BiggerPockets Podcast 150 with Luke Swab Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 150: Designing a Lifestyle-Based Real Estate Business with Luke Swab

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets Podcast Show 150.

Luke: I want to do real estate. I want it to be extremely passive. The end goal for me is 40 to 50 houses.

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Josh: What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host of the BiggerPockets Podcast here with my co-host; finally back from Ireland, I don't know if I got that right, Mr. Brandon Turner.

Brandon: I am back. It was fun. I was driving on the other side of the road and seeing a lot of sheep and horses and stuff. I saw a lot of castles. That was cool.

Josh: Yes. The pictures were awesome, man.

Brandon: Yes, I got some cool pictures.

Josh: You should share some.

Brandon: Yes. What I'm going to do is on the show notes for the show at BiggerPockets.com/show150, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to my Instagram page which I think is just instagram.com/brandonrturner. You could see all my recent pictures from the trip. I put a bunch from there. Anyway, yes, I had a good time. I really did found castles out in the middle of a farmer's field. I went and tracked one down.

Josh: So cool. So cool. Yes, you just got back yesterday, a little jet lag clearly.

Brandon: A little bit but it's all right.

Josh: You don't look too good.

Brandon: I never looked too good. It's good. I came back with a thousand BiggerPockets...by the way, if you e-mailed me or sent me a private message on BiggerPockets in the past week, I apologize because I have a thousand I got to respond to. I'll be doing that the rest of today. Speaking of BiggerPockets, I heard something cool happened today. Actually, it was a week ago.

Josh: A week ago, yes. We just launched a brand-new rebranding of BiggerPockets. We've put a lot of time and energy in to this thing. We felt like the BiggerPockets logo was feeling a little stale. We felt like the BiggerPockets look and feel needed to be more consistent across the board.

The first phase...it's a multi-phased project; launched the brand-new logo. We love it. It's awesome. If you guys look on iTunes, hopefully, the new iTunes cover image is now up. It's got this guy and that guy, me and Brandon on it along with our new logo.

The site's nav is new. The site feels fresh. It feels new. It feels clean. It's exciting to me. A ton of work and big thanks to the guy who kind of led the path which was Josh Telton, our UX designer, UI guy. He's amazing. He's done a phenomenal job. I'm really excited about it. Yes, if you haven't been on the site, come check out BiggerPockets. It just feels so good.

Brandon: It should be easier to find things, too. I find it's really easier to navigate. If you're looking for a certain topic or you're trying to find where to find a book or where to find webinars, where do I find whatever, the forums? It's a lot easier to get around.

Josh: A little more obvious.

Brandon: Check it out.

Josh: Speaking of BiggerPockets news, really quickly, we also just hit a milestone last week, whichwas 400,000 members which is pretty exciting. It's always hitting those milestone numbers. Big thanks to all 400,000 of you for joining. We definitely appreciate it. If you haven't been in the site for a while, there is just a ton of new people on BiggerPockets to network with, connect with. Get on there and start interacting and make the most.

Brandon: There you go. All right. Let's get to today's Quick Tip.

Josh: Quick Tip.

Brandon: Today's Quick Tip is you are probably aware of this already but did you know BiggerPockets has a Facebook page and an Instagram account and a Twitter account. What we would like to start doing is showcasing some of our members and their properties, photos of our members and their properties.

What we're asking you, listener is take a picture of yourself in front of one of your properties. It could be a flip, a rental, whatever. Take a picture of yourself in front of your property and on the picture hold up a sign. Grab a piece of paper and with a Sharpie or whatever, on the paper just write #BiggerPockets and then send it to us.

You can either send it to us on Twitter. You can send it to Twitter or Facebook or whatever. If we get those pictures, we're going to start sharing those on our social media channels, just kind of talking about our members a little bit and showing what you've done.

If you've got a picture of yourself in front of your rental, take one. It could just be a selfie. Hold up a piece of paper that says #BiggerPockets and then tag us at BiggerPockets on your Twitter or Facebook message or whatever and we'll get it.

Josh: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: All right. Really quick you guys. This is the BiggerPockets Podcast. Pretty soon, the BiggerPockets Podcast is going to be playing on the Android Play Store. I think that's what it's called. I don't know. Really excited about that. We're on Stitcher. We're on iTunes. We're on SoundCloud.

Please, particularly on iTunes, leave us ratings and reviews. If you're listening to this on Android, whatever it's called, the Play Store, Google Play Store, at some point in the future, leave us ratings and reviews. It really helps us out, guys. We really do appreciate it. It tells us that we're doing a decent job. That's what I've got.

Let's get to the sponsor and let's get the show going, man.

Brandon: All right. Today's sponsor is...

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All right. Big thanks to our sponsor who of course makes this show possible each week. I just want to thank you, sponsors. Why don't we get to the show? Today's show is really, really cool. We got a guy who talks about a lifestyle design when you're building a real estate business. He's got a cool lifestyle. I'm envious.

Josh: Yes, it's a crazy story. Today's guest is Luke Swab. Luke is a professional commercial fisherman. Think of those guys that you see on TV. It's like the crazy drama on those fishing shows. This guy has done it and he was on a fishing show. He's awesome. He's cool. He's laidback. As Brandon said, he's building this really neat lifestyle business for himself. A lot of fun.Really, really good guy. Let's bring him on. Let’s get to the show.

All right, Luke. Welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here.

Luke: Thank you. Thanks for letting me be on the show.

Brandon: Yes. This should be fun. I noticed and I noticed before we actually started this call. We were doing kind of our prep work. You've have a little bit of a, I'm going to say Northern Midwest accent. I don't know if the people have picked up on that yet. Where are you from?

Luke: I live in Lansing, Michigan right now but I am from up North is what they call anything above Clare in Michigan. You're just from up North at that point. I'm from up North Michigan.

Josh: Somewhere on your hand, right?

Luke: Yes. I got my hand out. I'm right here in the little crack between the two fingers here.

Josh: I figure most of Michigan is kind of a crack.

Luke: We've been going for a minute and a half here. You're already on Detroit. Okay. That's fine.

Josh: I got it. I got it. It's here. All right, man. Cool. You're from Michigan and you are a real estate investor. What do you do full-time and how did you end up falling in to real estate?

Luke: I guess if you had to say what my job was, I'm a commercial fisherman. I started that13 years ago when I was 18. I'd found out that my some kind of third cousin, relative, uncle that I don't really know has a fishing boat in Alaska. I got his number, called him up, asked for a job, and then I worked for him for two summers and thought this was an unbelievable way to make money.

I bought my boat when I was 20 years old. That's been my main job for the last 11 years has been commercial fisherman in June and July.

Brandon: You go out there for two months a year, three months a year, right?

Luke: Yes, two months. I make it sound like it's two months but it's really six weeks, sometimes five. I can squeeze it down. A very short period of time.

Josh: This is a difficult job, right? You work for two months and the rest of the year you sit on your ass. That sounds tough, man.

Luke: That's exactly right. It is tough.

Josh: Tell us about the fishing. You're one of these guys like on the TV shows where they all fight on the boat. It's crazy. Is that kind of what you do?

Luke: That's exactly what I do. It's a difficult job. I want to make sure that everyone knows it's hard.

Josh: I'm kidding. I've seen the shows and there's not a chance in hell that you'd find me on one of those boats. No, not a chance.Kudos to you for having a big set.

Luke: I'm really fortunate and happy because I do make a lot of money in a very short time if I play my cards right. I've been fortunate. Every year has been good except for two out of my 11 so that's really good record. Yes, it is a hard job. I make a big chunk of money. Then, I have a huge opportunity to do whatever I want the rest of the year which has been luckily for me not blowing it like a lot of fisherman do and I've been investing in real estate.

Brandon: That's awesome.

Luke: That's my strategy. I still, I guess have a full-time job even though it's five to six weeks total a year.

Josh: That's really cool. Obviously, we want to talk about your real estate. You've done some TV as a result of your fishing and other things, right?

Luke: Oh, yes. Like you, Josh, I have a TV career kind of.

Josh: You're not famous at all?

Luke: No. No. I only have 500 followers on Instagram.

Brandon: 501 after today. I'm going to follow you.

Luke: I hope so.

Brandon: Good.

Luke: Yes. Two summers ago, I was approached by a casting company and we worked with Animal Planet. I was one of six boats featured on an eight-episode show called Alaska: Battle on the Bay. I had a guy on my boat. I had a little film crew and we shot a full season of this show.

The ratings were bad. I was funny. It was good. Everyone liked me. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. The rest of the characters were just casted poorly. I think it could have been a really interesting show because it's amazing what we do out there.

The whole industry is completely different than all the other fisheries. It's still a derby style unlike crab with IFQ's. You don't know how much you're going to catch. You don't even know what you're getting paid until the end of the season when you caught it all, which is a horrible way to run a business, by the way.

Brandon: Yes, yes. That's pretty rough.

Luke: Just as an example, two years ago we got paid $1.28 a pound. I made my money. I made $50,000 to $75,000. That's good. The next year, I got paid 50 cents a pound.

Brandon: Ouch.

Luke: You can imagine. I didn't make any money. On top of that, that was the first time I reinvested in the business. I was running a piece of garbage fishing boat that was $15,000. I invested and got $150,000. Made this huge investment...

Josh: Did they make that boat in Detroit? Is that what this $15,000 boat...

Luke: These are Detroit prices. No, I just got it from some guy in Seattle. Nice joke there. I appreciate it. Anyway, I didn't get paid at all. When it came to settle after all my crew was paid, I went home without a check. This was my first time in 13 years of flying back home from Alaska still owing money and no check in my pocket.

That was a big reality check. Right around the same period, I've started focusing harder on my real estate because I've been extremely lazy with it. Now I'm realizing that I really need to focus more on it and take advantage of the ample opportunities that are in the Detroit, I mean Lansing area of Michigan.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Is that where you invest, Lansing?

Luke: Yes, I invest right here in Lansing, Michigan.

Brandon: Okay.

Josh: Right on. Let's get in to it. That's cool. That's fascinating. Congrats on your flop of a show. No. It sounds really cool. What I find interesting is it's one of these careers where...like teaching. A teacher, your work nine, ten months out of the year then you have a really amazing two months of free time. You obviously have considerably more time, which opens you up for the opportunity to get in to real estate instead of bumming around.

I'm super excited to hear about this lifestyle that you've built which is what it sounds like is pretty cool. How did you get started in real estate?

Luke: My first deal luckily didn't work. What was I? I was probably about 23 years old. Before I went fishing, I found a house in Holt Lake, Michigan, a tiny little town that has a crashing economy. I signed a land contract for a guy. I put $1,000 down earnest money and I was going to buy the house for $55,000, two-bedrooms, one-bath, probably about 600 square feet. I think the terms were 7%, five-year balloon.

I had my worst fishing season ever up until this last year obviously. This was my first bad season. I came back and I had to walk away from the deal. In hindsight, that was the best thing that could happen because Holt Lake is not a good rental. I didn't do any research. I was just like, "I have money. I want to be a landlord. I want to own properties." I'm very thankful that it fell through. That was my first failed attempt at real estate.

Josh: Really quick, what is a land contract?

Luke: Oh, that's the same as owner financing. That's where the owner of the property is the bank. You deal with them. You write up a contract -- what's the interest rate, what are the terms, how long is it for, et cetera.

Brandon: Land contracts --that terminology is used a lot of times in Michigan and a few other states I think but most of the US doesn't talk about. We usually talk about owner financing or maybe lease options we've heard.

Luke: Right. Right.

Brandon: Yes, land contracts are big out there. Yes. I don't deal with them in my area.

Luke: There are a lot of land contracts going on in Detroit right now.

Brandon: I don't know about that.

Josh: How is that? Because granted in over the three years we've been doing the show, I've given a lot of grief to D town. Obviously, there's a lot of money going in. The Quicken guy is buying up downtown building it up or trying to. Are you seeing things start to turn at all or is it still kind of...

Luke: Oh, totally. Yes. I don't hang out much in Detroit but I have friends that are in Detroit, actually in Detroit proper and then friends in the outside like Ferndale, Royal Oak, things like that. It's getting very trendy to live downtown, more expensive. I see it improving. I think Detroit is a great place to invest if you're savvy.

I don't want to deal with it and I'm close. I'm not recommending people from California. "Hey, this Luke guy said invest in Detroit." Hey, I live an hour and a half away. I'm not even touching it but there's a lot of opportunity there for sure.

Josh: Cool.

Brandon: Let me ask you about real...you make good money as a commercial fisherman. You could probably do that for a long time of your life and have a decent life. Why pursue, why get in to real estate?

Luke: Because I don't like commercial fishing. I've always done jobs because you got to make money somehow and that's a good way to make concentrated money in concentrated time. I don't like it. It's stressful. The things I have to do I don't feel right about. It's very dog-eat-dog and I'm a pretty laidback nice guy. I just don't like what I have to do.

I want to do real estate. I want to be extremely passive. The end goal for me is 40 to 50 houses, hand it all over to a property manager, and I just collect $80,000 to $100,000 a year. I just talk on the phone more to one or two people with the property management company. That's what I want.

Josh: That's a professional bum.

Luke: Yes, that's what I'm...right now I'm part-time bum. I'm trying to be professional bum.

Josh: What was the first deal that you actually did? This first deal, the $55,000-house fell apart. Thank goodness. What actually happened next?

Luke: I was bumming around the world, as you would call it. I was on a motorcycle trip in Africa for five months with my best friend. Needed, I was sleeping in couches. I didn't pay rent for about three or four years somehow, just bumming. I landed in Lansing, Michigan. My sister lived there. My cousin lived there. I have some family that is in the regions surrounding. I decided I wanted a place to live.

I started looking at houses. The market was down. This was four years ago, about 2011, yes. I just picked a neighborhood that my sister had a home in and looked at prices and found a house on the MLS but it was an auction. It started at $25,000. I looked at it with my realtor. Okay, I could live in here.

It's two-bedrooms, one bath, big upstairs. It started at $25,000. On the day that you bid, I just clicked "bid." Someone outbid me. I clicked "bid" again. It was going up in $2,500 increments. It got to about $32,500 and there was this little "buy it now" button for $40,000. I said, "Eh, I don't care. Buy it now." Bought it for $40,000.

I still live in the house today. That was my first purchase four years ago. I lived by myself for a year because I was always on couches. I wanted my own space. I lived by myself for a year. During that time, I got my second rental property. That worked out really well. I still have my original tenants, by the way.

With the house I lived in, what I did was over the next three years I remodeled it. I put in a new Ikea kitchen. I took out the wall between the living room, opened it up, granite countertops. I put some money in to it, about $25,000. New driveway.

Then, I took the upstairs, put a separate entrance on the upstairs and turned the upstairs into an efficiency apartment, a real small one but it's beautiful. I rent that for $550 a month. Then, I also have a roommate now and he pays $475 a month.

I'm clearing just over $1,000 on a house that's free and clear and I live there. I don't pay for internet. I get it from my neighbor. He gives me the password.

Brandon: That is house hacking right there.

Josh: That is serious house hacking.

Brandon: That's serious house hacking. I love it.

Josh: Do you also have a hose tied to his hose spigot you've been filling your sink on? I don't know. Do you tap at the cable?

Luke: No, no. I don't have cable. I have Netflix, friend's password or something. I don't know.

Josh: Like I was saying, professional bum.

Brandon: That's funny. That's funny.

Luke: That's the way it sounds like.

Josh: I love it.

Brandon: You bought that house. You bought it for cash. You're bringing in all this money now. That's a good cash flow deal. Even if you had a mortgage on it, that would likely cash flow well. Then, you have a second rental property. Let's talk about that one. How did you find it? How did you get it? What did you do?

Luke: MLS. I'm a pretty loyal guy. I used the same realtor even though I found the house. I just paid him. I got this house, kind of looked at it. I bought that house for $32,000. It had purple carpet throughout. When I say "throughout," I'm talking bathroom, kitchen, purple carpet.

By the way, all my houses are built in the 1920's. They're all the same shotgun style, bungalows, two-bedrooms, one-bathroom, unfinished basement, no upstairs except for my own personal. I have the upstairs. I'm very simple because I don't want things to break. If you have a simple house, you have less things to break.

About this house, ripped off the carpet, put tile in the bathroom, kitchen. Took about a month. Painted. I got maybe $38,000 in to it. Put it for rent. It's renting at $750. Put if for rent on Craigslist. Got a lot of people interested. Picked out a really nice husband and wife.

They're still there to this day. I don't raise their rent. The check comes first of the month. It's a wonderful thing. The last thing that happened to it was the fridge went out. I talked to them. I got them a nice pretty black to match all the other appliances, double swinging fridge. I hooked it up to water. They have an icemaker and they're really, really happy about it.

It was $800. I could have gotten one for $500. They treat me well so I'm treating them well then it works perfect.

Brandon: I'll just say I love that philosophy, not that any of my tenants live in swill. The tenants that are my best tenants that I like. They pay on time. They do good things for me. Yes, I want to reward them.

Just like finding employees for a company, it's a lot easier to hold on to people than it is to have to hire new or a lot easier to hold on to good tenants than it is to go find a new tenant constantly and that turnover. Yes, I think that's great insight.

Luke: The funny thing about that particular story is I own the house across the street. That fridge also went out at the same time. Lowe's came and delivered two fridges. There's the one, nice one sitting next to the cheaper $500 one.

If the tenants were watching, they could look at the windows and see, "Oh, how come they get the little white fridge and I get the nice black fridge?" I don't know if that's funny. That's my one house that I may dump in the portfolio. Everyone has a problem house, right? That's my problem house.

Brandon: The house across the street was the bad one, is that what you're saying? Which is the bad house?

Luke: The bad house is the one across the street from the white house. It's gray. It used to be a storefront converted into a house. It has really weird-sized rooms. It's a weird house. That leads me in to something else. I don't buy weird houses anymore because you get weird tenants.

Brandon: Yes. I always tell the story about my hell house. I talk about it in the podcast. I talk about it on webinars every week. I have this one house that I just hate this house. It is a weird house. It has a weird back area that was attached to it above the garage. The whole thing is weird. It attracts weird tenants. You said that perfectly. Weird houses attract weird tenants.

Josh: It's unpredictable. The key at the end of the day is you want to create a portfolio that's predictable, that's kind of, "Hey, this is the exact type of property we buy. These are the tenants that typically will end up in the property." It's easy. You use the same paint. You can kind of build this portfolio, plug and play across the board. Once you start adding in those weird houses, it just kind of gets confusing, doesn't it?

Luke: Oh, yes. Totally.

Josh: How big is your portfolio today?

Luke: I have nine properties including mine that I live in. I went in with a goal buying two properties a year with my fishing money. I'd get a loan from a bank because it's cheap money; pay my 20% down because it's investment property. That's what you do in Michigan. I'd have enough money for two downpayments.

All my properties are fixed rates. They are 15 years. I could have gone 30 if I wanted. Talk to your accountant if that's better. You get better interest appreciation. I don't know. I'm kind of old school. I like getting them paid off faster.

Brandon: Let's talk about that because that's a question a lot of people ask. Should I go 15-year or 30-year? You're saying you want to do 15 because you want to get them paid off quicker. Why do you want to do that?

Luke: Because I don't have much debt. The only debt I have is business debt. I've never bought a TV from Best Buy with a credit card. My car is always paid in cash. I don't know. It might not be logical. It's probably more of an emotional viewpoint but I just want my houses to be fixed 15's because they are paid off sooner.

It's kind of a set it and forget it kind of deal. I haven't had to go commercial loan yet with adjustable rates and having that looming over your head. What's going to happen in five years? The rate is going to go up. What am I going to do? I always worry about re-financing. I have come to find out that financing is extremely hard to do.

Once I have a house locked in, I set it and forget it. Cash flow, make sure your numbers are good and then you're there. You don't worry about it for 15 years.

Josh: We're not going to judge the idea...

Brandon: I actually like the idea. When I was younger, first starting out, everything I wanted was 30-year. I wanted as minimum as possible down. My goal was to maximize my leverage in putting as little money to it.

Now, I'm thinking five, ten years down the road, here 15 years on the road from now, it would really be nice to have a lot of paid-off properties because it gives you so many options down the road. Less fingers in the pie or less people's agendas on your deal. It's your agenda. It's your property. You own it. You don't have any mortgage person yelling at you or doing anything weird.

I get both sides completely and I don't think there's a right or wrong way there. I think 15 years is a nice middle-of-the road between those people who say, "I need to pay all cash" or "I need to get a 30-year fixed." It's kind of a nice middle-of-the-road way.

Josh: What works for you don’t necessarily have to work for the next guy, which is an important thing for the listeners. Just because this is what you've got going on, Luke...that 30-year may work better and that goes across the board with real estate.

That's the beauty of this show is we want to expose people to all these different ideas and reasoning because it works. It makes sense for you and it may make sense for tens of thousands of other people.

Luke: Sure. I still have the full-time job, the fishing. I'm not living off this investment money. I still have the regular full-time job income that I'm using for investments. If I was only full-time real estate, no fishing, I might have to have a different strategy to leverage more like Brandon is saying.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about a thing that you and I kind of talked about before in the prep work. Basically, your story kind of revolves around this idea of having a lifestyle-based real estate business. Your goal, earlier you said, was 40 to 50 houses.

You're not looking to become a billionaire here. You’re not looking to, I'm assuming you're not looking to work 40, 50 hours a week trying to build up this massive business. What is your goal? Your goal is to be a bum, as you said.

Luke: Professional.

Brandon: Professional bum. That's kind of the lifestyle-based real estate business. Can you talk about that a little bit? Why is that important to you?

Luke: It's all about freedom for me. How do I put this? I look around at the world. Okay, let's back up. I've seen a lot of the world. I've been to over 40 countries. I've seen all these cultures. I've seen how Americans live, how people live in South Africa, Thailand, Europe, whatever, all these places.

I'm not convinced the American culture is perfect. A lot of people in America they just get stuck in this trap of having to work, having no freedom, forgetting what they do for fun, forgetting what their hobbies are, not loving people as much as they could, all these hippie ideas. I don't want to be part of that. That I guess is my answer right there.

Brandon: I love it.

Luke: Can we get another guest to do this show? I don't really like this guy. I think it's awesome, man. Yes. Listen. We're so self-centered here. There's a whole lot more to life than the J-O-B. I think that is something that I think BiggerPockets speaks to a lot of people is finding ways to supplement incomes, finding ways to replacing incomes.

Real estate is really an amazing tool for building that lifestyle business that you've got going on. We love it and we support it. I'm envious. 40 countries is phenomenal. I'd love to do that. One of these days, that will happen.

Brandon: I want to know about what your thoughts are between...there's this hard dichotomy is what I might say, whatever, a difference between hustling so you don't have to work later and still enjoying life now.

I could put in ten years of hardcore work, 100 hours a week for the next ten years and then never have to work again. Then, I get freedom for the rest of my life. Or, I could enjoy life now and enjoy it for the rest of my life. Where do you find yourself on that scale of passivity, whatever you want to call it?

Luke: That is the hardest question right there. It's a different answer for everybody. I lean more extreme towards the way of working less and playing more. I've seen both sides of it. What you're supposed to do is work until you retire and then enjoy yourself but when you retire...

Josh: When you're supposed to.

Luke: Yes, when you're supposed to. You're 65 and your knees hurt and you can't go hike to the bottom of Grand Canyon. You can right now. At the same time, you don't want to be supported by the system, have no money to be able to do anything. It's this fine line.

I grew up in a poor family. We didn't get to go on trips. We didn't even really have much money for food. I had some motivation to work hard but once I got some money, I want to play. I think I've always kind of just had this outlook of you got to do both. I'm not afraid to work at all.

I want to be a professional bum but at the same time I've done a season on a crab boat in Alaska and that's the most dangerous job in the world. That's a hard job to do. I've been doing commercial fishing for 13 years. I absolutely hate it but it's worth for me having the rest of the year off.

I think people need to decide what's important for them -- time, money, relationships, whatever and then go from there.

Josh: Right on. Right on. You've built up this portfolio, two a year. You're up to nine. At some point, you want to dump it all off. It sounds like you're currently managing the entire portfolio yourself. How time-consuming is that for you? What are some of the big headaches that you're facing?

Luke: I've been really fortunate so far. I think that's because I've been very picky with the properties. In Lansing, when I was buying $40,000 houses, you could have bought similar $20,000 houses and on paper you make more money.

I'm so picky I only buy in one neighborhood. I can walk to all my properties. There's nothing more than half a mile away from my current house. It's a growing area. You get better quality tenants here. All my houses are built in the 1920's but they've all been remodeled -- electrical is updated, dry wall, furnace, roof, vinyl windows. I've been very selective with what I buy and I'm buying low-maintenance properties.

I can get away with leaving say, the fifth of the month. Get all my rent checks. Then, come back at the end of the month and I didn't miss any e-mails, any phone calls. There are no problems. The tenants don't even know I'm gone. I can do that.

Josh: What is a low-maintenance property? What does that mean exactly? Is it that you've done the fix-up on them and so now there's no maintenance or is there something else that you're talking about?

Luke: In my opinion, when I say low-maintenance house I don't have any finished basements because you can have water problems especially in my neighborhood. It's moist ground so people with finished basements have sump pumps going out, dry wall getting wet, et cetera. That's eliminated because I don't have any.

As far as plumbing or electrical, if there's a problem, you can crawl up in the attic and fish wires down. Or, you go to unfinished basement, fish wires up. That's easy to do. You don't have to tear a dry wall out.

The windows open and close. You wouldn't believe there are houses in my neighborhood where the windows are wood. They are painted shut. The tenants try to open them up. There's a problem. They're calling you. I don't have any wood windows so I don't get those calls. Those are the things that I'm talking about.

I mostly buy turnkey and I do pay a little premium for that because I don't want to be the guy managing contractors rehabbing but I can still make the numbers work. I do have to pay the downpayment but I have to work less. I'm willing to pay a premium to buy things on the MLS and the prices were working out for me with that strategy.

At the beginning of my real estate career, the last three deals have been no MLS. I've been more creative, new ideas from listening to you guys really. That's pretty much where I'm getting a lot of my stuff is your own podcast and being inspired by other people.

Josh: Cool.

Luke: The last three deals have been a little different with how I acquire them but they are still low-maintenance houses, pretty much turnkey. I'm doing a flip right now. It's my very first flip, flip-and-hold. It's the BRRRR.

Josh: BRRRR, yes.

Luke: I'm doing one of those right now. It's kind of a nightmare because I've never managed a project like this before. Everyone blames each other. The contractors blame each other. They're supposed to be done when I got done from fishing. That was five months ago. Now I just want to get it done before it freezes so I can get the water turned on so it won't be vacant all winter long.

Brandon: That actually brings up a great point about BRRRR investing, which is buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, that idea of buying fixer-upper rentals. It never really goes as smoothly as you think it should. I like doing that strategy a lot because I'm able to build equity right into it. I'm able to be creative about the financing. At the end of the day, it is hard work. It is a job to have to mange the rehab of a property.

What you did is you have a job that works two months out of the year and you work hardcore at it. You make enough income from it to be able to buy real estate without having to do that side of the job of real estate.

It's almost like in order to be in real estate, there are two sides of it. There's job and then there's the investment. You can either combine both of those in to real estate or you can keep them separate. You've kept them separate for the most part in that you make money from a job. You put it into the investment. Again, there's no right or wrong way but just kind of that's how it seems to play out.

Luke: Yes, that's exactly what I've done. Yes, I agree 100% there.

Brandon: Do you anticipate needing to do more? Do you want to do more of those BRRRR, kind of those fixer-upper rentals? Or, do you think from now on you're going to g back to the sort of turnkey where you buy them finished and fixed up?

Luke: Since I'm getting so frustrated with my fishing business, I'm trying to sell. It's for sale right now if anyone wants it.

Josh: I got it. I'll do it.

Luke: I'm trying to get rid of that. I'm going to lose my income and I'm going to be forced to do the BRRRR method or be more creative. I think I’m willing to put in that work right now. I'm probably going to have to change. I don't want to but I can learn anything. I can learn to do that as well.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: That's all it takes.

Brandon: I did it on a webinar topic a couple of weeks ago with the BRRRR kind of this idea because we're talking about lifestyle kind of business, just kind of a cool idea. Again, I talk about this also in the new upcoming book on rental property investing that will be out this week or next week.

Anyway, the idea is you can buy these properties. Let's say you did two BRRRR strategies a year. It’s actually your strategy right now. You buy two properties a year. Let's just say you bought two properties a year and you bought each one. You could put a bunch to work into it to make them look nice, fix them up, make them better, add some equity, get some cash flow. You bought two every year just like that.

After five years, you started selling two every year. Theoretically, if it all worked out the way perfectly like that, you did two a year and whatever, after five years you can start selling two properties a year, make $40,000, $50,000 per property in profit with low taxes because long-term capital gains.

You could just live on six figures just doing two deals a year -- buying two, selling two. It's just kind of a unique strategy that I know some people use to live a lifestyle-based real estate business. Just throwing that out to you in case you're ever interested in that kind of thing. It's kind of a cool strategy.

Luke: Yes. I think I kind of want to hold my stuff so I have something to pass down to the kids and the family, things like that.

Brandon: It's a whole different conversation we get in to about leaving...what do you want to leave your kids, what are your goals? Kind of to wrap up this long drawn-out thought I'm having here is there are so many different ways you can do this.

A lot of it just depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to live a lifestyle-based business, to have a lifestyle business, you can build that with real estate. If your goal is to make a million dollars a year, you can build that, too. If your goal is to be a billionaire, you could technically do that. That's why we love real estate.

Luke: Yes. That's perfect. You can do whatever you want.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Anyway, very, very cool stuff. I love talking about this stuff. I love the idea of lifestyle design and designing the kind of life you want to live. It's cool that real estate can do that. Why don't we move on? One more question I have before we go to the Fire Round is mistakes. What have you done? What have screwed up on in the past few years of being a real estate investor?

Luke: Oh, lots of them. I got lots of mistakes. My flip house right now is kind of a mistake, too trusting. I'm kind of getting frustrated and not being picky like, "Yes, it's good enough," just to get it done, one of those deals. Actually, I'll tell you my worst mistake I've ever made probably.

Josh: How many on this show?

Luke: My worst mistake I've ever made involved giving some guys, some flippers $20,000 cash and writing down on a napkin a contract to buy a house for $40,000. Josh, I see you shaking your head.

Josh: Oh, man. I'm crying here. All right, keep going.

Luke: It wasn't cash. It was secured funds or something. I didn't go in with an envelope if that makes you feel better.

Josh: Okay, a little bit.

Luke: Okay, good. This was one of my deals that I got...I have a couple of houses on a certain street. I saw that someone was trying to rebuild on a house across the street.

I talked to them. "What's going on? I would like to buy it if you want to sell it to me." They're like, "Yes. Sure. We'll sell it to you for $40,000." I'm like, "Oh, yes." Because I know that neighborhood and it's going to be worth $70,000. If it was appraised today, it would probably $70,000, $75,000.

Okay, cool. I have some money, just got back from fishing. I'm like, "Yes. What do we need to do here? I've never done this. What do we need to do?" They're like, "We'll take half now." Okay. I give them the $20,000. They wrote a little receipt. It's going to be completed in I don't know, two months or so.

Two years later, I don't have the house. I call them. They don't answer their phones. Things are slowly happening; maybe like doors would be in at this point. You just go over there and look at the house whenever, doors are in.

Eventually, this last spring I'm really getting out on... they're sick of me calling. They get it close enough for me to just say, "This is good. This is good." I was happy with the $40,000 purchase with what they were going to give me.

I finally closed on the house. I gave them the last $10,000 that they needed because they tricked me. In that two-year span, they tricked me to give another $10,000 to keep it going. I don't recommend doing this to anybody.

Josh: Don't do it.

Luke: This is actually horrible. Yes, I gave them the last $10,000 this spring, walked to the house. It was mostly what they said it was going to be. I have the house and I rent it for $850 a month and it's good. I was looking in the attic and there was no insulation in the attic so I blew some in real quick.

They were just very dishonest people with how the whole deal went down. Luckily, I didn't lose any money. I got the house. It's rented. I paid in cash. I could probably pull a line of credit off it and get all my money back if I want. It's like a good ending to a very dangerous, don't-do-that-again story.

Josh: You actually have the note to the house?

Luke: Oh, yes. Yes. It's there. Made it.

Josh: Just making sure.

Luke: Yes, made it.

Josh: Was it scribbled in crayon?

Luke: It wasn't crayon. I think it was erasable pen.

Josh: Yes, erasable pen. Nice. Nice. That's probably something people shouldn't be doing. How would you have done it otherwise? Now, looking back, what would you have done in lieu of that?

Luke: I would have gotten official paperwork from BiggerPockets.com and had them fill it out. I don't know. I really don't know the right way to do it except I did it the wrong way. You tell me, Josh. How do you go about this deal? Because you don't want to scare them.

It is a deal. If it works out, it's a great deal. The day that I signed and got the note, I had equity in the house. That thing is worth $75,000. It's a great deal. How should I have gone about it in a better way?

Josh: I don't know that I have any other answer but what I would say is at least what scares me is going into it and letting the folks that you're buying it from finish the project because you don't know them from Adam.

You don't know how reliable they are. You don't know how trustworthy they are. You don't know the contract, just the subs. You don't know any of them. You're counting on their honesty, their team whoever they are to actually get everything done for you.

My thought would be if you close a deal for a discount as incomplete, buy the deal unfinished and negotiate down from the $40,000 to whatever it is; $30,000, $33,000. I don't know. Actually, that's probably the only thing I would do because I don't want them doing work on my house. I would want to buy it and get rid of these guys to move on. I don't know. Brandon, what's your take on that?

Brandon: I don't know. I'm with you on that one, Josh. I don't know.

Luke: Yes. It was one of those deals where do I figure out how to get out of this or keep going further down the rabbit hole? The only reason, probably the main reason I kept going down the hole was they have a local presence.

They own lots of properties in the area and I know their liquor store. It's half a mile from my house. They have three 7-11's. I know where they live. It would be hard for them to just move away and not let me find them. That's kind of the deal.

Josh: You trusted that they were local and that they weren't just going to disappear?

Luke: Yes.

Josh: They kind of jerked you a little bit but in the end it worked.

Luke: I'm from up North. I'm from up North, Michigan. I do handshake deals and I got to stop doing that. That's kind of my own culture and I want to trust people and believe people because that's how I am. I made a mistake. Fortunately, I didn't have to pay for that mistake.

Josh: Yes. That's awesome. It worked itself out.

Luke: Part of the reason I wanted to even do this show was to be an inspiration for people to let them know...you have a lot of people on this show that do things very well. An average guy listening to this, they might be nervous that they would make mistakes and they'd have to learn so much and never even get started.

I want people to know, hey, you got a guy in the show right now who is telling you he did this bonehead move and he's still out there going for it. I want people to have no excuses. If Luke did that, don't move. I was even smart enough not to do that what he did and he's pulled it off.

I want people to just go for it, not as naively as I did. Hey, you don't have to be a perfect real estate expert to do this because I want people to have freedom with their lives. That's what I want.

Josh: Yes. Awesome. That's why we do this show, man. I think that if Brandon and I did this show just for the sake of doing the show, we would have been done a long time ago. Frankly, I don't like talking to him. I don't like spending time with him.

Brandon: It's my body odor. Sorry.

Josh: Yes, yes. Sharing these stories...that's why we talk to somebody like you. We talk to somebody who just did their first deal. We still talk to guys who have done huge deals. Last week, we talked to Clark Howard, nationally syndicated personal finance guy. We want people to get exposure and inspiration from people of all levels no matter who they are.

That's what BiggerPockets is all about. There is no one-way. There is no one right way. No one person is better than the next. We are all the same. We are all on equal footing. At the end of the day, we all have to just kind of take that risk. The risk is risk. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to screw up and that's okay. Just got to get past that fear and just start taking action.

Brandon: Yes.

Luke: Yes.

Brandon: All right. Hey, why don't we move over to the world-famous Fire Round, which is sponsored by...

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It's time for the Fire Round.

Brandon: All right. This is the Fire Round. These questions come direct out of the BiggerPockets forums. We're going to fire them at you. First question and this was a fascinating discussion. People should jump in to this on the BiggerPockets forums. This is a great discussion. Should I drop out of college to be a real estate investor?

Luke: Ooh. Wow. If you're going to do it...yes, college is really expensive. I don't think there's very good ROI on college right now and it's only getting worse. It's up to your personality. If you can't think business-like and motivate yourself to wake up in the morning instead of sleep in, I think it's a great thing to do. Absolutely.

Josh: Nice. Nice. By the way, lots of people who go to college can't self-motivate after they get out of college. It's funny. When we hire people, when we look for people at BiggerPockets, I don't care. The degree really doesn't matter.

I want somebody who's motivated. I want somebody who's excited. I want somebody who's going to get off their butts. That's the test of success regardless of what you do is can you get yourself to get out there and hustle?

Brandon: Speaking of that, if you're in the Denver area, BiggerPockets is hiring for numerous roles right now. If you want to come down to the BP team, just go to BiggerPockets.com/jobs and you can see them all.

Josh: Nice plug.

Brandon: Thanks. We want to hang out with some more people on the site so you can learn real estate at the same time as growing a big company.

Josh: Yes. Awesome. Second question: one of my rentals keeps getting mold because the tenant won't run their fans...

Brandon: Like the vent fans in the bathrooms and stuff, exhaust fans.

Josh: Oh, okay. And push their furniture too close up against the walls. How does furniture against the walls create mold? I've never experienced...

Brandon: Oh, okay. I don't know.

Josh: I don't live in Washington.

Brandon: This question was from Florida.

Josh: Same thing. It's really moist.

Brandon: It is moist. If you have furniture up against the wall, really close like a couch or a dresser, you move it and there will just be an exact outline of your furniture on the wall sometimes. If it's a moist area, that happens quite often.

Anyways, the person was just saying their tenant keeps complaining about mold but it's their own fault because they're not doing the things they're supposed to do to take care of it. Should they kick them out? What should they do?

Luke: I thought about that question when I remodeled the upstairs in my house and put in a bathroom. It was a very small bathroom. What I did was I wired the fan to the light. In order to have light in the bathroom, hit the switch. Fan is on. It's loud. They have to do it. That's one way to force their hand if they wanted light in the bathroom. Fan is automatically on.

Brandon: Yes, I do that as well. It's such a good idea. Yes.

Josh: That's great.

Brandon: It forces people to have that on. I know other people they do have these things. They're expensive but they might be worth it. I think they're like $60 or $80 but they'll turn on automatically, the exhaust, when the humidity gets to a certain level. You install it in the same spot on the outlet switch as the other one but it monitors humidity and just runs it whenever it needs to. That is an option. It's a little more spend-y but it could work.

Josh: Yes. Us desert people don't really understand what you guys are talking about.

Brandon: All right. Whatever. We got mold.

Josh: Good luck. Enjoy that.

Brandon: Thank you. All right. My next question: how should I find a good real estate attorney? How do I go about finding one of those?

Luke: I don't use an attorney now. If I did, the guy I would use is the guy that hangs out at the courthouse and is always dealing with the sheriff sales. I was just down there today actually for a sheriff sale. I watch those. I'm learning. That might be my new strategy to pick up homes.

There are always one or two lawyers down there. They know real estate very well. Just start hanging out down there. I'm sure you'll find one. That would be my suggestion.

Brandon: I actually love that suggestion because those are the real estate attorneys. They're going to be hanging out down there. I love it.

Josh: That's great. That's great. Last question on the Fire Round: I'm brand-new to real estate. How do I get people to take me seriously?

Luke: Whom are you trying to get taken seriously?

Brandon: I think they were just saying the people...

Josh: Generally like people you work with -- contractors, other people you network with, other investors, bankers, you name it.

Brandon: They were at a networking event.

Josh: I changed the question. The real question is: I went to my first networking event.

Luke: Oh.

Josh: I thought it was irrelevant.

Luke: I read through it.

Brandon: Yes, you did. All right. First event. They're hanging out, passing out business cards. I've been to those events before. There are a lot of newbies there and most of them will never be back. It will be one time and they're going to be done. How do you set yourself apart as somebody who is going to be seriously in this game for the long-term?

Luke: Actions speak louder than words. If you want to be serious, be serious and do some action. I don't know what else to say about that. If you've done a deal, people will look at you differently than if you've never done a deal. You want to be serious with your realtor. Put in offers and your realtor will take you serious. If you want to buy a house, get pre-approved. Just do things and then people will take you seriously.

Brandon: Yes, I love that.

Josh: That's great. Really, really good advice. Awesome.

Brandon: Yes, cool. All right. Let's wrap this thing up by asking you our Famous For.

Famous For.

Brandon: All right. These questions are asked of every guest. You probably know what's coming. Number one: what is your favorite real estate-related book?

Luke: I know it's common but I don't really read books. I listen to your podcast.

Brandon: That counts.

Luke: That's it, to be honest. If you want me to say another real estate podcast I listen to, I won't or I could.

Josh: Say the BiggerPockets Podcast is my favorite real estate...

Luke: Yes, that's what I mean to go with right there. I learn different ways. I'm not a huge reader but I listen to podcasts constantly. I've been doing it the last few years and it's completely changed my life. All kinds of podcasts -- history podcasts, real estate podcasts, finance. I've never learned so much in my life and I've been to school, college and everything. Podcasts are just wonderful. Podcast love.

Brandon: There you go.

Josh: Next question. I'm going to alter it a little bit just for you, Mr. Man, Mr. Luke. What is your favorite non-real estate business podcast?

Luke: I have one of these but it's a book.

Josh: Damn it, man.

Luke: I didn't want to avoid two of the four questions. That's complete disrespect.

Josh: What's your favorite business book?

Luke: It's called "How Economy Grows and Why It Fails." Very interesting book. I recommend everyone to listen to it, which is what I did. You can find that on YouTube, a couple of hours long. It basically talks about an economy and it uses fishing as an analogy so I like that.

It starts off as people live on a small island. They have no resources. They start to fish. They use fish as money. It's kind of funny in the sense that they relate to what happened in America with the housing crash and the automotive crash.

Josh: When was that?

Luke: What?

Josh: The automotive crash? Where did that happen?

Luke: Oh, jeez. Detroit, Michigan. Flint, Michigan. Lansing, Michigan. It happened everywhere in Michigan. Yes, okay. I stepped right into that one.

Josh: Oh, man. Sounds interesting. Definitely sounds interesting. Yes, that's cool. That's cool. All right. What do you do for fun? Obviously, you don't fish for fun. What are your hobbies? Travel?

Luke: I guess in general I just like adventures. As an example, I was in Kodiak, Alaska for the last two weeks on a brown bear hunt.

Brandon: Did you get one?

Luke: No. I didn't have a tag. It was really expensive. One of my fisherman friends, he got really lucky. He got a dual tag with his wife. We took out a 58-foot sailing boat, went to a very remote part of the island, anchored up, took the skiff in and we hunted brown bear. You don't use bait. You just stalk.

They were both successful. They got two bears. One was a ten-footer, really big bear. That was an adventure. I don't hunt but I just like to see what's going on in the world. I like to travel, ride motorcycles. That's what I like to do.

Josh: Wow. Awesome.

Brandon: Cool. All right. Final question from me: what do you believe sets apart successful investors from others who might give up, fail? What made you successful?

Luke: What made me successful was I have this kind of skill. I call it the pulling it off skill. An example is my horrible $20,000 downpayment to the house you heard earlier in that story. I do have this some kind of skill where I get myself in to buy-ins and I can get out of it.

I learned this from commercial fishing. You just have to keep your boat running and floating and bringing in fish. Otherwise, you don't make any money. You have to be creative. You have to get your hands dirty. You just have to believe in yourself. Never give up and be uncomfortable and not sleep for 48 hours and whatever it takes.

This is an example with this podcast. I'm not even doing this at my own house. I still pulled it off. I still wasn't late. I had to borrow someone's house, use their internet. The password didn't work. I'm texting Timmer, "Hey, what's your password?" I finally figured it out. I'd unplugged the fridge, took down two clocks, pull in the shades. You should see this area that I created for myself pulling it off. Now we have an awesome podcast.

You just have to make it work and not give up when you have a little annoying problem come your way.

Brandon: That's one of my favorite answers I've ever had for that question.

Josh: Oh, yes.

Brandon: Because it's so true.

Josh: That's real.

Brandon: So much of real estate is about figuring it out and pulling it off. I like that. That's very cool. All right, Josh.

Josh: Where can people find out more about you? You got a website? Tell us...you're trying to sell this fishing business. You got a big audience. Plug away, man.

Luke: Okay. Go to dockstreetbrokers.com and look in my boat for sale. Call Paul. He'll tell you what it is. It's a beautiful boat and it made me no money last year.

Josh: Oh! Let me buy that right now!

Luke: It could make you money if they decide to pay us $1, $1.50. Actually, you never know. You can find out more about me, I don't know. Follow me on Instagram at lukeswab. I have a website called lukeandnick.com. It's my Africa trip blog that we did. It's pretty cool. I have videos. You can fine me in BiggerPockets if I ever log on.

Josh: You should do that more often.

Luke: Which I should do more often, yes. I just deactivated my Facebook two days ago because it wasn't helping my life. I got rid of it. You can't even try me there.

Brandon: Okay. I'll find you in Instagram.

Josh: Before we let you go, I want your best fish tale. You're a fisherman. We got to get a fish tale out of you.

Luke: Okay. Let's go. This is on the spot. My first boat I bought it was in such bad condition. I bought it sight unseen from a guy I met in an airport sitting at a table for ten minutes. Yes. You can see I'm constantly learning major [Inaudible][57:57] behavior. I paid $12,000 for this boat. The first year is great. I made money. Everything worked out. The second year I almost sank it twice.

Josh: How do you almost sink a boat, by the way?

Luke: How do you sink a boat? When you're at court, there are these huge tides in Alaska. They can fluctuate 30 feet twice a day. You have huge tides. I'm tied up to the dock. It's fine. This is normal. The tide goes out. Your boat kind of settles down on the bottom of the river.

They land on this big rock, which would be no problem for other boats but mine when I landed the boat shifted and it went crrk, made this noise. Water started coming in. I turn the bilge pumps on and let everybody know in the string of boats that I was tied to that I have this emergency and when the water comes back in that I need to get pulled out of the water. I got pulled out of the water. It was fine.

Then, about a week later I'm driving in out to court again. I'm about two miles offshore and I hit this rock. The same thing happened but this time I have no one to help me. I'm on the VHF alerting the Coast Guard of my situation. I say alerting, just letting people know what's going on.

They come back and they say, "How are you doing?" I'm this 22-year old guy and they ask me if I need to abandon ship. I'm like, "I'm not abandoning the ship! I am not abandoning the ship!" Some guy in a skiff came out with a bigger pump called a trash pump. He got to my boat. When the water started coming, they lift me up.

I had t-shirts and a sweatshirt shoved in there and some Epoxy splashes on. I limped to the boat two miles up current into shore. All my bilge pumps were running. It was one of those you just wash it. "Am I going to make it? Am I not going to make it?"

I finally get to where they can launch me, take me out of the water but it's midnight. Everyone's gone to sleep. I'm on the radio with the dispatch. I'm like, "Hey, can you pull me out of the water because I'm almost sinking?" They say, "Can you wait till 8:00 when our guys go on ships? We don't have to pay extra money." I'm like, "I guess because I'm not sinking but I'm very close."

I had no sleep. I'm probably going on two days with no sleep and I'm just dipping my finger on frosting, eating frosting and Snickers bars trying not to fall asleep going in and out just looking to see if I'm going to sink. I didn't sink. That was close.

Josh: That was the best fish tale I've ever heard. You need to avoid rocks more often.

Luke: Yes. I just put that boat up and I bought a different one a couple of weeks later and finished the season. It all worked out.

Josh: Right on, man. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for coming on the podcast, man. It was a whole lot of fun. We really appreciate it. We look forward to seeing you around, man.

Luke: Cool. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Keep doing this podcast. It's what gets me through my motorcycle trips. I listen to you guys in my helmet when I'm all over the world. It gives me some fresh ideas when I get back to do the real estate.

Brandon: Nice.

Josh: Thanks, man. Awesome.

Brandon: We'll see you around.

Josh: Take care.

Luke: Thanks.

Josh: All right, guys. That was Luke Swab. Big thanks to Luke. I love it. I love his whole thing. Clearly, he's not perfect in what he's doing but none of us are. We're all fallible and we all make mistakes. That's why he likes the show. I think that's why people appreciate the tales that we tell in the interviews that we do. It was a lot of fun having him.

Brandon: Yes. He's very real and I like that. He's very real. He's at a place a lot of our listeners are probably at. Their first few deals, they've done a handful. They're not multi-multi-millionaires with the real estate yet but they're just on the journey. I love it. Cool.

Josh: Link up really quick with Luke if you want on the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show150. I don't know. Did you have anything you want to add?

Brandon: I was going to say it's funny. I mentioned earlier in the show about his accent. He's got kind of that like...when I think about that accent, I think of the Northern Minnesota accent because I'm from Minnesota. Everything is, "Don't you know?" That's how everyone talks. I've been watching "Fargo." Have you ever watched the show "Fargo?"

Josh: I have not.

Brandon: Fantastic show! One of the best shows I've ever seen. I have one episode left of season one. Fantastic show. I highly recommend it. It's on...

Josh: You have planes or something?

Brandon: I don't know. Try it sometime. I watched it on the plane ride to and from Ireland. They had it on the plane. Man! Such a good show! Everyone talks there like that accent, that Northern Midwest Swedish accent.

Josh: Fascinating.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: That's great. Yes. I don't really care. Hey, really quick. You've been gone for a week in Ireland. What was the coolest thing you saw or the coolest thing you did? You sent this picture and we talked about before you're going to show your Instagram account. You showed this picture, these monster cliffs that you saw these people on the edge like, "I won't go anywhere near that edge." That's so frightening to me.

Brandon: There are a few times. Two different places had cliffs. One was the Cliffs of Moher and those were 650-foot cliffs. Those were the Cliffs of Insanity from "The Princess Bride." That was insane.

The other one was on the Aran Islands. We went to the Aran Islands, the island off of the thing. I can't pronounce the name of the actual cliff but it's the most famous thing on the Aran Islands. Those cliffs are 300 or 400 feet high but they're just so rocky and straight down.

That's one of the coolest pictures I got. There were three women standing down on the cliff. It was insane. You guys check it out, BiggerPockets.com/show150. I'll put a link to my Instagram account there. You can see it.

Josh: Cool. Man, let's get out of here.

Brandon: All right.

Josh: Hey, big thanks. Welcome back.

Brandon: Thank you.

Josh: Let's get on to Show 151 next week. Stay tuned at BiggerPockets.com/podcast. With that, I'm Josh Dorkin signing off.

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