Kicking Off 2022 with Goal Setting and Live Q&A w/ David Greene

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 552. My advice for everyone here is they should make goals, but give grace to yourself. Okay? Don’t make goals that are punishing you. Don’t make goals that are ridiculous like I’ve never bought a house or I own one home and I’m going to go buy 100 units. That’s just the fastest way to making bad decisions. You’re much better off to try to figure out how to do I build momentum. I’m going to buy a duplex and then a fourplex by the end of the year. And three years later, I’m going to put a plan together to get to 100 units. I’d much rather see someone do that than just tell themselves something ridiculous they’re not actually going to accomplish.

David:
What’s going on everyone? It is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. First and foremost, happy New Year to everybody. Really hoping and praying that 2022 is a better year for everybody than 2021 was. That’s something that’s very important is even if you don’t love where your life is, just make sure that every year gets better than the year before. You don’t want to be going backwards to where you’re more unhappy or you’re making less progress. And we’re going to talk on this show today about what I do to make sure that my 2022 is always better than my 2021.

David:
All right. So a few notes before we get into today’s show about goal setting, and staying accountable, and making progress in life. We’re producing more content than ever here at BiggerPockets. And we know that you’ve been asking us for more clarity about which types episodes published on which days of the week. So I’m going to give you a breakdown of what you can expect from BiggerPockets when it comes to the types of shows and when they’ll air.

David:
On Thursdays, for nine years, this has been the OG interview format, and we’re not going to change anything about that. Every week, you hear a new investor story and learn new golden nuggets about their chosen niche. The Deal Deep Dive, the Fire Round, the Famous Four. We’re not messing with any of that. We are going to make some opportunities for listeners to join podcast recordings live just like today. And today we have a few listeners with us. We’re going to get into some Q&A little bit later. So stay tuned for that.

David:
On Sunday, you’re going to be getting a Q&A style episode. We’re going to keep doing the Seeing Green, so make sure you send your real estate questions to biggerpockets.com/david, because that’s my name. I’ll be doing those Q&A shows with other experts and some of your favorite past podcast guests, and some live Dave Ramsey style call in shows. And on Tuesdays is where we’re going to keep experimenting with a few different kinds of formats. So we’ve done the state of the markets or the BiggerPockets news segment. We’re going to do that once a month. We’ve got to detailed how to guide to different real estate investing strategies, coaching calls, and then those mindset episodes that you’ve heard some of.

David:
The last thing I want to say is that today I’m here solo. But in the spirit of providing new viewpoints, I’m also going to be joined by a few different co-hosts in the coming weeks. And by the way, we’re looking for some great new talent to join the BiggerPockets Podcast network. If that’s you or someone you know, you can make a submission to our system at biggerpockets.com/talent. That’s biggerpockets.com/talent to submit a video reel if you want to get involved in potentially contributing your talents to the BiggerPockets Podcast network.

David:
Now make sure you go to biggerpockets.com/talent. Don’t DM me directly and say, “Hey David, here’s what I got. Here’s what I’d like to do.” You’re going to get lost in there. I don’t have a system to filter through all that. BiggerPockets has got it covered, so please go through the appropriate channels.

David:
All right. And for today’s quick tip, I’d like to say go to biggerpockets.com/talent or biggerpockets.com/david, and either submit a video of yourself and why you want to be on the podcast, or at least ask a question so that everyone else can benefit from it. In my experience, majority of people think that their questions are stupid, but the reality is everybody is asking the same questions of themselves. So when you ask me questions, especially via video, I get to address that for everyone here and everyone learns. Which is why we’re really wanting to create one of those Dave Ramsey style shows where we can get live callers, because we can actually interact with people and pull more out of them. And you get your chance to get a question asked. So that’s a quick tip, go to biggerpockets.com/david or biggerpockets.com/talent. Submit a question. All right, with that being said, let’s get into today’s show.

David:
All right. So I’m just going to jump right into this. We’re going to start off the new year where I’m going to share my goals personally. And I’m going to share basically in today’s show, we’re not going to get into the whole thing being just my goals. We want to leave some time for some Q&A. But you’re going to get to kind of see how I make up the goals I have for the year. And then you guys can dive in and ask me questions about how I come up with a plan to accomplish those goals make sure they happen as well as how I keep myself reminded of them and how I make sure that I’m staying accountable.

David:
But I start off, I just make a Google document. It’s that simple. And I write down what the vision is for the year. So this is as far as maybe they’re not specific goals, but they’re things that I want to make sure I accomplish. So here’s what I have so far.

David:
I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it this year. But one of the things I’d love to accomplish this year is to have a commercial building that I can make this one stop shop model that I’ve been working towards. So my goal is to create businesses that help you accomplish financial freedom through real estate. So basically, I had to figure all this stuff out on my own before I came across BiggerPockets. I was out there trying to learn how to invest long distance, trying to use the BRRRR strategy. I was trying to just save up money on my own to go buy houses, trying to figure out who a good agent was, how the lending thing worked. It was just slow going, like walking through quick sand. I guess quick sand is not slow, more like sledging through mud or snow. And that’s given me a heart to educate other people because I remember how difficult it was for me to get going.

David:
Well now, instead of just trying to teach you how to find the perfect agent, I’d like to just provide the perfect agent. Instead of teaching you everything to know about the lending business, I’d like to just have loan officers that are super good that I’ve trained myself they can help you accomplish your goals.

David:
So what I’d love to have is one big building. This is why I put out a post earlier this year on my Instagram, which is @davidgreen24 and said, “Hey, I’m looking to buy a church.” I’m still looking for a building like that in the East Bay area so that I can have office space for my lending company, for my real estate company, for the insurance company I want to have, for the construction company I want to have. Rehabs are a problem. For an appraiser, for a home inspector, for all the pieces that you need to do a good job real estate investing and make sure that your due diligence is formed. Get all those people together in one space, and then have a common area where I can give them all training at the same time time. So that’s why a church is perfect because they have the auditorium where people usually sit and listen to the pastor or the leader where we can bring in different experts that can teach everyone. And then when they’re done with that common training, they can all go back to their own office space.

David:
So I’d love that idea because it lets us sort of have a place that our clients can come to and meet everybody in one trip. You can come, you can meet your agent. They can come up with a plan. Then you meet the loan officer, you meet the insurance person. You meet all the people that are going to be involved, and they’re all communicating and on the same page. So that’s the vision I have for what I’m trying to grow. I’m not in complete control of when that all comes together, because it depends on the profitability of the different businesses, and finding a building that will work and it being actually economically feasible. But that’s an example of the vision that is driving me for why I came up with all the goals that you’re going to hear in a little bit.

David:
I’d also like to have two companies that profit six figures a month. I want to stay in Gary Keller’s Top 100. That’s the top 100 agents in the country. And then I want to make sure that I maintain BiggerPockets as the world’s best and most successful real estate podcast. So those are the things that are sort of driving all the other goals that I come up with. So that’s the first thing that I think everyone should do when they’re coming up with goals is name your why. Are you a family person? You want to have more time with your kids? Don’t just save more time with my kids, create a vision of what you want that to look like. I’m there to put them in bed every single night. I’m there at dinner every single night. I am encouraging them to do better in sports, or I’m actually coaching them. I have this kind of an impact on my kids. You start with the vision for what you want to accomplish, and then the goals become the practical steps that you need to get there.

David:
So we’re going to start off my goal portion of this by going over the David Greene Team since that is my first company and still the biggest one that has the most employees and does the most revenue. So my goal in 2021 was to have 150 million in gross volume sold. So that means if you add up the price of every house we sold, it would be 150 million. We’re going to hit about 200 million. So we actually passed up our goal. Now I’m going to set the goal for 2022 at 250 million. And I’m going to hope that we hit 300. So some people will say, “Well, why don’t you just set it at 300?” The reason is that the way that I’ve worked out the numbers, if we do our bare minimum, we should be able to hit 250, and then 300 is sort of icing on the cake. If I set it at 300, I have to rework numbers. And when I did that, I didn’t think that I could actually hold the agents I have right now accountable to what it would take to sell 300 million. I don’t think their experience level is where it needs to be able to hold them to that as the minimum.

David:
Now let’s say in January or February somebody hears this and they say, “David, I want to come work on your team. I sell houses.” And boom, we get a couple superstars that are great. I will bump that goal up in the middle of the year. I’ve done that many, many times where I’m like, “Okay, we’re doing too good. If we keep the goal where it’s at, we’re just going to hit cruise control. We’re not going to be pushing to be our best. I’ll move it up.” I don’t like to move it down. That does not happen. It’s just my personality is I work like a ratchet. I can move in one direction, that we can do better. We can go higher, but we do not actually go backwards. Just like you can’t turn a ratchet the wrong direction.

David:
I need to have a minimum of four, they’re strong buyers agents, but we call them sales leaders on in my team. So these are agents that are licensed just like everyone else, but they’re doing the majority of the work. These are the ones I give the best leads to. These are the ones I give specific training to. I can’t give training to all 25 agents or so that are on the team. So I just focus on the top four or five that are the most experienced and that are doing the best. And then that training sort of trickles from them down to the people that are supporting them, like are showing assistants. Sales leaders, they’re given more opportunity. And then with that comes more responsibility just like you hear from Spiderman. So those are really people that are being developed to be leaders.

David:
I want to end the year with a chief operating officer. I’ve currently promoted Kyle Rankie. He’s in a six month, not really a probation period. They don’t like that word. But I’m giving him six months for me to personally teach him how to run operations of the David Greene Team, and eventually take over with our expansion system. A lot of you have been asking me, “Hey David, can I be the first David Greene Team in Miami, or in Austin, or whatever?” I don’t have the bandwidth right now to take on new people, teach them our system, teach them what we do, get them up to speed with all of it, and sort of hold their hand. So far, the people that have come haven’t been experienced agents that I think I could just teach our system to and could run with it. But that is the ultimate goal. Like I said, I want everyone who’s listening to be able to have a great real estate agent. I also want to help BiggerPockets promote their agent finder system, because it’s exact same idea, right? We all need agents to help us find deals, to help us close on deals, to know what we should be looking for. And that’s why I’m constantly educating real estate agents. Because the more agents I can get out there that are better at their job, the more likely they are to help you when you’re going to need one.

David:
I also want to end with a team leader or a sort of director of operations for our flagship office, which is in Brentwood. So the David Greene Team currently has a Brentwood division. That’s in the East Bay area of California. And this is where like our hub is, or our flagship. Then we have an expansion team in Sacramento. Then we have an expansion team in Southern California. Now the Southern California team is absolutely crushing it. They’ve got 10 in escrow or more at any given time.

David:
So that’s one of the reasons that we exceeded our goals for 2021 was I didn’t expect to find Lindsey, but halfway through the year she joined the team, and she’s done awesome. So now Lindsey went from selling two houses a month to somewhere between 10 and 15, which is about where they’re averaging at the end of the year. And then we’ve got five or six showing assistants that are helping Lindsey that are learning the business. So every year, I can expect a little bit more out of those showing assistants as they get more experience and they grow. So Krista is going to be train to become the leader of the Brentwood office. And she’ll be doing a lot more training of the new agents helping support. Because like I said, I can’t do that. As well as the other goals that I have that are just taking a priority to training brand new agents that come into the office.

David:
All right. So that’s my goals for the David Greene Team in 2022, at least at this stage, right? Sometimes those goals often become a little more clear, and lines become a little more solid as the year goes on.

David:
The lending company that I started, The One Brokerage is the next company that I’m going to get into. So they did very, very well in 2021. We’re in the top 25 in the state of California. And we weren’t even basically a full business for the entire year. Going into 2022, we’ve got some momentum going and we’re really going to be putting our foot on the gas. So our goal is to close 600 loans in 2022. And I want to hire an additional 25 loan officers to join this company.

David:
Now that’s not going to be brand new, don’t know how to do anything. At the pace that we’re going, this is not the right place for a brand new loan officer who knows nothing and needs a lot of handholding to join. This would be an experienced loan officer who wants to up their game by getting more support from processors, and the things that really loan officers need to close more loans. And then we expect more out of them as far as what kind of service they give to our clients. So you could expect to get a lot more content from me specifically about the mortgage industry, the lending industry, tips that you can use to get a better loan, what you should be looking for in a loan, and then some loan programs that might work for you when other ones don’t.

David:
We also want to do 250 million in gross volume, which is the same goal we set for the real estate team. And then I need to hire 10 new processors. A processor in the loan game is an assistant to a loan officer, much like a showing assistant helps a buyer’s agent with a lot of the duties that go with putting someone in contract.

David:
And then finally, I want to end the year with that company having nationwide service. So we want to be able to be licensed in all 50 states. So anybody out there that wants a loan officer that they can trust and can understand what’s going on with their product has a place they can go.

David:
I have a marketing plan. So this is something that should help all of the other things that you hear me talk about. The first is I’m getting ready to launch a text letter. It might even be out by the time that you’re hearing this, but probably not. It’s going to be called Behind the Shine because there’s a shine on my bald head. Brandon has one called Behind the Beard and I thought his is pretty cool. So I’m trying to do what he’s doing, just better. It’s going to be visually stimulating. It’s going to have different topics. So we’ll have what’s going on in the stock market, in the crypto world, where I’m buying, what books I’m reading, where I’ll be speaking, what new loan program that we can offer, sales stories of people who we helped sell house so that you can see how this person got from A to ultimately Z and owned real estate. What markets I think people are heading to, trends that I see going on. We’ll have various topics that you’ll be able to sort of if you click on the link when you get the text, you’ll be able to see what’s going on in my world in a little more depth.

David:
And then a new website is being made. So David Greene is sort of my overall website. That’s going to be launching probably by the time you hear this. And then I’m working on one where we are going to show the details of what I’m doing behind the scenes. So this is where we’re going to host the content that’s in the newsletter. It’s going to be called DGT Live like David Greene Team live. And that’s where I’m just going to be able to show clients we had that sold on houses, the struggles that they encountered, how we helped them overcome it. House hack stories, people who sold a house, paid off a bunch of debt, and then bought maybe three new houses. So you can just get a better idea of what it looks like once you start putting into play a lot of the concepts that we talk about here on BiggerPockets. If you want a more detailed story of what that looks like, that’s a great place to find it.

David:
I have the goal to write one new book in 2022, and then to come up with the idea for the book that I’ll be writing in 2023. So in general, the way it’s kind of working out is I want to write a minimum of a book a year. That’s obviously difficult with all the other stuff that I’m doing, but that’s why I make it a goal, because I want it to stay a priority. So at some time during the year, I’ll probably be asking people, what would you like to see more of? What type of content would you like me to write a book about? And then I’ll take that to BiggerPockets Publishing and see if we can bring that into fruition. I have down here that I want to start at sometime in 2022 an insurance company, just like the loan company and the real estate company. So I’ll be figuring out what I need to do to legally make that happen, and how we can that together.

David:
As far as my personal investments, there’s some big changes that are going to be coming in 2022. And they’re scary, but I know that they’re going to be good. The first is I’m going to move for the first time ever to raising money to invest in deals that I’m not the operator on. Now obviously I have all the normal human emotions that you guys have when you think about buying a house, because I’d be giving up control of operating the asset after we buy it. But I really believe there’s people that are better at doing that than me and that have more time and more expertise at it. So I’m going to be looking for experienced operators that have bought different asset classes before. We’re going to do multifamily, commercial, and single family. And I don’t know exactly how far into each one I’m going to get. It probably depends on the partner that I’m picking, but you can expect me to be raising money and then putting deals together in different asset classes if that’s something that you’re interested in, and it should lead to a lot of growth and a lot more knowledge for me. Which I have to do if I want to be able to keep bringing really good information to you through this podcast.

David:
So part of that’s going to be raising money, and part of that’s going to be actually finding operators to partner with. So if you’re someone who’s experienced in buying real estate and you don’t like raising money, well let me know, because that may be a thing we should talk about. And then I want to buy a minimum of four new properties personally. So every quarter, I want to be buying at least one property that I’m not doing with partners, that I’m just doing with myself.

David:
As far as 2022, my tax goal is to pay no taxes personally because of a depreciation strategy. So the short of it is if you’re a full-time real estate professional, you can take depreciation from assets that you buy and apply it against all the income that you make through real estate. So if I buy big enough properties and the right properties, and not necessarily the syndication model. This is why I have to make sure I buy properties for myself. I can take the depreciation of those assets, what the IRS gives me because the properties slowly fall apart over time. Use it to cover the income that I make from other areas so that I can invest more of that money into more real estate that creates more jobs, more opportunities, helps build up properties to be better shaped than they were, creates new business opportunities for other people instead of just paying it in taxes.

David:
I also want to find a partner to build a CPA business with. Because like I’m talking about right now, as people hear that, I know a lot of them say, “Well, how do I do that? Can I do that?” Well, the problem in my opinion with the average CPA is they always tell you what you could get in trouble with. “You don’t want to do that, because this could happen.” And then by the end of the conversation, you’re just, “Okay, I guess I don’t want to do this at all.” But then you hear David Greene say this is what he’s going to go do. And you go, “Yeah, I want to go do that.” And you kind of bounce back and forth all the time.

David:
I’d like to find a partner that we could build a CPA company with that will not just tell somebody here’s what could go wrong, that will actually say here’s what we can do to save you money. So I’ll be on the lookout for a person who has experience being a CPA, but maybe doesn’t love the business side of it. They don’t love the lead generation. They don’t love looking for new clients, because that is the part that I tend to do better.

David:
And now lastly to wrap up with my personal goals, one of them is to do quarterly paid speaking engagements. So every quarter, I’d like to do a paid speaking engagement. It’ll force me to become a better speaker, a better communicator. And shift from just being focusing on the knowledge of real estate, into the delivery system of making it easier to hear. So I have this theory that in order to heal a sick person, you need two things. Got to have medicine, but then you have to have a delivery system. If you’ve got vials full of medicine and no way to get it into someone’s body, it’s no good. And if you’ve got an IV set up that’s going right into somebody’s vein but you don’t have any medicine to give them, it’s also no good. So you actually have to have both, and I’m trying to balance out the knowledge that I gain which is sort of the medicine with the way that I deliver it. Becoming a better speaker and a better communicator, which would be the delivery system.

David:
I want to hire a bookkeeper to help with all of these other businesses that I talked about, tracking the money that’s coming in and out as well as helping to run my real estate portfolio. It would have to be somebody who has experience. And I might be looking to hire a property manager. I don’t have that on my goals because I’m not committing to that. But finding someone that I could sort of have manage my properties. And every time I buy a new property, get it up and running and make sure that it’s still running well is something else I have in the future that I’m going to be looking for.

David:
I want to work out five times a week and do Brazilian jujitsu at least twice a week. So the minimum of two times a week. And then I’d also like to hire a personal assistant much like how Brandon hired Ryan Murdock. So it wouldn’t be a personal assistant in the sense of just washes my car and takes my clothes to drive cleaning. Kind of more of somebody who does a little bit of everything, because I’m involved in everything. Runs my calendar, helps me book those paid speaking engagements, helps manage the properties that I have, helps prioritize what makes it to me and what doesn’t make it to me.

David:
So that’s something that when Brandon found Ryan, it really changed his life. Ryan did a really, really good job. Now here’s why. Ryan wasn’t a brand new person who knew nothing that was like, “I want to be Brandon Turner’s assistant.” That’s sort of a death sentence. If you don’t know anything about what Brandon does, you don’t want to jump in and be his assistant. Ryan had managed properties before. He had worked at a property management service. Ryan had owned his own real estate. So he knew what needed to be done practically. Ryan had been a real estate agent. He was licensed and had worked closely with lenders. So a lot of the stuff that Brandon had going on, Ryan had experience and knew how to make sure that that stuff got done. So that’s another thing that I will be looking for.

David:
And that all has to happen around keeping this the best real estate podcast in the world, and keeping you rapid BiggerPockets fans, happy, well-fed, and well educated. Look.,I like to grow my wealth. That’s no surprise, but I also like to make sure everybody around me is winning. I like to make sure that anyone who’s in my world is growing their wealth too. And I kind of think that’s just a good human philosophy to have. If you have poor eating habits, anyone who spends a lot of time with you is going to feel their eating habits kind of pulled down as they get into your world. They’re tempted by the foods you do. If you have good eating habits, or if you exercise a lot, or if you read a lot of books, you will find yourself having the people around you start doing that same thing. So as you start to gain more influence in life, it comes with more responsibility. You have to pay more attention to what you’re doing because of all the people that are watching you.

David:
So a lot of the goals that I have in place are done with the fact that a lot of people are sort of looking at how they can go down the same path that I did. And they need a leader. They want to mentor. They want a person whose path they can follow. So that forces me to always be pushing the limit, right? I have to becoming a better real estate agent, have a better team, have a better loan company, have better insurance products, be a better communicator, do better stuff with my time. If I get financial freedom and then I use it in selfish ways, that’s just encouraging a lot of the people that are looking up to me to go do the same. And that’s not what I want to do.

David:
And a lot of this comes from Josh Dorkin who is the founder of BiggerPockets. His personality is stamped on to that company. And Josh was all about family and freedom. He likes to be able to do what he wants to do. And he likes to be able to put his family over everything else. He is wildly protective of his family, and it’s very admirable.

David:
So if you’re listening to this podcast, if maybe you’re new, just know you’re going to be influencing those ways. You’re going to be challenged about what you spend money on. You’re going to be challenged about how you do business, right? This is not a company, BiggerPockets that promotes just trying to dominate someone in a negotiation. You’re always going to be taught to look for win-wins. You’re going to be trained and encouraged I would say to add value before you take value. That’s another thing that successful people do that BiggerPockets wants to emulate.

David:
And then lastly, you’re going to have an emphasis on knowledge that’s going to be kind of pounded into your head. So a lot of the competition for BiggerPockets, the gurus that are out there that say, “Yeah, we can teach you how to invest in real estate too.” They’re not necessarily giving you knowledge. They’re stoking the fires of GRE. They’re telling you, “Hey, you can get out there and you can make a bunch of money. It’s not hard.” And it’s always easier to go to the person that tells you you can do something easy than hard. It just isn’t true. So at BiggerPockets, we will always be putting a heavy emphasis on bringing in real world examples of people that actually did it, and not sugar coating the story. The good, the bad, the ugly, the nice.

David:
And the idea is you’re going to have to take that same journey. We all got to walk up the mountain, and going up mountains is not easy. Financial freedom is not an easy goal to obtain, it’s just a freaking worthwhile one. But the goal is we hope to help you avoid taking the path, right? We don’t want you to spend more time getting to the top of the mountain than what it really took. We don’t want you to go the wrong way and have to come all the way back and then start again, and maybe go the wrong way. If we can interview people or get knowledge out of them, it helps you avoid taking the wrong path. More of your energy can be put actually getting to the top, which is where all the good stuff is.

David:
So that is a summary of how I put my goals together, what my goals are. Now my love language is people that help me with those goals. So I want to be able to help other people with their goals. And if I can, I do. And I love if you’d be able to help me with mine. And because the number one goal is to make this podcast the best podcast that we possibly can, we want to keep getting your feedback. Keep telling me in the comments on YouTube, keep emailing us and saying, “I’d love a show that focused on,” fill in the blank. “I want more content that is like this.” Me and the production staff spend a lot of time going through that and figuring out how can we actually make this happen for our listeners like you. So this isn’t the podcast where you’re just going to show up and you got to eat whatever is being served. We’re actually going to try to give you what you want.

David:
So, okay. And if you’ve got some of those ideas, if you’re hearing this and you’re like, “David, that’s what I needed to hear. Because I got all these ideas in my head, and every day I’m talking in my car and there’s no one listening as I’m driving.” Well, if you go to [email protected], you can email us and share what those ideas are, what you liked to see, what you loved, and what you didn’t like as much. And if enough people say they don’t like the same stuff, well we know to make less of that content and more of the other kind.

David:
All right, Instagram. If you are here and you’ve been watching this live podcast recording, do me a favor. Go to pigger not pigger pockets. Go to biggerpockets.com/livequestions and submit your questions there. [Eric 00:26:51] is there, and waiting to talk to you, and figure out which of those questions we should be bringing into the show. So if you’re typing it into my Instagram, I’m not able to see because I’m paying attention to the camera that we’re recording for BiggerPockets YouTube and the podcast. So I won’t get it there, but if you go to biggerpockets.com/livequestions, I should be able to answer it there. I also put that at the top of the chat. So just go ahead and scroll up and you can find it there. All right. JT, your hair’s looking great man.

JT:
I appreciate it. I’m mimicking after you, I’m not quite there yet though.

David:
I think you found a good role model. I appreciate that you’re going after my head instead of Brandon’s beard. Thanks bro. All right. What’s on your mind.

JT:
So I’ve always admired the fact that you successfully run several businesses simultaneously. It’s a challenge that you and I share. But what I find one of the most vexing pieces of that challenge is not getting mired in the day-to-day minutia. I’m constantly getting dragged down by the things around me. And I’m kind of curious what steps you take to avoid that.

David:
Well, here’s the answer that all of the gurus in this space. I say gurus, I don’t want it to sound negative. But it’s sort of an echo chamber of the same information that you hear especially if you work as a real estate agent. In this business, you hear the same information packaged and phrased in different ways. So one of the things they’ll tell you is you need to have talent around you. And there is a lot of truth to that. You probably already know that. That’s why I’m not just going to make that my only answer. That would be the easy way to go. But for the people that are listening, if you’re surrounded in your growing enterprise, your growing goal. It could be a business like a traditional one like what I do. It could just be trying to find rental properties, and you’re trying to work with an agent that doesn’t get back to you, or a property manager that doesn’t seem to care. Or you partnered with someone, and their job is to analyze the deals, and your job is to fill up the funnel. And you’re like, “Well, I’m doing my job. I’m filling up this funnel. Why aren’t they analyzing it?”

David:
There’s a really good quote that Ben Kinney once told me. He’s an agent I look up to. This is actually his cup that I’m drinking out of. And he said, “David.” He probably got this from Gary Keller. “Nobody is a great leader of mediocre talent,” right? I’m not meaning to be dismissive or rude of someone who gives a mediocre performance. It’s more a call to action for everyone who’s not giving their best. That it doesn’t matter if you work at the best company in the world. If you’re putting in a mediocre performance, if you’re not giving your best, your leader can’t lead you well and you’re not going to find success. So the first thing I would say is when you have really good people around you, stuff doesn’t even make it to you for you to get mired in. Okay? If I worked at your company JT, and what is your company by the way? One of them at least.

JT:
Yeah. My primary company is I flip rural vacant land.

David:
Okay. So a common problem that might occur if you’re flipping rural vacant land is you’re probably trying to figure out how do I get the city to approve of my plan so I can develop this land and sell it to somebody else with, I’ve done it for them? Is that accurate?

JT:
Yeah actually, primarily we buy land as is well under market and then re-market it either via owner finance or cash sales.

David:
Okay. So then you’re maybe spending a good amount of your time actually trying to figure out how do I market this and how do I find the buyers? If I worked for you, I would make it a challenge every day that JT will never have this hit his desk, because I’ll take care of it before it gets to him. Right? If that is the mindset of the people that you’re surrounded with, you just don’t get caught up in the mire like you’re talking about because other people handle it before it gets to you. So the first thing you always got to ask yourself is do I have the right people around me? And if the answer is no, am I willing to go through the hard work of separating from them and finding new ones? Any comment on that before I answer the second part?

JT:
No, that makes a lot of sense.

David:
Okay. Here’s the more practical answer that I think you’ll get more value out of than me just saying the one that everybody says all the time. Because I know there are certain things that are crucial to getting right, and there’s other things that would be nice to get right. Every business has these. Every anything has these. If you’re a real estate agent, you have to put people in contract. The business dies if you do not put people in escrow and close on deals. Now if I don’t put emphasis on getting a listing agreement signed, so I’m going to sell your house, it literally doesn’t matter if I succeed at the other 99% of the job, because I don’t have anything to do. If I don’t have a great ability to put the pictures that I have taken together in the MLS in the right order, or maybe I’m not good at writing a description for a property. Like I don’t have that whole must see, cute bungalow in the highly desired district of blah, blah, blah. It’s okay to not be good at those things, because I can leverage that to somebody else. And even if I don’t, I can survive. Okay? I cannot survive without taking a listing. And every business has something that’s the lifeblood of it. So for you, that might be act actually getting land under contract, and then finding the end buyer.

David:
So I would guess if I was in charge of your business, there’s two huge priorities. We need to find product to sell, we need to find a person to sell it too. And if we get those two things right, all the rest of it, maybe the business is messier than we’d like it to be. It’s not as smooth, but it will still survive. Okay?

David:
What I do with my calendar is first off, I have Krista run it. There’s not several people putting things on my calendar. There’s a human being that everything has to funnel through so that I don’t get stretched too thin, or get double booked, or miss something. If it’s important, it has to be on my calendar. So there’s a person right now that I’m looking to start buying short-term rentals with in different markets and expensive markets. And I’ll be in charge of raising the money, and analyzing the market, and going up with a big picture. And they will be in charge of executing on the details of that plan.

David:
We have to have a weekly meeting in the calendar for the same time every single week, because you move at the speed that you communicate at. If we’re talking every week, and I haven’t done my job, and I got to get on there and be like, “Guys, I blew it. I didn’t do whatever.” I’m not going to make that mistake again next week. If they had gotten part of the way through and then they’re like, “I got to ask David something,” and they text me and I don’t reply. That’s when you forget it, right?

David:
If I make sure that it’s on the calendar, they’ll ask me then. And we will focus on those big rocks, those things that have to get done. And as long as I get the big stuff on my calendar, the only time they come to me is if I let them. It is much easier for me to pass those on to somebody else. So if my job is to find the areas, raise them money, and look at the property and say, “Hey, this is how much we can pay. This is how to structure the deal.” If the little stuff starts to boil back to me, and I’m tempted to get involved, like I want to go through the pictures on Zillow myself and I want to see if this would work. Or I want to look up the rents instead of letting somebody else do it. That’s 100% on me. I absolutely push that back to the other person and say, “I need this by our next phone call.” And if they don’t do it well, then that becomes a training opportunity to show them. And if that still doesn’t work, well now you just probably have the right person.

David:
So the short answer of how I avoid getting stuck in the mire is my calendar dictates what I do. I show up at the office, and I’m not a free man. I’m a employee, I’m a slave to that calendar and the responsibilities of those businesses, which ultimately serve the client. So what do you have to say about that?

JT:
No, I think that’s the heart of the issue. I’m definitely by nature the kind of person who wants to get all the things right. So accepting that as long as the most important things, the one thing if you want to put it that way, right? That gets done correctly, on time, and delivered. As long as that happens, I guess I just have to accept the fact that the rest might fall through the cracks sub level.

David:
Let me give you a story of how I had to learn to be okay with what you’re going through. And hopefully this will help you. There was a time about three years ago where I had a listing in Fremont, California, which was a very, very desire area. Not a lot of products, really good schools. And this was a three bedroom, two bathroom house with a pool and a huge lot, but it backed up to a freeway.

David:
So long story is this could go really well or really poorly depending on how you market the property and how you make sure that the buyers that are buying it are okay with the freeway before you go into contract.

David:
The client was difficult to deal with because they were very stressed out about moving, leaving the house where they raised their family, finding a product closer to Sacramento. There was a lot of unknowns, and this person did not deal with uncertainty very well.

David:
They were frequently upset with me for little things that I just didn’t understand. I wasn’t there when the photographer came to take the pictures. I sent the best photographer we had. We had a plan for what stuff I wanted to make sure they captured. The client knew they were coming, but I didn’t go there to point out, “Hey, move that flower pot to the side.” Now, the reason I didn’t do that was because I think the photographer is better at deciding that than me, frankly. And I would’ve just messed it up. The client perceived that like I didn’t care. I’m not trying to sell their house. And when they’re in a highly stressed state, it was very easy to lash out at me all the time.

David:
Now what I did care about was making sure their plan was executed to the highest degree that it could done. So where I put my focus was on negotiating the contract. And we got about 12 offers on this house, and we listed it at probably 1,010,000 I think. And all the offers were somewhere 1,010,00 and 1,050,000. Well, I spent a lot of time talking to every single agent to find out who had the buyer that was the most desperate to get a house. Found them, pumped them up to much higher than 1,000,050. It was like 1.15. So an extra 100 grand on top of the highest offer that we had with no contingency. So they cannot back out of the deal. They have no inspection, no loan, no appraisal contingency. And they had their down payment on the line.

David:
Now, this client did get cold feet after they realized, and this happens all the time. You go into contract and then you’re like, “Well maybe I don’t want to pay that much.” And then they try to come back and ask for things. But because they had no contingencies, they couldn’t get out. The client made way more over the appraised price and 100 grand over the highest. They made 150 grand over what the house appraised for.

David:
Now that client was upset because I wasn’t there to move the flower pot. Right? But at this stage in her life, do you think it mattered more that I was there to move the flower pot, or that she got $150,000 more? Right? I frequently have to remind myself that those details seem important at the time. And when you’re stressed out, they can appear like they are. But the other aspects of the business are what people are actually depending on you for, okay? I don’t mean this to sound rude, but someone can get over not having me there when the photographer’s there. They’ll never get over that extra 100 grand that they could have left on the table if I wouldn’t have given it my all. So in your business, that’s a question you have to ask yourself. What are the flower pots, and what are the six figure decisions that can make a huge difference that can build wealth for everyone that comes to do business with JT?

JT:
Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I think that’s the difference between experience and theory, right?

David:
Yeah. And don’t feel bad that this is hard for you. This is hard for all of us. Perfectionists like things to go well. And when our name is on the line, we feel really bad. And if you’re a high C on the DiSC profile, which is what I’m guessing you probably are. One of the worst fears that high C’s have is being considered sloppy, incompetent, making mistakes. So if someone else makes a mistake in your name, it’s like you just got punched in the gut. But it’s going to take intentional focus for you to pull your mind off of some of those details and focus on the one thing that you mentioned.

JT:
Yeah. That’s perfect. Appreciate it.

David:
Thanks JT. Thanks for asking a great question. All right. Nice to see you again, Susan.

Susan:
Thanks. I’m the one consistently asking questions.

David:
Hey, we need questions. So you’re the superstar right now. Let’s hear it. What do you got for me today?

Susan:
So I’m a new investor, and I just got my first single family home this past fall intending to BRRRR it.

David:
Are you in the Seattle area by chance, Susan?

Susan:
Yes.

David:
All right. I do remember talking to you before.

Susan:
Yes. And I saw you at BPCON. Yeah, so I got my first single family home. It’s a five bed two bath in a great neighborhood, got it 100,000 under asking. Largely just from listening to BiggerPockets and understanding, kind of watching the market and seeing something that had been on for a few days extra, and really bad photos. So got a great deal.

Susan:
Right after that, I lost my W-2 job. Funds are super tight. So what I’m going to do is move into the home to live in rehab, because I can run out my current home, which is way closer to turnkey, and it’s in a desirable neighborhood.

Susan:
So contractors are super frustrating to find or to employ while I’m unemployed. And I can do some of the work myself. So I know this financial situation is a temporary setback. So how do I keep my forward momentum going and my mindset right while my finances are so tight and I’m having so much trouble with my first rental that I’ve purchased?

David:
First piece of advice I’ll give you is don’t be too hard on yourself. We don’t talk about it often in this podcast or ever, but having capital is one of the biggest things that stops newer investors that give up, fail, or never get started. That answer doesn’t come up a lot, but the reality is it’s a big piece of this. So if you just lost your job and you didn’t have a lot of money saved up, it kind of just paints you in a corner where you don’t have a lot of room to move. And a lot of the time, what makes these deals work when things go wrong is that cushion. You’ve just got 50 grand extra that if something went wrong, you’re like, “That sucked, but I can survive.” And maybe the deal takes another year or two before it hits what you wanted it to. But over a 30 year time span, that’s sort of an insignificant. It doesn’t feel insignificant in the moment where you’re at.

David:
So if you don’t have access to a lot of capital, the first thing I would say is can you do this rehab not as nice as you wanted to? Can you sort of make it a bare bones just survive until I get my next job and I build up some capital, and then revisit it and execute the grand plan that you originally had?

Susan:
I think yes. I did have some cash saved up and I have a HELOC. But my rehab budget and my HELOC was more towards when I purchased the home, it was more to rehab the house and make it a really, I don’t know, grade A rehab. What has changed is I’ve been living off that money for going on four months now. So that’s bringing it down to maybe that grade B. So yeah, I could do that for sure.

David:
I would look at it if I had an analogy. Your original plan was to get this patient completely healed. You were going to put them in the best wing of the hospital that you had. You were going to give it your all. And unexpected to you, a huge wave of other injured patients are coming in your hospital. Okay? And you’re stretched too thin to be able to do what you wanted to. Can you stop the bleeding and triage this person so that they don’t die, get them stable, deal with some of the other issues that have come up in life with your finances, like getting another job and getting your savings built up, then revisit that patient and execute this plan that you originally had? It doesn’t mean that you can’t do it, but you’re probably going to have to do it in smaller steps.

Susan:
Okay.

David:
If I was you, I would not feel guilt about that at all. This happens constantly, especially if you don’t have a lot of money in the bank. This has happened to me many times over my career, where I have a grand vision and I’m so excited, and it is driving. And then something happens, right? A second deal comes up that I put capital into. Unexpected expenses pop up on a property that I had before. Man, I think the David Greene Team, the money that was coming in from that in February, March, April of this year was almost three times where it was at the end. Right? We had 50 something houses in escrow, and then a lot of changes happened as far as the agents that we brought on. And the market got so hot, you couldn’t even put buyers in contract. And at one point, it dropped down to 15 in escrow from 50. So I had really big plans, and I had started the process of getting some really, really nice big properties. And I had to stop. I didn’t like it. It sucks when you get that momentum going.

David:
But it is a part of this game. It is a patient game. Sometimes you’ve got all the momentum behind you, and you just sprint and go as far as you can. And sometimes the landscape doesn’t look like you can run as fast as you can. Sometimes you got to tip, throw through the mind field. And that sounds like that’s where you are now, but don’t lose that dream. You should make that property into exactly what you want it to be if it makes sense. You just don’t have to do it right off the bat.

Susan:
Sounds great. Can I ask you one more question?

David:
Yeah.

Susan:
And just related, but do you have any concrete suggestions for kind of keeping my mindset going? So what I’m doing right now is making sure I listen to at least one of our either BiggerPockets, BiggerPockets Money, Rookie Real Estate. One of those podcasts that I love so much and get so much value from. I started The Miracle Morning. So just that’s helped a lot, just being able to plan. I used my intention journal. What else can I do, or what else am I missing? Or am I on the right track?

David:
I don’t know for sure. My assumption would be just from listening to you and from what I remember of our last conversation, you’re doing the right things as far as the momentum you’re trying to build. But the weight of this, what you foresee is either a failure or something you don’t have control in is just crushing your spirit. So even though you’re listening and you’re like, “I’m doing what I can.” You’re just not taking steps forward because this is so crushing. Right? I think you got to forgive yourself a little bit. I think you got to just, like I was saying, “Hey, I got to save other patients right now. I’m going to stabilize this one and then move on and not let the guilt of, ‘I screwed up.’” Maybe you’re beating yourself up over getting laid off. “If I only would’ve done something different, I might have not,” you can’t control that. Momentum is all about small wins.

David:
So my challenge to you is don’t do the same things you’ve been doing like reading books and listening to podcasts. Where can you get a small win in your finances, which are probably causing particular stress with you? If you moved out of your house and rented it out, is there a place you can move into that would be significantly less expensive so you have less money going out every month? Is there another job you can get somewhere else? Could you make money in a different way? Do you have a side hobby? Are you good with stocks? Is there a book you’ve been planning to write? I would just be looking for any little thing that I could do to make some progress when it comes to my savings, because that’s probably where the majority of your stress is as you’re watching this HELOC slowly get eroded over time where you’re living.

David:
If you can get a job, even if it’s not a great job, but it makes you happy. You get to help people and you have some money coming in. What you’ll have is this clarity of mind where you’re like, “Okay, I got my bearings again. I don’t really love this job.” But at least you have the vision to find the next step. I could get a better job and make a little bit more. And when you’re back in the game, and when you’re positive, and when you’re confident, you will come across the person that will have the job you really want, right? If you’re just buried in your house listening to videos and reading books, you’re not meeting those people that are going to open up the doors for you. And then you just get more down on yourself.

Susan:
Okay. Sounds great. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

David:
Thank you Susan. I appreciate you.

Susan:
Sure.

David:
Let me just say if you’re from Instagram and you guys have come to biggerpockets.com/livequestions, thank you for that. And those of you that are at the live questions here with me, Susan, JT, Christopher, Eric, whoever else is here. Thank you guys for showing up, Mark and Michael. This is awesome. We want more of this. So I really appreciate you guys taking the time to join us.

David:
So the question is if someone’s long-term goal is to maximize cash flow, is it wise to purchase in areas with a much lower purchase price? For example, a home I could buy within 45 minutes of Denver, Colorado for 445,000 would go for 280,000 in or around Columbia, South Carolina or that metro.

David:
This is a great question first off. And it gives me a lot of room to answer. So let me break down the fundamentals of why I’m going to give the answer I do, and then give an answer for each side. So this is how you can know if you should go left or if you should go right. First off, the question is, “If my ultimate goal is cash flow, does it make more sense to buy in area with lower price properties?” Because the assumption is cash flow is found more abundantly in lower priced properties. And in general, that is a true statement. There’s always a person that can point out an example of, “Well I’m in a more expensive market and my cash flow is higher.” And I get it. Yes, that’s the case. However, in general, it is easier to find cash flow in cheaper priced homes.

David:
But that is at the same time, almost always true in the short term. So if you looked at buying a property in let’s use a stereotypical expensive market like California, where I am, versus a stereotypically cheaper market like Indiana, where a lot of new investors start, okay? The reason you can start in Indiana is that there’s more properties that get close to the 1% rule where they bring in 1% of the rent every month that you paid for the property. So if you bought $100,000 property, 1% of that’s 1,000. You can make $1,000 a month in rent in Ohio. It’s probably going to cash flow.

David:
That is the case when you first start. But I will say over time, California rents increase just like the values do. So the misconception, there’s a couple of them here, is that if you buy in a cheaper market, you get better rent. If you buy in a more expensive market, you get more equity. And that is true, but I think you also end up over time getting more cash flow in more expensive markets if the rent increases every year, just like the value of the property does.

David:
Now, there is a cap to how high rents can go in any than market. Because if they got too high, people that were paying that rent would just go buy a house. So you got to be aware of that. It’s not an infinite level that rents will go up. What happens is they start to go up with inflation, and that goes up every single year.

David:
So the first thing I would say is if you want cash flow, you need to be looking at what is the time frame that you need that cash flow. If you need it today, let’s say you’re 60, 65 years old, you’ve already got a good amount of capital built up. Investing in a less expensive market is going to provide you more cash flow, especially if you’re talking about five, 10 years, and then you’re not going to need it anymore.

David:
Well if you’re young, you’re 25 years old, and you don’t really need cash flow because you’ve got your whole life to be able to make money, you’re much better off buying in one of the not I’d say more expensive, but what we’re really talking about is more desirable. There’s a higher demand for property there, and that is why they’re more expensive. I don’t want you to think that expensive markets equal more appreciation and more cash flow. In general, that often is true. But it’s not the case all the time.

David:
So to answer your question here, the goal is to maximize cash flow and permanently alleve I think you meant to say a W-2 job as fast as possible. There we go. So for mark, if your goal is to get outta that W-2 job, yes. You need to be investing in less expensive markets where you’re going to get a higher cash flow, and you can leave your job because you can replace it with income faster.

David:
But, financial freedom in a market like that when you get 50 properties, or 20 properties, whatever it’s going to take to do it. It’s less passive income than if you win in one of the other market. So just to sum this up, my California properties that I bought eight years ago, nine years ago, one of them I bought the rent was 1,100 a month, and my payment was six or 700 or so. Now the rent on that one’s like 2,200.

David:
A fourplex where the rent was when I bought it 750 a unit I believe, maybe 700, the rent’s now over 1,500. Okay? It’s significantly gone up, and I never deal with those properties ever. I forget they’re there. The tenants don’t ask for things. When something breaks on those properties which is more rare, there’s so much equity that’s been created over time that I could just pull out 50 grand from one of those properties and fix all of them at the same time. And the 50 grand that I borrowed is well covered by the rent increases that have gone up.

David:
The same thing for my Arizona properties. Forget that I own them. It never comes up. The most more inexpensive properties that I’ve bought have significantly more problems that come up. So even though the cash flow is bigger, it’s harder. It’s less passive. There’s more work. So my advice to you Mark is don’t quit your job, get a bunch of properties, get the cash flow, and then hate your life because you don’t actually have freedom because you’re constantly dealing with problems and having to get new property managers, and fix the mistakes that were made. You want to buy in a market that would attract the type of tenant that wants to leave their landlord alone. Simple way to put it.

David:
Now it’s your job as the landlord to provide safe, clean, good housing for people. Okay? None of your tenants should ever be living in a house with roaches because you don’t want pay the money. But that’s why I like being in better areas. Because if God forbid I did get a roach, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to say, “Yeah, just let the exterminator go take care of it.” If I’m living on cash flow and I have problems on every single property, that’s where the slum lords start to develop. That’s where you start to be like, “Maybe I can’t pay for that cockroach because instead, I got to pay for the hot water heater over here. And I don’t have enough money to go around to also pay my own bills, and make my car payment, and make my own house payment. And it gets messy.” Okay?

David:
I really believe that if you’re getting content like people are on BiggerPockets, you should be a grade A landlord. There’s no excuse for any of us that own real estate to ever be taking advantage of our tenants. And you will start to be tempted to do that if you get properties that cause you too much trouble.

David:
So the short answer was yes. If you want cash flow quicker, cheaper markets is easier to get it. If you can, you want to play the long-term game and buy in more expensive markets. So an example like Denver, Colorado, you’re probably not going to get a lot of cash flow there right away. But in five years, you will be. And in 15 or 20 years, you’re probably going to be dominating compared to somebody who got into some of those cheaper markets. It just depends on the timeframe that you have. But for everyone listening, don’t listen to the sweet, sweet siren of the mermaid that calls you into these cheaper markets and tells you, “They’re so much easier. You can get cash flow right away. Look at what the spreadsheet says.” Spreadsheets aren’t real life. And I know there’s a lot of people nodding their heads right now that made that mistake that got into those cheap markets.

David:
I tend to think cheaper markets are better for getting started, not for cash flow. If you’re trying to learn the fundamentals of real estate, the principles that make it work. You’re trying to ride a bike. Those cheaper markets have less upside, but they have also less downside. You can’t lose as much on those a lot of the time. It’s kind of like riding a bike with training wheels. So use it to learn how to ride a bike. Don’t keep the training wheels on for your entire career. Hope that helps Mark.

David:
All right. This comes in from Christopher K. in Milford, Delaware. Never heard of Milford before. I wonder if it’s a nice place. How do you deal with not hitting certain goals? I had problems with 2021 goals, but now I am pumped about hitting 2022. This feeling stuck with me. All right. So I believe the feeling you’re talking about Christopher is your own lack of confidence in yourself.

David:
All right. So here’s the first thing that I’m going to tell everybody in my opinion that matters more than anything else. The first thing that we all need to understand is our own motivation. So Christopher, you had a goal or goals in 2021 that you did not hit. Why? Did you not hit them because you don’t care, and because you talk a big game, but you don’t ever back it up? Did you not hit them because you got distracted by something else, right? Like did you have a kid that you weren’t expecting to have or did your relationship get on the rocks and you had to put some time towards stabilizing that? Did you have a health problem that popped up?

David:
The reason you didn’t hit that goal is going to help me answer this question. And I want to give everyone listening freedom to understand it’s okay to be honest with yourself about why you did not hit your goals. One of the mistakes that we all make when we’re younger, and it often comes from lessons that we learned from our parents when they were trying to get the most out of us and help us the most they could is when we didn’t do something, they withheld love or withheld approval. If you went through that, you know exactly what I’m talking about because you’re starting to get tears in your eyes just hearing it. Okay? And I’m not making light of that. I’m just saying those experiences color so much of what happens. And I’ve heard so many people tell stories about not hitting a goal and they start crying when they’re telling the story. And then you find out why.

David:
And you’re like, “If you would’ve stuck through with that goal when you had a baby that year, you’d be a bad person. You should have let that goal go to focus on something else.” So that’s where I want to start this with. If you’re sitting there saying, “I didn’t hit my goals in 2021. Well now I’m scared to make them in 2022. What if I don’t hit them?” The first thing you should ask is why? And just be real with yourself. If the reason you didn’t hit your goals in 2021 was because you lacked confidence or maybe you lacked clarity, that’s what we need to be having the conversation about. If you set goals for 2022 … that’s a lot of twenties I threw in there. And you don’t have clarity on how to get them, you should expect that you’re likely going to fail unless you get lucky and you find clarity.

David:
So you here’s something that I’ve seen a lot of people do. They’re in bad shape. Let’s just take the typical New Year’s resolution, which is I going to get in better shape. And they say, “I’m going to lose 50 pounds in 2022,” or something like that. And they know that they are in trouble. They have bad eating habits. They don’t know how to exercise. They don’t like exercise. They haven’t done it. They’re embarrassed to go do it. They don’t have people around them that do it. The whole deck is stacked against that person.

David:
What happens is we tend to make up for our lack of resources or confidence by just making the goal itself wildly big, as if making this outrageous claim will somehow make up for the fact that we’re not good at doing it. It’s probably the worst thing that you could do.

David:
So if you know you’re not good at fitness, the worst thing to do is say, “Well, I’m going to lose 50 pounds. I’m just going to make myself do it.” You’re guaranteeing that you have to bet on willpower. And willpower’s going to let you down. You’d be much better off to say, “All right, I’m going to go to the gym once a week or twice a week.” Something you know you can do, and give yourself grace for what you do when you get to the gym. Okay?

David:
So one thing that I like to see people do is say, “All right, I’m going to go to the gym once or twice a week and I’m going to give it my best when I’m there.” But my best is very subjective. Some days, your best might be getting on the treadmill for five minutes. Okay? You’re fighting the demons of, “I’m too fat. And I look terrible. Why am I even here?” And it makes it so hard to move forward, right?

David:
And some days, your best might be an hour of sweating through your clothes and you’re just giving it your all. You’re pumped up. You’re excited. You’re listening to your favorite song, you’re in a good mood. You never really know where you’re going to be at any given day. So you can’t control that. But what you can control is the effort that you give. And maybe make a goal that a quarter of the way through the year or half the way through the year, you’re going to reevaluate and ask yourself what your best is at that time. Maybe you’ve lost 10 pounds. And now you can actually say, “I’m going to go to the gym three times a week, because it’s getting easier. My knees don’t hurt as much,” or whatever the case is.

David:
I hope you’re understanding this isn’t just for weight loss or fitness, because I’m definitely not the master at explaining that. But goal setting in general is often done incorrectly from the get go, which is usually why we don’t hit our goals.

David:
Now I wish you were here Christopher so I could get more information from you of why you didn’t hit those goals in 2021. But don’t make the mistake of saying, “Well, I’m just going to make bigger goals to make up for the fact that I didn’t do it.” I think you need to make different goals.

David:
Now, one of the reasons that I tend to hit my goals every year, I don’t hit all of them. You guys heard that list that I gave, I will not hit 100% of those. I’ve never done that before. It’s just okay with me. Because halfway through the year, my goals are going to change. I’m going to realize I don’t need that insurance company right now. That is not as important as I thought it was. And I’m not going to be able to hire 25 loan officers, but I need to get 10. And I’ll shift the strategy around making sure that I get what we needed. Like when we talked to Susan, how do I save this patient so that they don’t bleed out? I don’t need to do everything that I wanted to do perfectly. That may be the case for some of you. You may need to just keep that in mind that your goals can change. And sometimes when you’re making them, you don’t know exactly if that’s even what’s best for you. You just know that you want to do something.

David:
So my advice for everyone here is they should make goals, but give grace to yourself. Okay? Don’t make goals that are punishing you. Don’t make goals that are ridiculous, like I’ve never bought a house or I own one home and I’m going to go buy 100 units. That’s just the fastest way to making bad decisions. Okay? You’re much better off to try to figure out how do I build momentum? I’m going to buy a duplex and then a fourplex by the end of the year. And three years later, I’m going to put a plan together to get to 100 units. I’d much rather see someone do that than just tell themselves something ridiculous they’re not actually going to accomplish.

David:
A lot of the time, your ability to accomplish goals will be depending on what you did last year. Okay? Like the David Greene Team couldn’t be selling 250 million in real estate if we sold 20 million the year before. There wouldn’t be infrastructure to carry that much weight. I wouldn’t have enough agents to handle the leads. All that would happen is I’d get a bunch of people that want to buy or sell a house, have a bunch of terrible agents or new agents. And my reputation would get smashed because they do a bad job, right? That would be a bad goal to make because it was so big. The weight of the goal itself would crush me.

David:
So that’s my advice to all of you is set goals that you want to accomplish, not that you think you should be, right? Listen to the podcast because you like it. Go to networking events because you’re getting something out of it. Don’t just sit there with your arms crossed in the back corner, hating it because you told yourself you were going to do that for the year.

David:
Christopher, I hope that helps with what you’re doing. And everyone who listened, I hope that you walk away from this with the encouragement to look at your own motivations. Ask yourself why you didn’t do something and be real with yourself about why that was. Very insightful.

Tori:
So here’s the deal. We want to know how we can kind of accelerate our real estate investing. We’re closing on house ask number two. And we love that strategy, but we want to go from doing house asks to more traditional investments. So I guess our question is what are some ways that we can grow our portfolio and build capital?

David:
So this is really good. Now [Tori 01:01:54], I believe we help you with your house ask, right? We’re helping you doing-

Tori:
Yes. Yes all the time. David Greene Team in the Bay Area killing it.

David:
You and I went to go see a house from hell in Oakland one time. I remember somebody took a dungeon in the bottom of the house and put a bathroom in it. And you were trying to pull that thing off, and we decided that wasn’t the best move.

Tori:
Yes. Working on 750 now. Somebody got it.

David:
That’s California real estate right now, right? It’s hard to make mistakes when that happens. All right. So here’s my question to you. Is capital the number one thing that’s restraining you from building up into the traditional investing like you said?

Tori:
I would say yes.

David:
All right. If you could go make more capital or maybe raise more. I don’t like to encourage people to just, “You need money? Just go get money.” Right? Especially if you haven’t done it yet. I would rather see people learn on their dime. That’s kind of how I do it. And then once I’ve learned it, I’ll invest with other people. I’ll borrow money from them, because I’m confident I’ll be able to pay it back.

David:
So if you know your goal, this is going to tie in really nice to what I just talked about, is to buy more traditional real estate. I would set a goal for how much money you think you need as a down payment. So maybe in 2024, you’re going to invest 100 grand into traditional real estate. And that will allow you to buy $500,000 of real estate.

David:
First off, it takes the pressure off to accomplish that right now when you maybe don’t have the ability to do it. There’s nothing worse than when you’re like, “I got to go do it, but I just can’t get that car into gear.” Right? You probably got that feeling like your brain’s going at 20,000 RPM.

Tori:
Nonstop.

David:
But there’s nothing you could do because you don’t have the capital to get going. Right? And you don’t want to let that pressure make you borrow money from other people and get into something that causes you to hate real estate or cause you to lose other people’s money.

David:
So set that goal out farther. What that will do is it will give you time to put that energy into productive use. So if you’re going to buy $500,000 worth of real estate in two years and you’re going to need $100,000. Well right off the bat, can you look and see how much equity these first two properties that you’ve bought will maybe have accumulated by 2022? Very good chance you might have that full 100K in two years, right?

Tori:
Or more.

David:
Or more, that’s exactly right. It also gives you motivation to budget your own money better. Are you going to work overtime? Is your significant other going to get a better job or work more? Are you guys going to spend less money on other things? Like when I started doing jujitsu, eating healthy food became a lot easier. It went from, “I know I should eat better,” to, “I want to eat better because I do not like being out of shape when I’m getting my neck throttled by somebody else.”

David:
So I like setting goals that make it easier to do what I already should be doing. And because I love investing in real estate, it makes it easier for me to avoid buying a really nice car that I don’t need, or spending money on things that I don’t need because I have the goal, so it makes it easier to be focused.

David:
The last thing it will do is it will make you a better investor. Because if you’re going to buy $500,000 worth of real estate, you start asking yourself the question of how do I maximize that 500K. What’s the best market to be in? What’s the best use of that capital. Right? Where can I get where other people aren’t going yet? Instead of just saying, “Well, what’s the trend? Everybody is investing there. All right, I’ll go invest there.” That was Birmingham, Alabama for a while. Maybe six years, seven years ago, that was Memphis, Tennessee. Why are you investing there? Because everybody’s investing there.

David:
I watched Atlanta. Maybe 10 years ago, that started to be a thing. Maybe a little bit less than 10. But you would just see every investor went to the same market. Why? Because everybody else was going there. Well, if you know you’re trying to get the most out of that 500K, you’re not asking the question of where’s everyone else going. You’re asking the question of what’s the best way that I can start to invest that money.

David:
And then in the process of researching those markets, talking to other people on BiggerPockets, visiting that area, talking to other investors that have properties there, you might stumble into someone who’s like, “Man, I’m already doing this other good point, but I need to raise money.” And now boom, that’s where you start to become the money raising person because you’re going to put it into a deal with someone who does know what they’re doing, not someone who doesn’t.

David:
You never really know what things start to fall in place. That’s why I like to put those goals out a little bit further. We all want to get out of pain right now. It’s a normal human thing. I don’t like my job. I don’t like waking up at four in the morning. Right? You work very hard. You are physically tired a lot of the time. I know it. Right. I’m amazed you got enough energy to grow that beard out like you have as hard as you’re working.

David:
So it’s normal to want to be like, “I got to get out of this ASAP.” Right? My boss comes and yells at me and I have a bad day. So I put on BiggerPockets on the way home. Because I’m like, “How am I going to get out of this?” But most good decisions are not made in the moment of intensity, right? This is my motivation to get out of this place, but I got to put a longer term plan together to actually make it happen.

David:
So the pressure’s good, right? The pressure’s like wind that can move you forward. It becomes a problem if you have nowhere to move. It just crunches you. You got to get out of it. Right? So you don’t want to lose the pressure. You want to keep it, but you don’t want to be stuck in a place where it destroys you. You need a direction to move in. So if you make up a plan that maybe gives you two years of time, that pressure will drive you to explore the markets, to look at the strategies, to meet the people, to talk to other people that are doing it. To start listening to other different types of personalities on YouTube, or in podcasts, or in books that you might come across a specific problem that you have with investing in that area. And a different voice helps you come up with the answer. So it gets you out of your own head of just pacing in a circle like I got to get out of here. And it actually gives that pressure a place to push you.

Tori:
Thank you.

David:
My pleasure, man. Glad to see you on here. Thanks for joining us.

Tori:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Appreciate it.

David:
All right, Tori. Give everyone a shout out of your Instagram before you go if they want to follow you.

Tori:
Oh yeah. Right on. Yeah. So I’m tmoney_realestate_investor on Instagram. And I kind of follow my short-term rental and my house hack and stuff that I do.

David:
Go follow Tori. He posts some good blue collar stuff out there. Thank you, Tori.

Tori:
Appreciate it.

David:
All right, there you have it. This is our first episode of 2022. Kind of cool. We got to see one of the clients of the David Greene Team wrap it up there. My guess is with the property that he’s already bought. He’s going to have more than that $100,000 in two years. He’s not going to have to worry about it, and he’s going to be well prepared when that time comes. Thanks as always to everybody who came on and asked questions today. You guys are the real MVPs. This show is a little bit longer than normal. That’s because it’s the first of the year, and I wanted to share my goals as well as let you hear other people that are in the same place as you. This journey, we’re all taking it together. It’s not as different from any one of us as it is from the other as much as it can kind of think so.

David:
Thank you guys for your support. Please follow BiggerPockets on Instagram. Follow me @davidgreen24 or @the_david_greene_team. So for any comments or questions that you’d like to email, it’s [email protected] And then please visit biggerpockets.com/david to submit your video or written questions so that I can answer them here on the podcast. All right. Thanks a lot, everybody. I will see you next week.