Join us for a riveting discussion with none other than the FI Guy himself, Craig Curelop. Craig started his real estate investing working for Bigger Pockets which eventually lead to his identity as "The FI Guy". Craig is known for his house hacking strategies and his book The House Hacking Strategy. Now Craig runs a team of investor friendly agents in multiple states as well as speak at events such as BPCON. Craigs tells his famous story about how he started by living behind a curtain in a house while renting out the other rooms.
Join us for a riveting discussion with none other than the FI Guy himself, Craig Curelop. Craig started his real estate investing working for Bigger Pockets which eventually lead to his identity as "The FI Guy". Craig is known for his house hacking strategies and his book The House Hacking Strategy. Now Craig runs a team of investor friendly agents in multiple states as well as speak at events such as BPCON. Craigs tells his famous story about how he started by living behind a curtain in a house while renting out the other rooms.
I think they're an evil organization I wouldn't recommend anybody selling anything to them and I think a lot of these gurus. They put out this content that shows how much money they made, but it doesn't really show any of the negatives or any of their obstacles, or they're just like it's their high school highlight reel. Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with Ryan Greenberg and Nick Calvis. All right guys, welcome back to another episode of the Everyday Millionaire Show. We're here with Craig Kerlap Kerlap.
Speaker 1:Kerlap.
Speaker 2:You almost got it. I almost got it. What's up, craig? How you doing man.
Speaker 1:Good man, Good to be here with you guys and grateful that we're here at BPCon together. So thanks for coming.
Speaker 2:I should introduce you, as I guess who you're really known as is the FI guy on social media, as we were just talking about social media and how important it is and your brand is the FI guy, and I started seeing people today at the conference wearing shirts that said the FI tribe or something like that, or is that you too? Or the FI something? The FI team.
Speaker 2:Maybe, I don't know, maybe I saw somebody when I was looking for you for this podcast. I saw somebody wearing like an FI. I forget what the word was, but I was like, oh, that must be part of your team?
Speaker 1:Maybe, yeah, if it was the FI team, probably If there's a FI tribe, that's not me. But hey, maybe there's something else that I need to meet.
Speaker 2:So you are an agent and team leader on EXP right, and where are you?
Speaker 1:based out of. So a lot of our business is in Denver but we're expanding now to California, idaho and Washington, but Colorado is still the main thing.
Speaker 2:So I knew the first time we interviewed you, you were in Idaho, right, is that? Where you live they call home in Idaho now, yeah, that's where we live now, yep, nice, yeah, it's cold there, right, it's colder than here, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:But yeah now it's beautiful man, we love it. We love the seasons. So, as we both grew up with that, both me and my wife grew up with the seasons- Nice, yeah.
Speaker 2:So what are you doing now, like what's your main focus in real estate and business? What are you trying to do now?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So my main thing now is just continuing to grow the team. We've got a team of maybe 15 to 20 investor-friendly agents in those markets that I just mentioned. Most of them are in Denver and we're just looking to grow the team, foster the team and help navigate through these times. That's one. We're also adding on some tangential businesses. That's a big word, yeah, sat word right there. Yeah, the one we're kind of focusing on next and right now is property management, and so we're going to be launching that here in the next month. But it's going to be not your typical property management company. We're going to really focus and only do rent by the room, co-living property management in the Denver market, to start.
Speaker 3:So are your agents, mainly focusing on investor clients.
Speaker 1:I'd say about 90% of our clients are investors. However, we are looking to constantly provide more leads in the residential space, just for simple diversification purposes, and I want to train our agents to actually be good agents so that way, if investors somehow go away, they're still able to perform and provide for their families.
Speaker 3:So I guess when you first started that was kind of the goal just to start focusing on investor clients, and now you want to diversify.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're still doing the investors. We're doing that very well. But we're bringing in the traditional residential buyer, retail buyers as well and that's been going OK. It's actually a pretty hard jump.
Speaker 2:Denver is a tough market too, Because I have investors. So part of my business is that I sell rental properties to people in markets that are too expensive or it doesn't make sense. So I have guys in California that buy a lot in Baltimore, I've got guys in Denver, I have guys in New York and somewhere like Denver the average house is what? $1,500,000? Yeah, so and you're saying rent by the room. Is that the way that you can make sense of these investments is to rent by the room?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Denver, like a lot of other cities tier one, tier two cities their biggest problem is affordability, and these cities want people to continue to move to their city because they want their tax dollars. And so how do they do that? Well, right now, co-living or rent by the room is kind of the way to go, Because people can still afford a place for $100,000 a month. It can be a nice home, nice kitchen, beautiful yard, beautiful neighborhood, all that stuff. They're sharing that kitchen with a bunch of other people that are like them, and so we try to. In my experience with owning, co-living and rent by the room properties, it's cultivating that kind of culture within the house and I think if you can do that, you can make $1,000 or $2,000 a month on any property Not any property, but on a specific. If it's got enough square footage to put some beds and baths in there, it will really work.
Speaker 3:How much longer would you say it takes to rent out per room versus just renting the whole house out to one person?
Speaker 1:The rooms. Typically so when you're renting out a whole house, people are a little bit more picky because they're kind of wanting to be there for a while. But when you're doing a room, it's kind of like, hey, they're going to be here for a year, it's not like a massive decision, and so we can get rooms filled pretty quickly usually, and especially because the price point's pretty low.
Speaker 1:And typically the people that we're getting are people that can't afford anything else. So obviously you've got to also fill five, six, seven spots versus just one and you're done. So it might take I think I've done it in as little as a week, but on average probably be two to three weeks to fill a whole house of things where it would take maybe a week or two to fill.
Speaker 3:That's not bad at all, though I mean. Obviously it takes a little bit more work, more leases, but the reward is the more cash flow per month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a college house that we were renting out to six-bedroom, three-bathroom house. So we were renting out to fraternity. It was a fraternity. They left and I couldn't fill it with another group and I was getting 4,200 from the fraternity. I'd rent it out by the room. Now I'm getting 5,700 a month, which is great. My mortgage is like 22 and change or something. But now I have spring semester or I guess fall semester's about the end, and then I have two people leaving. So now I feel like I'm constantly in a state of looking for the next tenant. Do you notice that you have more vacancy with the rent by the room model?
Speaker 1:So if you, look at it, is there more vacancy? It's tough, right, because one day of vacancy with one room is one fifth or one sixth or one seventh of the whole house, Right, Right.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of the same. Reason why people invest in multi-family properties is they want diversification. If it's vacant, then you're not all vacant, and so very, very rarely is there not a single person in the room. Denver is not a huge college place. There's a couple colleges there, but I don't think I've ever rented to like only college kids. So we don't really we're not really in that whole like okay, you got September and if you miss that September window, you're done In January right, that's what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what happens, so. So we don't have that, which is grateful, which is, personally, why I've always been hesitant to invest in a college town, but I know people do it with a lot of success, like yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so. So yeah, I know I don't. I honestly think there's less vacancy.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Because it's never really fully vacant. It's usually just like okay, you got to fill one room. Like once you get it all filled, once you've got it set now, it's just very rarely or everyone's leases up at the same time.
Speaker 3:Do you, do you manage now for the investor clients that you have?
Speaker 1:Not yet. So we're starting that in like a month. I'm personally not going to be running the operations of it. I've got a guy, an ops guy, that's going to be doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one thing that I've found in small multifamilies and I'm dealing with the situation now and this rooming college house I haven't had this issue yet. But tenant conflict have you dealt with that in your own you know world where people are like not happy with the dishes in the sink or they're not cleaning up or like so. For my college house, for example, I have a cleaning lady that comes every third week and she does all the common spaces. I'd say you have to keep your bedrooms clean, but she does all the common spaces and, like you know, it takes pictures of stuff and every once in a while There'll be dishes left in the sink or whatever, and I have to kind of send a message to everybody so they don't start fighting. But right now I have two tenants that are literally like fighting and calling the cops on each other because one's yelling at night and one's coming home late or whatever. Have you had those issues with these like rooming houses?
Speaker 1:Honestly, no, we do a pretty good job at screening and I've never done the cleaning lady thing and I will going forward because it's like one of those things where I haven't run into that a problem, but I can see how that will definitely be a problem, especially as we do this at scale and it's a check-in, and it's a check-in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So I think that's a great idea In order, you know, with your tenant conflict thing, I've dealt with a little bit of it. Honestly, there's two ways that I would handle it. One is like you pick whoever you don't like and just say, hey, I'll give you 500 bucks to leave, right, and just like, just pay away your problem, and that for someone that's living in a room that would probably do a decent job. If they're both don't want to leave, then you might have an issue. But typically someone just wants to move out and you can just refill that room really quickly. But I think the tenant screening thing I think is a big piece of it. We're like just make sure what we do to kind of nip that problem in the bud is we try to get people of similar. We try to like theme houses and so we might have like a Colorado, like a snowboarders house or like a whatever Right, and so you're getting people of similar personalities in the same house.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask, like the demographic, yeah, cause now if you got like this, this video gamer, right, that's uphill, three in the morning swearing at call of duty versus like this high productive guy, they're not getting, probably get along very well, Right. But if you get a bunch of high productive people or a bunch of video gamers in the same house, now the conflict you're getting like with like and so personalities are meshing a little bit better. So we try to kind of cultivate it a little bit better. Are we perfect at it? No, but we try to do that as best as we can.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we're going to start doing is actually limiting the amount of common space. So, like a lot of the houses that we do in Denver, they've got basements. There's kind of like two living areas, one upstairs, one of the downstairs. We're going to turn the downstairs living spaces into bedrooms. You're going to get an extra two bedrooms out of it. In Denver that's going to be an extra 16, a hundred bucks a month or so. And where do all the fights happen? They happen in the common areas. So eliminate the common areas. People at, maybe, college is different. They want to be hanging out with their friends. But people when they're like young professionals in their 20s. They just want to go home from work and go to their room, chill. They don't want to hang out with anybody. So that's kind of like what we're starting to provide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the common space is definitely a thing, and that's why I have the cleaning lady come in. But, we had, it was four bedrooms. Now it's six bedrooms. We put a tiny addition on it, but it's mostly bedrooms.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great, great model, because it's less for you to take care of, because I tell them we're furnished, I furnish the common spaces, but I make them furnish their bedrooms.
Speaker 2:So then, like you're responsible for that, you have to clean that the cleaning lady is not going to come in your bedroom Everybody has their own little door lock, you know and she just comes in and does the common spaces, and I think that's a good idea to limit the amount of common spaces. And the one thing that I think I did wrong with this house is I probably should have done five beds, four baths, instead of six beds, three baths, because I have two groups of people that are sharing bathrooms, and that in a college house I didn't I kind of didn't think of this, but like a lot of them have to go to class at the same time and like the girls are taking 40 minute showers or you know they're in the bathroom for 40 minutes and causing the other people to be late and this and that. So I think that's the bathroom, the bedroom, bathroom ratio, I think is really important and I'm learning that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It's funny Like you have to know your market right and ours. A six, three would be perfect. You've got one person that got their own, or two people. Actually I guess two people have two to each of five. Threes work really well where one has like a master and the other people are just sharing with one person. I've got a house the first one I ever bought rent by room. There's four people to one bathroom. It's a five to four people to one bathroom, then one person's got the master.
Speaker 1:Well it's never had any problem with it. Like people are just on. Most people, if they're not in college with the same exact schedule, right, have different. They like to wake up a little earlier or someone goes to bed a little later. Their work isn't exactly right, especially in more written by the room snares. A lot of people aren't working nine to fives. It's more of that like shift work type work, so um yeah, when did you start renting by the room?
Speaker 3:2018 was the first one Well.
Speaker 2:Craig, you are. You wrote a book, right. You're the house hacking guy. Yeah, so is that where it like? That's where it started the rent by the room like model in your head. Was you house hacking originally?
Speaker 3:And did you live in the first house that you is? That is that what you did. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I lived in the first. So I mean, a lot of people know my first house hack was like I didn't know about rent by the room. So I I lived like behind a curtain in my living room while I was like had this one, one duplex while I went to my bedroom, and so then I was like let's get, let's be real, it's not very fun, right?
Speaker 2:So you didn't live in the bedroom. You know I didn't. I rented the bedroom, yeah, and I and you lived in the common space. That's right, that's baller, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's winning right there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, but you know, I kind of actually knew that was going to be part of my story. Funny enough, like I remember like foreseeing that, and then I, and then I was like, oh, I could just like buy a house a little further away from the city, 10 minutes to downtown. It's a five-bed, two bath, it's cheaper, I get my own bedroom and I actually make more on the rent by the room model. And so it was like a win-win, win all around. And Then I was like Not everyone, most people would not want to live behind a curtain. Like I can't convince anyone, right, most people I can't convince to do that Rent by the room, though. Like, if you're just like a single person, male or female, you would probably be willing to live in your own private bedroom and just share some common space. Yeah and uh, that's how. That's how.
Speaker 3:I guess for the listeners out there who want to maybe buy their first house and house hack, can you explain like how that looked like your first house. How did you purchase it? Did you use FHA Conventional? And then, once you moved out of that house, did you buy another house and do the same thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll tell you that, like what we know now, I didn't know want to start. So when I started the only way to house hack was a duplex track, flexor, quad, right, no one was talking about how. Second single family, so the old. So I had to house hack a duplex. I happened to find one about a mile and a half from where I work. Worked which was better. Pocket of the time, I used an FHA loan three and a half percent down, because that was also the only way. No one talked about three percent down or five percent down conventional loans and and so I just did it the way that I thought was the only way. And then I started exploring more and I was getting smarter and I was like, oh, I can buy a single family home with five percent down. If you're a first-time home buyer, you can buy it with three percent down. And and I guess now they're changing the rules Right, starting November 18th, they're doing you can buy a two to four unit with five five conventional.
Speaker 2:As a game changer it is. But yeah, I have an argument against that and I put this on Facebook the other day. It was like, yeah, sure you can put five percent down on a multifamily, but with nine percent, eight percent interest rates, like you're gonna put five percent down, lose cash flow, like it. It seems like it would be an impossible cash flow model.
Speaker 1:It's, it's really hard to cash, but that's where the creativity comes in right in interest. Yeah, right, by the rooms, airbnb, medium term, that we do all that stuff. But the the caveat there is, like interest rates are they're gonna change, right, you know it's just, it's just right now. Sure, maybe it doesn't work, but if you can just kind of like suck it up for a couple years, mm-hmm, I think next year election year, both parties are gonna want to get votes and they're gonna drop there, you know they're.
Speaker 1:They're gonna drop the interest rates. I think it's gonna be a big way to do so, and when they do that, we all know prices are going to go up. So if you can just suck it up for a year or two max, you just refinance it and be good to go.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 1:So do you think?
Speaker 2:how much more up Do you think we can afford to go? Right now, though, do you like? Don't you think that's a little bit of a problem? The affordability, like this house in 2019? It was it or 2020 sold for like a hundred ninety thousand dollars, and now they're selling for like 450, wow, so like it's hard for me to imagine how much more room there is to go up without you know it being a major economic problem.
Speaker 1:Oh, imagine how they felt in the 60s when it was 10 grand to buy a house in the 70s it was 40 grand to buy a house which is four times as much. Right, all that right it's. There's no rule in the US Constitution that says every American must own a home.
Speaker 1:Yeah there's no. This is like the American dream that's been sold to us for the past 100 years. But if you go and look at cities that are countries that are maybe a little bit more developed than us, like in Japan, the UK, singapore, even China, right, like not China, but whatever, those three People don't own homes there. It's just simply too expensive.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And so they rent and they rent for 30, 40, 50 years. Look at New York City. Most people in New York City and in San Francisco don't own, and so we're in these markets where you have. We're fortunate enough to be in a Place where most people own, but your market will get to a place of development like New York City when now people are noting there yeah, and if you want to own somewhere, you go to Oklahoma or somewhere, do you?
Speaker 2:think? Do you think that's like by design? Are you like conspiratorial at all? I don't even know if that's a real word or is that a real movie like?
Speaker 3:is it set up for banks to benefit from people owning?
Speaker 2:houses and getting mortgages on them. What's your opinion on that?
Speaker 1:I don't think I've thought too much about like the banks.
Speaker 2:Like the big, you know, like the big eye buyer, like BlackRock, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I think they're. What they're doing is not good, Like I don't think they're they're trying to monopolize the US economy, the US housing market, and I think that needs to be stopped. Like, personally, I would never sell my house to BlackRock. It's like they offer me.
Speaker 2:I was watching some Instagram or YouTube videos, something it was like I think it was Patrick Bet Davis who was talking that Vanguard and BlackRock have, like more assets than most governments Like in the whole world and right now they're buying up like neighborhoods and forcing appreciation with their own money and like they can afford to lose money for basically an unlimited amount of time on these places, until one day they make Everything. Yeah, and that worries me a little bit because, as somebody that like really values owning things, owning assets, like I want my kids To be in a position without me having to give them something to buy real estate. I think that's like I think that's why people love America, right, it's like that freedom to own and grow your wealth where other.
Speaker 2:You know other Countries and they kind of limit you with either high taxes or you know high property values. You can't do that, so I feel like that that could be a problem coming down the the pike.
Speaker 1:I think you have to be careful and you have to be watchful of it. For sure, like I think BlackRock is, I think they're an evil organization. Like I don't, I don't, I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't Recommend anybody sell anything to them because ultimately, you're just every, every more, every house that they get is more and more power that they're going to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah and then they start to have a power with American people and they're just gonna Dictate what the prices are and it's all gonna line their pockets in the politicians pockets and whoever owns BlackRock.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think they have more. I think they have a lot more power than anybody actually Thinks, or? Understands sure, with the amount of money that they throw around, it's like it is like an ungodly number of Assets under management that these people have. So absolutely that's, that's. That's really tough.
Speaker 3:So good. What other strategies have you used other than you know, buying a house with FHA or conventional and Living in one and renting the rooms? Have you used other strategies and different types of investor loans for other properties?
Speaker 1:I think we've done almost everything.
Speaker 1:Honestly, like you know, our whole team right where we're not like a, we're niched in that we help investors, but we're not so niche that we're only gonna do one specific thing because, I just think every I Don't know if you guys have been in the business long enough where like there's kind of a flavor of the year Right, if you recognize that, like when I first got in it was like long-distance real estate investing in Burr, and then it went to like medium-term rentals and short-term rentals and now that's kind of on the DSCR now it's like sub two and all this, and so it's like all of these are just flavors of the month.
Speaker 1:They're working now, but then when you all start flocking to that, it stops working as good right. And so the few gurus that are touting it are gonna get really rich and they're gonna be good. But if you look at the people that have invested in real estate for a long time and have had the most success, most of them are just doing it that good old, boring way. Yeah, that's it, and so I'm a believer in doing those things when they make sense, but like they only do them in the couple of years that they do make sense. But eventually we need to all be just regular old, boring landlords that make some good money.
Speaker 2:And I think that's really important to say on social media too, and I feel like that's something that, like Nick and I, kind of value. It's like we don't wanna just talk about like the quick and easy way to make money, cause it's not true, and I think a lot of these gurus they put out this, the content that shows how much money they made, but it doesn't really show any of the negatives or any of their obstacles or they're just like, it's their high school. It's their high school highlight reel.
Speaker 3:Cause that's what people are attracted to. They're attracted to the wins, and people wanna shy away from looking at the negatives, but that's what people need to share.
Speaker 2:It's like the downfalls. But now there's two million people trying to do sub two deals cause it pays more to be, and now everybody's trying to do you. Can't everybody do that, that won't work.
Speaker 1:No, you can't. And the sub two deals, we're not a thing. A year and a half ago, Rates were great, so this will only work in this time period and rates will not always be this high. And so and most sellers don't wanna do it it's not like beneficial to them. Really, it's better than not selling it in many cases, but it's a tool in your tool belt. So if you've got an opportunity that comes up I'm not saying it's bad you should learn it. We've done a handful of sub two deals. We've done a handful of seller financing deals. We've done Airbnb's in medium term and short term and long term and like you name it, we've probably done it and so we know how to do all that. So I think that's what it comes to. When you're working with like at least for us being investor friendly agents, it's like you wanna work with someone that has the entire toolkit. So, given in a case by case basis, we can kind of tell you hey, this was what. This is how we would attack this problem, and most people agree.
Speaker 2:So what's your biggest obstacle right now in business and what are you trying to work through?
Speaker 1:The biggest obstacle is probably. I think it's just kind of coaching up the agents right To kind of like convert, to know that it takes time, to continuously prospect and kind of to follow up and stick with it and all that kind of stuff. You know, our agents are quite motivated, I will say right, maybe they're not as motivated as I was, but either way, like just kind of like continuously kind of keeping them accountable and doing that and just making sure that they're kind of getting caught in the rhythm, and I think we're on a really good pace to do that. Like we've got a, you know, we kind of have where we wanna go. We've got a way to get there and now it's just a matter of just executing it, and so I feel pretty good about where we're at.
Speaker 3:What's your hiring process like when you're bringing in new agents?
Speaker 1:So we're admittedly, we're not very picky and this is why, when we first get somebody on board, we send them through our bootcamp, and our bootcamp is about 60 to 70 videos. We say it's about 30 days and if you can get through in 30 days or less, we're like okay, you're committed, we'll invest a little bit more time in you. It takes more than 30 days, you know you can join the team. It doesn't cost us anything to have me on team.
Speaker 1:And if you're not putting any effort in. We're just not gonna pay attention to you, right? So it doesn't cost us. It costs us like a hundred bucks a year to have somebody on team and if they don't start performing within six months, we start charging them a hundred bucks a month. So they're either gonna they're gonna start filtering themselves out because they're not gonna wanna pay the fee, or they're gonna start producing.
Speaker 2:And most of your agents? Are you focusing, like when you're recruiting on people that wanna be full-time agents? Are you cool with like dual career agents? We prefer, obviously we prefer full-time.
Speaker 1:We've got a handful that are dual career or like kind of trying to get out of their W2, but kind of need some lead time for that transition. So you know we give them some grace with that right, but we don't really cater specifically to the people that have W2 jobs. You know we have our meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 am. We have our retreats on Wednesdays, like we're not gonna like have stuff on the weekends and like all that kind of stuff. Just cater to these people that aren't giving us their full attention right.
Speaker 1:And so so, yeah, we really encourage people to try to like make that jump as quick as possible, and a lot of people on our team start as a W2 or on our team for six, 12 months, are starting to make good enough money where then they can leave their W2 and be agent full-time, and then that's when we really start pouring into them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's definitely common for a lot of agents to start out dual career because they don't wanna just jump in and leave their W2 job and not have any income, because obviously the cycle of real estate can be, you know, three months before you start making any money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have a lot of new technology out, even since the last time we spoke last year. Are you using AI and this new technology? And this is a question that I'm asking all people and it's kind of been kind of a similar answer but are you using? Yeah?
Speaker 1:maybe this is a different answer, but not really. Yeah, I just it's just so much. I mean, we use it a little bit like for some ideas or some copyright or I'd say very basic level. I don't know. I'm just like very averse to all that stuff for some reason, and I honestly don't have a good reason. Am I just because it confuses me? So I don't use it a whole lot.
Speaker 3:But one thing that really helps out is when I'm listing a property that I'm selling and the description I just put it. Yeah, I mean I feel like for rentals listings descriptions I don't need to be like that in depth with the description, but it really pumps out like a really nice description for a property.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess we do that. Yeah, like I don't have like any sort of like, I've got this like chat AI. That's leveraged with my knowledge and I uploaded I synthesize it with this and we've got this big software.
Speaker 3:I'm like there's entry level use of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, entry level like get the basis down.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of programs that we started using, and one of them is really cool and I'll show you like an example of it. After the show is Scribe. Have you heard of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you've probably seen it on Instagram and I'm not. You know I'm gonna plug them, but we don't get paid by them or anything. But it's really, really cool where you can go on your computer and do a task Like for us, balancing water bills is a big one because Baltimore City water is insanely expensive. So you gotta go on the site, you gotta find, put the address in and you gotta enter into the spreadsheet, you gotta charge the tenant or whatever. Scribe will record what you're doing on your screen and make you a step-by-step PDF with descriptions on what you're doing through the whole thing and then you can edit it and you know, type a little bit extra or whatever, but it will literally make you a page-by-page, step-by-step on anything you do on your computer Interesting, so any task that you do that you wanna delicate to somebody else, you just do it once, and here's your instruction guide.
Speaker 2:What about? So? I always just use Loom. Have you used that? I've heard of that, but I don't I've never used it.
Speaker 1:It just like records your screen so I can talk and make a recording and so any task I do, I just have me doing it and then I just send it to them and they can like, rather than say, oh, click this, and then find out where it is, it's like, oh, they can just see exactly where I'm pointing with my mouse, you know?
Speaker 2:So one thing that we're doing just in my like, my companies in general, is we're making a binder like a standard operating procedure essentially where everything that all of my staff does has an instruction guide that's like on paper, which I like. The video idea too, obviously, but having like a hard copy binder. So, like our next admin that comes in, we're like read the section on admin, it'll say how to balance water bills, how to onboard somebody in Apolio, all those things it'll just have in her binder or in his binder.
Speaker 1:So you think it's okay because we do that, but like just electronically with the videos and the links, but like, have you found it better to have it as hard copy? I don't know.
Speaker 2:I haven't found anything yet, I'm just. We're just rolling it out now, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd be curious to hear, because I've always just been like kind of anti-hard copy stuff just because it just Don't know.
Speaker 2:I just feel like no one ever looks at it, flipping to the pages they don't, they can't, you can't search, you know one thing that also that we're doing to Ford is like for the VAs, like any virtual people, I'm gonna show them once, like on a zoom call, how to do this thing, but the next time I don't want to have to do that like.
Speaker 2:I don't have to do them to call me in any way. They just like go look at this PDF and, again, like I don't know if it's better or worse, I think, having probably a little bit of both, it's probably the best, honestly the best is to have both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because if they need a quick reference, they can go to the binder. If they need to see the whole thing right, record your calls, your training calls, with them, and that might be helpful too.
Speaker 2:My thing is just so easy, it's quick. Yeah, it takes me like, if I do a task, it takes me 10 minutes. It takes me 12 minutes to make the scribe. Yeah, which is like, why not?
Speaker 1:why not? Yeah, you might as well have it exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a we have a list of, like general questions here for that We've been, you know, kind of just asking everybody and just seeing everybody's different answers. So what did you do before real estate Mm-hmm, and now obviously your full-time real estate guy, what did you do before? So like, before, before real estate I guess your job, your job, yeah, yeah, I worked at bigger pockets, okay. So that's why I'm saying yeah before, before real estate is.
Speaker 1:I was working at a venture debt company in Silicon Valley. I was an analyst there and maybe I got to an associate I don't remember but I hated it and basically and went. Venture debt is a Fancy word for hard money loans for startup companies. So companies would be failing. They'd come to us for some sort of bridge debt that would get them till their next round.
Speaker 3:How often would they fail on or default on paying back? As you would think, if the company's already needing that money, did they go into that? We just love pretty heavy underwriting.
Speaker 1:It wasn't common, but it happened. One of the companies that I was doing had went bankrupt and, yeah, that was not a fun, I left right around that time. But but then I got the job at bigger pockets and so that was like at that time I was doing finance for them. I think they hired me because I had some like Venture capital experience. I knew how to accounting and balance books, and then I was also like obsessed with real estate and so I don't think I got rehired there again because there's a lot better people than me at finance and accounting.
Speaker 2:Well, now bigger pockets is like a whole different animal.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, now they actually have like good accountants, yeah, good finance people, not just like people that can do finance and accounting, but really love real estate. And so then I, kind of, you know, was there for a few years and then that's when I, just like, with the writing on the wall, was like I was making Insanely a lot more than just being an agent that I could have ever made at bigger pockets, and it had a graduation. There is what I called it, because we left on good terms but and I still obviously I'm here right, so you know very good terms and all that and still in touch with all those guys.
Speaker 2:So you're doing some speaking here at PP con too yeah that's right, so what panels are you?
Speaker 1:on. I want a house hacking panel and the investor from the agent panel.
Speaker 3:Is that today or tomorrow? Tomorrow?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So consistency is super important. We were talking about social media and you know, just in general, in life, how do you find you hold yourself accountable for being consistent in training your agents, in growing your team and getting to work every day, when clearly you know you probably don't have to work this hard to live your lifestyle that you're living? What? What makes you come back?
Speaker 1:every day. I think it's just habits, man. Like I'm pretty structured, so I try to wake up early. I, you know, I do my kind of morning routines, very similar to the miracle morning, and then I kind of, you know, we have a kickoff meeting every day with me and my staff at 8 am Pacific, 9 am Mountain and and, and then I just kind of like get into it, I start getting into my daily tasks and I just it's just part of the process, like I don't even think of it as like a Check the box thing. It's just like what I do. You know, there are there some days that are harder than others. Of course I Sometimes give myself some grace and sometimes you got to push through. Kind of depends on the season that I'm in. But yeah, I just think that consistency in like the habits it should be like brushing your teeth, like no one wakes up in the morning.
Speaker 2:It's like oh, brush my teeth right.
Speaker 1:So it's just kind of like that. It's just like you. Just you just do it, because that's what you do.
Speaker 3:You're also motivated because you know you have other people working for you, that you have to keep the thing Moving that definitely makes it hard.
Speaker 1:It makes it, yeah, like, and I got to show up for them to like, if I don't show up, then they're not gonna show up, right, so I have to continuously be on and be a leader. You know, I got, I'm now married and so, and you know, I'm fully supporting my wife and, you know, our future kids and our life, and so there's more pressure. So it's not just me anymore. Because I'll admit like if it was just me and I was the single guy that I was five years ago, well, we probably wouldn't be here talking to you right now. Right, I'd be out doing whatever my own thing is. But I think when you start living for other people, it becomes a little bit more real.
Speaker 3:So what's your goal as far as growing your team for the next, let's say the next year?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we like to get to the team the team, I don't know, between 20 and 30 agents in Denver and I think we kind of like that and probably each market we're gonna be in, and then we're gonna start opening up those and sorry businesses with the property management. We'll probably do insurance after that mortgage at some point title, and we'll just kind of continue to Grow out all of our arms there.
Speaker 3:I like that number and here's why because a lot of I've heard this I think Mike ship mentioned it like there's like a sweet spot as far as agent count. Like you get to too many agents, Then it becomes you know you're not sending leads to everyone and everyone's yeah but then when you have, you know, you know not enough agents that you can't really hold, handle it so like 20, 25, 30, I heard it's kind of like the perfect agent count number.
Speaker 1:It feels good. We're like you're still small enough for everyone knows each other. That can be on a personal level and all that, but big enough. We're like if someone leaves, it's not that big of a deal, unless it's like one of your core people, which is unfortunate. But you know you probably have your like three to five core People and then you kind of everyone else is like a revolving door.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So I have a question and this is an interesting one, because you actually do this really really well, considering I didn't even really know what your name was for a while. Oh is branding your business versus branding yourself as your name and like, just to give you an example, like as a Construction guy, right, I'm a contractor, so People know Ryan Greenberg, the contractor, they call me, but they don't call my business because they know who I am. With you, you, you're branded as your business. What did you do that intentionally and and why?
Speaker 1:So I never liked a lot of real estate teams or like the person's last name team, but I just thought that was like Kind of conceited and like I don't know this really rub me the wrong way and I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's just my your name is that five guy. He's like I, that's what people know you, that's your business, yeah it's my business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just like I. This is how the five I originated. I'll just tell you this story. I haven't told that many times. I was at, I was working at bigger pockets and I was talking to Josh dork and he was there at the time. He was the founder and he came up to me and we were having a conversation I remember we're talking about. But he's like, oh yeah, like I wasn't this real estate guy that was gonna have a billion doors and bull. He's like, oh yeah, you're the five guy, right, like the guy that's like financial independence and that I'm like, yeah, I guess I am the five guy. I don't even know if he remembers this conversation. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm the five guy. And so then I just like looked up, literally a year after that conversation, I looked up the five guy after I wrote my book on Instagram and no one had it and I was like, wow, it's kind of like, and this was like after the financial independence, it was like really taken off.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I was like kind of surprised that no one had it and so I just grabbed it and and, yeah, that's kind of what has stuck. And then I, because of, like, the Phi is what people like remember Everything. Every other business that we have that's affiliated with it is just like the Phi team, our property management company, is gonna be enjoy the Phi because it's just, yeah, that's how we are. So I guess I don't know if that was intentional or not, but yeah, it's just okay to be.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I feel like you know you can ease, you can more easily sell the idea of like a business rather than a person, mm-hmm and like being connected to a person, the business being so closely connected to the oh yeah. It really like pigeonholes that business into just being revolving around that one person. That was intentional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember because I was in the VC space before and so and I saw it dealt with a lot of people, a lot of companies trying to sell and when the brand was so tied to the person, it just tremendously devalued the company and so, and all of that, like, right now I am very closely tied. I'm less closely tied than it was a year ago and I'm trying to work kind of away from separating me from that. But but absolutely, I mean, if you look at like bigger pockets, right, like it was so tied up with Brandon for the longest time, yeah, and, and they did a really good job. And I was kind of there during that time where they were starting to bring on other people because they were like, if anything ever happens to Brandon, like we're screwed, yeah, right. And so now they started bringing on David Green and they started bringing on whoever else, right, and now it's you got so many, you got so many people that One guy drops off and you hardly even notice, and now Brandon's hardly even with them anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we did like people, so we interviewed Brandon. We went to Maui, interviewed Brandon at his house and you know, I think he's still so tied like he's not involved At all business-wise, but he's still the fate, like he's still a face that everybody knows, that people started, you know, listening back in 2015, 2016, whatever that that was the bigger pockets podcast. Like people think that he was the founder of bigger pockets.
Speaker 1:Like a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like the I don't want to say quality, but definitely like some of the. He just had such a good Personality from for podcasts that I do feel like you know we've lost that yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think Brandon made that company like Josh started it, and I don't think Brandon could have started it right, but Brandon took it from this little peon to this massive thing, yeah, and there's no way Josh could have done that without Brandon, and so I think they were really like the perfect team and yeah, I mean, I think maybe it's nostalgia or whatever, but I think Josh and Brandon together are and they still hang out and Maui and they're still fun like batter and battling back and forth with each other if you're and yeah, I think you know he's very much tied into it.
Speaker 1:Right, but over time he won't be Right because as more people start to hear about their pockets, post Brandon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the new people, the new real estate investors that are just coming up now. It is what it is. They don't know, yeah, but like the old, you know, the seasoned people that's, they do that. They really put Brandon's face in bigger pockets.
Speaker 1:Do you?
Speaker 2:think going corporate was a good idea for them, like selling to corporate selling.
Speaker 1:I think it was a culture more culture, not financially.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, from the culture of prompting probably not the culture is definitely kind of taken a little bit of a hit. I think everyone, everyone sees that and feels that because it's a little bit more of a money grab than it used to be. I don't think that's probably what Josh 100% wanted. I would be shocked if he didn't have a little bit of backlash as to what's going on. But Ultimately I mean, hey, it's a company, right? Josh worked his butt off for 15 years and took almost nothing from it for the first 10, and so I think he you know, he did what was best for his family, right?
Speaker 1:and he, I think he deserves every yeah he deserves more than every penny that he got for that company and and, and. Yeah, and I think now it's. You know, I mean that what does? They got bought out by a PE firm and it's a corporate machine? Yeah, now, what a PE firms do? They flip businesses. So now I wouldn't be surprised if they're gonna go sell again here the next year or two and yeah, we'll buy some.
Speaker 3:So is Josh involved in bigger pockets now at all? I think he's.
Speaker 1:I think he's on the board, I think he's got some sort of role, but I don't think he's not like day-to-day or anything like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, craig, I know we got to get back to the conference, so I just wanted to say thanks for coming on and everybody on Instagram he is the FI guy. That's it right, just the FI guy, fi guy. That's me. Yeah, give him a follow and give us a follow. The everyday millionaire show and we'll see you next time.