon?

Brandon: Yes, why don’t we start with number one, myth number one, what is the number one myth. You know, actually, before we get to that, for those people who did not listen to the last show.

Josh: Yes, let’s do like a brief catch up really quick.

Brandon: Yes, give us, yes.

Josh: Two minute.

Brandon: Who are you? What do you do? What’s your story?

Chris: Yes, Chris Clothier. I own a—along with my family, have a business called Memphis Invest, which today is one of the top 50 home buyers in America and we’ve got offices in Memphis, Dallas, and Houston. For a lack of a better way to put it, we’re a turnkey company, a turnkey model. We are—all of us are active investors ourselves just real into the kind of into building businesses, which is what was so interesting about this particular, you know, kind of endeavor that we went into because we built a lot of different businesses as a family, but this one that we’ve stuck with the longest because it’s just—it’s kind of like every year there’s just something—some new challenge coming out of some new way to grow, some new thing to try and maneuver around. You know, it’s not just a company anymore. Now, it really has become a growing type of enterprise so we manage almost 3,000 properties. We’ll hit 3,000 in fact the next month.

Brandon: Ooh.

Josh: New hits.

Chris: Yes, yes, we’ve got—like I said, we’re in three cities. We’ve got 1,100 clients that we work with and you know, I guess since we talked last, that’s been the biggest thing, the biggest change for us is that we went to Dallas and Houston. I’ve just been having a blast doing it just having a blast, seeing what comes next and how do we get around it and keep growing.

Josh: You started this, I mean you didn’t start with like a, you know, billion dollars in the bank. I mean you started this thing from the first house. I remember, I seemed to recall in Denver, you had picked up some property and there was drama. I don’t remember the whole story.

Chris: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Josh: I mean, you know, just like everybody else, you know, you started one house at a time.

Chris: That—no you’re exactly right. I had—the way I originally got started in real estate was I had a home for sale and it was in Memphis. I lived in Denver and I was living in a hotel because I had to sell my house in Memphis first and I’d been there for 11 months. A guy came to me and he wanted my house, but he had a house he had to sell first that was near a university. My very first transaction ever was I went to him and said, “I’ll buy your house near the university.” Because it cost a lot less and I could buy my home in Denver if I did it. I bought his house near the university. He bought my house, I rented his property out. I bought my first home in Denver ‘til it ends so.

Brandon: That’s cool.

Chris: From then—yes that’s how I got started, completely by accident.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: Didn’t mean to be a real estate investor.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: We’re you involved in real estate before because I know your father’s kind of like what the patriarch of the family like, you know, the business of it.

Chris: Was he into this at the time or did you drag him into the business of real estate.

Josh: That’s a great question. Yes, I don’t this story.

Chris: You know, it’s and it is most people find it hard to believe, but all of us got into it independently, completely, none of us knew that the others were doing it because I owned a grocery brokering company, that’s the business my father taught me. I owned it in Denver. My father had a small grocery company in Memphis and my brother had moved down to Florida, my older brother and had a grocery company in Florida and independently, all three of us were starting to get into real estate on our own. Really my dad was the one who did it much bigger, much better than we did. He was a—before we knew it, he was, you know, talking to REAs.

He was telling his story. He was buying real estate very creatively, lots of different ways. Then he’s the one who was first approached by a Fedex pilot who said, “I don’t have time to find and renovate and rent a property. Will you do it for me?” That guy was our very first turnkey client and so that’s how he got started then he, my brother, and myself, we were all talking, we all—you know, always keeping in contact to kind of see what’s going on with the other and it just developed. You know, Memphis was a great market for long-term buy and hold. Denver and south Florida at the time were not considered that—they were considered much more fast, you know, flip type markets and so we began to send investors to him in Memphis to do the turnkey model. That’s how this whole started back in 2002, really was when we first started doing that.

Brandon: Wow.

Josh: Right on. Right on.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Awesome man so you’ve grown, you’ve got this big thing going on and it’s great and as we talked about show 26, BiggerPockets.com/Show26.

Chris: There you go.

Josh: To get the whole story.

Brandon: Hey.

Josh: Let’s get to.

Brandon: Real quick sorry, you mentioned you were one of the top like 50 home buyers in America or whatever, but what does that mean in terms of like—do you mind sharing like how many deals are you buying a year now or what do you get.

Chris: Well, Realty Track, I spoke at a conference about two months ago and Realty Track was one of the gentleman who came up to me and I spoke with them there and he just mentioned to us that you know, that we were on their list as one of the top 50 home buyers in America by volume and that’s by—I think that was by number of units because we had closed something a little over 600 houses the year before.

Brandon: Whoa.

Josh: You did that all by yourself right?

Chris: Yes, yes, no it’s strictly me. I’m a little tired right now, but.

Josh: Yes. You look good. You look good for some people suit something.

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Josh: You know. I mean two a day I mean you know, a lot of closings. You handle it, it’s good.

Chris: Yes, it’s interesting because we never—we didn’t know. We’d never—there was no reason for us to even care that’s not even something that we really talk about, but in one of those things is just it was interesting because he was looking at us and he was like, I just want you to know, he’s like—all of the research and a lot of the data that we do. Your name pops up everywhere. You know, you’re you guys are.

Brandon: You’re kind of a big deal.

Chris: Well.

Josh: Now, he talks about it. Did you notice?

Chris: Yes, yes so.

Josh: By they way, just you know, the first thing I’m going to tell you guys we’re one of the top 50 home buyers—in Am—I mean you know, it’s not important.

Chris: Oh oh my god.

Josh: I’m just mentioning it here because you know it’s just a little thing.

Chris: I’m never going to live that down. That’s.

Josh: Not on this show you’re not.

Chris: That’s my passive, aggressiveness. You know, I mean that’s my yes, but I’ll never talk about it except when I talk about it in passing. You know, just like—yes, great.

Brandon: Okay, well cool so 600 houses you had last year. I mean is that typical or is that just a crazy big year.

Chris: Well, it’s what we grew into so we—we’re probably going to be closer to 750 this year. Yes.

Brandon: Man, man.

Chris: It’s just—it’s just part of the close.

Josh: I mean almost.

Brandon: That’s awesome.

Josh: Oh, I’m patting myself.

Brandon: I gave him the opportunity. I wanted to know because.

Josh: You know.

Brandon: Well, you see I know like your business is so different than mine. You know, I’m still on that buy one house here, one houses there. I’m doing two next week, supposedly, I talked about that last week and so the only time I’ve ever done two in a single week so I’m—you know, I’m growing right. I guess so it’ll be fun.

Chris: It’s funny as you and I were talking before it’s very different for me now. I’m still an active investor, but I just invest in such a different than I even used to. I was sharing with Brandon that I just, you know, sometimes, I miss getting my hands dirty. Sometimes I miss you know, going in there and crawling underneath the house and looking at it. I mean, but I have all of that taken care of now all that’s done, you know, is—the company is growing, but we’re still an investor. Well, I’m still a real estate investor, I just do it differently than what I used to.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes, right on, right on. Alright, let’s get—let’s try again. Let’s get to the show because we’ve got some good stuff we’re going to talk about besides you Chris.

Chris: Yes.

Josh: We’re going to talk about you talking about other things and no, I mean listen, we’ve got you on here because you’re doing a great job and you know, I think there’s no reason that we don’t cover this stuff so thanks for sharing all of that. Alright, so today, we’re doing again, the truth behind five real estate investment myths. Myth number one, don’t work with family. I—now I will tell you I like this myth. Since I’m bringing it up. I like this myth. You know, I’ve personally worked with family. It wasn’t great. I know other people who’ve worked with family. It wasn’t great, but that’s—it’s not a rule, right?

Chris: Right.

Josh: I mean you guys clearly all work really well together so let’s talk about it.

Chris: Well and we haven’t always worked really well together. Another part of the story they might know is I actually left my father. You know, he and I, I learned the business from him when I moved to Denver, I was moving away from his company. I left his company and went to start my own and that was big deal at the time. That was one of those things that got, you know, it was just ugly for us for a little while.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: My brother has done the same thing. I think that working with family, it just means that more than ever, more than in any type of partnership, there has to be clear lines, clear boundaries, and clear—just clear respect. You know, now I’m—I showed you guys my glasses earlier. I am older. I’m—I turned 43 this year.

Josh: Wow, you’re old.

Chris: Yes, I said older. When I was in 20s I didn’t work well with family. I mean I thought I knew it all. When I was in my 30s I was learning and still didn’t work very well and now that I’m 43 and I do know it all. It’s better—it’s just easier to work together now that I’m older and I’ve got more respect for where my dad and where he’s coming from.

Josh: How does that feel I mean because I stop and look at it at our company I look at my team and I’m the old guy. You know, I’ll be 40 next year.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: No, but like how the hell did I become the old man on the team. I mean when did that happen? You know.

Chris: Yes.

Josh: I mean is it, you know, beyond the your kind of immediate working with the family. I mean just being 43 changes perceptions. It changes how people look at you, talk to you, communicate with you, work with you, deal with you, right?

Chris: Sure, absolutely. One of change is the way that we think. The way that we operate, I guess.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: That I—I try—I mean like to think that I’m a little bit more thoughtful. I speak a little less and I think a little more than I used, you know, but it’s, you know, I think I have in some level, some way, that you earn respect and as you get a little bit older and you become the old guy on the team, those—it’s pretty interesting when there’s a bunch of younger people that are truly looking up to you.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: From a level of respect, it’s not just you’re the old guy, it’s like wait a second, you actually know something, why don’t you help me out and teach me something.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: That’s only happened in the last few years and I guess you’ll get there, Josh, it’ll happen.

Josh: I mean, I’ve known you for awhile and still don’t respect you, but.

Chris: Yes, I know, yes. It’s getting there.

Josh: Alright, so let’s get back to working with family so there was this drama up front and then, you know, as you’ve kind of gotten older, it’s changed.

Chris: Yes and there’s you know it just depends on what your family dynamic is you know for us, we—at work it’s all work. It’s all business and sometimes there’s harsh words to be said. There’s harsh realities when mistakes are made. That kind of thing, but then literally we walk out of there and we go home. None of our wives understand it. They don’t get it because we’ll go home to a dinner or something or we’ll see each other. We’ll go to dinner, go to a basketball game, something that’s like all the yelling from the day is over and every once in awhile I’ll—you know, I’ll bring it home. My younger brother may bring it home. I’m sure my dad does too. We’re—we’ve done something that really really irritated the other bad, but you know, for the most part as I said, it just takes that. For us, we have clear levels of who does what.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: As long as somebody does what they’re supposed to do and everyone else respects it, it’s okay. Doesn’t mean there won’t be you know, that what happens with family. We—there have been times. It’s really funny we had a girl that she was in her first week with us and she sits out in the front office and we had a real knock down trying out I mean, throwing stuff across the rooms at each other. It was.

Josh: I want a video of that

Chris: You know, calculators coming whizzing by and you know, it’s just one of those things where I don’t know why, but you know, we were at and we were going at it and it’s usually it’s me and my father because he and I are so much alike. My little brother, he says all the time. He says, “I just sit back and eat popcorn.” He’s like, “I just like they just start yelling. I’m just going to eat popcorn.” You know, but when we’re all said and done this little girl sat there. I mean she’s probably 22 when we hired her and she was dead silent. She wasn’t even looking. She just kind of looking around what just happened. A lady that had worked with us from the day one, she went and grabbed her and said, “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.” Kind of walks around the hall and says, “So, every once in awhile. That happens.”

Josh: Nice, nice. Well, okay so that’s your story, that’s you guys have kind of, you know, that’s your interaction and that’s great right?

Chris: Right.

Josh: Except for the calculators knocking you out, but I’m sitting, I’m listener, I’m listening to your story. You say there should be clear rules and expectations. What else do I need? If I’m going to work with my brother, my cousin, my nephew, my uncle, my bro—you know, dad, whomever it is. What do I need to do to make sure it’s going to work?

Chris: Well, it has to be respect number one and you have to have a reason to bring somebody in. I now have nephews and I have an uncle and I have a cousin so I’ve got nephews, cousins, and uncles now that work in the company with us. We had a set rule for each of them to come in too. When they came in, yes, their name is Clothier, but we were very up front with them about who the owners were and who you know, what each role each of them had to play and none of them are owners of the company at all, but they all had a very very set role to play within the company.

They had a piece of the business they were supposed to handle and what they’re supposed to do and then the real key to this making it work is that we hold them accountable the way we would any other employee, any other team member. I mean it’s exactly the same. They do something wrong, they just get hammered like anybody else and they do something great, they get praised. You know, lifted up and that’s why.

Josh: Do you actually use a hammer against them?

Chris: Every once in awhile.

Josh: Okay, okay.

Chris: You, you know.

Josh: Just making sure.

Chris: It’s just being real, be up front, be very—no don’t—you don’t have a job for everyone and if you do that and you bring in all of your family members because you just want to give somebody something to do. It’s never going to work.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: It has to be. You know, you need something, you be very clear with them on what it is they need to do and then hold them accountable to do it.

Josh: Well, they also better be qualified, right?

Chris: Yes, well, sure sure, I mean that’s—yes, I guess that goes without saying.

Josh: It’s not.

Chris: I mean you know.

Josh: Sometimes people do that right? I mean.

Brandon: I think people tend to—they tend to work with family. This is true for both, you know, private lending and in terms of working in a team. They hire somebody based on convenience, not based on skills. Right so it’s like, well, you know, my brother’s there. He’s available. I like him. I’ll work with him, but it’s not that he’s competent to be able to do that skill. I mean my brother’s confident, if you’re listening, Chris, just kidding.

Josh: Well, that’s what Chris’s dad did with Chris and you know, I mean.

Chris: Yes, yes it sure it.

Josh: He’s competent 20 years later, but.

Chris: Sure. It’s—it is a—it’s a good word that I just mentioned. It’s not charity and here’s my—you want to say hello.

Child: Hello.

Chris: Okay, very good.

Josh: Hi there.

Brandon: Hello.

Chris: She does not have black eyes, those are butterflies around her eyes.

Josh: She’sgot a face paint.

Brandon: Nice.

Josh: Yes, look at that. That’s great.

Chris: She’s got face paint so.

Josh: Speaking of working with family and you know, you’re a family man, that’s great.

Chris: Yes, absolutely, absolutely and it’s funny, here I am, I’m on vacation, but this is the other part about working with family. I’m on vacation, but I’m working.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Right.

Chris: When we go on vacations together as a group, when we go on vacations as individuals, that’s what we still do. We all—I mean—I went in on our staff meeting this morning and you know, just never ends. When you’re family there’s a lot of expectations I guess.

Josh: Yes. No, I think a lot of that is also being the owner of a business. I mean when you’re the owner.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: Of a business, there’s, you know, there’s really no escape.

Chris: Yes.

Josh: Even if you’ve got a team that’s competent. I mean you’re never really fully away are you?

Chris: Are you Josh?

Josh: No.

Chris: As I see Brandon going no.

Brandon: No.

Josh: No, no, no.

Chris: Yes, that’s not just for family, but that’s the business in general, yes so.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: Cool.

Josh: Cool.

Brandon: Last question I have on the family thing is how do you protect yourself? You know earlier, you said have rules and stuff, but how do you—if I’m going to go and in a partnership with a family member, how do I make sure that that doesn’t end really really badly. I mean is there a form I got to sign with them? Is there? Do you have any tips on that?

Chris: Well, it’s a tip on partnerships in general. Now look, I believe that every partnership is going to end. That’s a mentor of mine told me that early on, said all partnerships end. You decide on the front end if it’s going to end good or bad.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: My father, my brother, and myself as our business has grown, we take in time to change the rules on how this will end if that makes sense so we know that should we decide to break up and go do something on our own or god forbid there’s a death in the family or anything along those lines, how—whatever ends up being in the end. We’ve all decided how that’s going to take place. Now with, you know, when you’re hiring a family member that’s not going to be a partner with you. I think that again, the same thing. I think you just have to treat them as if they are another employee if that, you know and that just sounds harsh, but that’s the reality that the same expectations are there and the same ability to rise and the same ability to be let go exists, you know.

Brandon: Sure.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I just think it’s all on the front end. We’ve had very open discussions with all of our family members that we’ve hired on, like I said, what the expectations are and then as partners we’ve been real clear with one another that if anybody wants out, this is how it’s going to break up. This is how we’re going to do this so it’s not ugly.

Josh: Yes, no that’s great.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Well, we did a show. It was our fifth show actually. It was BiggerPockets.com/Show5 was dealing with death, financial discussion. We had a CFP, Neil Frankel and the show was all about that. It was all about kind of planning for the end, being prepared, making sure that you know how you’re business is going to end, making sure you have all of your ducks in a row. It’s—you know, it’s a scary concept.

It’s a scary thing, but I can’t tell the listeners how important it is to have all this stuff prepared. I mean, especially before you go into business and knowing, you know, and preparing for the possibility that are going to end because you have to look at the negative and you have to say, hey if this happens, then we do this. If that happens, we do that and kind of go through these different cycles. It’s the only responsible way to go through planning. You have to do it and that show’s really really important so I thought I’d just mention it again.

Chris: Well, you know, whether it’s—whether you have one house or five houses or a business that buys and sells houses, it’s important to do that.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: Because you have something of real value to pass on.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Exactly.

Brandon: Right on.

Josh: Awesome. Well, let’s go to myth two, Brandon, why don’t you take it.

Brandon: Sure, so myth two, I’ve got written down here and correct me if I’m wrong Chris, but I got past performance is a reliable predictor for future investments. What do you mean by that? I mean why is that a myth?

Chris: Yes, well because so often when we’re buying real estate, we look to the past to tell us what’s going to happen in the future. We look at comp sales, we look at past sales of that particular property, we look at, you know all these things that have already occurred either to the property or around the property to tell us what’s going to happen with that property going forward and the thing I that found about that, especially now that I’m—I’ve started buying into other levels of real estate. I’ve started buying vacation properties, looking at commercial properties, haven’t done anything in the multifamily sector, but we’ve looked around a little bit, but what we’re finding is that it’s almost impossible to look past—to look to the past to be able to tell use what’s going to happen going forward. I mean it’s much more important to look.

The point of that is it’s much more important to look at what’s going on forward so what’s happening with housing permits. What’s happening with zoning regulations? What’s happening with things of that nature, which are going to tell us what’s going to be taking place around us as we’re going forward instead of what happened in the past as an indicator.

Josh: That makes sense. That makes sense and you know I mean I think about stocks in the same right? You’ve got all these people who are like, oh this stock has been going up, going up, going up. It doesn’t mean it’s going to stop going up. The housing market is going up, going up, going up year 2007. It doesn’t mean it’s going to keep going up. You can’t.

Chris: No.

Josh: We can’t predict what’s going to happen no matter what. I mean we just have to prepare for you know, the inevitability that things can change right?

Chris: Yes, yes and like it’s so—a big part of that myth and the advice that I think that needs to around of this that’s there’s so much data without getting confused and without getting overloaded, but there’s just pieces of data you can look at that are going to help you. That are probably going to be more significant to you than what was happening, two-three and four years ago with a property. You know, the recent past, last couple of months was what’s been selling around it. Yes, that’s important, but you know, too often we talk about as you just said, Josh, like these past housing cycles and housing always goes up and housing’s always a good bet and then reality is that their pockets in every city that you can look at and see houses that maybe sold in the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ‘90s, the 2000s, and have they already sold in 2010s where they sold for the same price every single time.

You know there’s this cycle of—it was built, it was sold, it went up in value, somebody bought it. Real estate crashed, it foreclosed, it was sold for pennies, when you know, it just—this cycle and so you know, try and show people that just because the last four or five years—some things look really good. It doesn’t mean it’s going to ever go beyond what it’s done, you know, you got to look at what’s happening going forward. There’s no housing being built around it. There’s no development, there’s no new jobs coming in. How do you expect that particular property that you’re buying to go up in value or to perform better?

Josh: Yes.

Chris: That’s what I’m trying to drive at.

Josh: Got you, got you and you know I’m a big proponent that you know, buy for cash flow and if you get appreciation, it’s a bonus and I think the things that you just mentioned are key factors in kind of you know, improving the likelihood that appreciation will happen, right?

Chris: Sure, absolutely.

Josh: The question is—is it—I mean do you guys follow that same kind of mindset of you know, hey listen, you know, we’re looking at properties here that are solid cash flow properties, appreciation, might be a factor at some point, but you know, will improve the odds by looking at properties in these demographics and you know, these economies and these places. Is that kind of your perspective?

Chris: Well, yes it’s kind of what I call and I personally look at the path of progress.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I look at—I’m like you. I buy all for cash flow. I’m in these wildly appreciating markets. Memphis, Dallas, and Houston are certainly are not wildly appreciating and but they’re good markets. For me anyway, they were able to find cash flow just as you had said so what I’ll look at is path of progress, what’s being built as I’d said what’s are the new shopping centers, are the new schools being planned, the new roads, you know, being widened, developed, new sewer systems. You know, whatever it ends up being. I want to try and get near that if I can or get in the way of it. Let something run into it.

Josh: Yes, yes.

Chris: I’ve done it all, I mean I’ve done the inner city where there’s no development, there’s no gentrification, there’s no anything like that and I’ve done parts of the inner city where that is coming. You know, I’ve done parts of suburbs where you know, on the part of progress, I’ve just—for me I’ve simply found that the easiest way for me to predict what’s going to happen with my particular property is going to be looking at what’s ahead of it. What’s being developed out there, not what’s taken place in the past. It just doesn’t done—it hadn’t been fruitful for me to be able to buy that way.

Josh: That’s great.

Brandon: Yes, cool, awesome. Alright, let’s move on. Myth number three, I’ve got here, investing in real estate as a big time sink.

Chris: Yes, yes.

Brandon: What do you mean by that?

Chris: Yes, well so I have a lot of people that think that you have to put in an inordinate amount of time to any endeavor you do. You know, what I mean, I’ve heard this over and over and over again, people saying I just don’t have time to invest in real estate. Now that’s—it’s one of those you have to be very careful with because you have to know what you’re doing so you have to put time in. You can’t just go in blind, but once you’ve gotten started and once you kind of get going, you know, literally, an hour a day on BiggerPockets is enough time to be really educated if you’re focused on what it is you’re trying to be educated about.

You know, if you’re trying to learn about everything then an hour a day on BiggerPockets is going to take you awhile, but if you are really focused in on what you want to do with real estate and how you want to begin investing or build your portfolio up. It’s not that difficult. It’s not like it’s one of those things you have to go eight hours a day, you know and all your free time and take away from your family everything to do it’s just not—that’s not the case and then even so when you own it, there are more passive ways to invest in real estate today than—well, they’ve probably always existed, but they’re just right there in front of you. You know, again not that I’m trying to BiggerPockets, but you understand what I’m saying, it’s all right there in the forums. I mean if whether it’s turnkey like I do, if it’s note investing, if it’s private lending, if it’s partnering, it’s all—the conversations in the forums are right there for you to get in and get educated with a small amount time and each of those ways of investing don’t require a lot of time once you’ve done it so.

Brandon: Yes, you know what, one thing that I talk about a lot. I mean whether it’s on like the Bigger—I mentioned it almost every week on the BiggerPockets webinars, but just I mean everywhere I talk about this topic of you know, what people say I can’t do something and I—you know, I encourage them to say how can I do it? The same thing with like the time, like oh I don’t have time to invest in real estate, if you shift your thinking to well how do I have time? How can I have time to invest in real estate? How do I make that happen? You know, it’s—there’s like this mindset thing that’s different and you start thinking about it like—differently instead of thinking, yes, I got to go out and change the water heater and then I got to go collect, pick—you know, drop by their house and pick up rent.

Chris: That’s right.

Brandon: You know, that’s how people think of real estate and if that is how you think of real estate, that’s how you will run your real estate and you will not have any time to do anything else, but that as soon as you start thinking about it differently and asking that question of how do I outsource this or how do run it differently, you know, amazing things happen.

Chris: Well, it’s a shame that a lot of people today, they’re interested in real estate from watching TV, watching the TV shows.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: They give such a skewed version because they’re meant to build up drama so you see a lot of drama and you see a lot of—you know, everyone of—not everyone, but a lot of the shows is like, you know it goes across the bottom. It’s 2:30 in the morning and the person’s still awake trying paint.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: Saying I got to get it done because an open house tomorrow and you know, so that becomes what we believe is the reality.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: It’s just not the case.

Josh: Right. Yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know and I think the, you know, the people who are listening, I mean we’re now, this is crazy number, we are now averaging right around 50,000 listeners per show of the BiggerPockets podcast. That’s an insane number.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: There are probably 50,000 plus people that are going to be listening to this show. Of all those people who are listening, I’d say a pretty good percentage of them, don’t own any real estate.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: They probably own stocks and they probably have other investments.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: They probably know as much about the stocks that they own as they do about real estate, meaning they don’t, they probably don’t know anything.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: You know, real estate as a time suck, you know, if you put that time in your stock portfolio, if you’re going to take the risk on buying stocks because you are taking a risk by buying stocks. The same risk can be applied towards real estate and it can actually be mitigated because you have a lot more control by applying that time that you’re spending so I mean I think as I’m blanking out of the word, but as just an investment type, you know real estate is something definitely worth consideration to those people who are sitting saying, oh it’s going to take too much time all the way to—it’s so hard, well you probably have stocks, you probably don’t know anything about that. You’re probably risking a whole heck of a lot in the market with those stocks. Stop, take the money, think about it, learn something, and consider real estate as a possibility.

Chris: Well, the nice thing is to your—even to your point Josh, those that are listening that do know about their stocks, for the same amount of time they spent probably studying P ratios and you know, earning reports, all that kind of stuff to know what’s going on with a stock.

Josh: Right.

Chris: It takes about that much time to know about investing in real estate in a passive manner that can be very rewarding, very lucrative just like stock hand so.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: It’s not—it’s neither—it’s certainly not—does not have to be the all consuming time suck.

Brandon: Yes. Hey.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Do you have any like, good tips for people especially just starting out who don’t want their life to be consumed by real estate. They don’t have time. They have a fulltime job. They’ve got kids, family, do you have any just good tips for people to minimize the amount of time that real estate takes?

Chris: Well, no.

Josh: No, not without plugging.

Chris: Well, I mean yes, well it’s kind of funny. It’s that you know, it’s whatever you put time to is where you’re going to begin to excel. It’s just it doesn’t take a lot of it. It doesn’t you know and I’ll go back to it again. One hour on BiggerPockets focuses really good. There are—at your library, the bookstore, you know if you don’t want to spend money, go to the library. If you want to own the books, go to the bookstore. There are a tremendous number of good beginner books out there. Some of them have been talked about right here on BiggerPockets podcast and they—you know, there’s list all in the.

Brandon: Show notes.

Chris: Articles, yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: That the good place to start is just wherever you’re at, you know, what I mean? It’s like the tip to get started is to say I’m going to devote one hour, that’s it.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: I’m going to put an hour towards this and it’s going to be from eight to nine at night or seven to eight in the morning or whenever it’s going to be that I’m going to out one hour a day into this and I’m going to—if I want to do it, I’m going to do it really well and so I’m going to understand that I’m doing and then go forward.

Brandon: Well and I think you touched on something really important there too is I heard a quote the other day and I don’t remember who said it or what the exact phrase it was, but basically, the idea was you know, small actions, take in every single day consistently. You know, add up to a massive change in your life. People often think I have to go to devote the next month of my life to learning real estate. Like you said, an hour a day, just consistently every single day moving forward, you can accomplish amazing things.

Josh: That’s for everything.

Chris: Yes, it could be life changing.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: Yes, absolutely.

Josh: Well Chris, you and I talk about that with BiggerPockets. I mean BiggerPockets for Chris and his company, I know is one of the—you know, we drive a lot of business to you not, you know, not for anything other than you come on BiggerPockets. You engage, you participate, you connect with people, you’re not doing ten hours a day. You spend a tiny bit of time consistently and by doing so you’ve built a brand, a reputation for yourself within our platform and people when they think of turnkey and reputable people, you know, they look and think of you.

Chris: Yes, it’s—you are exactly right. It does not take a lot of time to engage.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: That’s the—that’s one point Brandon to what you had just said is that the question you had asked is if you’ll just devote that little bit of time and then engage. Don’t be—don’t think of yourself as a newbie that can’t, you know, add to value to someone else. That cant’ answer questions, that can’t give their own thoughts and view points. The reality is that you have to engage.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: If you want to get better at this and you want to find the right partner or the right deal or the right, you know moneylender or whatever it ends up being, just engage.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: Just get engaged, get active.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Right on, right on.

Brandon: Love it.

Josh: Alright, myth four, you should only invest locally. Talk about it.

Chris: Yes, so before the advent really of the internet, I think it was probably hard for people to invest in other areas because or it would have been hard for me because I just don’t know how I would have ever gotten over the idea that I’m going to invest somewhere else. I mean, you know, it’s certain it’s somewhere across the country.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: The reality is that or the way you do it is with family and that’s how I got started. I bought my first long term buy and holds in Memphis only because my dad was there. Only because he was running the company and I had a high level of faith that it was going to be done the right way. I did some fix and flips in Florida with my older brother Kent down in Del Ray Beach and Fort Lauderdale area and they worked, but only because of him.

Only because I knew him so you know, I think now that with the advent of the internet and certainly the resources that are available to people and the ability to get on and look and check and do data searches. I mean the whole world is open to you. If you want to—if you literally want to invest and you’re looking for markets that you trust, that you understand a little bit, or that you, and maybe faraway from you—you can do that. You don’t have to invest down the street or across town anymore if you don’t want to.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I have an interesting theory about this also as to why some people go out of area and it’s not controversial in any way, but it’s just—it’s real. It’s about being able to look in the mirror and being real with yourself that I think a lot of investors look to go out of area first because they don’t understand real estate. It’s easier to say if something goes wrong, it’s easier to say that it was someone who did me wrong. If I bought far away from where I’m at. If I didn’t have to drive past it everyday, but if I bought down street and went wrong.

Josh: There’s no one to blame.

Chris: Yes, it’s all falls square on me so on the forums all the time, I really encourage people to—before you just go buy somewhere else in the country. Get to know what’s going on around you locally first. Know what’s happening—get your—you know, educate yourself, get—know what you’re talking about and what you are doing and then if locally is not good enough for you, do the time or you don’t—you’re going to—you don’t have the time to do it, you don’t have the time to learn it enough to be active in it or just have decided that I don’t want to actively invest. I want to passively invest then go buy out of area if that makes sense.

Josh: Hey Chris.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: I mean do you guys have a lot of clients that are out of town obviously so what would you say are the biggest reasons that people give you guys for investing out of town at a distance?

Chris: Well, almost all of them is due to their own time. Almost all of them are not active investors nor do they want to be. They only want to be a passive investor. Now, they can do that. They could probably, some of them could definitely do it locally and then it becomes other reasons, you know, that’s more about our company or whatever, but.

Josh: Sure.

Chris: For them, personally it’s almost all due to active. They don’t want to be an active investor. They only want to invest passively.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I think back, Josh to those, you know, you and I are two companies, cosponsored some surveys a couple of years ago.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: When I look back at those surveys and even kind of extrapolate it through today. I think that—I firmly believe that there are more passive real estate investors out there than there are active real estate investors.

Josh: Interesting.

Chris: I think there’s more people that passively invest in real estate today when you—especially when you factor that they might be investing notes, they might be investing in REITs, they might be investing in turnkey or whatever.

Josh: Okay. Sure.

Chris: I just think that there are more people that are—that would call themselves real estate investors today that are passive than who are actively fixing and flipping or building and selling that kind of thing.

Josh: Interesting, interesting and hey, maybe we’ll do another survey and find out.

Chris: Yes. Well you know, so when you look at it like that and you look at kind of what we just said, if you’re going to passively invest in real estate, then you literally can invest anywhere in the world you want to invest.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: You know it just takes you getting to a level of comfort where you feel like you’ve done enough due diligence to buy.

Josh: Well so all that said and you know, I think you’ve firmly dispelled the myth that local is the only option, that said local is a great option for people, especially those people who are going to be active.

Chris: Oh yes.

Josh: I would say local is where you should absolutely start without a doubt, right.

Chris: Yes if you—and that’s the other thing that there’s a lot of people that buy passively or they buy out of area, but in their own personality says that was a mistake.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: Like they want to be involved, they really want to be hands on or they want to—you know, maybe they like testing colors to see what works best for a renter or a seller, whatever and or a buyer and so they need to be active. They need to be hands on, but yet they buy a passive property in another area because they think that maybe the prices are better or that you know, it might be turnkey and they want to go turnkey. It’s just not—it’s not what’s good for them if that makes sense so a lot of if you’re going to by passive or active, it depends on who you are and what you enjoy and if you enjoy being active, absolutely invest close to where you are so you can be in the job everyday, you know.

Josh: Yes, right on, right on.

Brandon: Alright, cool, cool, let’s move on to myth number five and that is kind of the one I really wanted to focus on today as well and I don’t—we don’t have a ton of time left, but the myth was you should avoid risk at all costs. I wanted to kind of have a discussion on the topic of risk.

Chris: Yes.

Brandon: Because I mean obviously, that’s on a lot of people’s minds when they’re getting into real estate as well. I don’t want to lose my money. I don’t want to you know, waste all this time and humiliate myself in front of my family and friends so I mean maybe you can just talk on that. How does somebody get over that fear of taking a risk and what kind of risk should it take a person take?

Chris: You know, I wrote another article and it’s really funny. I thought I was being fairly unique with the article I was writing and I did a video for the BP blog and then of course over time as I continued to search on and study on that I realize that I wasn’t being unique at all. Like there’s all this research about mistakes that we make and so risk is one of those things that it’s very dangerous for investors because those that don’t want to take risks, they often times will make decisions that are more risky. For instance, our fear of losing money because it’s what you just said Brandon, our fear of losing money will often times lead us to risk fewer dollar and let’s just say there’s two houses and there maybe more risk with a lower cost investment whereas there’s less risk with a higher cost investment.

Josh: Absolutely.

Chris: The higher cost investment means I got to risk more dollars, but risk of losing it is lower whereas my lower cost investment, I have to risk fewer dollars, but my true risk is higher so my—in probability, I will lose that money whereas with a higher cost investment, I may not. I mean my risk of losing is actually less and so it’s one of these things like our fear of losing money is greater than our desire to earn.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: I think with all risk, everything is calculated, even as a business man, we take risks all the time and some of them pan out and some of them don’t and some of them. You know, I was sharing with you recently, Brandon. Some of them we lost a lot of money on some major risks we took in Texas and you know, ultimately, hindsight 20/20, we looked back at it. We got outside of our normal pattern of decision-making and we—which was our risk.

That was the risk we were taking. We decided to change our pattern a little bit and try something a little bit different and we thought it was going to propel our company in Dallas instead set us behind. I mean we looked up 90 days later and we were really far behind where we wanted to be. We lost some team members, we had acquired some bad assets, we had lost some valuable time is a great way to put it and it cost us a lot of dollars too and so you know, we 90 days in, we make quick twit, a quick change, we go back and switch to you know, decision make we always used, but ultimately, when we looked at it, it was a great risk for us to take because it really taught us a lot about our team and the way that we make decisions.

Josh: Interesting.

Chris: Risk is all about assessing the good and the bad of making a decision and not making a decision because there is good and bad on all sides. I think with investors risk is not a bad thing. You just have to know the risk you’re taking and be aware of you know, what your upside is and is that risk worth it. You know, we always say is the juice worth the squeeze and if it is.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: You go for it.

Josh: Hey, I love your point about the cheaper property. The property you put less money on might be considerably more risky than and I you know, that’s one of those big lessons that I suffered through. I was like, hey I know real estate, I’m going to buy some cheap properties. How many times have I—yes, we’ve talked about this. I mean.

Chris: Yes.

Josh: You know and you know awesome. You know, let’s go buy in Detroit because we can get them for $3,000 and we’re going to make all this cash, yes. Sorry, I haven’t talked about Detroit in awhile so I had to bring it up.

Brandon: It has been awhile.

Josh: Yes, I mean listen, I—you know, today, I’ll go on a you know, property in a middle class neighborhood that’s you know, stable, that’s you know, cash flowing considerably less over property that’s in a transitional neighborhood that’s going to bring a lot more cash, but probably going to come with a lot more problems. High evictions rates, issues, and things like that that kind of come with it.

Chris: Absolutely and to add to your point, Josh that when you—because you’re in Denver and you just mentioned Detroit.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: If you were going to buy in Detroit just a simple fact that the space between where you are and where you’re buying. The fact that probably doing it through some form of turnkey or you’d be relying on other people.

Josh: Supposed turnkey. Yes.

Chris: Yes, all of that raises your risk. That was my point that there’s buyers that are there in Detroit that probably know those neighborhoods very well and they—they’re active investors, the might do great there.

Josh: Oh yes.

Chris: At that price, but it just—you add to the risk when you add those other elements, I mean every time you take a—one more element to it so I’m removing myself from it. I’m trusting someone else. It’s very low cost, you know, all of these things add to the risk. It’s just assessing what your risk is and whether or not you’re willing to take it or not. You know, but so often people say hey it’s fewer dollars so if I lose big deal. You know, it’s less money, but you’re going to lose.

Brandon: Yes. Yes.

Josh: Well, it’s like buying penny stocks right? Same thing.

Chris: Yes, yes, great point.

Brandon: I get a lot of people you know, because I talk about my area a lot here in the show you know, like it’s at 50,000 people listening to it and you talk about like the numbers that I get on my deals and it’s like that’s you know, that’s like the lowest price on the west coast you can get and so a lot of people emailed me and asked me hey should I invest in your area? Not even to be like mean like it’s not like I’m trying to hoard all of the deals, but like I tell people.

Josh: Oh he totally is, by the way.

Brandon: Probably not. No I tell people, you probably shouldn’t invest in my area. Like you don’t know that B street. I would not touch that street, but go three blocks over the other way, the neighborhood looks worse, but I would invest there in a heartbeat. Like they don’t know that and so unless they’ve got a guy like that—you know like completely and utterly trust, unless you’ve got somebody out in boots on ground, it’s really hard to do that and that’s where I think—I don’t I think people get in trouble is they see these numbers and they see other people who have success there and they just try to jump in that market. It’s scary.

Josh: Boots on the ground, you said, Brandon, I think that word is so important. That phrase, you know, I think if you can find that boots on the ground in any market that you trust and you really like we’re talking about risks so the word trust and risk go very. You know, they’re hands in hand, they have to be.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Used together. You have to find people or companies that you trust if you’re considering investing at a distance and you have to consider all of that with any kind of investment that you’re making.

Chris: Sure.

Josh: You know, and that’s the key is how do you find boots on the ground and maybe it will apply to you Chris, like how do we find boots on the ground that we can trust?

Chris: Well, it is a process, okay. As amazingly as it sounds, there are more, right now, there are more investors out there that will trust based on recommendation, based on reputation, based on conversations on the phone or whatever. There just hasn’t become a level yet where people say I have to go see things for myself. There’s just a very trusting, it’s still exists here and there’s—I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I’m just saying it raises your risk and so of course, I want to say that if somebody does that with my company, they’re going to be okay, but the reality is that they’re still taking a big risk.

Josh: Sure.

Chris: You need to go in and investigate for yourself. Put your eyes on it. Meet people face to face, so much can be learned from someone when you shake their hand and you speak with them and you just get that feeling is this the kind of person that’s going to take care of me and make me feel like I’m investing next door instead of 1,500 miles away. You know, I can’t—again I know what we do and I know how my company operates and I know that investors that and yes, sometimes I still, you know, I just kind of shake my head. I’m like, wow it just—it—I’m still sometimes amazed that we have the investors that we have that have never met us face to face. As I said, that’s reputation and the credibility part and the what do you call it? The—somebody—giving you a recommendation, but I don’t think any of that ever replaces actually physically meeting somebody face to face.

Brandon: Yes so would you advice then there if you’re going to go invest in another market, you’re saying hands down, fly out there and go meet them and talk to them, look around.

Chris: Look I tell if an investor, if you’re an investor saying, hey Chris, what do I need to do next. I want to buy properties from you, but I’ve never met you. I would say get on the plane and come see me.

Brandon: Okay.

Chris: Absolutely, every time.

Brandon: Love it.

Chris: It’s going to—it’s going to solidify where you’re at and where you’re going.

Brandon: Yes, I mean it’s a fairly small investment of what a thousand dollars for a flight and couple of nights in a hotel, you know, to secure your future so.

Josh: I think if somebody—if you’re looking at—for example, turnkey and the operators that you’re considering don’t say that and don’t want you to see their operation and don’t want you to see how they work, I think it’s a giant red flag.

Brandon: It’s a red flag.

Josh: Oh, huge red flag.

Chris: You are correct, it is a huge red flag and I don’t know of too many people that would do that. I just don’t know if too many operators that would say that, but you’re right. There’s probably some that under—you know, kind of their little way would try and dissuade an investor an investor from coming to see them face to face would say that they don’t really need to do that and I would never buy that way ever. I mean.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Cool.

Chris: It just doesn’t make sense.

Brandon: I agree.

Josh: No right on, right on.

Brandon: Alright, well cool. I want to get a little more specific here. You know, a lot of this show has been a little bit theoretical so let’s get very specific with some case studies here. I just want to ask you—I got like a list of like six or seven specific situations that are risky and how would you advice somebody to reduce the risk on that. Number one, is losing on a bad deal, like just losing cash flow or if it’s flip, losing you know, at the end of the day, losing money. How did you advice somebody to reduce that risk of that happening?

Chris: Wow, well I’ll tell you what, on the, you reduce risk in all areas by making sure that you have priced correctly so if you’re talking about a property that you’re losing money on the rental side, make sure that your rent is priced appropriately, that you’re not too high for the market. One of the other things I would do always is that if you’re going to—if you’re going to own a rental property in a market, make sure you rent in a sweet or you own it in the sweet spot of where people are renting. In other words if 70% of the renter population rents between $700 and $1,100, I would not buy properties that are going to rent for $450 a month. You know, I wouldn’t—I would because you’ve got fewer people that are looking for that. I wouldn’t rent a property that or try and buy a property that’s going to rent for $2,000 a month. You’re going to be searching for this little sliver of the population. I would stick where everyone’s looking.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: That’s awesome.

Brandon: Love it.

Chris: I will tell you on the flip side, the biggest mistakes that I made flipping properties were, number one, I would over renovate which that’s just a risk to some of the return that you’re going to get. The property is still going to sell. Where I would—the biggest mistake I ever made was my realtor comped a property for me in Denver and they comped it even within a block or two. I mean, everything was like within less than a tenth of a mile, but yet it was so different. Even a tenth of a mile, this property, it was like this street was all to itself. You only—you could only take comps from that street itself because even a tenth of a mile away, the properties were just so visibly nicer and it was a more appealing more attractive and so you know, I bought a property expecting it to be worth $450,000. In the end, I was lucky to sell for $300.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I owned it for way over $300 so.

Brandon: Wow.

Chris: You know, it’s one of those things of trust, but verify.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: You’ve got people on your team that are giving you good data and they’re there for a reason. Verify everything that they’re telling you so if looked that eyes on the front end, I would have known that I was incorrect.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I didn’t. I bought it first based on their data.

Josh: Right on. Right on.

Brandon: Good advice.

Josh: What about going over budget on a rehab, how do you mitigate the risk of doing that?

Chris: Of that actually happening?

Josh: Yes sir.

Chris: Well, there’s a thing that we call inspect what you expect and so you only go over budget on a rehab really in two ways, number one is if who you’re failing to inspect what you expect so the job is dragging on. Things aren’t getting done in a timely manner. Things are getting done in a half ass type manner so you got to come back and do it again or number two that you fail to look around you what else is in your area so you got this budget set up and you come in and you start doing it and then you walk and you say well wouldn’t this look really good if I put you know, some other type of counter tops here and wouldn’t it be really nice if I did these really—these nice new light fixtures instead of the light fixtures I normally use. Let me try this and you keep experimenting and experimenting with something new and better and bigger.

Brandon: I’m vey guilty of that.

Chris: Well, there’s no pay off.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: You know, that’s the thing, there’s no pay off.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: In the end. It doesn’t increase anything for you. It only increases your budget.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: I think the biggest one though is inspect what you expect because if you’re not around, those contractors are—it doesn’t matter how much you trust them. It’s just—it’s human nature that things aren’t getting done to your level.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Love it.

Josh: Right, right on.

Brandon: Alright, third one. How do you mitigate the risk of tenants destroying your property?

Chris: Man, a lot. Individually, if you’re—if you manage—if you self manage, I think that some of the ways you’re able to do that are by being at your property. You know, whether you’re collecting rent or you’re doing inspections just on as often of a basis as possible. When you—I will tell you like when you’re—like a management company like us, we’ve got 2,300 properties in Memphis and it is—it’s impossible for us to put them all on an inspection schedule.

I would—the staff that I would have to carry and the cost to carry to actually put them on an inspection would be astronomical so what we do on our front end is—it’s a very very serious process. The closing with a very strict lease written and very kind of authoritative type of messaging to that tenant and then the way that we conduct ourselves is very much that it’s, you know, it’s a—you are a guest of this particular house so we expect to be kept in a certain way and what we try and do it minimize the number of homes that actually are torn up by a tenant and you know, you do that by programs job for the tenant, you do that by they way that you treat and talk to the tenant. You do that by as I said, inspect what you expect so we hold them to a certain level of expectation and then we keep them there. Not again not to kind of toot us, but I wanted to make sure I pointed out that so we have a length of stay of almost four years. If that’s the case, then there’s going to be wear and tear on that house that’s going to occur.

Josh: Sure.

Chris: If you have these major wear and tear after four to six months that they don’t stay in property then you’ve done something wrong with the management on the front end. You hadn’t—you didn’t set the right expectations, you know, when they came in, they just destroyed it and moved out on you.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I just think it’s so important that you inspect as much as much as possible and then you really really set the right expectations on the front end.

Josh: Yes and Chris you’ve written quite a few articles on BiggerPockets about property management, about how to find a good management company. How to screen management companies, what to look for.

Chris: Yes.

Josh: We’ll see if we could tag some of these and attach them to the show notes. It’s at BiggerPockets.com/Show122. I think people listening would find them great reads and—yes I think that’s great I mean screening obviously is also a key.

Chris: Yes, it’s just—it’s so tough to know who you’re getting. It’s really—I’ll tell you one great thing and this will be without taking too much time that when you set and an appointment with someone to close on a property, if you’ve self managed, then don’t close at the Starbucks or the local Burger King or the hood of the car. In my opinion, we say even close at the house. If you own rental properties near you then you probably have a closing attorney. Borrow your closing attorney’s, closing office. Let them allow you to close your rentals there even if you have to rent it from them for the hour. Have you rental closings in a place that screens business, that screens professional to that renter on the other side and then schedule it for a time and if that renter cannot show up on time. Then you don’t rent to them and you tell them that the wrong way to start this relationship is you showing up not on time because that means my rent won’t be on time.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: It’s a—that’s just one little shift to change the type of renter you’re going to get and it does, believe me prevent houses from getting destroyed.

Brandon: That is a cool tip.

Josh: That is an amazing tip. Yes.

Brandon: Never heard that before, I love that.

Josh: Yes. Awesome.

Brandon: Yes, I got to talk to my attorney now see if he’ll use his room. He’ll love that.

Josh: That was great. Alright man, how do we mitigate the risk of getting ripped off by a property manager. We kind of got into this, but you know, what things can we do to avoid that.

Chris: Well, right off the bat, communication is key. They have to have a—they have to have a way set up for you to be able to speak with them on a monthly basis and it can’t be an email and this it has to literally that they had to be willing to spend the money to have the staff there to be able to handle you as an owner and the request of other owners to be able to speak with them one on one every month. The biggest way to keep from getting ripped off I think from a property management company is you don’t go for the low end. The reality is that the cheapest property management that has the lowest fees and the lowest services or cost to you are going to give you the lowest service. They are the ones who are going run right on the skim of success and failure and so I mean they’re just—they’re teetering, one way or the other. A big month to move outs with no rental income coming in and they could be gone.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: They could because they just don’t have the revenue to be able to stay alive so you—I would suggest that you find a good company that charges a good rate and that means you got to talk to a bunch of companies in a city, but just find out what their all charging and then you find out, alright so what does it look like the normal is and don’t go for the low end and just because it’s more expensive, it doesn’t mean it’s better. My point is definitely that you’re looking for someone that says I know how to make money as a management company so I’m going to be here and I’m going use that revenue that I’m able to make to provide great service to you as an owner. That’s who you’re looking for.

Josh: That’s great. Cool. Really really good advice.

Brandon: Yes, I love it. Alright, the last one I got for you here is the risk of analysis paralysis, in other words the risk of never actually getting started in the first place. How do you overcome that risk?

Josh: How is—that’s not risky is it? No.

Chris: Well sure, yes, you’re not going anywhere that’s for sure. I guess that’s the risk.

Josh: Right.

Chris: You know and I’m going to plug BiggerPockets again here real quick and I’m going to tell you that there are some amazing people on that site that they give up their time and they up their knowledge and I would just—I would tell you that the best way to avoid analysis or paralysis by analysis is to seek advice from other experienced investors either in your particular niche or in your area or in the area that you’re buying. One of those three depend on—so no matter what you’re doing. That person exists on BiggerPockets and you know, I don’t—I just don’t know of—of course it’s gotten so big now, you guys I don’t even know all of the people on there that are—I’m sure there’s many probably commentators that are excellent that I don’t know. My point is that there’s probably 25 that I can think of right off the top of my head that they’re always active on the site. If you ask them a question, they will give you an answer and that’s just something you don’t find too many other places and so if you feel yourself like I want to get started. I just can’t get over the hump, ask for someone’s assistance. They will help you to make that right decision. They won’t make it for you, but they’ll help you get there. That’s the.

Josh: There you go.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: That’s the best thing I can say.

Brandon: I love it. Love that.

Josh: Awesome.

Brandon: Alright.

Josh: You know, but we’ve got one last quick question before we go to the Fire Round, which is you know, you’re—what are you? 53 now? Is that what he said?

Chris: Yes, yes.

Brandon: 63.

Josh: Okay.

Chris: I’m over there.

Josh: Now that you’re old and Just for Men being used in your hair, you know. What are some lessons you wish you would have learned earlier?

Chris: Oh well, I wish I’d learned.

Josh: When you were a child of Brandon’s age.

Chris: Oh yes, oh yes. I wish I’d learned that cheaper didn’t mean better.

Josh: Oh yes.

Chris: That didn’t mean it was easier to get started because I lost a lot of money on cheap cheap properties early on. I wish I had learned early on that just because somebody says it doesn’t mean it’s real. I had a lot of—I lost a lot of money by trusting people that I shouldn’t have trusted early on and I think the last lesson I wished I had learned early on was that there was no like perfect time. Like it—like I didn’t have to get started right now or else I was going to miss out because especially with the internet and especially with the ability to invest really anywhere in the country that you want to invest any day. Tomorrow is a great day to get started. Two weeks from now will be a great time to get started. You know, it just—you don’t have to pay attention to all these real estate cycles and everything. It’s not as important as it used to be because you can make money in real estate in any market through any cycle.

Josh: Yes, agreed.

Brandon: That’s great.

Josh: Agreed.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: That by the way—that’s a huge, huge, huge myth that’s put out there by you know, the major financial press. I mean that’s one that, you know I’d say sophisticated investors get it. They understand it. People who don’t understand real estate have no idea how important and how true what you just said is and you know if you learn anything from this show. Listen to that one piece of advice that Chris just gave because it’s huge.

Chris: I’m going to give you one more and this my pet peeve right now, okay because companies within my niche do this and even gurus do this, gurus being the education guys that just—that are selling more myth than reality. Warren Buffet did an interview on CNBC. I don’t know, it’s probably been a year maybe two years ago, maybe longer now where he said in the gist of what is purported today is that Warren Buffet would buy all the single family houses he could. Warren Buffet loves buying single family houses.

That’s not what he said. What he said was that is he could and the “if” was the biggest part of his entire equation. He said if he could, he would buy thousands of single family homes and put them on a mortgage. Put them on some type of leverage. To be able to leverage that money out because money was so cheap and the houses were so cheap, but the point of what was saying was he didn’t have the mechanism to do it. He didn’t have the teams in place. He didn’t have the ability to be able to make that work and so he didn’t do it. He didn’t make a bet in single family houses.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: Today, it is reported so many over and over again by companies that want to sell to new investors that you know, Warren Buffet, the oracle of Omaha, you know and then they’ll just put that little clip on there. If I could I’d buy 2,000 houses today.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: It’s—that’s not what he said. That’s not what he did so.

Josh: Well and what’s interesting about that was I think that kind of sparked this craze by you know, some of these big funds to buy, scoop up, you know, billions and billions of dollars in properties with no infrastructure to manage, take care, or maintain. You know, or anything and I think we’re still going to see the ramifications of that at some point in the coming future.

Chris: Well for a company like mine, it is an opportunity.

Josh: Oh sure.

Chris: You know, Brandon you had asked earlier about growth and that kind of thing and so yes, we are very blessed. We’ve made good decisions along the way. There’s no white board that says this is what we do to get where. We just—we’ve been lucky enough to make good decisions at the right time.

We’re in a position now where when these funds especially in the early years we operate, when they decide that they want to sell 50 or a hundred or 150 or 200, whatever it is, that hopefully, we’re in a position to be able to buy big bulk, some package of those things, which is very sustainable model for our company going forward because we can buy them. Make sure they’re fixed and stabilized and then we have inventory for investors to buy from us. It’s, you know, for us, you’re right Josh it’s this—I don’t know what you could call it here, but it’s like this natural cycle that’s going on.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: That’s just going to continue to feed the company for awhile so.

Josh: Yes, for sure. For sure, cool, great stuff Chris really really good. I think it’s time to move to the next section of the show which the.

Announcer: It’s time for the Fire Round.

Josh: Let’s hear it man. He’s sick. He can’t do it. Alright, the Fire Round, these are questions that we—Brandon always does this. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say.

Brandon: You are listening to the world famous Fire Round. It’s like that. I don’t know.

Josh: There you go. Alright so the Fire Round is we fire questions at you fire answers right back. These are questions that come from the BiggerPockets forums, which you can check out at BiggerPockets.com/Forums. Alright, first question of today’s Fire Round is my tenants want to buy the house they are renting from me. Should I sell it?

Chris: Yes.

Brandon: That’s a good—that was a very good Fire.

Josh: Awesome.

Brandon: Do you want to expand on that at all. I know this is quick, but.

Josh: Yes, feel free to go a little deeper.

Chris: Look if you’re making money on the house every month and you can re-rent it Absolutely not. If you want to hold this thing, you know forever, keep it. If you can sell it to them and make an incredible return on the property, sell it.

Josh: There you go.

Brandon: Alright. There you go. My tenant—this is actually a true story that happens to me occasionally. My tenant is not paying the water bill, but still paying the rent because the water bill goes with the house, you know so ultimately on me if they don’t pay yet they’ve refused to pay the water bill, but they’re paying the rent just fine so like what do I do and that was the—I didn’t ask that question in the forums, but that is a situation I deal with so what would you do?

Chris: Move to evict if you can. Move to evict, get an eviction notice on them and put them on notice so they pay water the bill or they go.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: Well and isn’t that something you should have in your lease? I mean.

Chris: Yes, yes and here’s the thing that if you just move to evict, usually you move them off center. That you get them off of okay, I’m either going to lose the price or I’m going to pay the water bill so they—usually you get them to take the action you want them to take, but if you do nothing, you’ve trained them already to never pay the water bill and just pay rent and they get free water.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: There you go. There you go. Awesome.

Brandon: We’ve had that. One of the town in our area, like a lot of my rental properties are in, they made the rule recently where tenants can no longer have water in their name period because they got tired of collecting from tenants so now landlords have to have it in their name and I have to go and build a tenant directly.

Josh: Oh man.

Brandon: Then the tenants don’t pay me and then I’m like I’m evicting over $50 water bill, but I’ll threaten it all day long. I haven’t had to actually carry one out yet, but I’ll threaten it.

Josh: For everyone who wants to buy a property in Podunk, Washington, keep this in mind if you’re thinking about it.

Brandon: This is—these are the thing people don’t know that right, they go to Hoquiam to go buy property because properties are $40 grand in Hoquiam and they’re like oh I’ll buy it there. They don’t realize that there’s these little nuances, you know so stay away.

Chris: Yes.

Brandon: I got this.

Josh: The subtle little nuances.

Brandon: No, what I do—I mean I just build them. We just put—like send them a separate bill for their water just like we do for their rent and most of them pay it, but you know the ones that don’t we just—well most of them are on a month to month and so we just give them notice to leave if they don’t. Then they shape up pretty quick or they move so.

Chris: There you go. There you go.

Brandon: There’s ways to deal with it, but they’re—it’s not always easy.

Josh: Nice. Nice.

Brandon: Alright.

Josh: Alright Chris, what do you think of the buy, rehab, rent, refinance strategy?

Chris: I rehab.

Josh: Rent and then refinance.

Chris: I like it.

Josh: Okay, okay.

Chris: I like it to an extent. I’m no a big fan of leverage anymore. That’s due to my own experience with leverage.

Josh: Age.

Chris: Yes with my age so I’m a big fan of levering for smaller amounts of time and so it also depends on what you’re going to do with that money so you buy it, you fix it, you rent it, you refinance it to get your cash back out. What are you going to do with that cash? Put it to work for you if you’re not putting to work, what was the point of doing it in the first place? You know?

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: Go do your next project.

Brandon: Yes. Great.

Josh: Right on. Right on.

Brandon: Love it. I am a huge fan of—I mean generally, a huge fan of the whole buy, rehab, rent, refinance. I call like hybrid investing. That’s kind of my name

Chris: Yes.

Brandon: I throw it, but I do like the idea if you do it right, but like you said, you have to have a use for that money, but yes.

Chris: Sure.

Brandon: It’s a good way to—it’s a good way to get in for like no or low money down to deals. You know, you put your own money in, fix it up, rent it out, refinance it a few months later and then get your cash back and go do it again. You can do it a number of times before you’re usually stopped from the bank.

Chris: Absolutely and I don’t disagree with that at all. My thing is know what kind of mortgage you’re going put it on, don’t just put it on a 30 year mortgage because it’s going to give you the most monthly cash flow. It also—what people don’t understand is that for the first 24 years that you’re going to own that loan, your interest payment on a loan is the single largest expense you’re going to have on that property.

Brandon: Yes.

Chris: You just tied yourself into 24 years of a tremendous expense that so you’re giving your rent to something else. I—you know, I’m one of those—I’m pretty passionate about it that if you’re going to do that, put that money to use. I mean you know, use it three-four times over so that and then don’t put everything on a 30 year note. Put it on a note that allows you to pay that off and use it again within your—within the cycle of that particular property. Don’t you know, a 30 year—I’m sorry, I’m rambling now. It just—it drives me.

Brandon: That’s the saddest thing.

Josh: Brandon just keep rambling along man.

Chris: That’s pet peeve. Yes, I hear you buddy.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Alright, final question was this—sure this is mine. How do I find private lenders?

Chris: Wow! I could have had a very funny comment right there. I decided not to.

Josh: Aw! Was it at Brandon’s expense and if so, do it?

Chris: No, it was not at Brandon’s expense. It was a product plug that I was not going to do, but you.

Brandon: Okay.

Chris: I’m just kidding with you. I’m kidding. The—so the best way for me to find private lenders, we find private lenders from our immediate surroundings, you know, people that we’ve done business with. People that know us that know our track, know our success. It’s probably the best way that you’re going to find private lenders, I would think the same way and here’s what’s interesting, once again plugging BiggerPockets, but you might find like some people might say okay, you go to a REA and at the REA is where you’re going to find people that have private money and all that kind of stuff, but you know, if you’re private—if your REA has 50 people at it.

Today, for a lot of REAs, that’s a good sized REA as sad as that sounds and there might be ten people at that REA that are actually doing something and then a handful of them might be able to lend you money at the most. If you just go onto BiggerPockets, where you have a much broader audience and probably a much bigger influence over people, especially, if you’re active on the site a lot, right there, I mean good gosh, you know, one thing out there and suddenly you’ve got a tremendous number of people coming back saying, hey you know I want to be partners with you. I did that recently. I have reached out to two or three guys out in California and said I have money to use. I want to put money to use with you out there in the west coast. Let’s do something so.

Josh: Did it work?

Chris: Well, we—it’s gotten all the conversation started.

Josh: Okay.

Chris: We all know that, I mean we’re moving forward. It’ll be the—Josh, it’s funny. It’ll be the first time that I will have done something like that. It’ll be the first time that I will do a deal with someone where I initiate it like that. I do as you know, as you said, a lot of business with people from BiggerPockets, but it’ll be the first time I will have gone on there and said, hey I’ve got money to lend. I’m only doing that to a very specific investors on the west coast because I’ve watched them. I’ve listened to them.

Josh: Yes.

Chris: I know that—they know what they’re doing and I’ll have success. They’ll have success so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes, I love that.

Josh: Brandon, you’re doing that right now as well aren’t you?

Brandon: Did I actually put up a thing on the BiggerPockets marketplace looking for a lender for this property I’m buying. I got probably a seven or eight people to respond to it and you know, I’ve—I’m only going to use one of them. I’ve built relationships with six other people and I discovered a Nigerian scammer, which I talked about in the intro of this—of this podcast, but you know. Yes, figured these things out, but you know, yes.

Chris: That is incredible. Wow!

Josh: Which part?

Brandon: The scammer or the getting the lenders?

Chris: Oh no, no, no, no, the Nigerian scammer.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes we’re on top of it. You know.

Chris: No, but it’s just.

Josh: They’re gone.

Chris: It’s the real deal. That’s the and no I own nothing of BiggerPockets. I have no stock in BiggerPockets. You all don’t have stocks yet right so I couldn’t a stock in it, but I continue to plug you guys because it’s—I mean it’s real. It’s the—if you’re looking for certain things, going on with real estate, it’s the place to go.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: Awesome.

Brandon: Love it. Alright.

Josh: That’s great.

Brandon: That’s it so why don’t we move over to the world famous.

Announcer: Famous Four.

Brandon: World famous, Famous Four, these questions, we ask everyone and we asked you these questions back on show 26 when you were last time, but I’m going to ask them again in case anything’s changed. It’s been a little over a year so number one, what is your current favorite real estate related book? Or all time favorite?

Chris: All tome favorite? Geez wait, it’s still going to be Frank McKinney’s Make It Big. I mean that’s still my favorite.

Brandon: Okay.

Chris: Real estate book. I still read it every year.

Brandon: Okay.

Josh: Alright.

Brandon: That’s cool. I have not read that one yet even though I said last time I was going to pick it up, but I have not yet.

Chris: You didn’t have to tell me that, but that’s okay.

Josh: Slacker, slacker. Tell Frank, you know.

Brandon: Yes, I’ll let him know.

Josh: Oh yes.

Brandon: Next.

Josh: Alright, what is your current favorite business book. What are you reading now, what business books have you read recently that influencing you?

Chris: Yes, there’s two of them. One is the Rockefeller Rules and the second one is Start with Why.

Brandon: Simon Sinek, right?

Chris: Yes.

Brandon: I like that book.

Chris: Yes.

Brandon: Yes, that’s a good one.

Josh: Nice. Good, good.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Alright, hobbies? What are you doing lately? I know you had a big family event that has led to different hobbies so to speak.

Chris: Well, I’ve got five kids now so.

Josh: Oh my goodness.

Chris: We are very very busy, but I’m coaching competitive soccer with my son and then I’m coaching just regular little soccer with one of my daughters so I’ve got, I’m in to coaching right now.

Brandon: That’s cool, yes.

Josh: Awesome. I just put a video up on my Facebook today and I think I shared on my Twitter today as well. Go check it out Chris, there’s some like soccer moves that will blow your mind. Like they’ll just make your ankles hurt just watching.

Chris: Really?

Josh: Yes, it’s crazy.

Chris: Did you find some of my stuff from when I was in college?

Brandon: I was just going to say the same thing about me.

Josh: Superimpose your face on there. Yes. Awesome man. Awesome and congrats on number five obviously.

Chris: Thank you.

Brandon: Alright, number four question of the Famous Four. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up fail or never get started in the first place?

Chris: I think you know, most people would say, action, but I don’t think that’s it. I think the biggest thing is surrounding yourself with people that you—that are going to have the right influence on you. That you will be the six people you surround yourself with so if you surround yourself with people that take action, that are successful, that are good real estate investors, you will be one.

Brandon: Love it.

Josh: That’s very succinct and smart.

Brandon: Yes, there you go.

Josh: Not that I was shocked by that, but you know.

Chris: Well you have shocked look on your face.

Brandon: Nice.

Josh: You know I expected you talk more because you know, sometimes you do that.

Chris: Wow.

Josh: Alright, Chris, as always man, it’s been an absolute pleasure, tons of really good information. We really really appreciate having you back on the show. Before we wrap it up. Where can people find more information about you and your company?

Chris: They can find us at www.MemphisInvest.com.

Josh: Right on.

Chris: You can always reach out to me, if you want to reach out to me directly, you can call me at 901-751-7191.

Josh: You’re out of your mind.

Chris: Yes, I know.

Josh: 50,000 people, I’m just saying. Good luck dude. Get a new phone number and they can find you on BiggerPockets right?

Chris: That’s right. Hang on.

Josh: Don’t call that number guys please. Actually do it for me. Just say, ha ha and just hang up and Chris will know what a bad idea putting his phone number on the podcast was.

Chris: You can—that’s why it wasn’t my cell, but it was the office number, that may have been, I don’t know, which one would have been worse. You can absolutely on BiggerPockets. I’m on BiggerPockets quite often. Try and get on there everyday if I totally missed one day in between being on there so. Yes, absolutely.

Josh: Alright everybody, make sure to check out the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/Show122 and please don’t prank Chris and at least if you do, then say that it’s Brandon. That is awesome.

Chris: Brandon, if you need to edit that out, you can just say the website and the BiggerPockets. It’s all good.

Josh: Oh we’re not editing it. If you want us to we will, but alright let me wrap this up guys. Alright, Chris listen, absolute pleasure man, thank you so much for being on the show. For those of you guys listening, obviously Chris has a whole lot going and as you can tell.

He’s on the site. He’s making things happen. He’s getting business. He’s using our platform to help him. If you’re not doing it, you’re missing out, period, end of story.

Set up an account, get on there, get on board. You know and make things happen. Take action. You know, get your career going and you know, listen, we all have different pathways so find the path that’s right for you, figure that out before you go and take action obviously don’t just make moves and be impulsive. Chris made that mistake early on. Brandon made that mistake early on. I made that mistake early on. I think a lot of people do that and the cool thing is today there are tools, things like BiggerPockets that can help you to hopefully avoid making a lot of the mistakes that we all made in the beginning. Get out there, make it happen. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week on the BiggerPockets podcast. I’m Josh Dorkin, signing off.

You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place.

Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com, your home for real estate investing online