BiggerPockets Podcast 141 with Chad Carson Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 141: 7 Ways to Find Incredible Real Estate Deals with Chad Carson

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets Podcast live from Charlotte, North Carolina, Episode 141.

Chad: FinCon! Woohoo!

You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radi, 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 millions 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 here with my co-host, the man, the myth; no, he's not the legend. That's somebody else. It's Brandon Turner.

Brandon: What's up, Josh?

Josh: What's going on, man?

Brandon: Hey. It's good. I'm doing well despite some problems that I've been dealing with the last week of my rentals.

Josh: Yes, yes. It's been an interesting week, an interesting week. Some quick contacts: this show that you're about to listen to was recorded live at a conference called FinCon down in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A bunch of us went down there to hang out and rub elbows with a bunch of our friends in the financial blogger community. It was a lot of fun. The show is great. This is a fantastic show with Chad Carson who has previously done shows like this but this one was really, really good.

I've actually got a funny story for everybody.

Brandon: Do tell.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Do tell, Josh. Does this story involve me and flames?

Josh: It does. It does.

Brandon: Oh, good.

Josh: Yes, yes. We're in Charlotte. We're at a bar where it's 11:00 or so at night. We're having a few drinks. We're relaxing, having fun. Brandon gets a text message. This wouldn't be unusual because typically through the course of any conversation with Brandon, he gets about 800 text messages, loses focus, and can't continue a conversation.

Brandon: Wait, wait. What?

Josh: Exactly.

Brandon: Sorry. What?

Josh: Said text message said, Brandon?

Brandon: It said, "You need to call me. Your house is on fire."

Josh: Okay. Let's get some context in to the story here. This text message came from somebody who is one of Brandon's very first tenants. He's been a tenant for eight or nine years, right?

Brandon: Yes, eight or nine. Yes. I think eight years, something like that. Yes, very first tenant.

Josh: Back when you didn't really know what you were doing. You kind of did everything wrong. He's got your cellphone, right?

Brandon: He's got my cellphone, knows where I live, all that good stuff that you should not probably do. He probably was never qualified to live there in the first place.

Josh: Okay, okay.

Brandon: Nice kind of screening, huh?

Josh: Exactly. Now, you're in the process of evicting said gentleman for about a month and a half, correct?

Brandon: Correct. Yes, he was on his way out. He was moving stuff out of the house, finally got out for the most part, and in the process decided to set a box on a stove and then leave and must have bumped the stovetop and lit the box on fire which then lit the kitchen on fire which lit the house on fire.

While I'm in North Carolina, I get this call from the guy whom I'm deliberately not talking to and I haven't had any phone calls...

Josh: You got a text.

Brandon: I got a text, yes. I have not been answering. He's been texting me for a month now with the occasional cussing me out for me being a jerk landlord for evicting the guy for not paying rent. I just refused to talk to him. I just let the lawyer deal with it.

Josh: You have a property manager and a lawyer and everything, right?

Brandon: Yes, yes. They're dealing with it. This is one that I gave over to property management because I didn't want to deal with this guy because it was set up wrong in the first place. Anyway, he lit the house on fire on accident. I do believe it was an accident.

Josh: It was funny because we get the follow-up. This text message comes in. We're sitting there like, "What do we do? Is he threatening to light it on fire? Is this a call for help?" We're all trying to figure out how to help Brandon out here. The phone rings and it's not his tenant but it's the fireman, right?

Brandon: It is. The fire department was there at the house putting out the fire. They're dealing with it. They took it down. I handled it from 2,000, 3,000 miles away. It cleaned up. Insurance is going to take care of everything. The best new is the tenant can't live there anymore because the house is completely smoked and fire damaged. I kind of killed a couple of birds with one stone.

Josh: You did not kill any birds with one stone.

Brandon: I didn't kill any birds with any stone but...

Josh: Let's clarify. The timing worked very well in your favor.

Brandon: My insurance company is not going to agree that this was a positive thing but that's one thing I like about real estate. People say, "What happens if your house burns down?" Okay. You deal with it. You have the right insurance.

That is today's Quick Tip. Get insurance on your properties because houses burn. If you don't have the right insurance, if something bad happens...call up your insurance company today. Make sure you have good insurance coverage on your properties, people.

Josh: Exactly. Great.

Brandon: That's our Quick Tip.

Josh: It's a tragic story but at the same time it actually worked out well in the end for you. Thank God. Even though you were evicting him, thank goodness he didn't actually get hurt although there was somebody killed in the home unfortunately - his fish.

Brandon: Oh, yes. That's right. His fish was killed in the home, which was sad.

Josh: It's sad. Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right. Anyway, let's get this show going. Like I said, we've got a great show. Let's bring on today's sponsor.

Brandon: This episode is brought to you by realtyshares.com. RealtyShares is a real estate crowdfunding platform that allows credited investors to invest in pre-vetted real estate deals online. Investors can browse and invest in both residential and commercial properties that yield returns of 8 to 16% annually.

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Josh: All right. Big thanks to our sponsors. As always, we really do appreciate it. All right, guys. As I've mentioned before, this is a live show. Not really, but we recorded it live with lots of people on, interruptions, and things happen. Stay tuned. It's fun. It was exciting and the content was awesome. Let's bring on Chad Carson, fantastic guy, a great investor from...he's from...I'm blanking out.

Brandon: He's from South Carolina.

Josh: Clemson. Clemson.

Brandon: Clemson.

Josh: Clemson, South Carolina.

Brandon: Chad is going to teach us Seven Ways to Find Incredible Real Estate Deals and some of them you probably have never heard of before. If you're looking, if you’re struggling to find good deals, this show is going to help you.

Josh: All right. Let's bring it on.

FinCon! Woohoo!

Josh: That's what I'm talking about.

Brandon: Are you ready for this?

Josh: I'm ready. Are you ready?

Chad: I'm ready.

Brandon: I'm ready.

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets Podcast live at the TradeKing stage here at FinCon 2015, Charlotte, North Carolina. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, your host here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? How are you, man?

Brandon: I'm good. I’m good. It's been a couple of good days here at FinCon getting very, very little sleep. People who don't know what FinConis, Josh, what is FinCon?

Josh: FinCon. FinCon is the world's premier conference for financial bloggers, financial writers, press, media; you name it. It's all about finance here at FinCon, Charlotte.

Brandon: That's all?

Josh: That's it, man.

Brandon: Oh, okay. That didn't sound as exciting as it really is.

Josh: It is pretty exciting. This is a conference. This year there's 880 amazing people networking; some of the top talent in blogging and writing all about real estate, finance, you name it. I'm excited to be here. This is my fourth year. I think it's your third, right?

Brandon: Third year. Third year. We recorded last year. We did a live show as well which was episode, I'm not sure but we'll link in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show141.

Josh: That's right, Show 141. Yes, yes, yes. Today we've got a great show. We actually have a BiggerPockets Podcast...

Brandon: Alumni.

Josh: Alumni named Chad Carson. We'll bring Chad out shortly. For those of you who are here, you can see that he's sitting here next to us. Before we go there, man, how have things been going on lately? Everything good?

Brandon: Things are good. I bought a new house. That's exciting. We've finally closed. We've been talking about it lately.

Josh: We have. Congratulations.

Brandon: Thank you. I haven't moved yet but I hired a high school girl to move all my stuff while I'm here at FinCon. She's been moving for the last couple of weeks. She moved my kitchen. I left with one kitchen. I left with one kitchen. I'm going to come back and the new kitchen is going to be stocked, all the dishes, all the food completely put away. I'm pretty excited about that.

Josh: That's great.

Brandon: That's outsourcing right there.

Josh: That is outsourcing. She's going to live with you guys now I hear.

Brandon: She's not. I wouldn't mind a maid though full-time. That will be kind of cool.

Josh: That's not a bad idea.

Brandon: Like Alice from, what's that show? The Brady Bunch?

Josh: That's right.

Brandon: My wife actually told me that a few weeks ago. She said, "You know, we need an Alice just to hang out with us and cook us meals and clean the house."

Josh: Do it. Do it. Do it. All right, man. Let's get to this.

Brandon: Okay.

Josh: Let's make this thing happen here. Chad Carson. Chad Carson is a real estate investor, I believe from the Clemson area. Chad, by the way who many of you guys may not know was a professional college athlete or a college athlete, non-professional who played in front of tens of thousands of people which is pretty fascinating to me, by the way. Chad's been investing for how many years, Chad?

Chad: It's been 13 years.

Josh: Chad's been investing for 13 years. We're really, really excited to have him back on the stage. Chad, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here.

Chad: I appreciate it, Josh. It's great to be here with you guys. FinCon is a wonderful place to hang out and get to know people and really network and learn a lot. This is awesome to be here. Very cool.

Brandon: You were last on the show back on Episode 84 where we talked about Getting Started with Creative Finance and Designing Your Ideal Lifestyle. Today we're going to shift gears a little bit. People can go back and listen to that of course at BiggerPockets.com/show84. Today we're going to precede that conversation a little bit, do a prequel I guess you could say.

Josh: It is.

Brandon: We're going to talk about how did you get to that point you had to buy real estate deals. You had to buy a lot of deals. How did you do that? That's what we're going to talk about today, how do you find amazing real estate deals. Not every deal in the world is going to work. In fact, most of them won't. How do you find the best ones?

Josh: Hey, Brandon.

Brandon: Yes?

Josh: How do I find really good deals?

Brandon: I have no idea at all.

Josh: I want to be a real estate investor. What do I do?

Brandon: We should ask Chad because Chad's actually here. We'll ask him. How do you find good real estate deals?

Josh: Let's do it. Chad?

Chad: Awesome. I love the topic. I think it's important to precede that a little bit and say...Brandon and I were talking a little bit in another conversation that you can go out and try to find deals and you can do all this lead generation to find deals which we're going to talk a lot about today.

I've got some tips for you guys to actually...some specific things you can use to find good leads and deals. I think it's important first of all to say just kind of what do you have to do before then.

Brandon, what do you think? What are some of the first things that you did? I can bounce in there, too. What do you recommend people when they first start before they even start looking for leads?

Brandon: Smooth. You're turning the interview around to me. That's exciting.

Josh: Yes. He flipped that on you, man.

Brandon: He did. I know. I was unprepared. I always tell people that mindset is probably the most important thing. First of all, you got to get in to the mindset that I'm going to go buy a good deal. Not just any deal but you got to know mindset-wise you're got to buy a good deal. Would you agree?

Chad: Yes. I wanted to ask you because you guys...I listen to your podcast and I don't know how it goes. Yes. I would say first you have to get educated and you got to know kind of how to analyze the deal. You got to know most importantly what's important for your niche.

When I first started, I was a wholesaler. I was going out and finding deals. Then, I would get under contract and assign to other people. That business model is completely different than somebody who's working a full-time job and needs one or two rental properties on the side and they're about to retire.

I guess I'm just bringing that point out because these are some really cool tips that we're going to talk about. There is some other homework that you want to do to kind of find your specific place within the real estate investment world first.

Josh: Yes. Lots of people are like, "Hey, I'm going to be a real estate investor!" They get all excited and they're like, "What do I do?" Finding deals is one thing but if you don't know and we talk about this in our beginner's guide, right? BiggerPockets.com/ubg, "The Ultimate Beginner's Guide."

You've got to pick your strategy. You've got to pick your niche. You've got to know what you're going for. Granted if you find a good deal, there's a whole lot that you can do with it, but you really need to know how to find that good deal.

You really need to know what are my possible exits. How do I get out of this thing? What do I need to do? We talked about that elsewhere. We covered that. Right now, let's get into this thing. How on Earth do I find great deals? You've got seven tips. The first of which is driving for dollars. Driving for dollars, let's talk about that. What is it?

Chad: All right. This is a pretty cool strategy. First of all, because if you have a low budget or if you have a big budget for finding deals either way, this not a really expensive proposition. Basically, you're going to get in your car. You're going to fill it up with gas. You're going to look on Google maps and say, "This is my target area and I'm just going to drive."

This could be on your way to work if you have an extra ten minutes on the way to work or this could be a planned Saturday afternoon, for example if you're part-time, working on the weekends.

You're just going to drive neighborhoods but you're going to do it deliberately. You’re going to be looking street by street by street and every little nook and cranny of the neighborhood, every little side street.

There are a few things that you're going to look for. I've got three typical main things that are going to catch your eyes. These are going to be these flags that you're going to stop. When you see these things, you're going to stop. You're going to do something. The first thing you're looking for as you're driving around would be these houses with grass that's up to your waist. There are newspapers in the driveway.

Josh: Those are pretty houses.

Chad: They're vacant. Basically, you're looking for signs of houses where somebody has moved out for whatever reason. You don't know why they moved out. It could be that they moved out across the country. It could be that they lost their foreclosure. It could be whatever. You're going to be looking for those.

When you find one, you're going to stop. You’re going to pull over and you're going to write it down on a notebook say, the address and maybe the address to the left and the right. You're just going to keep on creating a list doing it that way.

Josh: Right on. Right on. Yes, that's a great way. That’s a great way. The great thing about finding vacant properties is anybody can do that. It costs you absolutely nothing. You get in your car. You drive around. You look for houses that look like crap. Suddenly, you've got a list of potential buys. Correct?

Chad: That's right. I don't know about you guys. We sort of call it our vacant radar. My wife is in on this game. Everybody I know in town is in on it. If you're riding around, I want you to be looking for these vacant houses. Everybody I've taught how to look for these now, it's like a different driving experience now.

You can't drive through a town without noticing these houses that before you were completely ignoring but now that you're looking for them, you'll notice weird little things. For example, a vacant house might not have any curtains in the windows. They might have something. There are no toys for kids in the driveway or something.

You find all these little things in your town that sort of indicate why a house is vacant. They're all over the place. You wouldn't believe how many there are.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes, that's so true. My wife and I did the same thing. I never heard vacant radar before but that's exactly what it is.

Josh: Yes, it's a great term.

Brandon: Yes. You sort of know. You're like, "Yes, that looks like it might be a vacant house." Sometimes if I have time, I get out of the car and go kind of walk up to the house, maybe knock on the door and see if it is vacant, if there's somebody there. You can walk by the front window, take a look inside and see somebody in there changing and they scream and call the cops. It basically gets awkward at that point.

Josh: That's a good idea. I like that. I like that especially when you're eight feet tall and scary-looking.

Brandon: Yes. You wear a hood and you run at night and it's midnight. It's a little weird.

Josh: Yes. That's weird.

Chad: I'd sell Brandon my house if he walked up at night, too. He's one scary dude.

Brandon: Give me your house!

Josh: All right. Cool. We got vacants. That's fairly obvious. What else do we have?

Chad: The other one I would quickly say is you're going to see signs. The sign I don't typically call are the realtor signs. That's the one everybody else is calling. I like to call the "For sale by owner" signs because they potentially can talk directly to the seller. You may not always work out a deal but there might be some remote reason why they didn't list with their realtor. They might need to sell quickly. Maybe they hate realtors. There's no telling why.

I've bought some properties just by calling "For sale by owners." The uglier the sign the better. They just bought a yellow sign and they handwrote on there. They use an old "For sale by owner" sign found on the dumpster. You want some kind of ugly sign.

That's really good because they're less apt to try. They're just kind of an amateur, to be honest. They haven't done their homework. They're more likely to be a motivated seller, which is what we're looking for.

Josh: Right on. Right on. We got the "For sale by owners." We got vacants. This is driving for dollars. What you want to do is you want to create your cold farm. You want to figure out what area do I want to invest in. This is obviously not going to work when you're looking remote. This is going to have to be something when you're looking in a relatively local area.

You're going to scout out an area. You can literally just make a grid. Just go up, down the blocks on your way to work wherever kind of your pathway is that you want to invest in. Essentially, over the course of time things are going to change. What's not vacant today might be vacant in three months, six months. You just keep doing it over and over again and you've always got a constant flow of leads, right?

Brandon: Exactly.

Chad: The other thing is exactly what you said. You got to pick a neighborhood and go after it and make that your farms. The final one I was going to say, the final thing you want to look for when you're riding around are "For rent by owner" signs. Not a lot of investors think about this. They think, "Oh, if it's for rent then it's not for sale."

I've had a lot of success and other people I know have had success calling the "For rent" sign. You can ask. Just be honest. Say, "I'm an investor as well. I saw your house is for rent. Tell me about it. Maybe I could refer you somebody." By the end of the conversation, you can turn it around and say, "I see you're renting the house but have you ever considered selling it?"

Brandon: Yes.

Chad: That one question has bought me a lot of houses and it has bought other people I know houses. If you just get practice, it's very simple. A lot of us are landlords. This is a person you can relate to and talk to. That's pretty cool. You can have a conversation with them.

It might even lead to other things. Maybe they're going to turn in to a private moneylender. Maybe they're going to be a referral source of other things for you. It's really a good thing to call rental signs.

Brandon: Yes. I was going to add that when you do that, nine times out of ten they're going to say, "Probably not. Maybe." It doesn't matter. You might build that relationship. They might become a mentor. If you're brand-new at real estate, what a terrific way to get a mentor and you get in to it.

By calling landlords, we're doing exactly what you want to do. If nothing else, maybe you'll hear their horror stories of what they screwed up on and you can try to avoid those things.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes, I love that stuff.

Josh: One of the things that we always talk about is taking out experienced investors for coffee or synching up with them. That's a great way to meet people. One of the actionable tips we always tell people is every week you've got to try and reach out to at least one new person or every day or however often you want to do it. That's a perfect way to do it. Right on.

Brandon: All right. Cool. Let's go to number two. The first one was driving for dollars. What's your second tip on finding great deals?

Chad: All right. I'm going to stick with another free one because I want everybody to have some budget ideas that they can do without having to spend a lot of money. The second one is just going on to Craigslist.

A lot of us use Craigslist to buy appliances. We use them to sell our old furniture and things like that. People sell houses on Craigslist. People rent houses on Craigslist. You can do this from home at night after you get home from work. You can look on Craigslist.

I would start off going to the "For sale by owners" section. On most Craigslist, you can look in your area and you can do a search for any houses for sale by owner. You can make a list of those and you start calling them.

It's kind of like you said earlier about the calling "For rent by owner" signs. It's not necessarily going to be a high success ratio. You got to prepare yourself to get a lot of no's or maybe's. If you practice getting on the phone, there are all sorts of good things that happen. One of those is you might buy a house. It's a free way to do it. You can control it.

Josh: Right on. Right on. Do you have any tips? Because calling people can be really scary. For those people who are afraid to pick up the phone and actually do it, what tidbits might you want to give those folks?

Chad: My heart always races even to this day. I've made thousands of calls and hundreds of appointments with people. I like to write the first things I'm going to say down because the worst thing that can happen is you just kind of freeze up on the phone and say, "Oh, wrong number. Bye," and hang up.

If you write down the first question or the first sentence and if you write down the last question or the most important kind of call to action question, which would be "Are you interested in selling your house?" or "What are you going to sell your house for?"

If you write those down then we freeze, you can go back to your paper. I still do that sometimes. Just write it down. Here are the questions I want to ask. That will sort of be your little handmade script.

Josh: Right on.

Brandon: That's a great tip.

Josh: Besides the "For sale by owner," are there any types of ad titles that you are specifically going to be looking for? Anything to help save time, filter out, and find out these properties?

Chad: There is a couple. One is an estate sale. Some people just try to sell their house on their own. Probate or estate, that would sort of be the indication. A lot of people put stuff on there, not only houses.

If you can look at furniture sales, people have estate sales in your town and they put their stuff on Craigslist, if you can talk to them about, "Hey, I see you're having an estate sale. When is the estate sale?" Ask about it. You can say, "My family, we had sold all our furniture and right after that we sold the house. Are you going to be selling the house, too?"

Josh: That's great.

Chad: That's a natural question because the person who is dealing with the estate is typically not that excited about it. I've known because I've had to help with my family, too. They're not that excited about it. They want to sell their house. It's a good way to kind of segue to do that.

Brandon: I went to an estate sale a few months ago. I walked through. I was looking at the stuff that was for sale and all this stuff. I went to the owner and I was just kind of talking to him. I really wanted to ask him if they would sell their house but I felt weird. I was like, "Ah, it feels awkward to do that. I don't want to to bug them and ask them." I didn't.

Two months later they sold their house for this rock-bottom price to some other investor who ended up flipping the house. I'm like, "Dang it! Why didn't I just ask him?" It would have been a ten-second thing. I was just afraid of hearing no and talked myself out of it. I lost a deal because of it. I like that. It's just something you got to do. You just have to get over.

I like your tip about the phone call, writing down your first line. I think that's just good. Even in person, you could come up with a phrase you always say and practice it ahead of time. I think that's awesome. Cool.

Chad: The other tip I'll give is in any of these phone calls you're making and if you're an introvert and you're not really used to making calls, you're going to have to psych yourself up a little bit. You're going to have to think about why am I doing this. I like to think about the fact that I'm not calling them to bug them about something. I'm actually calling to help them about something.

For some of us who already bought houses, we know that there are some people that we really helped a lot and they're so happy with the way we bought the house. If you've never done this before, you might be thinking, "I'm just taking advantage of somebody." Or, "I'm buying their house cheap."

No. The person who's going to sell it to you is going to be very happy that you're buying it from them. You got to go in there with the attitude that "I'm looking for that person who I can help." If the person says no, it's just somebody you can't help. Don't worry. Don't take it personally.

Josh: It's interesting because not just in real estate investing but here. We're at FinCon and we got all these people who are little entrepreneurs doing their thing. Across the gamut, fear is probably one of the most powerful things that stump us from accomplishing what we want to accomplish.

Whether it's making that phone call or whether it's getting out there and doing mailers or driving for dollars, you're like, "What do I do next? I found a property. Now what? I'm freaking out." Or, "Hey, I've got this blog." All these things, it's fear. You have to get past the fear.

The key to get past the fear is to have a plan is to have a map. By knowing whether it's a script on who you're going to talk to or at least a basic map on how you're going to accomplish your task, you're going to have an easier time getting past that fear.

Really quickly before we go on, we've got your back. It's been a while since you were on the show. How many units do you have? How many properties do you own? How many units do you have? How long have you been doing this now?

Chad: Sure. I've been investing in real estate full-time for 13 years. I'm 35 years old. I graduated from college and decided that before I figured out how to do a real job, I would just go and start buying some houses and just do that for a couple of years. I look back now and I've been doing it full-time. I'm an entrepreneur.

We currently own 55 units. We're in a college town in Clemson, South Carolina. Some of those are college rentals. Some of them are just your typical single-family houses, duplexes, that sort of thing. I like to tell people, "I'm a little big business."

I have 55 units which for a new person is going to sound a lot but for somebody who syndicates thousands of properties, that's very tiny. I work out of my basement. We have a part-time person who helps us out, a little overhead.

I'm a lifestyle business. I like to travel. I like to do other things. I like to write. I think the most powerful thing about it for me has been the kind of flexible lifestyle it has allowed to do so many other things. That's what really I'm excited about.

Josh: With 55 units, you don't really have the credibility to talk about finding deals, do you?

Chad: Not at all, no.

Josh: All right. Cool. We had Craigslist. We had driving for dollars. Next thing on the list is MLS.

Chad: All right. This is one that probably a lot of people already do. Maybe we can go in to some nuances, some different techniques. Most properties sell in MLS. It's the realtors' list. Most of the properties, they put it in this big database called MLS which goes out on the internet, syndicated everywhere else.

It pays to pay attention to that for two reasons. One, because there are a lot of properties there.Two, because it's free. Again, if you're getting started, you want to try to exhaust every free resource you can.

My strategy with MLS is to kind of filter out the ones that actually have some potential for being interesting. One way I do that, you can hire a realtor if you're not a realtor yourself to do a search for you. They have a computer where they can filter out and look for certain things.

For me, one of the most important things is days on the market. Unless that property is priced really low the day it comes on the market, I'm not really interested. Even then because there's going to be five or six other people bidding on it with me and I don't want to bid against other people.

What I like to do is come back after everybody else has forgotten about the property and after they've had lowered the price two or three times and it's 200 days on the market. They might have been not motivated to start off and I'm in this camp, too.

When you own the property you had on the market for 200 days, you start listening to a lot of different options. That doesn't mean you're going to take the lowest offer. There are a lot of things that you can get done. I ask my realtor to search for those.

Then, from there we'll start looking for ones that are listed within the price range or kind of close, just within $10,000 to $15,000 of our target price that we think would be a good deal. Then, we'll start making offers on those and just start following-up, following-up, following-up.

Josh: Do you have a minimum time on market before you start even looking or is it just play it by ear?

Chad: Not necessarily. I divide the search into two different kinds of categories or buckets. One might be "here on a long day on the market ones." The other ones might be "All right. It's only been 20 days on the market but it's an REO. It's a bank foreclosure. It's an estate sale." You can get your realtor to use some other key words like that, fixer-upper, REO, estate sale. I'm thinking about some other terms.

Sometimes you can look for addendums required. They might not list bank-owned property but they might...all the bank-owned properties, you have to sign addendums. Your realtor, if they really know their stuff in the local market, they know what the foreclosure motivated kind of sellers typically how they list them.

Ask your realtor to help you figure out a search that gets those in to a category and then you just search down that list and fine the ones that are in your target location, that are already kind of below the full market value. Then, you start going after those.

Josh: Yes. Just because it's on MLS, obviously doesn't mean it's going to be a good deal. Just because it's been on the market for 280 days doesn't mean it's going to be a good deal either, right?

Chad: Exactly, yes. Some people try to buy a property just because it's on foreclosure. They think it's below market value. That’s not the case. It sort of goes back to our conversation at the beginning is that this is all assuming that you've done some work on your business plan.

You've done some work on what my target neighborhood is. You've done some work on what a good deal means. Do you know the numbers? Do you know the market values in your area? Because you have to know the value. Knowing your values is such an important thing.

I quote to people that "This is like lifting weights. If you're an athlete, every single day you train and you life weights in order to perform well." In the real estate business, our product, our commodity is a piece of real estate that has a certain value. If you want to lift weights everyday, you got to know your values before you go out and start doing all this stuff to try to find deals because that's how you recognize what a good deal is.

Brandon: Yes. I love. I love the analogy of lifting weights. It's something that they do everyday, which is work everyday.

Josh: It's something you do everyday, right?

Chad: Obviously. Look at Brandon.

Brandon: Yes. Look at me. I'm ripped.

Josh: You're a beefy dude, aren't you?

Brandon: No. I think this is my third day in a row working out. You should be proud.

Josh: I know. I stopped after five minutes.

Brandon: Yes. That's all right. You got a phone call.

Chad: I'm joining you guys. I'm going to work out with you guys tomorrow.

Brandon: I love this analogy of working out because it's the everyday process of doing everyday a little bit. If you want to start investing in real estate, you don't have to start out by buying a whole ton of stuff. Start off by one activity everyday that takes you ten minutes.

That might be analyzing three deals. I say that all the time on BiggerPockets webinars is I encourage people to analyze three deals every single day, everyday without fail. Maybe it's just meeting one new person that's investing in real estate in your area every week. Maybe that's jumping into forums on BiggerPockets and asking one question everyday. Just that everyday action, I just love.

There’s that famous quote that says, "It's easier to work out seven days a week than it is to work out three days a week." Because when you work out every single day, you don't fail as often as you do working two or three days a week. Anyway, I love that stuff. Cool.

Let's move on to number four here. What is that?

Chad: Our fourth one is I call it referral prospecting.

Brandon: Referral prospecting.

Josh: I like that.

Chad: It's sort of a bigger bucket of things that you do to try to get other people bringing you leads. I got to be honest. This is the one that sort of changed my business life when I realized...I was actually looking at other businesses and I thought about it.

I said, "You know what? Most businesses when they're in business four or five years, they don't have to do a whole lot of proactive marketing." Like in a little small town, if you're the local small town attorney or the small town dentist, my mother was a dentist so I kind of saw this behind the scenes.

Josh: You've got nice teeth, by the way.

Chad: Yes. I wish they could see it on the podcast. She's done a lot of work on this from my football days tearing my teeth up.

Anyway, most local business people don't do a ton of marketing five years into their business because they get so many referrals to a point where most of their business comes from referrals.

In my real estate business, I thought about that. I said, "What can I do?" It's almost like planting seeds. "What can I do right now to start planting seeds with other people so that they'll bring me deals instead of me having to be out there hustling all the time. Hustle, hustle, hustle."

I'll give you a few ideas on ways that you can do that. Again, they're really inexpensive. One is we're all on BiggerPockets. One of the most valuable tools for me in my local market is to be in the local market forum on the BiggerPockets. I'm in South Carolina. I'm in the upstate of South Carolina. If you let people know in that forum that here's my location.

For me, I'm the Clemson guy. I'm in a college town. I want people to know I buy Clemson properties. The week does not go by when I don't have another investor in my area who's apparently my competitor but they're always bringing me leads because either they don't have time or they don't have the money this week or they don't have the inclination on this type of property.

That's often an opportunity by telling other investors in your area specifically through BiggerPockets which is huge network of people in your area that you buy properties, what you're looking for, what neighborhoods and just let them come to you.

Josh: Let's talk about that. I know we talk about that a lot. I think it's important to stress every time it comes up so I'm going to stress upon it again. You said, "These people are my competitors. I'm an investor in this market. I want to get good deals." They are investors in the same market and they also want to get good deals.

They are your competitors. Why would you want to work with your competitors? There's benefit to be gained. Is there not?

Chad: Yes, absolutely. I think it's counterintuitive for some people. I know for a fact the last two years, the best deals I bought the last two years have come from a referral from somebody who does something fairly similar but he just had a little bit different niche.

For example, one guy referred me a duplex. He didn't want to buy duplexes at all. He was buying 20-unit buildings. That made perfect sense for him that he was looking for bigger stuff. He had bigger fish to fry. This is just a little duplex which was an awesome deal for me. It was right in my wheelhouse. It happens every single day that there's some deal that the other person's doing that they can refer to you. Yes, absolutely.

Josh: Not just if they're doing another niche, you might have a guy who does duplexes and you do duplexes but he's tapped out because he's got too many deals and he doesn't have the cash or the resources to get the next deal. If he can work with you, get a small piece...

Chad: Exactly. You can also start telling people if you're somebody who has the capital to buy deals, if you're a cash buyer or you have some sources of private money, start telling other investors that "Hey, I've got money to loan," if you're interested in being a private lender.

A lot of times that's sort of a back door to getting deals because the person who has the deal, your competitor in your town says, "Hey, I've got three deals on the counter. I can now get a fourth one. I don't have the money. Can you loan me the money?"

You can talk about it. Say, "Yes, I'll loan you the money at 15% with four points and whatever the case might be." They say, "I’m not going to do that." I'll say, "I'll buy the property from you for $50,000." They'll say, "Okay. I'll make $3,000 and just pass it on to you."

Brandon: That's a great tip.

Josh: You're a terrible person.

Chad: Yes, I know. This is a common theme that Josh mentioned earlier is if you get out and start talking to people, there are so many people out there in the BiggerPockets when they talk on the forum they think there's a technique or a trick that you're going to get some direct mail campaign or we're talking about MLS here or referral prospecting, you can do those.

The common theme is you need to start talking to people and you need to start pitching people about what you do. If you do that every single day in whatever form that comes then you're going to start having some opportunities.

Brandon: Yes. I love that. You mentioned this idea of the local networking forums on BiggerPockets. In case people aren't familiar what that is. We recently introduced these sub-forums in BiggerPockets that you can go to and your area has its own sub-forum probably. There are hundreds of them.

Josh: We've got state. Then, we've got major metros and counties.

Brandon: Yes. You can go in there and just start networking in that sub-forum like you do in the Clemson or whatever area in South Carolina.

Chad: We need to get an upstate one, guys. I'm having to network with all of South Carolina right now.

Josh: Wow! With everybody watching and listening, you just called us out. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, can we find another guest? Alexander, come on up, man. You're an investor.

Chad: Just some feedback from your consumers.

Josh: All right. Cool. We talked about BiggerPockets. I was kidding but it's okay.

Alexander: What's up, everyone?

Josh: This is Alexander, another BiggerPockets member.

Alexander: I'm Alexander from cashflowdiaries.com.

Brandon: Nice. You write about real estate?

Alexander: I do write about real estate. I love real estate and I love BiggerPockets. I've been a member for years. Most of the information that I know is from BiggerPockets.

Brandon: That's awesome. I love that. We're going to get you on the show at some point full-time. Is that cool?

Alexander: Oh yes, man.

Brandon: We're doing it.

Alexander: Thanks.

Josh: All right. All right. Let's get back to this guy next to me. We're talking about BiggerPockets, referral prospecting, local networking groups. There is some other stuff too, right?

Chad: Yes. The other thing I would do and I've had a lot of success with is talk to all your professionals in your hometown. We're kind of back in to this and think about somebody has to sell a house whether they're in financial straits or whether they inherited the house or for some reason they're selling this fixer-upper house that you're trying to buy.

Who do they talk to in the town to get advice? You think about it. What would you guys say? I want to put you on the spot again. Who do they talk to when they go to town to get good advice when they have a situation in their family or whatever happens?

Josh: Their realtor, their pastor. They talk to you, don't the, Brandon? You're a pastor, aren't you?

Brandon: I'm not a pastor. I'm a youth leader. They're different.

Chad: He plays a mean guitar, though.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I play a mean guitar.

Josh: Ukulele too, right?

Brandon: I know three chords in the ukulele.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I can do some damage.

Chad: We'll be doing that later on, guys for anybody who's alive.

Brandon: I was going to bring it but I didn't.

Josh: For everybody who's sober tonight, come to suite...

Brandon: I was thinking insurance. If you have an insurance question, go to your insurance agent. Houses, you go to a real estate agent. Mortgage, mortgage person.

Chad: Your attorney, too.

Brandon: Attorney, yes, yes, yes.

Chad: Your attorney, your CPA, your financial advisor. I just found that all these people in town who a lot of real estate investors they don't go talk to them and tell them what they do.

That's a mistake because what happens is those people go, they're having their appointment with their financial planner, with their attorney. They'll say, "You know what? I need to sell my house. I don't really know what to do at this point."

If they knew that you're a respectable person in your town who also buys properties, that attorney might say, "You can list it but if you really need to sell quickly, you could try talking to Chad. I know he buys houses."

Josh: Chad, they know you're not respectable.

Chad: Yes. You need to be respectable for this. I'm in a small town. That's kind of another conversation. Everybody's in a small town. If you're in a big city, you have your village. I think it's Warren Buffett who said this in one of his books that if somebody who's working for him loses money for them, he can forgive that. He didn't like it but he's going to forgive it. If somebody loses one shred of reputation, for Warren Buffett they're gone right now.

I think if you run your business that way, I think that's really important because that is your equity, just in financial terms, in your business is your reputation. In a small town that equity turns in to referrals. Going back to this whole conversation about referrals, if you have a good reputation, if you deliver, if you over-deliver then people who know you, other professionals in town are going to refer business to you.

Josh: That's huge. That's huge. So many new real estate investors come in and they're like, "You know what? I hear about these marketing techniques." Some of them might be kind of borderline. They're going to try some slightly shady stuff and think that "Oh, it's great because I got a deal from it so it's okay to do."

The problem is everybody else now knows that you did that. You’ve kind of sullied your reputation to folks and they may not want to work with you. Just because you were successful one time, two times, five times, you've just kind of used up your ability to be successful and you don't have a long-term business anymore. You’ve just screwed yourself.

Your reputation is absolutely everything. I agree with you 1,000%. That's fantastic feedback.

Brandon: Yes. Awesome. All right. What else we got? Are you going to the next one or you got anything to wrap that up with?

Chad: No. I think that's it.

Brandon: That was number four. Let's do a quick review. Number one was driving for dollars.

Chad: Number two is Craigslist. Number three is using the MLS but using it a little bit smarter. Don't just try to go out with the whole MLS. Be targeted about it. Number four was referral prospecting. Number five is we're going to talk about direct mail.

Brandon: What is direct mail?

Chad: All right. Direct mail, instead of going out for the whole universe of people who own houses in your town, you're going to try to build a list. You can buy lists from different sources. There's online. If you search for direct mail list in my town, there are a number of people who will sell you a list for a few hundred bucks for a lot of names.

That's kind of another story and maybe we can link this. I can give you a couple of names that we can link to.

Brandon: Yes, for sure.

Chad: Basically, once you get a list you can search for certain criteria of homeowners. You don't want all of the homeowners. You want, for example all the homeowners who live in a different location than where the property is. That's called an absentee owner. That's one of the most common lists.

You're going to have to test these. I didn't put this first because I think it's a little bit more advanced technique even though on the forums in different places people talk about direct mail all the time.

This is one of those techniques that you're going to have to spend money on. There's a possibility that you send a thousand letters out because that's how many you have to send before your start getting results. You can't just send two, three, four, five letters. You have to send a thousand and maybe get ten calls or 15 calls.

There's a possibility though that in your market if it's so competitive or this niche doesn't work, you might send this amount to the absentee owners and you get no calls because there are ten other letters going to that same person. That's just part of the deal. You have to experiment with it.

That's why I think it's a little bit more of an advanced technique. You have to be willing to spend and lose a little bit of money in order to make some money to find the right list.

Absentee owners is always a good place to start because you just think about the motivation level. They're potentially people who live in another place who are having to take care of a property in our hometown. Especially if they're managing it themselves or they inherited it, that's just not a fun situation to be in.

I'm a local property owner. I like owning property in my backyard. The people who own property out of town have to do a lot more work. It takes a lot more effort than I do. When an emergency comes, if something happens, I can just drop by it. That leads to motivation for some people especially if they haven't done their homework, especially if they don't know how to manage properties. That's a really good potential list.

Josh: Yes, it's a great start. It's a great start. What else besides absentee owners? What other options do we have for direct mail or at least you use?

Chad: Here's one that's not talked about a lot. It's the first one that I ever did when I first started investing right out of college was I found the people in your town who have filed an eviction to evict a tenant. Automatically, you've taken the whole universe of property owners and you've narrowed it down to just landlords.

From there, I build a list. I used to have to go down with my laptop and kind of sit on this corner on this little desk on the edge of a little desk in the courthouse. I would type on my laptop for three hours. These days, things are on the internet. Makes it a little bit easier. Look in your hometown and look for the clerk of court. In my area, it's called the magistrate court.

You want to look for the clerk of court. They have public records for every single court proceeding that ever happens in any court. It's public knowledge. You should be able to narrow it down by just eviction proceedings. You can build a list there.

From there, you narrow it down even further though I don't send them out to properties that have property managers because they're doing a little bit better job managing typically.

I look for the people who have the properties themselves and they filed their own eviction. They're the ones who are going to be completely frustrated by this tenant who has just torn their house up who's not paying them. They're filing the eviction. They're indicating that they have a higher likelihood of being motivated. If you send them a letter or if you give them a call, track down how to contact them, you have a pretty good chance of buying that property.

Josh: That's a great idea.

Brandon: I said this before. I'm actually going through an eviction right now.

Josh: You are. Yes.

Brandon: My longest tenant I ever had...

Chad: You're being evicted?

Brandon: No. I'm not being evicted.

Josh: This is the property that you've got this fantastic property manager, right? She's awesome, right?

Brandon: I have a terrible property manager. Hope she's not listening. Actually, I hope she is listening. I have a terrible property manager. You guys have been following along for six months about this terrible property manager. I haven't fired her yet but that's a whole different story why I haven't.

Anyway, I heard the deal about the eviction. We're evicting this guy who's been with us for eight years now or whatever and my longest tenant and just destroying the house in the process. Everyday is costing me thousands in damage to the house. I'm just watching this happen and there's nothing I can do about it.

This feeling I have right now, if an investor came to me and was like, "Hey, I want to buy your property. I'll take care of the eviction." I'll just take it. I don't want it. I'm so emotionally drained by this stupid tenant that I just want out.

Josh: By the way, that address of Brandon's property is...

Brandon: I'm going to get a hundred direct mail now.

Chad: Brandon, you're going to be getting a letter from me tomorrow.

Brandon: You guys don't want this one. This is my very first property. It was beautiful. The property manager texted me today and said she almost cried when she looked through the windows.

Josh: You should read that text. It's a really good text.

Brandon: Yes. I'm not going to read that. I'll cry right here on the air. All right.

Chad: The point is even somebody...Brandon is an experienced investor. He's bought a lot of properties. I know I could say the same thing as Brandon was saying on properties in the past. Whatever price you would sell it for when you felt best, after you've been dealing with a tenant, whatever that is, you will sell it a lower price. It will be lower no matter what.

Brandon: I don't really want to make a profit on that property anyway. I'm good. I'm good. I just want out.

Chad: Some people will take those properties.

Brandon: Yes. That's what I feel like. Hopefully, I have the experience and know that I shouldn't let my emotions drive my decisions but a lot of people don't. They simply say, "You know what? I've had enough. I'm done." My brother-in-law lived in there for 17 years and he has never paid rent.

Josh: This is Brandon talking here. Those of you who know the show have been listening for almost three years. Brandon's been doing this for a long time. If this can happen to him, it can happen to anybody. Evictions happen. They're exhausting. They're difficult. Hopefully, you have good property managers helping you out.

You can understand why this is a good motivator for a potential person to want to sell their property. The property is just a constant headache. The tenant is a pain in the neck or one tenant is fine, the next one is a headache. Whatever it is, it's time to move on, time to sell. I don't think we've actually talked about this. Thank you for sharing that. That's awesome.

Chad: I'm just going to piggyback to what you said, Josh. There's a common misconception in the real estate world is that when you buy a property as an investor that you have to take advantage of somebody else who's just going to let it go really cheap and they don't know what they're doing.

I think what we're getting at here is that they are intelligent people who have bad moments. There are also intelligent people who make strategic decisions to get rid of a property because they might have a better opportunity somewhere else.

Brandon for example, this is the first property bought. He might have another deal here that he can make a 20% return on. He might be willing to sell it at a loss in order to get rid of it to get his capital back to go to another deal.

I've had plenty of deals like that where a very intelligent person chose to sell it because I would close in a week and pay him cash and he can be done with it.

Brandon: Yes. You never know what people's motivations are. If you don't ask, you'll never know.

Josh: All right, man. Number six, guerilla marketing. Whoa!

Chad: All right. This is another big category. We're going to a couple specific things. Guerilla marketing means just low-cost ways to get the word out about yourself. The first one I'll say it's kind of basic. Business 101. Get a business card and put something on that business card about you buying properties.

When I first started I got 500 business cards, $15. Every time I pumped gas in my car, I'd put the business card on the top of the gas pump. Every time I went to a coffee shop...

Josh: You litter? That's great. That's a really good technique. I like that.

Chad: People always take my cards out there. I know. Don't tell the local magistrate police.

Brandon: I won't say a word.

Chad: Anyway, you get creative on where you can put your cards. You can go to the coffee shop and put them on the bulletin board. You can go to your local church or your organizations might have places to put on. Those cards go around. Get a business card. It's cheap. It's easy. That's guerilla marketing.

Josh: You also hand it to everybody that you meet. Correct?

Chad: Exactly. Yes. Again, we're talking about professionals. If you go to an attorney's office, if you go somewhere else, you're going to hand those cards out and they spread out.

Josh: Right on. Cool. We've got business cards. What else?

Chad: Other inexpensive things like that, we can just list them, things like flyers, things like magnetic signs for your car. I don't do magnetic signs anymore because I don't really have to and I don't want to have to drive around with them on my car.

In the very beginning when every single deal I bought was the difference between being able to put food on the table or not, I put magnetic signs and stickers all over my car because I needed to pay the bills. For every year for five years, I bought a property off a sign I had on my car. Every year for five years. It cost me $50, $100 and it put food on the table.

Josh: Right on. Cool.

Brandon: I love it.

Josh: What other techniques do you have for guerilla?

Chad: You could dress up like a gorilla and stand out there with a sign.

Josh: Or you can look like my co-host who was born that way.

Brandon: I was nicknamed "Sasquatch" in high school.

Josh: Right on.

Chad: I think that's it for the guerilla marketing.

Josh: All right. We're running out of time. We got five minutes left. Let's go to number seven, the last on the list which is what?

Chad: All right. This is really simple. Sometimes you just want to handpick a property. In my town, there are certain properties. For example, there might be a 20-unit building if you buy multi-unit buildings. There might be a rental property you think is just in a good location. Just handpick that property.

Look up the address. Look up the owner. Send them a letter. Call them. You just get a list of ten or 20 properties in town that you want to buy and just keep bugging them for a long time.

I bought one this last year that I've been bugging him for seven years about buying that property off an on. We met. I talked to him. They knew me. Situations happen in life and they change. They need to know that you want to buy their property. That works.

Josh: That's awesome. You're like Scott who works for us.

Chad: He bugs people, too?

Josh: He does. He boomerangs them.

Brandon: The last property I bought was that exact way. I've been watching it for two years and just waiting and waiting and waiting and watching it. It was a little different that when it came to the market. It was a foreclosure sort of. I've been watching it for years and then it went into foreclosure. I knew I wanted that house. When it came on, I watched it. I jumped on it. I got it. I handpicked that house and I wanted it.

Josh: Let me ask you guys this really quickly because one of the things we learn as real estate investors is not to get emotionally attached to a house. Are you guys not that emotionally attached to that property?

Chad: I'll qualify it. The reason I handpicked that property was there are certain locations in town that attract better rents, that attract better tenants. For me, I'm in a college town. The closer you are to campus, the better. What I found is there's just a limited amount of properties close to town. It just pays to narrow those down and research. If you're in Clemson, send those deals to me, by the way.

In any case, in your town it's the same way. The farther you get from the good places, the schools, the interior or the village center of your town, the walkable locations, the parks is not as attractive of the rentals.

What I'm saying is go to the best locations. You still have a good deal. You’re not going to be emotional overpay for that property. All you want is a call. That's what we're saying. Send letters to people who own properties in good locations.

Josh: Right on. All right. Finding great deals, guys. Chad has been awesome. Let's run through this list really fast. Top seven tips are: driving for dollars, we got Craigslist; we got the MLS, referral prospecting, direct mail, guerilla marketing, and handpicked properties.

Chad, we got you. What do you got going on? Really quickly, what do you got planned for the next foreseeable future with your real estate?

Chad: We're sort of in a maintenance mode. We have a certain number of properties that we're happy with. We sell off a few. We buy a few. We're in a mode of trying to get our properties paid off free and clear, buy a few strategic properties here and there.

My big picture when I first started was to have income producing properties that pay for my lifestyle. We're getting closer and closer to that where I can do other stuff like this. I can talk with you guys, write on my blog, do stuff like that. That's what I'm all about.

Josh: Right on. Right on. All right. It's now time for the world-famous Famous Four. We now have a recording that does that. That was how we used to do it. Famous For.

Brandon: What is your...we've asked you this before, Chad when you were on the show back in number 80-whatever it was, number 84 but let's see if it changed at all. Number one, what is your favorite real estate-related book?

Chad: I had a hard time with this one. I hope you will allow me a little bit of leeway. I like reading books outside of the real estate niche because I get a lot of good ideas that I can then apply to it. For me, the number one guy I like to study is Warren Buffett. I really enjoy "The Warren Buffett Way." Robert Hagstrom was the author. It goes to a lot of fundamentals of what Warren Buffett is looking for in businesses.

For example, I've noticed that a lot of the same things he's looking for, if you translate that to real estate language is very similar. I'll just mention buying in good locations. I didn't believe that.

Apparently, when I first started buying properties and I bought a bunch of crap in bad locations and now I'm paying for it. I learned why buying good locations and maybe paying up a little bit for those properties can actually make you more money over the long run. That's a classic Warren Buffett. He buys good companies below market prices but he buys them.

Josh: Right on. Right on. I thought you were going to say "Book on Investing with No (or Low Money) Down."

Brandon: Josh, that was the first time you ever said the title right. I want to give a round of applause to Josh.

Josh: Yes. I've been studying really hard.

Brandon: You got my book title right.

Josh: Really, really hard.

Chad: I do like that book, too.

Josh: All right. That was a non-realistic real estate book. How about other business books? Is there another business book that you've really gotten a lot out of lately?

Chad: Yes. I've got one I just put out last week. It's a classic from again from the 1980's or 1990's but it's called "What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School." He was an agent. He's an attorney and agent for a lot of high-profile athletes.

The whole book is about street-smart kind of business advice that you wouldn't pick up in a business school class. It's things like how do you communicate with people, how do you write thank you notes. It's just a lot of really handy, practical advice that I think is awesome. Whatever business you're in, you can really benefit from that kind of advice.

Josh: That's great.

Brandon: I never heard of that one.

Josh: Yes, me neither. Right on. All right. Hobbies. What do you do for fun, man?

Chad: I've got a two-year old and a four-year old little girls. My hobbies involve them basically. We like to walk and hike and get outdoors.

Josh: You sing "Frozen" songs?

Chad: Yes.

Brandon: Let it go.

Chad: I've got the whole "Frozen" song memorized. We could do that for a postscript.

Brandon: Nice, nice.

Josh: Nice. Awesome. Awesome. Brandon?

Brandon: All right. Cool. Final question and I'm going to tweak it a little bit for today's show about finding good deals. What do you believe overall sets apart investors who are able to consistently find deals from those who struggle and never find a deal to buy?

Chad: All right. I'm going to do a little plug for an article I wrote on BiggerPockets. To me, the number one thing is hustle. I gave you the techniques here. You can pick one of these techniques and run with it. Really, the difference between the people I know who get a lot of deals in my hometown are the people who just hustle like crazy.

What I mean by that is just when you get up in the morning, you're looking after deals. You're going after deals every single day consistently without fail. If you hustle, good things are going to happen. I would say that.

Josh: Right on. Hustle, hustle, hustle.

Brandon: I will also say for those people who don't read the blog very often, the BiggerPockets blog, Chad is by far one of my favorite writers we've ever had on the BiggerPockets blog.

Josh: Oh, he's amazing.

Brandon: He's one of the few people that I have to read every post that comes out. I'm going to link to all his posts on the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show141. Anyway, Chad, thank you so much for being with us today.

Josh: Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on!

Brandon: You want to ask him...

Josh: I got an important question. Chad, where can people find more information about you, man?

Chad: I'm on BiggerPockets. You can find my profile there. There's a link to all my articles. I also write some kind of non-real estate stuff at a blog called coachcarson.com. It's about business money and life, kind of how all that intersects and wealth-building so you can check me out there as well.

Josh: Awesome, man. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, FinCon! Yeah! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us perform here on the TradeKing stage. I'm Josh Dorkin.

Brandon: I'm Brandon Turner.

Josh: Signing off.

Brandon: If you are a real estate hustler, you probably end up billing people for stuff quite often like late rent, contract, in work, et cetera. I know that I do which is why I am a huge fan of FreshBooks and I recommend them all the time.

FreshBooks is an incredibly easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help entrepreneurs get organized, save time invoicing, and get paid faster.

You can also use it to keep track of your employees' hours, track expenses, and generate awesome reports. Bill like a boss.

Try FreshBooks free for 30 days. Just got to freshbooks.com/BiggerPockets and enter BiggerPockets in the "How did you hear about us" section when signing up.

Josh: All right. That was Chad Carson live on the BiggerPockets Podcast from Charlotte, North Carolina. Pretty cool interview, man. Lots of great tips.Chockfull of information.

Brandon: It was. It was. It definitely makes me rethink about a lot of what I do in finding deals. I'm like, "I should do this and I should do this." I know I'll start incorporating a lot more of those in my business because today you have to be creative. Deals are hard to find.

Josh: Exactly. Exactly.

Brandon: Cool. Let's get out of here.

Josh: Big thanks to Chad for coming on. Yes, let's do this. All right, guys. Hopefully, you enjoyed Show 141 of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Definitely make sure to check out the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show141. You can also find all of the rest of our podcast at BiggerPockets.com/podcast. That's it.

If you're not yet a member of our amazing community, I definitely encourage you to get involved. Jump on BiggerPockets.com. Sign up. Create an account. You get to hang out, network with guys like Chad and Alexander who came in and so kindly interrupted our show earlier. It was awesome. It was awesome. Yes. Jump on the site. We hope to see you there. Thanks for being a listener. We'll see you next week on the BiggerPockets Podcast.

I'm Josh Dorkin signing off.

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