BiggerPockets Podcast 153 with Linda McKissack Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 153: From $600k in Debt to 108 Single Family Rentals with Linda McKissack

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets podcast show #153.

Linda: Really, and kind of like you guys now, our passion now is helping other people do this, you know, because you see how it’s changed your life.

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Josh: What’s going on everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host of the BiggerPockets podcast, here with cohost Mister Brandon Turner. What’s going on, Brandon?

Brandon: I’m chilly because I forgot to turn my heater on in my office so I’m a little cold, you know?

Josh: Aw, I’m sorry.

Brandon: Yeah.

Josh: Do you want a hug?

Brandon: I want some cheese with that whine. Ba-dum-ch! Get it? Whine? Cheese?

Josh: Really? Really? Yeah.

Brandon: My dad always said that to me. Anyway! How are you doing? What’s going on?

Josh: I’m great, man. Things are good.

Brandon: Besides launching, like, the best real estate book ever written again.

Josh: We did. Oh, yeah. We just had a big launch which probably can take us to today’s Quick Tip, but yeah, I’m pretty excited. The books are doing great and yeah, why don’t we go to the Quick Tip?

Brandon: Sure.

Josh: Today’s Quick Tip is—

Brandon: Quick Tip. Alright, today’s Quick Tip is if you’ve not yet picked up a copy of The Book On Rental Property Investing that we talked about last week or The Book On Managing Rental Properties, the book that I co-wrote with my wife, you guys should pick up a copy of that right now because it’s awesome, it’s there, it’s for sale, and you can get some good bonus stuff with it. So, check it out at BiggerPockets.com/RentalBook, you won’t be sorry.

Josh: Awesome, awesome.

Brandon: Like that?

Josh: And I’ve got a Quick Tip which is if you’re interested in being a guest on the BiggerPockets podcast go to BiggerPockets.com/Guest and it’ll give you information on what we’re looking for and obviously if we select you you’ll be a guest on our show. If we do not get in touch with you do not worry, it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or not qualified. We have lots of things that we look for at different times.

Brandon: And there’s like 500 people on that list already so we don’t get everyone.

Josh: Yeah, it’s a big list. Yeah. Otherwise, guys, definitely, definitely get on iTunes for us and please leave us a rating and review. You can also do that on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, on any of these players, but we love having those iTunes reviews so please go on iTunes to the BiggerPockets podcast which has a really cool new cover image of Brandon and I. It’s pretty swanky. Check out the BiggerPockets podcast and leave us a rating and review. We do appreciate it and it helps expand the exposure of the show.

Brandon: That is true.

Josh: So that’s it. Yeah, well.

Brandon: Should we get to the show?

Josh: Let’s knock out today’s sponsor and let’s get to the show. So…

Brandon: Alright. If you’ve been listening to the BiggerPockets podcast this month you’ve probably heard me raving about our awesome podcast sponsor RealtyShares.com. RealtyShares is making it super simple to diversify your portfolio by investing in real estate from your computer in just minutes. What I really like about RealtyShares is that all of the real estate deals are sourced and vetted by experienced investment professionals. They’ve crowd funded over 1,500 properties across the US. Now, of course, keep in mind that all investments are risky and may lose value and past performance is not indicative of future results. So visit RealtyShares.com/BiggerPockets to start investing in real estate deals in your neighborhood today. Once again, that’s RealtyShares.com/BiggerPockets.

Alright, big thanks to our sponsor as always.

Josh: Alright, guys, we have an amazing show today with Linda McKissack. Linda is the author of Hold, it’s one of the top real estate books out there, and her story is amazing. I mean, they went from, I think it was, $600,000 in debt to build this portfolio of 100 plus properties and they’re just crushing it and doing all sorts of cool stuff.

Brandon: Yeah.

Josh: The philosophies and mindset that she talks about in today’s show is really unbelievable. So whether you’re a newbie or somebody who’s been in the game a long time she’s definitely somebody to learn from.

Brandon: Yeah.

Josh: Let’s bring her out. Alright, Linda, welcome to the show! It’s good to have you.

Linda: Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brandon: Yeah, yeah. This will be fun. So you are an author, right? As well as an investor. I want to get that right on the table right now. You wrote a book, right?

Linda: Absolutely. I wrote a book on our investment strategies.

Brandon: And what is that book?

Linda: It’s called Hold: How To Find, Buy and Rent Houses to Build Wealth.

Josh: That’s like one of the top books in real estate, isn’t it?

Linda: I hope so.

Josh: You’re kind of a big to-do, that’s awesome.

Brandon: It is, and I’ve read the book and it’s awesome. That was one of—yeah, it was a few years ago. I should have re-read it for the show, but you know.

Josh: Yeah, you should have.

Brandon: I didn’t have time.

Josh: I actually didn’t read it at all because I don’t want to come in with a bias.

Brandon: Josh doesn’t know how to read.

Linda: Just slackers.

Brandon: Well, it’s been a while. So I want to pick your brain on obviously what you talk about in the book, but obviously we’re going to talk about just you, and your investing and what you’ve done and all that good stuff. So why don’t we start at the beginning? Who are you? I mean, where do you live? What do you do? How’d you get into real estate?

Linda: Okay. I actually live in Flower Mound, Texas just outside of Denton, Texas. Most people know Denton because it has two major Universities in it, it’s a college town if you will. I actually got started in real estate investing in the early ‘90’s. We actually, for people that were in Texas or Oklahoma or Arkansas in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s we actually, had a pretty good size crash that happened to our economy and that sent my husband and I out of the nightclub and restaurant business and into the real estate sales business.

Josh: Nice.

Linda: But because of that kind of crash it really kind of shook our world a little bit and made us realize how little we were in control of. You know, ultimately we’re not in control at all, of our financing and economic situation. It just kind of turned us upside down honestly. So it made us really wanting to start understanding what are some things we can do so that no matter what we did for a living we would always have money coming in passively? When we studied wealth we realized there’s only three ways to do it; real estate, stocks, or businesses. So because we had actually entered the real estate sales world we thought, “hmm. That must be the easiest one for us to do,” so we started to understand and study real estate investing and that’s how we go into investing.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Cool, and what was your—let me ask you this first. How many properties, I mean just to give our audience a picture of who you are now, how many properties do you have total now, or units about and then what else have you done with that?

Linda: Okay. We have 108 single-family properties right now. Most of those are all located around us within about 48 minutes of us here in Texas. However, we do have 12 nightly rentals and we’re building 3 more. Those are kind of like cabin type properties up in Branson, Missouri right now and then the only other properties we have outside of Texas are two in Florida where we actually just have a relative contact there that can oversee them for us.

Brandon: Wow. That’s awesome.

Josh: Oh, cool. Yeah.

Brandon: 108 single-family rentals.

Josh: That’s a lot of properties.

Brandon: That’s a lot of rentals.

Linda: Somebody at the gym asked me this morning, “how did you get to 108?” and I said, “one at a time”.

Josh: One at a time, yeah. Hey, I wanted to ask. You said nightclub and restaurants before that so were you guys owners and operators in the businesses or were you guys just employees?

Linda: Yeah, actually, no, my husband was an owner. Both of us went to college, neither one of us graduated from college, and one of the reasons he didn’t graduate from college is he decided it would be a great idea to open Denton’s first nightclub. There were no nightclubs in Denton, and so his dad had done that so he got the bug to do it and he’s an entrepreneur. At that time I’m only 23 years old, I don’t even understand what the word entrepreneur means much less whether I was one or wasn’t one.

Josh: Sure.

Linda: But I’m a hard worker, have always been a hard worker. Come from a family of hard workers, and I really loved his kinda multiple opportunity thing he did. He ran nightclubs and we had a vending company so we just had all these mini things that we did. So he was the owner and he opened it instead of finishing college. He decided it would be better to own businesses and open the first nightclub. So he actually owned them. I didn’t understand a lot about them. I worked in them because I’m the kind of person if I’m going to be there let me work and make some money, right?

Josh: Sure.

Linda: Let me be the waitress or something. So I was going to college trying to figure out what I could do to make any money because to date I had had two or three jobs at any given time, but none of them paid very much money and so it was actually his recommendation to me when the market crashed and we found ourselves $600,000 in debt it was his recommendation to me when I looked at him and said, “I’m happy to help you, but what can I do? You know I’m a hard worker, but nothing pays,” and he’s the one that suggested I get into real estate sales.

So getting into real estate sales was actually a perfect vehicle for us to start climbing our way out of this debt, and we actually bought our first three properties while we were still in debt. You know, we were working our way out and we did that with a partner. We took a partner, a friend of mine that had been a builder in my area, and I knew him and knew his integrity and thought he would trust me on the opportunity and approached him and he said absolutely. So that’s how we bought our first three properties without any money or not really good credit at the time.

Brandon: Okay.

Josh: Right on. So I wanna just rehash a little bit because there were a few things that kind of stood out, primarily the $600,000 in debt. I mean, that’s not an insignificant amount. Obviously we are America, we are kings of debt and the average American probably has more debt than they do wealth. So, $600,000 to go from that to a place where you are today where, I mean, you’ve got a sizeable portfolio is quite the transition. Can you talk about that kind of tweak in mindset from deep in debt to somebody who’s obviously the opposite?

Linda: Sure, absolutely. Well, the good news about our debt back at that time is it was lines of credit from my husband’s businesses which was very common in the ‘80’s. You’d go to your banker and you’d just get another line of credit and it kind of would help with cash flow. So one of the good things about that period and that particular crash is we didn’t have credit card debt. It wasn’t that kind of debt, it was business debt. So it was savings and loans that crashed, real estate and oil and gas that crashed in Texas during that period so because the savings and loans were readjusting and bankers would come to us and they would give us an opportunity to come up with, let’s say, 40 cents on the dollar of a note that we had. So we had an opportunity to try to get that paid off. So that was one great thing in our favor. It wasn’t a bunch of credit card debt and we didn’t own real estate at the time so everybody we knew that did own real estate at the time lost it during that period.

So you would think that would be kind of a deterrent to ever own real estate, right? But what we saw was they were over-leveraged in it. They were more speculators than they were, what we call, investors. So, you know, I think the first thing that has to happen with anybody is you have to kind of get mad at your situation and say, “I’m going to get control of this. I’m going to learn. I’m going to be smarter,” because once you’re smarter about certain things you can take certain steps to put yourself in a position to say, “well, you know, I’m not always going to be in these great income earning years that I’m in right now so how will money come in later?”

So we just started asking ourselves those deeper questions, what do wealthy people do? I mean, how do they manage to always come in and out of every crash and still have money? So we first started to study it and honestly the best book we read on it, most people read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Kiyosaki, but the one that was a game changer for us and our mindset was Cash Flow Quadrant.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: Because he talks about how there’s only three ways to build wealth. So I love it when people take something that seems complicated and make it simple, and so that’s what that book did for me. It said, “okay, look. Here’s three ways. Pick one or pick two, but do something because if you don’t do anything then I don’t know how you ever expect to survive any kind of economic bump”

Brandon: Yeah.

Josh: For sure, for sure, and making your life recession proof is certainly an important thing and we wholeheartedly support that. Let’s talk about the speculation versus investing. You made a distinction there, I think it’s an important one, but I want to hear what is the difference in your mind between the two?

Linda: For us we have a very simple formula. We’re very simple people, you know, I’ve gotta be able to scratch it out on a piece of paper. I don’t want something I have to have this fancy calculator to figure out. So for us speculation means you buy on appreciation, it’s not a good deal when you buy it. That’s not a part of our formula. Speculation means you go into an area that’s booming and you consider it’s always going to be booming. You’re over leveraged in a property and so you maybe have a negative cash flow. We would never do that. So it’s those types of things that I think people thought they were investing, but they were really speculating and so to me that’s the difference.

Brandon: And speculating, obviously, I mean some people, you know, everyone’s got an Uncle whatever who bought a house for $50,000 and sold it for $200,000 and bragged about that for the rest of their life. So obviously it sometimes works and people just get lucky or they do time the market correctly, but yeah, for me the vast majority I want to know that no matter what the market does I’m going to be okay.

Linda: Absolutely.

Brandon: Yeah, I love it.

Josh: And it’s funny, I was reading this morning, there was a debate on Red Finn about the BiggerPockets market index that we had put out about a month ago which was a study of the best—it combined appreciation with cash flow and it was mostly agents and they were kind of ripping the study saying, you know, “well, appreciation is so important. How do you guys stand by yourselves and sleep at night when you don’t take it into consideration”.

Brandon: Yeah, they asked, “why is San Francisco not at the top of this list?” and we were like, “because San Francisco is a terrible place to invest for cash flow,” and they’ve had some good appreciation but I wouldn’t recommend people go out and buy a bunch of rental properties in San Francisco.

Linda: Yeah, we just did a Google talk in San Francisco.

Brandon: Nice.

Linda: And that was one of the things that came up. It’s a whole different market, you know, and so every market’s different and some of them you’re going to have to put a whole lot more money down to do things that we do so we’re just real honest about that.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: If you’re in Canada or you’re in California you’re going to have to put a lot more money down, but we still feel like sometimes your money is better placed there than somewhere else but not ever buying because we think that market is just going to keep going up and up and up.

Brandon: Yeah, I love that. So you mentioned earlier this idea that your first few deals you did without a lot of money using a partner. I want to talk about that strategy a little bit. I wrote a book, not as popular as your book, but I wrote a book a couple years ago, or a year ago it came out, called The Book On Investing With No and Low Money Down. It was just a bunch of different ideas, different strategies, for investing. One of those I talked a lot of about because it’s one of my favorite strategies is the partnership so let’s talk about that a little bit. How does that work? I mean, how did you guys structure that and should newbies do that today? Do you still recommend that?

Linda: Absolutely, yeah. For us it was perfect. We had built a plan on how we wanted to create, you know, we were trying to figure out what’s our freedom number? What’s our lifestyle number that we need money coming in to have a lifestyle that we want to have? Of course back then with our limited knowledge about what we would actually be able to do we said, “you know what? I feel like I’m pretty good at selling real estate. I’m probably going to make good money selling real estate,” by this time my husband had quit the nightclub business and got into real estate with me. So we said, “we think we’re going to be able to make some decent money there so what if we had $250,000 coming in passively?” so we wrote the plan for that. You know, based on our formula we’d had to have them bringing in $1,000 a month rent free and clear, you know, buy about 20 properties. We just came up with a simple plan and I always say a goal is just something to get you started.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: You know, the goal can change and all that stuff, but for me when I see it on paper and I see how simple it is it kind of gives me the momentum to get started so that’s what we did. Well, once we made the plan I’m all excited and ready to do the plan. So I find the first property, I come home, I’m all excited, “I found a great property! This is awesome! We’re going to make $15,000!” Now, at that time we hadn’t decided that our long term strategy would be hold, we were just going to do investing. So I set out, you know, I’m going to make $15,000 on this property, I’m so excited, and my husband said, “that’s great. Where are we gonna get the money?” I’m like, “gah, what a naysayer you are,” right? Or maybe a realist is what he would call it, but I’m like, “darn,” and I said, “you know what?” Just put my entrepreneurial hat on and I thought about it and I said, “you know what? I think Lou Craft will do this with me”. I’d been in business with him for 3 years selling these properties, I know how the man acts when there’s money on the table. There’s certain things before you go into a partnership you might want to know about someone and I felt like I knew those important things about Lou Craft. Plus he had the ability to do the remodeling.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: So that’s why I approached him and said, “hey, Lou, I found a great deal on a property. I think we can make $15,000,” and by the time we bought that first property absolutely to a penny it was $15,000. Another one from the RTC came up over by the college, and it was like an old dilapidated big house that we took Lou over to and I said, “we can either take the $15,000 and split it or this house is exactly $15,000. We could buy it if you think we can fix it up,” and he said, “absolutely. We’ll make it a fourplex,” and we laugh today because my husband got his notice about whatever that money is you get when you stop working, I don’t even know what it’s called.

Josh and Brandon: Social security?

Linda: Social security, thank you. Anyway.

Josh: Oh, I thought you were making a joke because I’ll never see social security, or Brandon, but you know.

Linda: Absolutely. So his was like $1,300, I can’t remember what it was, and that first property is free and clear today and brings us in, I don’t know, $2,100 or $2,200 a month. So it’s a better plan, we feel like, than social security, but that was our second property and then we eventually found a third one over by the other University in Denton. You know, I think when you find, when you really buy into something, you know, we move on emotion and justify with logic and I was so emotionally tied to what we needed to do in this plan that I think you just kind of figure the rest out, you do.

So I like partnerships to some degree, you know, because if you’re real careful about them and you know how people are with integrity and money and those kind of things. Especially now. We’ve got so many people that are not happy with the money they’re making in the stock market and any other places you can probably find people that you feel very comfortable with that would be your partner in real estate, I feel like. So I love it. I say do it whatever way you can do it. So if partnering is the most logical way for you absolutely. I would do it again today if it was my only entry way in, and I still do it today. We have key people that work for us that part of what we do as their plan is help them build wealth. So they’ll go find the properties and it’s mostly our financing that gets the deal done and so we still have partners today.

Brandon: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I love about partners is that not everybody has everything they want, right? I mean, some people want more return on their investment, some people want to quit their job, some people want to retire in ten years, and you bring multiple people together and if you get the right person, I mean, you can’t just grab any guy just cause he’s your brother-in-law you’d think he be a good partner, but you find the right guy that has what you’re lacking and has similar goals and yeah, it can be awesome. So do you think that’s a good idea? Newbies should definitely approach that kind of strategy with partners?

Linda: If it’s their only way absolutely. I mean, if you can do it without partners it makes things less complicated because most of our partnerships, not for bad reasons, but just for reasons of simplicity we’ve undone them later like Lou.

Brandon: Sure.

Linda: We have actually sold one of the properties, the one we made $15,000 on, the first one, we flipped it, kept the other two and at some point we just said, “hey, Lou, you pick, which house do you want? We don’t really care,” they’re both kind of the same big ol’ houses close to a college and he picked the one closest to Texas Women’s University so that left us with the one closest to the University of North Texas and we still have it today and I assume his family or his estate still has his today. So, yeah, I think if it’s your only way in absolutely. If you can do it without it then I would probably recommend that just because there are complications that come along with partnerships sometimes.

Brandon: Sure.

Josh: Yeah. Hey, so I’m going to cycle back again. You talked about freedom number, lifestyle number, is that—we just did an interview and I’m not sure actually the order whether it’s going to come up before or after this one, but with Clayton Morris and he kind of talked about a freedom number too. His number was basically it figured out how much money he needs to kind of live off of and then you kind of go and reverse it and do the math and say, “hey, I need 16 houses or 23 houses in order to generate the cash flow,” is that what you’re talking about? Is that the same thing?

Linda: That’s exactly what we did. We came up with $250,000 around and we decided it would be 20 properties free and clear in 15 years because when we started our investment my husband was already, he’d just turned 40, and so he said, “hey, by 60 I’d like to have this much money coming in passively”. Of course we’ve blown way past that because of other great opportunities that we’ve had not just in investing but owning businesses. We eventually took on the business side of that quadrant also. We said, “okay, look, if wealthy people,” I’m kind of a plan and a backup and a backup plan kind of person.

Brandon: Yep.

Linda: Just because we had so many different things we’ve seen happen and fall through it’s like I’m thinking, “oh, well, that’s easy. Let’s go ahead and have another,” and I actually had a business coach years ago start us on the path of understanding and believing that one stream of income wouldn’t be enough for anyone anymore. If you were raised in a family in 1950 maybe on stream of enough, but 2015 and moving forward we just truly don’t believe that one stream will be enough so we eventually tackled owning businesses and we own real estate offices and franchises. Then our company has a profit share plan that they pay you on a residual basis for helping them grow the company and we’ve been a big part of that.

So I think the plan, the number you need, because I used to always be bothered with how much is enough? I hated that question and I would eventually learn it’s because if you answer that question that makes it about the money and I truly don’t believe in most people’s cases it’s ever about the money. If you do enough of the right activities the money just kind of shows up and it’s kind of a score card or a by-product, but freedom number makes sense to me. I’m very strong on freedom options and what that money coming in passively to you gives you freedom and options.

We tell a story of losing a son-in-law three years ago, and for 10 and a half months we had a choice to stay where we were or to be 6 hours south of us with our daughter, our granddaughter, and our son-in-law as he would go into the battle for his life that he would unfortunately, eventually, lose, and I said the decisions we made 20 years ago about passive money allowed us to be there for every bit of that journey where we needed to be for as long as we needed to be there. Those are the kind of choices and options that you’re going to need to have someday that you don’t even know right now.

Brandon and Josh: Yeah.

Linda: So, for me, that freedom, that’s what freedom allows is options.

Josh: That’s fantastic.

Brandon: Yeah, I love it. Say, I want to ask you about, you said the first few you owned free and clear then. Do you own all 108 free and clear? Do you use leverage?

Linda: No, no, no. We do use leverage. Yeah, we have mortgages which I didn’t realize until I was speaking to another investor the other day that that’s actually pretty miraculous what we’ve done because I know there’s limits, of course I know that, I think when we first started the limit was 10 for, like, with a mortgage company and now I think it’s back to 8 or 10. It’s pretty close to that.

Brandon: I think it dropped to 4 and then went back up to 10 again, but not all the banks are saying it’s okay.

Linda: Right.

Brandon: Yeah, they’re still saying 4 some of them, but anyway.

Linda: Yeah, so—

Brandon: So how have you done that then?

Linda: Well, we tell people to go there first, which is what we did, we went to—of course we did the first 3 with a partner so those don’t count really as much and then all of a sudden we took the others and we went to, I think it was, I’m trying to remember 4th mortgage, I mean it’s like a mortgage company, and so we did our limit there. Then we built relationships with locally owned banks.

Brandon: Okay, yep.

Linda: You know, that’s one of the benefits of being in a small town. The president of our bank lived next door to us and we became good friends with him. Now we probably have 3 or 4 banks that we do and what we work of off today. Matter of fact, I just heard from my husband and my son we bought 2 properties before lunch. I’m not sure if we bought one after lunch at the foreclosure sale, I’ll let you know later.

Brandon: Nice.

Josh: Nice.

Linda: But we have a line of credit and so it’s about a half a million and we pull that line of credit and either take it to the foreclosure sale or we might find a deal that we need to close quickly on and we’ll use that line of credit, fix the property up, and back in ’08-’09 through really almost 2011 we were buying like crazy cause the market had crashed and we were actually in a position to have money at the time and good credit so we could go get mortgages. Back then they would let you finance 80% of the appraised value. So as long as they fit our formula, meaning we never were higher than a 70 to 30 loan to value ratio we would go ahead and finance almost all of it.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: But pretty much we used leveraged money. We don’t go—the only reason we pay cash is because we have a line of credit and we have to for the foreclosure sale, but otherwise we’re using, I mean, the interest rates are so good right now it’s almost like free money.

Josh: Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah, it’s true. I mean, interest rates are extremely low and maybe people listening to this 5 years in the future are going to be like, “5% interest? What?” it’ll probably be a lot higher then, but it’s good right now so get it while it’s hot. I love that strategy, by the way. I love the idea of using a line of credit or something like that whether it’s a business line of credit, a home equity line of credit, whatever. I like that strategy of if you have a line of credit buying a property, maybe fixing it up and then going into a local bank and refinancing it. I call it the BRRRR strategy which is the Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat so BRRRR. I do that a lot, it’s one of my favorite ways to buy.

Linda: You know, one of our biggest issues, we were just talking about this yesterday, we went into our banker and we just with a phone call said, “hey, this rate’s kinda high, can we get this lowered down?” We got it down to 5% I think or something. I don’t know what it was, but it was 7% or it was something. Whatever it was. Just with a phone call got it lowered and went in to sign those papers yesterday and my husband and I were talking and we were saying, “do we? We’ve got some so close to being paid off, do we pay them off?” and I said, “where’s that book?” You know, where’s that book, “okay, you have 108 properties now here’s what you do,” you know, there is no book like that. So we battle with it all the time and I said, well, if we call the CPA he’s gonna say, “well, if you do then you’re just gonna pay more taxes,” and all that stuff so it’s just kinda hard to—I don’t know where step 2 is when you have all those properties. Do you go ahead and pay em off? Do you leave em? I mean, there’s just, you know, I don’t know.

Brandon: And I don’t think there is an answer to it.

Josh: There isn’t one, yeah. There’s no path, right? There’s no singular way for anyone to go and it really depends on where you guys are, right? What your risk tolerance is, what your accountant says is the best. I mean, we like to harp on that because a lot of investors want that hand hold like, “hey, I’m Matt, property one, now what? Or I’m at property zero, now what path do I take?” and there is no one path for you to take. You’ve gotta find your way and the beauty is, and no offense, but Linda here with 108 properties who’s been doing this for quite a long time you still don’t know what you’re doing and we’re still trying to find your way and we’re all trying to find our path, right?

Linda: Absolutely, but the beauty isn’t what you just said, but we still go ahead and take the next step and do it. I think one of our things we said is sometimes if people overanalyze they get paralysis or they don’t do anything. That’s why our formula is so simple and we don’t, you know, figure all that stuff and people start asking questions like, “well, what all’s in there? Do you count?” and I’m like, “no, if we counted everything we probably wouldn’t do it”.

Josh: Yeah.

Linda: So that is the magic, though, is you don’t—you have a why and how shows up if you look. It’s there. Like your podcast, our books, the how is there, but you do have to do a little bit of it just in gray space and faith that if other investors did it and it worked out it’s going to work out okay for you too.

Brandon: I love that.

Josh: Yeah.

Brandon: I love that. Hey, you mentioned formula. What do you mean by formula, if it meets your formula?

Linda: Well, our formula’s real simple. It has to be a 70 to 30 loan to value ratio because we don’t want to be overleveraged and we’ve watched people lose money by being overleveraged. It needs to cash flow about $150 to $200 a month and we want to finance it on a 15. We’ve done as far as 20, but remember we started when my husband was 40 and so we were trying to do it based on his age and his time line and it has to be, you know, 322 or 422 brick. We no longer—we used to fall in love with the really old houses with the hardwood floors. We fell out of love with those pretty quickly. You know, just those simple things that it has to cash flow that much, we want it paid off on a 15 to 20 year mortgage, 70 to 30 loan to value ratio, it has to be 10% below market when we buy it at least. So it has to be a good deal when we buy it, not assuming it’s going to be a good deal.

Brandon: Yep.

Linda: You know, we’ve got a lot of speculation going on on what’s going to happen in Texas and man, some of these properties we bought in ’08 and ’09 we could triple, almost triple our, money on right now.

Brandon: Wow.

Linda: So it’s really testing us on our hold strategy.

Brandon: Yep.

Josh: And that’s that appreciation, right? So you got the bonus.

Linda: Yeah, icing on the cake.

Josh: So you didn’t plan for the appreciation, but it’s the icing on the cake, right?

Linda: Yep. Absolutely.

Brandon: That’s cool. I like how also you looked at your situation of being in the 40’s, or just turning 40, and you looked down the road and you didn’t want 30 year mortgages for that reason. I love that too that it just shows that you can’t have a top down guru, some guy saying this is what you should do, because they don’t know how old you are, they don’t know anything, right? That’s why people have gotta learn this stuff and then figure it out on their own in a way and get advice and opinions but.

Linda: Yeah, I have a nephew that started investing early on in his 20’s and he has, like, 20 or 30 properties now and his goal was to not have to go have a regular job. So he did them on 30 years because he wanted the cash flow to live off of. We knew we were in our highest income earning years we were ever gonna be more than likely so that wasn’t what we were after, we were after cash flow later, much later when we wanted options or choices or to work because we wanted to work not because we had to work.

Josh: Yeah.

Brandon: Yeah, in my young 20’s my goal was to quit my job. That’s all I wanted in life was to quit my job. I hated my job, but yeah. So I said, “what’s my freedom number?” essentially and I said, “I need 30 units,” I was buying multi-family so I said I needed 30 units total at $100 a piece would give me $3,000 a month and I’ll be okay. So I did that, I quit my job, and I was like, okay, I’m done. Now my life shifted and now I’m doing other things. I’ve got BiggerPockets here, like, you know, I like this as well. So my strategy for real estate changed because my life changed and I think that’s okay. I think that’s what happens.

Linda: Absolutely.

Josh: And you’re not quitting your job, right?

Brandon: I’m not quitting my job.

Josh: Okay, I’m just checking. I mean, you know.

Linda: Making him nervous there.

Brandon: No, I was talking about my—I worked at a bank and it was a terrible job. It was really, really bad. I was a sales guy at a bank and it was so bad, but yeah, real estate helped me accomplish that goal and now my next goal, you know, is to, let’s say, get a million dollars a year or whatever my goal is.

Linda: Yeah.

Brandon: Now, like, I’m changing my strategy to hit that instead of just quit my job.

Linda: Absolutely.

Brandon: Yeah, very cool.

Linda: The emotion from the quit the job that caused you to take the first step.

Brandon: Yes.

Linda: It was that emotional wanting to get out of that job that made you take the risk, right?

Brandon: Yep, exactly. Yeah, cause I don’t know if I would’ve. If I didn’t hate my job, you know, what’s that phrase that says the enemy of progress is passivity? Or something like that. If people are just comfortable in life it’s hard to get the motivation to get out and do things and take those risks and buy rentals or flip houses or do any of that because it’s scary.

Linda: Absolutely, yeah.

Brandon: Yeah, cool.

Josh: Hey, Linda, so you gave us your criteria. I mean, I think it’s great and I love how defined it is and it’s something that I think is important for any of the listeners to heed. You know, 70 to 30 LTV, it’s gotta cash flow $100 to $200 a month, 15 to 20-year financing, 422, 322 brick, 10%, you know, you’ve got these very, very specific criteria. Like, if you are a new investor and you were listening you need to go and figure out what that is for you. What is that criteria for you? Nobody is going to answer that, you just have to kind of figure out what is going to work so I just wanted to kind of harp on that. But back to you, you set a goal. Your goal was, hey, we’re going to presumably, somewhat was getting out of debt I’m going to assume, but also creating this freedom number where you can have the cash flow to live off of. Well, with 108 units, $150 to $200 a month you’ve well exceeded your goal.

Linda: Right.

Josh: So why do you continue? Why are you still buying properties? Why is your husband at the auction sale picking up foreclosures? Why not just stop? Is it greed? Are you a greedy pig, as they say on the shark tank, or are you guys, I mean, did the goal line just change? Is there a new bar? How did that all happen?

Linda: You know, I think if anything the bar and the number kind of went away and it got bigger when that happened. The goal eventually really was more, you know, what was the emotion behind us even being willing to do this because we just didn’t ever want to be in that situation and we wanted options, but I think really life is about achieving. I mean, about becoming, and the way you become is get up and achieve and really, and kind of like you guys now, our passion now is helping other people do this, you know, because you see how it’s changed your life and the way you become is to get up and achieve and achieving means you’ve gotta get up and put energy in something and you’ve gotta, you know, get excited about something different. You know, the nightly rentals kind of have us excited right now because I’ve learned how to, you know, you have to get em all finished out and people write in the guest book about the most wonderful family vacation they’ve ever had so that’s kind of a shift and it’s fun and it’s different. I think, you know, that’s where they talk about it’s the journey, that’s the journey. The journey is where you’re learning and you’re growing and then you’re helping other people do it and that’s got a whole charge of its own like you guys know.

So, you know, the money and the number just kind of goes away, but also what you learn is the more money you make the more options you have and the more good things you can do. I think we’re the first generation that has had to help somewhat financially with our kids and our parents. You know, I’m listening to friends whose parents are in a situation where they can either put them in whatever the homes are that you have that you can put people in that doesn’t cost you any more, or they can put them in private care and that’s costing $9,000-$12,000 a month and so what I found is the bigger that number gets the more options you have in life. Whatever that is for you, and for everybody it’s going to be different. It’s going to be different charities, it’s going to be different experiences, whatever you do with that. So I think, if anything, you know, I don’t now say, “we’re at $3,000,000, we want to make $5,000,000,” I don’t say that, I just say, “okay, what can we do next?” this is kind of fun and we now know what we’re doing and the options seem to come to you more once you know what you’re doing and you’ve been doing this a while. It’s like, you know, you’d have to put blind folds on to not see deals now. You know, it used to be you’re like, “where is a deal?”

Josh: Yep.

Linda: That’s what most people say is, “where is a deal?” but I think it really now becomes about becoming and the way you become is you get up and achieve. You know, sports teams don’t get up and they don’t win a Super Bowl and quit, right? They go back to the practice field.

Brandon: Well, if you’re the Seahawks that might not be true.

Linda: Well, that’s true. Yeah, I think I just gave that in Seattle and that was a bad place to give that analogy.

Brandon: Yeah, it’s been a rough year.

Linda: I need to watch more football before I use that.

Josh: Nice, nice.

Brandon: No, it’s true.

Josh: Hey, so you also talked about people working for you earlier on. You said that, you know, and I think you were referring to money working for you and the people working I don’t know if you were referring to your team. Have you built out a team of folks who work underneath your husband and you who manage the business or is that something else you were referring to?

Linda: Well, we actually have multiple businesses, but, you know, and businesses are people making you money whereas a real estate investment might be an investment making you money. However, once you get to 108 properties you do need a team. So we have a lady that has been our chief financial officer for 14 years or more. So she does all the finances and we have a guy that it’s actually his second career. He was extremely successful at his first career. I call him our boomer, he’s a baby boomer, he’s 70. Our biggest, we always laugh and say our biggest, fear is Tom’s gonna get sick, you know, cause he’s so good and he works only for us which we love. We tried it all. We owned our own property management company. Gosh, I’d say the best day of my life, two best days of my life, is when I had my children and when I sold our property management company.

Brandon: Really?

Linda: I mean, that was just not a good business. We weren’t as well versed on all the things. Plus you make money on pennies and we weren’t good at watching the pennies.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: So we’ve had property management companies, we’ve been the property management company, this has been the best situation we have. This gentleman works for us and he gets a percentage of the rent so he’s excited about always making sure they’re rented, but we don’t have a lot of the other fees like half a month’s lease up fees and all those fees that you’d normally have. Plus he has full attention. You know, sometimes in property management companies theirs sit vacant a little bit longer because they’ve got a bunch of properties to handle. He’s got just our properties and that’s how he makes money.

So, we do have a team of people. We are training our son to try to do the investing side of it because quite honestly, like I said earlier with the question, we do sometimes sit there and go, “how many more properties do we need?” because at this point 20 years in the future are we really going to care about that? So we do try to ask some deeper questions about the stuff, but so we said, look, next generation’s going to need to worry about what we grow this to. So we’re teaching him right now, but we do have a team of people in all of our businesses. It’s all about great people.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s great. It really is. I mean, if you want success long term in real estate you’ve gotta have the right people on board. You know, we use the phrase a lot of times around BiggerPockets of get people on the bus. We don’t exactly know what they’re going to do, but we just find great people and we’re just like, “just get them on the bus. We’ll figure out where they’re going to sit later,” and I’m all about finding good people.

So, alright. I want to go back to something before we get out of here. I want to talk about two really fundamental questions. Well, really just one because you kind of answered the management part, but why single-family homes? You know, people who know me know I’m a multi-family guy a lot, but why single-family?

Linda: You know, I think it was easier for us because I was selling real estate so somehow in my mind I found them easier or I thought I would find them easier. That’s a great question because, and I think by the time we really looked into multi-family our other thought on single-family as opposed to multi-family is we knew that the end buyer of our product would be retail. We knew there was a possibility of a bigger upside whereas on a multi-family one of the things we considered was you’re really only—it’s only about the cash flow so I’m going to have to sell to another investor on the cash flow.

By the way, we have bought apartments on a foreclosure and fixed them up and made a couple hundred thousand dollars on them so we made good money on apartments, but we just—it never was our path. I think it’s a great strategy and if we probably would’ve started sooner we probably maybe would’ve looked into that, but for whatever reason we just kind of started down that path and didn’t get off of it. Not that we don’t have some commercial, we have six commercial buildings and we’ve had apartments before.

Brandon: Okay.

Linda: But it just didn’t seem to catch with us.

Brandon: Sure, and I think that’s great, right? Different strokes for different folks, right? Like, I mean, some people—yeah, I think that’s great. Now, I think that changes throughout your life too as you get later you maybe want more passive investments than when you’re younger. Like, when I was 21 I wanted anything. I’d buy the crappiest property in town. Now today I’m like, I don’t want to drive over there.

Linda: Yeah, you do get more selective.

Brandon: Yeah, definitely. Cool. So, six commercial buildings. Are those actual, like, you own a Walgreens kind of building or what do you mean by commercial?

Linda: Actually they all are—we have a business in each one of those. We do not have a single commercial building, let me think about this, we don’t have a single commercial building that we don’t have a business that we own in it. So it just made sense if we felt good about our businesses and the kind of money they were making to own the real estate that they were in.

Brandon: Do you mind my asking, like when you’re talking about your businesses, I’m assuming, you’re a Keller Williams agent, is that correct?

Linda: Yeah, mhm.

Brandon: Is that what you’re talking about or do you have other businesses as well? Do you mind—

Linda: Yeah, we own three of these Keller Williams franchises ourselves. Two in Texas, one in Kentucky, and then we actually own the regional rights for Keller Williams Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky so that means that we service and support those real estate franchises that are there, but we also own three of them ourselves. In those we have agents, and in two of our offices we have so many agents we have them in two buildings.

Brandon: Wow.

Linda: So we own both the buildings. So that’s kind of how that works out, but yeah, it’s real estate franchises.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Right on. So, I just have two more questions before we move to the next part of the show. So building your portfolio. We have a lot of people who always ask, “hey, should I get my real estate license? Should I become a real estate agent?” did your license help you in the building of your portfolio or not at all?

Linda: Not at all.

Josh: Okay.

Linda: What did help, or what has helped, is we’ve used the strategy to go to agents in our town and say, “look, we don’t want the commission. You can have all of it. We don’t really care about that part of it, we just want the investment,” so we’ve been brought a few deals probably because of that, but at the end of the day it’s not about having a real estate license.

Brandon: Okay.

Linda: That was our job. That was my job. It was the way I made money because you do have to get in the middle of money somewhere.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You need money to support your investing habits.

Linda: Absolutely, and my lifestyle yeah.

Josh: Okay, cool. Then my last question; you own these franchises, these KW franchises, this to me has been a bit of a pet peeve for a long time. I was an agent over at Caldwell Banker for about 3 minutes, I was an agent at Keller Williams for about a minute and a half.

Linda: I wish it had been a little bit longer than the other one.

Josh: You know, it wasn’t for me. It just wasn’t for me.

Linda: Okay.

Josh: And I was just trying to feel it out, right? But my question, it’s a fundamental question that really annoys me, and I don’t know that—I have yet to find an answer.

Brandon: You gonna get to it?

Josh: Really? You know, I have a problem here and you’re busting my chops.

Brandon: Alright, alright.

Josh: Let me just go.

Brandon: Alright, alright.

Josh: The question is, Brandon Turner, and it’s not for you it’s for Miss Linda, why don’t more agents invest?

Linda: Yeah, that is a great question. I was laughing when you guys said earlier that some agents were busting your chops because I wanted to pop in and say most of those probably don’t own real estate investing but I will tell you that is changing. Jim and I have been teaching for 20 plus years in the real estate industry. We teach once or twice a year. We allow our agents to bring their investor clients with them for all of our market centers and I will tell ya, because I’ve taught for 20 plus years on how to build a real estate business and that number has changed, but it’s changed very slowly.

Josh: Yep.

Linda: I think it’s for the same reason a lot of people, you know, there’s 80/20 or 90/10 or 95/5 in anything. People get comfortable. They don’t think about what their life would be like if they don’t do something, they just kind of live in the moment of whatever that is and they’re just trying to put food on their table. I think the number would shuffle out no matter what industry or business you’re in.

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: It just doesn’t make sense, especially to me, that you’re in the real estate business and you’re not investing. I will tell you from the time we started teaching this years ago, or just teaching anything because I always ask about wealth building and passive income cause if you do real estate for 20 or 30 years you have had nothing but a job. You didn’t do a business, you had a job. So it’s my pet peeve that people aren’t creating passive income. I will tell you that number has changed, it’s changed way too slowly in my opinion, but it is changing. I think it’s humans are humans. They’re risk adverse, they’re not thinking, you know, we think more about our vacation than we do what our life’s gonna look like in 20 years and so I think it’s for all the same reasons that everything kind of gets in a mess because we don’t plan enough. As people we just don’t think through, you know, if I keep doing this what’s my life gonna look like in 20 years?

Brandon: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah, and I’ll contend my belief is that plus a little more. I think the major brokerage firms don’t care.

Linda: Oh, of course. They have a different agenda.

Josh: Yeah, their agenda is different and at the end of the day I do think that it would behoove them to help educate those agents. Furthermore, I actually ask why are more agents not versed in real estate investing such that they can work with investor clients which troubles me even more than the fact that most agents don’t invest is, why are most agents not versed in investing at least in the capacity where they can help their clients? Because I’d say it’s probably closer to the 95/5 rule versus the 80/20 or 70/30.

Linda: Yeah.

Josh: Most agents don’t know top from bottom when it comes to how to analyze a property or anything else and the problem with that is those that don’t know what they’re doing and go ahead and work with, particularly new investors, do a dramatic disservice to those people and, frankly, are aiding and abetting people getting into bad deals. That, to me, is a major pet peeve that I have and frankly I think being investor savvy as an agent should be a requirement for licensing.

Linda: Yeah, it wouldn’t be a bad plan. It’s certainly a vehicle and we’re putting together an online course right now for agents and the very last module is going to be on wealth building because it’s such an important piece, but absolutely part of what we teach in the lead generation section is to use investing seminars as a tool to lead generate. It just makes sense. If you can have 50 people looking at you instead of 2 or a couple, why wouldn’t you be doing that all the time?

Brandon: Yeah.

Linda: And we have the books, and we have the PowerPoint, and we have all the tools to help them do that. So, we do, you know, I do a webinar for Keller Williams International once a month on multiple streams of income. So there are companies out there that do educate, that do genuinely care about the agent having the best life possible and the best business possible, it’s just not enough yet. It hasn’t caught on enough.

Josh: Yeah, right on.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Well, pass the word to everybody. Spread the word! Alright.

Brandon: Alright, let’s move onto the—

Josh: We shall.

Brandon: Alright, we’re going to go to the Fire Round which is sponsored by—Alright, today’s sponsor is Booth a complete phone and voicemail service ideal for the active real estate investor. You can use Booth to accept phone calls from potential sellers, tenants and more on your own device, but with a new local or toll free number. You control how, who, and when you receive calls, you can set up pre-recorded messages to save you time and hassle and you can even get one of those press 1 for this, 2 for that auto attendance which can be really helpful in making your company stand out like it’s a big deal. So give Booth a try today by visiting www.TryBooth.com/BiggerPockets. Again, that’s TryBooth.com/BiggerPockets.

It's Time For the Fire Round

Brandon: Alright the Fire Round. These questions come direct out of the BiggerPockets forum so these are real members asking these questions and we thought we’d throw them at ya. Number one, should I invest out of state if it’s too expensive to invest near where I live?

Linda: Yeah, only if you have a really, really key person. Our trick to any investing outside of our state is a person. I can point you to the person and the reason we did it was that person and the reason we did it is that person and the reason we’re still there is that person. So only if you have a great contact or connection that would be on that end of it otherwise figure out, our model would be figure out, what you’ve gotta do to invest where you are to make the numbers work.

Brandon: Okay. I love it.

Josh: I love it. Oh, man, I love that so much you have no idea. The person is key and I like how you said if the person is no longer the person then potentially it’s time to get out and that holds very true. That holds very, very true. Alright, question two, what are some common exit strategies for a buy and hold investor?

Linda: Not sure I’m clear on what exit strategy means. From getting out of the property?

Josh: Yeah, when to get out.

Linda: Well, we’re still in. The market’s tripled on some of the properties that we have bought and if it’s not going to be tempting to get out at that moment we’re standing firm with the hold because it depends on what you’re after. I mean, we’re after cash flow long term so when all those properties have paid off we’re talking about $146,000 a month approximately, you know, coming in passively. That’s what our original goal was and that’s still what our goal is is that cash flow. So, again, what’s are you trying to accomplish? Are you looking for money when you don’t necessarily want to work or do you want options so you don’t necessarily have to work? What’s your plan? Because ours is to hold and to hold long term and we’ve never lost money when we’ve held long term either so that’s another reason. Not that we don’t ever flip, but what’s your long term plan? That’s going to dictate what you do.

Brandon: Cool. I love it. Should I invest in student rentals?

Linda: I assume you mean properties that are close to a college?

Brandon: I think that’s what they’re—yeah, they meant.

Linda: Yeah, we love ‘em. Our first property, the fourplex that we still have, is close to the college. I love college properties. I’m not sure how that game is changing with so many of the Universities getting into housing and stuff, mostly apartments, I would probably still tend to go single-family because there’s something about a house. Everybody want a house. So I love colleges. I love properties near the college.

Josh: Cool.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Alright, last question of the Fire Round. What was your worst landlord headache ever? Your landlord nightmare story. We all have one.

Linda: Oh, wow. We do? Let me think about that.

Josh: Oh, c’mon now. 100 plus properties?

Brandon: She does outsource all of that, so.

Linda: Yeah, that’s a great—you know, I’d probably say early on when we were collecting the rent we were such softies. You know, especially if I sent my husband and they were an elderly couple they’re gonna live there for free as long as, you know. So that was when we realized we can’t do the management of it. That just is not gonna work because you’re gonna listen to somebody’s story and oh my gosh and then we said, “look, the banker’s not listening to our story. We’ve gotta get somebody in here to get the rent,” so I would probably say on the front end maybe when we were collecting the rent and you kinda buy into their stories if they, and they all have them.

Josh and Brandon: Yep.

Josh: I love it. Right on.

Brandon: Alright. Let’s move over to the last segment of the show which we call lovingly our—

Famous Four

Brandon: Alright, the Famous Four. These questions are asked of every single guest so we’re going to throw them at ya. Number one, what is your favorite, not your own, real estate book?

Linda: Oh, seriously?

Josh: Yeah.

Linda: Oh, gosh. No one told me I couldn’t answer my own. Okay, this one is—I can’t remember exactly the name of it but it’s Getting Rich One House At A Time.

Brandon: John Schwabb, is that that one?

Linda: Maybe. We used to give people that book early on until we had our own book, and I’d say The Millionaire Real Estate Investor.

Brandon: Okay.

Linda: I think that’s a great one.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Right on. Alright. So, wait, was it Building Wealth One House At A Time by John Schwabb?

Linda: yeah, that was it. Building Wealth, that’s it.

Josh: There you go. Alright, favorite business book?

Linda: Oh, definitely right now The One Thing. Gary Keller’s book The One Thing. I’m telling you, as entrepreneurs, it’s squirrel and rabbit and what’s the new shiny thing so I have to be reminded always what’s the one thing on whatever this is that’s going to make the biggest difference and how do I keep myself focused on that?

Brandon: I talk about that book so much people think I’m getting paid for it I think.

Josh: I’m going to switch the question. I’m going to switch it because alright, what is the favorite business book non-affiliated?

Linda: Okay. Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kyosaki. It was a game changer for us. Most people read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, very few read Cash Flow Quadrant. I think he gives you the answers in the print, in the plan, in that book so I’m going to have to say Cash Flow Quadrant because it was such a game changer for us by Robert Kyosaki.

Josh: Right on. Alright, what do you do for fun? What hobbies do you have outside of running businesses and real estate and building this empire?

Linda: This was really hard. I’m glad I had 24 hours to think on this one because this is what I love to do, you know? You’re just wired to do that.

Josh: Yep.

Linda: It’s like, “is it Monday yet?” But, you know what? We’re big family people. We have four great kids, and four great grandkids that we love spending time with so we spend a lot of our time with family, but I’m a runner and I love to read. So if I can do any me time I’m running or I’m reading.

Brandon: Great.

Josh: Perfect.

Brandon: Love it.

Josh: I’ll race you.

Linda: Alright. Well, I’m a long distance runner so you go ahead.

Josh: Yeah, I’ll lose. I get 5 steps and I’m huffing and puffing.

Brandon: Alright, my final question of the day. Linda, what do you think sets apart the successful real estate investors from those who give up, or fail or never even get started?

Linda: You know, I think it’s being connected to a bigger reason. In other words, something that’s an emotionally charged reason. You know, I always say our $600,000 in debt was a have to, it wasn’t a why. The why was I love freedom and when I started realizing, like, when I had my first job after 18. I had many jobs before I was 18. Like, I would work 2 or 3 jobs and one didn’t work out on a weekend thing I had planned I’d just quit one and go get me another one the next week, but when I turned 18 someone got me a job at General Telephone and that’s the first real job I’d ever had.

On Sunday afternoon my stomach would start to hurt and I didn’t know why and later I would figure out it’s because, and then I got into real estate where you go in way before 8 and get off way after 5, right? But it was different. It was something I was doing for me. There were options. There was freedom. I got the major result from that outcome so I think, what are you connected to? Is it freedom? Is it options? You know, has something happened in your life that you realize I’m not in control of this stuff and I need to get in better control of it? I mean, what is it? There’s something that you’ve gotta be emotionally charged and connected to and I think that makes a difference.

I had a little kid that’s been a friend of my son since three. They’re educators and she said, “why in the world? Aren’t investment properties headaches?” and I said, “yeah, but you know what? Being 80 and no money that’s a headache too,” so I think thinking about the consequences or what you’re saying no to, what you’re really saying no to, if you did that enough I think more people would do it, but they don’t do that. They think, “hey, my life’s great. I’m making good money,” you know, whatever, “I have a nice house,” but fast forward, what does it look like? And I think they don’t spend enough time there. Me personally, that’s what I think.

Josh: Perfect.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s great.

Josh: Alright, last question from me, where can people find out more about you and also, if you would, please tell us the name of your book once again.

Linda: Okay. The name of the book is called Hold: How To Find, Buy and Rent Real Estate To Build Wealth and you can find it on Amazon. I think we have it on our website, it’s LindaMcKissack.com and if it’s okay with you guys we have a free giveaway that we’ll giveaway if they text RENTALS to 33444 and we actually take them through our last property that we refurbished cause we got a lot of questions about, “well, what does that process look like?” so if they’ll text to 33444 the word RENTALS R-E-N-T-A-L-S they’ll get a free link and they can watch that whole process of that investment property.

Josh: Right on.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Alright, Linda, well thank you so much for sharing your story. Thanks for coming on. We really, really do appreciate it. Lots of fun chatting with you and we definitely appreciate all that you do.

Linda: Oh, my pleasure. I appreciate you guys too. Thanks for spreading the word and making more investors out there.

Josh: We’re trying.

Linda: Alright, keep it up!

Brandon: Thank you, Linda. We’ll see you around.

Linda: Y’all have a great day. Thank you. Nice talking to you both.

Brandon: Alright, thank you. you too, bye.

Linda: Bye-bye.

Josh: Alright, guys, that was Linda McKissack. We do appreciate Linda being on the show. It was great, man. Lots of really great advice, particularly in the mindset arena, huh?

Brandon: Yeah, I mean, definitely and I love the fact that, I don’t know, she’s not one of those this is how you should do it kind of people.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: There’s a lot of ways to do it and there’s a lot of ways to invest in real estate. I mean, let me plug again, it’s almost like she could have written my book. Like, I’m not saying she did, but everything she says in there is stuff that I firmly believe in. This is all stuff that, like, I don’t know, I just love this concept of anybody can do it. Make a plan, stick to that plan and if it changes a little bit that’s okay. I don’t know, I just love that stuff. It’s like me and her are BFFs now.

Josh: Nice, nice. Yeah. Cool. You guys gonna be on Christmas cards together?

Brandon: We might with the dogs and cats and stuff.

Josh: Send me one. Yeah, awesome. Cool. Well, good stuff. Again, a quick reminder to everybody check out the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/show153, that’s BiggerPockets.com/show153. Otherwise, again, please do leave us ratings and reviews on all the various podcast players out there and that’s it. If you’re not engaged, active on BiggerPockets definitely recommend you get out there and do that. The site it amazing. There’s so many great people networking, making things happen just like Linda is and it’s a great place to meet them. So get on BiggerPockets today, create your free account and start making things happen. Start asking the questions that you’ve got, start networking with other folks and get it on. So that’s it.

Brandon: Let’s get out of here.

Josh: I’m Josh Dorkin, signing off.

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