Life-Changing Deals: 5 Traits They Have in Common with Ken Corsini

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 410.

Ken:
You don’t ask for money. You present an opportunity. I think this is where people get stuck. They think, “Well, I don’t want to be the guy with my tail in my hand meagerly asking for their money.” You’re not asking for their money. You’re presenting a financial opportunity and they’re lucky if they get to invest in your project.

Intro:

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Brandon:
What is going on everyone? It’s Brandon Turner host of the BiggerPockets Podcast here with an investor that I look up to a ton. Yes, our guest also, but also Mr. David Green. Hi, you didn’t know I was going to say that, did you?

David:
Ooh, you caught me off guard with that Brandon. I wasn’t expecting a compliment from you. Usually you’re telling me to stop talking, just sit there and look pretty.

Brandon:
Well, when you got that a shaved head like you, it’s hard not to sit there and look pretty. So people got to admire it. It’s okay, man. You bring a lot of value to this show, especially the YouTube. So thank you man.

David:
Oh, that’s-

Brandon:
With that said, that’s good, right?

David:
I have a face for podcast not a face for radio. I like it.

Brandon:
Exactly. Well, today’s show is another really, really awesome look at what it takes to become successful in real estate, but not one way to become successful, not two but five different things that some of the top of the top of the top, some of the best deals in the world, like what do they require? Our guest today is going to go through five of those because our guest is none other than the world famous and yes, really literally world famous, Ken Corsini. Ken is the host of HGTV’s Flip or Flop Atlanta. Ken has been a friend of BiggerPockets for a long time. I mean, he’s been around longer than I have been around, I think in the real estate. And he is just like a wealth of knowledge. He does everything from real estate flipping to wholesaling, to rentals, to brokerage, to loans, to everything and-

David:
New construction development.

Brandon:
… new construction. Yeah, all the stuff. And he just sort of booked for BiggerPockets. In fact, that brings us to today’s quick tip.

David:
Quick tip.

Brandon:
Today’s quick tip, go pick up Ken’s new book. It’s awesome. It’s called Profit Like the Pros. You can get at biggerpockets.com/profitbook, again slash profitbook and it’s interviews… It’s basically, he did a series of video interviews like 25 of them. This book is almost like they take the stories from all 25 video interviews that he did and writes a chapter for each one on the best deal people have done. Like what are the things that made them successful? And throughout that book, when he was writing, he kind of pulled out a few common threads and that’s what today’s podcast is all about. So the quick tip is go get the book. The long tip is listen to this whole show because it is fantastic. Then now I think it’s time the end of this. Anything you want to add before we jump in Mr. David Green?

David:
Your common thread quote was awesome. That’s exactly what I think every listener should do is listen to the show and ask yourself, which of the pieces of advice that Ken is giving would apply most accurately to your own life? Look for the common thread in the struggles you’re having, or the area that you’re looking for guidance, and then go put it into play and you should benefit from this. I know after listening to Ken, I was thinking about things a lot differently. We had like a 30 minute conversation with him when we finished up. This is an awesome interview.

Brandon:
Yeah, really, really good. So with that said, let’s get to the interview with Mr. Ken Corsini. All right, Ken, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. How are you doing man?

Ken:
Good, man. Thanks for having me back. I guess I didn’t screw it up the first time since you’re having me back.

Brandon:
Yeah. We’ll allow it this time. I really enjoy… I mean, every time we talk, I really enjoy talking with you. I always learn a lot and grow and now you got a new book coming out and so we’re publishing through BiggerPockets and I’m excited about that. Not just because my pictures on the front cover-

Ken:
That’s true.

Brandon:
… but I know artwork took a picture of me, which really made my beard accented on that picture. I don’t know [crosstalk 00:03:54]-

Ken:
It was very good. It took up a lot of space on that cover too just the beard itself.

Brandon:
It did. Yeah. You guys have to go check that out definitely. What’s the link for that book? I think it’s biggerpockets.com/ It was a deal book? Is that right? We’re going to call it… Oh profit book, biggerpockets.com/profitbook. Check out the picture of me everybody and of course the book itself, it’s a good book. But before we get into that, let’s hear it real quick for those who didn’t listen to your last episode, don’t know who you are or whatever. Who are you and why are you here?

Ken:
Wow. Well, do you have two hours? Because you’re asking-

Brandon:
I got four. We do long form podcasts here.

Ken:
Right. So I am Ken Corsini out of Atlanta, Georgia. Most people probably know me because I happen to be on a HGTV show called Flip or Flop Atlanta. Interestingly though, I’ve been contributing to BiggerPockets way before then, since 2011 and a bit written a ton of blogs for BiggerPockets. Had a turnkey flipping operation here out of Atlanta, sort of morphed into just a straight flipping operation and now it’s a little bit of everything. Obviously having a TV show opens up a lot of opportunities and so we do new construction and brokerages and mortgage and all sorts of fun stuff that we can get into.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s cool. That’s cool. What’s been your favorite thing? I mean, I know you did construction for a while and you had a background in construction, right? Like you went to school for that, that right? Remember that?

Ken:
I went back and got a master’s degree. Yeah, actually, after I started flipping, I went back got a master’s degree just so I could kind of hone in on the new construction. So yeah, new construction’s a lot of fun. I mean, we do a lot of custom construction. Honestly, I have enjoyed… I’ve really enjoyed the brokerage piece where we’ve brought on over 200 agents now here in Atlanta and seeing kind of what that’s grown into and it’s really scalable, and as an entrepreneur, it’s fun to scale things and it’s hard to scale flipping. Like I beat my head against the ceiling of flipping and it was hard, but then I sort of fell into this brokerage thing and it’s been fun to watch this thing grow as quickly as it has, because like I said, it’s super scalable.

Brandon:
That’s neat. Well, let’s jump in a little bit. I want to jump right into this idea of… The book that you wrote is about interviewing. I mean, you interviewed me, you interviewed a lot of people about their best deal. Right? Can you talk about what was that about? And then we’re going to go into the specifics of why we’re talking about that today and how it’s going to help our listeners.

Ken:
Sure. So I’ve always loved the idea of just hearing somebody else’s story, especially a real story. Like a really cool, interesting deal to me has always inspired me more than anything else. Even before I got into real estate, talking with people that were in the space and hearing how they landed some off market deal was just super inspiring to me. And I said, “You know what? Let’s do something fun with BiggerPockets where we take it a step further and just have a show that we just do best deals.” And so you and I were kind of talking at the time of, “Hey, that’s a pretty cool idea, let’s do a YouTube series called Best Deal Ever.” And then we created all this really cool content. We’ve got all these amazing interviews so far and some of them were just so good. It was like, you know what? These should be in a book because there’s a lot of good education that you could extract from these stories and make it entertaining and educational book.
And so from that series, it’s on the YouTube BiggerPockets channel we extracted the 25 that I thought would really be a good addition to the book and then created a book out of it.

Brandon:
That’s awesome. Here’s why I think this is so helpful, especially when people are first getting into real estate, a lot of people, they don’t know what the right path to pursue is, right?

Ken:
Right.

Brandon:
They don’t know if they should flip or do rentals or be an agent or whatever, there’s a million options, right? So what I typically tell people, I know you probably say the same thing and David you as well it’s like, just get a feel for a lot of things, like figure out what you like. That’s why podcasts are so helpful because you hear what single mom from Detroit, what she did and you hear what HGTV star and Ken Corsini did and everything in between. Like you see people doing million dollar deals or they own the Grant Cardones and you see the person just doing their first two, three deals. And so this book basically gives you that, like here’s 25 stories of people who have succeeded and that’s something really cool. So when people are reading it, they go, “Oh, I want to do that.” Or, “That really fires me up, that gets me excited.” And that’s what I love about this.
Did you notice in the process of writing this, did you notice common themes, like people who are super successful had a great deal? Were there things that stood out as awesome?

Ken:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny I was… even while I’m doing the interviews and then when I took a deeper dive into these interviews and started writing the book, it inspired me. I’ve done so many of these different types of deals before, and yet I’m in there and at the end… I’d finish a chapter and be like, “Man, why am I not doing that? That is so cool.” Because there’s just so many interesting fun things that you could be doing as an entrepreneur in real estate that I haven’t explored that I want to try. And even to this day, I mean, there’s still a handful of things on my to-do list that came from this book. So whether you’ve never done a deal or you’ve been in this business for 20 years, there’s always something you can explore. There’s other ways to make money, especially as the market shifts and adapts, there’s ways that you can adapt your business into certain niches and sort of stay relevant and stay successful and that’s one of the things I love about the book, but yeah, absolutely to your question. Absolutely.
There was a lot of really cool threads where I had to go back through the book even, and at the end of each chapter too, there’s a takeaway. It’s sort of a high level… So I’ve told you the story, I’ve given you some educational nuggets, now what are the three or four big takeaways from this chapter? And even in my mind, it sort of helped me sum it up like, “Okay, here’s what you can walk away with and extract, some interesting nugget or truth.” And so I went back at the end of writing it and looked at all 25 chapters and said, “Okay, what are the common themes between all these different takeaways?” And it was really cool how there really are some interesting common threads that sort of weaved throughout the entire book that you can walk away with.

Brandon:
That’s cool. I mean, I would love to just go through those today really just like… I mean, we’ll go through a list of, as many as we can get to on what are those common things because I think people are interested in like what makes people successful in deals. What are those common traits? So I think, yeah, we’re just going to burn through that. David, anything you want to do before we get into that?

David:
I wanted to bring up a conversation that you and I had Brandon that relates really strongly to what Ken is mentioning here because we kind of glossed over this awesome resume. “Oh, I just went to school and got a master’s degree in construction on top of already flipping houses and being on TV.” I remember there was a commercial where you were like driving a backhoe or something, just mowing things over. “Oh, and I also own a brokerage and I do loans and a title company. That’s all.” The point is Brandon and I were on a walk one time and you were telling me about either a book you read or a person you talked to that said, when you’re young, you should say yes to everything. When you have a chance to do it, go do it. Learn everything you can about as many things as you can and then as you get older and you start to recognize where your skillset is, where your highest and best use of your time is, you start saying no to everything. You really niche down and you say, “Okay, this is what I’m going to do.”
And that’s probably where your bridge building analogy would start to come in. Like I’m just going to build this bridge or that bridge. But once you get that bridge built, you can do what Ken’s doing, where he’s now launching little side businesses off of the bridges that he already has built. He’s not building a complete new bridge from California to Hawaii, but he’s got extra lanes that he’s maybe adding to the bridge that he’s got. And I wanted to point it out that you don’t have to say… You don’t always have to say, no, you can’t do this and tell yourself no to everything you want, but maybe you have to say no for now and then later on you can get into it. And I’m sure in the book Ken, I know that you dove deep and you figured out what are these people doing well? What are the common themes that I can see? And I wanted to highlight that. That was a conversation Brandon and I had that really helped and you’re kind of an example of what that should look like when it’s done right.

Ken:
I appreciate that and I think your sentiment’s right on, because especially when you’re starting out and I was guilty of this, it was like the squirrel mentality like, “Oh my gosh, there’s another shiny new object. Let me go chase that.” And it’s real easy if you’re wired that way to want to go chase everything. And I’ve had to be really disciplined and I would still say I’m not perfect at it. I still would probably do that a little bit, but I like the bridge analogy a lot. Like for us, we built a brand because of television, right? Especially locally, we have a really well known brand which has Red Barn. And so was how do we leverage that brand? We’ve built this brand now and that’s sort of the bridge, obviously brokerage scales really well with the brand because you’ve got hundreds of little billboards in people’s yards all over the area, which is great for brand building and what goes along with construction. So that works really well. And renovation, it’s really just sort of bolt-on mortgages or bolt-on title.
Like you can sort of feel like extra lanes in the bridge. That’s what this brand that we’ve built. And to be honest as an entrepreneur, it’s also just a lot of fun because you want to scratch all these itches, you want to explore like different businesses. I’ve done enough mortgage, I have a penny how it works. I’ve just never been on this side of the table before and so it’s kind of on that side of the table. It’s similar to you because you’re sort of exploring that as well, it sounds like.

David:
But I knew it was time to do mortgages when I had done so many for myself and for my clients that I didn’t have a whole lot more to learn. Like what you said is the really good point, the bridge was built. I just had to do a little bit of work to kind of finish it off. So for someone in your shoes, that’s done as many deals as you have. How did you know when it was the right time to say, “Okay, now I can add onto this.”?

Ken:
Well, I think we probably were up to about a hundred agents and we’re like, okay, it’s going to work. The brokerage is going to work. Like we’ve got a building now, we’ve got agents, we got a thriving community. We built sort of a cool culture and these agents are sending deals elsewhere. It’s like, “Well, we want to capture some of that, then it just makes…” And then not only that, honestly, part of the reason we did title and we did mortgage it’s also the client experience. Like the more control you have over something, the better able you’re to serve your clients. And for us, the only reason we’re able to grow is because we put a lot of emphasis on client service. They don’t come back to us if we do a crappy job. So if we can control title, make sure that’s smooth, we can control mortgage, make sure that’s… Well, then now we’re just growing the monster because we’re controlling it.

David:
That’s exactly right. That’s really what motivated me to do it too, is I was frustrated with the lenders’ mistakes hurting my business and the title company’s bad service reflecting poorly on me. So it starts off where you just want the control to make sure it goes well and then you recognize how to make that profitable once you have that control. That’s an awesome, awesome point.

Brandon:
Yeah.

Ken:
Totally.

Brandon:
Really good.

Ken:
And it’s been fun too. Like if you’re an entrepreneur, so obviously it’s fun to stretch your wings a little bit and try different things that you wouldn’t have otherwise done and explore businesses and just risk. And some are going to work and some aren’t, but again, it’s not so far outside, it’s not like I’m swapping industries for something that totally doesn’t make sense. It’s something that works ancillary to what we’re already doing really well.

David:
So let’s talk about that. For the people that are saying, “Hey, I want to be able to do it.” What are some of the common themes that you recognized, “Hey, this is what the entrepreneurs who did it right and were successful, this is what they did well.” And then maybe some of the things that they didn’t do well so that we don’t have to make those same mistakes?

Ken:
Yeah. So that sort of feeds back into the book. I mean, so some of the common threads I saw in the book and… In the books and just to clarify, it’s not that I just interviewed 25 of the best top real estate investors in the entire country. It’s really a pretty good sampling of different skill levels and different experience levels where some have only been in the business two or three years. Some have been in the business a long time and every story is a little bit different. And in a lot of cases, the stories are… it’s sort of that level up story, like where this is the first time I discovered that this is the niche I want to be in and then that sort of opened up everything for them.
And so that’s a perfect first one to talk about is how a lot of folks discover their niche, whether it’s early in their career or late in their career. And they hone their skill, they fine-tune it and then they just scale the snot out of it and do really well at that one specific niche.

Brandon:
It’s like the bridge thing, right? You have one bridge, you figure out what that bridge is and then you just keep building that bridge, making it stronger and stronger and stronger, knowing that that’s going to get you there rather… So how do you balance that? Or how do people in the book or that you know, balance that picking one niche going with that one thing with, “I want to see what’s out there and I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to do all these fun things because I’m an entrepreneur.” How do you balance those two things?

Ken:
Yeah, that’s a good question because it’s funny because not everybody niches down. Some people do really well experimenting with a lot of different things or having a repertoire of a number of different businesses and some people are more suited I think, to just find one business and do it really well. For example, Frank Rolfe, I’m not sure if you know Frank, he’s mobile. So great example. He’s in the book where he had just sold a business. He was in the billboard business, he had sold… And he was just trying to figure out, “What am I going to do next? I’m not sure.” And he happened upon a mobile home park that somebody was selling and he made a very conscious decision. “Okay, I’m going to learn this business and this is the first deal I’m going to do. If I can figure out this one deal, then we’ll see if this is a space I want to be in.” So it was a very conscious decision. “I’m not doing anything else.”
And he actually moved into the mobile home park for that first year. Like, “I’m going to learn it to the extent that I’m willing to move into this mobile home park, manage it and if I can learn this business really well, then this is…” And sure enough, he’s one of the top mobile home park investors in the country now. But that’s how he started it in that niche, which I think is really admirable.

Brandon:
Yeah. He’s awesome. Yeah. Frank was on episode, I think 339 of the BiggerPockets Podcast back in the day. So if you guys want to hear more about that, obviously check out the book, but it’s also, we have an episode with him. And I love that example. Like he just became the King of that niche. Like he’s that guy. Now, I would almost argue that other people that you see that are successful that feel like they’re doing a lot of things like you, they see you doing a lot of different things. Like you also didn’t start a brokerage at the same time you started flipping, at the same time you started doing mortgage, at the same time you did title. You built those things on as you… What David and I talk a lot about to keep harping on the bridge is like, you either wait till your one bridge has completed and you’ve got it built to the island that you’re trying to get to and it’s at least functioning. So you can put somebody else to run that bridge, like the toll worker to sit there and manage it.
And then you go build another one or you hire someone else to build another bridge. Like, “Hey, it’d be really cool to have a mortgage company.” So you go and either acquire somebody else’s bridge or you hire someone to build that bridge if you’re busy doing another one. So I would say people that I know that look like they’re doing multiple bridges really aren’t, they’re still doing one bridge at a time. They’ve got other people working their bridges or their one bridge’s always automated at that point. Do you see the same thing?

Ken:
You’re a hundred percent right. And I guess to clarify, I’m not in the day-to-day of any of these businesses because I couldn’t be, especially when we’re filming and that’s really sort of this is where it all started is we were so busy filming the show that it was sort of, these are opportunities, but I have to delegate. I have to find people to partner with. And so really all of my businesses, they’re all partnerships, every stinking one of them. And I bring in really, really good people and honestly, they’re the ones running the day-to-day. We meet once a week, we look at P&Ls, we look at a high level. So we’re working not in the business, but on the business, but there’s no way I can have my hands in all these different things and then be in the weeds, be in the day-to-day.
And you’re right, there’s always… it’s really a sequential progression. First you lay the foundation for that initial bridge. And these are really all bolt-ons. They really just plug into the existing central business. And I don’t think I would have done this, except for that we had built the brand on TV. Really, that’s the only reason we’re able to sort of quickly expand into these different businesses.

Brandon:
Well, how can people listening to this right now that obviously don’t have a TV show or a big podcast or whatever, how do they build their brand on a smaller level perhaps like in their local market? Is this whole thing possible to be able to bring on the partners and have other people doing it? Is that possible at a smaller level, do you think?

Ken:
Oh. A hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, even in Atlanta alone, I mean, I can count on two hands the number of guys that just started as wholesalers and have built really good businesses and crap I was in the business for 15 years before having a TV show and all I did was flip houses. So yeah, absolutely there’s opportunity to build brands now more than ever, because it’s so much easier to advertise. It’s so much easier to get in front of people. It’s so much easier to target your marketing too to your audience, where you can build the brand to that audience, whether it’s Facebook Ads or Google Ads or even a local billboard. Absolutely, you can start even just wholesaling, building into a sizeable flipping business locally can absolutely be a recognizable name.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s really good. We talked a lot about that back on episode 405 with Lewis Howes here on the podcast where we talked about your brand is recession proof. Like if you build that personal brand, people in your area know you’re the person to go to. You’re the flipper, you’re the wholesaler. Maybe you’ve got a decent social media, you got email lists, you got… whatever it is, that you’re that person. I get the exact same concept on a large scale. That’s why I tell people who are new to start going to local real estate meetups or real estate clubs and maybe even start your own. If there’s not a good one in your area, start your own real estate club. Just get together at a local restaurant, bar, whatever and just start meeting people, become that connector and then you can put together those partnerships. Because now you know you have that brand is like the real estate guy, real estate girl and you can put that stuff together.

David:
Let’s talk about that because now maybe not everyone can have a TV show, so it’s very easy to write that off and say, “Well, that doesn’t work for me. I’m not Brandon Turner, Ken Corsini.” However, what does it mean when you have a brand? I was just talking to somebody about this and we were boiling it down to… I was basically walking through downtown Walnut Creek and I saw that Nike was selling eyeglasses and I would have bought those, but like what the heck do shoes and clothes have to do with classes? Why would I buy Nike glasses? And right next to that store, there was a Yamaha pianos and I had the same thought like Yamaha makes motorcycles and jet skis, why would I think their piano was good? But it’s because what you think is if that company is doing it, it’s probably doing it well, right? I like Yamahama motorcycle… Yamaha motorcycle so… Yamahama, I think I just made up that [inaudible 00:21:31] thing. It sounds like a Hawaiian company.

Brandon:
Yamahama.

David:
I would trust their pianos were made well, and that’s the same where if you see Ken on TV and you see what he’s doing and he has a reputation and you trust Ken, you would trust his brokerage. You would trust his lending company. You would trust his title company. And what I’d like to highlight is that that trust is not dependent on you being a celebrity, just the celebrity status gets more people to see that you can be trusted. But Brandon, to your point, it absolutely works in a local market. If you’re running the real estate meetup, you’re the celebrity in that world and people get a chance to get to know you, to see your integrity, to see how you work, do you keep your word? They’re more likely to trust you when you’re going to build your brand and everybody listening here can do that.

Ken:
Yup. It’s funny because you guys just made the perfect segue into one of the other principles that I noticed throughout the book. And the perfect example of this is Anson Young. You guys know Anson obviously, he’s written books for BiggerPockets. And yeah, he did exactly that. So he started up a meetup. He’s in Denver and his best deal came through a meetup. And so one of the common theme… And there’s actually a couple of other people in the book that did exact same thing. They created their local brand by starting their own meetup or their own RIA and ultimately what it comes down to is personal connections. I mean, it’s amazing how simple that is and how we forget it. It just comes down to people. Like we’re in the people business day in and day out. And the second you isolate yourself and try to run a real estate business is the second you’re on your way to going out of business because everything comes down to being in the… And it’s not just people, it’s personal connections.
And so for Anson he created opportunity for himself in his RIA group, but then when it came to get the deal, it came through the RIA group. It was one of the people in the group and it was one of those… It was almost like a probate deal, where there’s a family involved, but he took it a step further. And so much of it comes down to then making a personal connection to acquire properties. And we miss that as well. I mean, so many of the stories in the book were acquired because they made a conscious effort to get real with people and to empathize with people and to make a personal connection where then all of a sudden the person that’s selling the house, they trust them and they like them and they know them and they feel like, okay, this is somebody I can do business with. But man, it’s so easy to miss that when it’s just dollars and cents, that if you’re really going to be successful, you have to connect with people.

David:
I think-

Brandon:
That’s so good.

David:
I mean, I know you interviewed Brandon for the book and a lot of his stories in there, but that’s why I think we all love Brandon-

Brandon:
Oh.

David:
… because he shares so much of himself that it’s like… When I first met Brandon, I mean, he might have a different story. You might think it was weird, but I already knew I wanted to be his friend. I knew enough about Brandon that unless he ended up being a serial killer or something, which he didn’t, I knew I was going to like him. I kind of knew what I was getting into. We already had trust before he even knew who I was or at least I had trust with him. And I think that’s why a lot of people invest in his fund. That’s why Open Door Capital’s done so well. Is people hear Brandon they know he’s a man of integrity, he’s a man of honor. He’s going to do what he says. They’re going to do business with him. And you know who really made this point, honestly, that we should give a shout out to here? Was Josh Dorkin.
He hammered this home on this podcast for so many years that if you do not have integrity and you do not do business well, you will not stay in business. And that’s just a really good point to highlight here that the people that are successful, all the people that Ken talked about and are in this book are all people of integrity. That’s why they’re still in business. That’s why they’re doing well.

Ken:
Totally.

David:
That’s a really good point.

Ken:
Couldn’t agree more. It’s funny even Brandon’s story in the book in one of the things I remember highlighting about that story is even your mailer, like the mailer that got this ridiculous response rate was because it was a personal letter. Did you have a picture of yourself on the letter? And it was like, I’m going to connect with you before I even meet you and the letter just… I mean, it worked off the charts. I like your response rate.

Brandon:
Yeah. It was like, I mean, it was a small sample rate, but I think that’s what? 300 letters and got 40 phone calls, like a 12% response rate, which… Yeah. Granted nobody was doing direct mail in my town at all. I’m sure it was the first piece of direct mail any of those people ever got. So they’re all like, “What is this? This guy sent me a handwritten letter.” That was like… not actually handwritten. It was printed to look like handwriting, but… Yeah. And I think it just… I always like to say this, people like to do business with people they like.

Ken:
Totally.

Brandon:
People like to sell to people they like, they like to buy from people they like. We talked about it on the show before, but there’s a likeability quotient or number on every deal. In other words, if David and I both were bidding on Ken’s deal and we both put in our offer, if Ken hated David, because he was just aggressive or rude in the way he offered and he liked me because he’s like, “Oh, that was a nice guy and he seemed really cool.” Now he’s not going to give me $100,000 discount, but I guarantee he’d give me a thousand. So somewhere between that there is a number and it’s different for everybody. But the more somebody is going to like you, the more of a discount they’ll give you, the more chance they’ll take your offer above somebody else’s. And I think people forget that in this industry is you could just be a normal person and make people like you or get people to like you and it…
Yeah. It’s all it takes. It’s a personal bit. So what you notice is that a lot of these deals had the personal connection somehow involved in the story.

Ken:
It did. Whether you’re connecting with people so that you could invest together, so that you could partner with people or you’re trying to get that acquisition and you’re working with the seller. I mean, let’s be honest most of the times, if somebody is in distress and they’re selling, there’s a reason behind it and if you approach him as just a businessman and it’s just dollars and cents and it’s just sell me the house, it’s really hard to convince them to sell you the house. But if you come in there and you’re genuine… The other idea behind it is also not just connecting, but also solving problems. Like if you come into some… and they’re in distress, it’s not just, how do I buy the house? It really do approach it as how do I help them? Because here’s the situation that they’re in and I know if I do this, this and this, it really is going to ease the burden for them. And people sense that.
And if you solve their problems, they’re much more likely to sell to you or just to work with you in general. Even if you don’t end up buying the house, that still comes back to you in the longterm, just helping people will come back to you in the longterm.

Brandon:
That’s so good. Hey, just another quick shout out to another podcast episode we did a while back. It was on episode 401 so now a couple of months ago with Jordan Harbinger. The show was called… It was like follow these steps to get people to know, like, and trust you. So if you want to get better at just getting people to know, like, and trust you, definitely check out that episode. It is just full of really good ideas about being intentional about making people like you. So definitely check that one out. All right. So number one we talked about was… To review real quick, number one we talked about was discover your niche-

David:
Personal connections.

Brandon:
And then two was-

David:
Focus on your niche.

Brandon:
Yeah, focus on your niche. And then number two was personal connection. What else you got for us? What else did you notice as a common thread?

Ken:
Almost everyone is… I see this between investors who they see opportunities, where other people don’t see those opportunities. Most of those deals were passed over by somebody else because they didn’t see the opportunity where an investor kind of puts their creative lens on and they turn the property rental. Why do they turn the property rental? Because somebody else couldn’t or didn’t see the opportunity there. So somebody that buys the… So Stacy Rosetti, she bought a self storage facility. Well, she bought it from somebody that was grossly underperforming. Well, she saw that there was opportunity there. She bought it and implemented just some simple basic systems, some simple basic marketing and next thing you know, it’s firing on all cylinders. The other one was, I know you guys talk about occasionally is just extra space in a house that you can finish, like a basement or an attic or just space that you didn’t even realize existed. You know who’s a perfect example of this is Felipe Mejia he does the newbies podcast.
His whole model is basically taking just a normal house that’s got a lower den and a garage and he converts that area into rentable space and now he’s renting by the room. And so he’s running to five people instead of one family and instead of getting 1,500 a month, he’s getting 3,000 a month in rent. Well, nobody else sees that. That’s just something that he’s able to cleverly put his creative lens on it and see. Again, it’s just recognizing opportunities where other investors don’t.

Brandon:
And this goes back to what we mentioned at the beginning of the show is like, especially when you’re getting started, but even for experienced people, a book like yours, or if you want to go back and listen to all 25 YouTube videos, you can do that too if you have a lot of time to kill and or listen to every episode of this podcast, by hearing those stories, that’s what then makes you recognize what I call hidden potential, right? The hidden potential it’s in… I mean, every property I feel like most probably have hidden potential somewhere. Like maybe can you convert it to an Airbnb? Or could you add that bedroom? One of the tricks I use all the time is I look for two bedroom houses that have over a thousand square feet. If it’s a two bedroom house with a thousand square feet, typically two bedroom houses don’t sell for as much as a three bedroom in most areas.
A three bedroom adds a ton of value. And if it’s over a thousand square feet, there’s usually a massively large dining room, living room, family room, pantry, whatever that you could turn into a third bedroom fairly easily. And so for a couple of thousand dollars, you can usually take a 12… I mean, I’ve seen like 1,800 square foot two bedroom houses and you’re like, “Well, that clearly has some extra space in there. Nobody needs that big of a kitchen.” And so that’s just one example of hidden potential. Just even rehabs in general can be potential. That’s why we like the burst strategy so much is that you can buy-

David:
It’s a part of business in general, the people who buy other people’s businesses and recognize you could be generating revenue in this way if you added bar sales to your restaurant or something like that, right? A buddy of mine that was a police officer with me, he opened a brewery and he went and bought a food truck and he just parked it right outside of the brewery and now he’s selling food and the alcohol. He’s doing really well. I mean, just not thinking in those ways, like you mentioned Ken, so many people are losing money. I would say on my real estate team, we have 27 houses in contract. 13 of them are house hackers who we found properties that have more square footage than was advertised on the deal.
So an agent puts it on the MLS showing 1,400 square feet because that’s what the tax records show, but it has an entire unpermitted basement that has been finished or partially finished and we can go in there, the person who buys the house can fix it up, live there, rent out the upstairs and then when they move out, they’ve got a cashflow in property in the most expensive market in the United States, just by one little difference. Like I’m just not going to look at the same houses in the same way that everybody else is looking at. And that’s a great, great point to highlight is everyone else tends to look at the world from the same lens. If you can just focus yours a little bit different, all of a sudden opportunities start popping up.

Ken:
It’s funny you bring up Airbnb because there’s a handful of stories in the book too, about Airbnb where that’s really in the last couple of years, one of those businesses that’s come on where somebody has a failing rental or it’s a house that just doesn’t make sense for anything else and then that one person realizes, “Hey, this makes a great Airbnb.” They come in there and then they start killing it on Airbnb. But again, it’s just another arrow in your quiver when you’re looking at properties.

Brandon:
That’s really what is. The more deals you hear about other people doing, the more unique ways that you see other people doing, the more chance that you’ll recognize that, which is again, why… I mean, I know we’re harping on this book a lot today, but obviously we’re talking to the author, so why not? This is why it’s one of the… I love books where it’s like you read it and it’s almost impossible not to make your money back a thousandfold from the cost of a 20 or $30 book. Right? Like, “Oh yeah. I spent money on a book and I learned 25 cool strategies that help people make a lot of money.” How does that not compute to a good investment? Maybe now is a good time just to maybe mention the book more officially and formally what’s the book called and tell us a quick 30 seconds, what’s it about? I mean, we know what it’s about, but what’s it called? Give us a little plug for it.

Ken:
Yeah, sure. So the book is Profit Like the Pros. And again, oh, there’s a great… Look at that. David’s holding it up for me. It’s got Brandon. Why else would you need an excuse to buy it when it’s Brandon’s [crosstalk 00:33:29] on the front of the book? I mean-

Brandon:
You can buy the book, throw the book away, take the front cover, tear off just my picture. Go to Staples, blow it up big, put it on your wall and you just have a picture of me forever in your room.

Ken:
Yeah. Or just stick in your wallet. You can stick in your wallet-

Brandon:
That’s true. You can keep it small and close to your backside. Anyway keep going.

David:
I hung mine on the wall right above my bed.

Brandon:
There you go.

David:
Absolute first thing I see in the morning.

Ken:
Or in the ceiling.

David:
Yeah, there you go.

Brandon:
Okay. So anyway, my face is on the cover, but Profit Like the Pros.

Ken:
Yeah. So the Profit like the Pros, again, it’s 25 individual case studies. And what makes the book super interesting is the fact that it covers everything. It’s single family houses, it’s Airbnb, it’s multifamily, it’s commercial, it’s mobile home, it’s self storage, it’s land. One of my favorite ones is actually some of the land deals that are in there, which I’ve not done a lot of land deals, but it’s super inspiring. The whole idea is you’re looking at other investors that have had success and we break down, why were they successful? Why did this change their business? How did this make them a better investor? And we break it down into small educational chunks that you can sort of take and absorb and then potentially implement in your own business.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s awesome. And you can get it right now at biggerpockets.com/profitbook, profit book. I think it’s 17 bucks for the ebook on BiggerPockets, 25 bucks for the physical book. And then there’s the ultimate edition of course that we usually put out has audio book, the ebook and the physical book all combined and it’s like 45 bucks. So definitely go check it out and there’s some bonuses you have there too. Can you talk about the bonuses real quick and then we’ll move on?

Ken:
Yeah. There’s a number of bonuses actually. So almost all of the contributors gave us either a presentation or video walkthroughs or just some additional content about their story. But the other half of the content, which is really funny is I got the worst deal evers from all these talks. So you hear sort of their best deal in the book and then part of the bonus content is like a five to 10 minute interview about their worst deals.

Brandon:
That’s awesome.

Ken:
Because not everything is roses in this business, right? Sometimes things go sideways and it’s fun to hear some of that’s been really successful, some of their failures. I just like commiserating sometime. We want just sort of screw something up. Okay. We’ve all done it. It’s fun to hear how they’re not perfect too.

Brandon:
And that goes back to what I said earlier about the investment. It’s like you hear one from one of these worst deals and you’re like, “Oh, now I’m not going to make the mistake.” Does that not pay yourself back a hundred times over? So you guys check out the book. I think you’re gonna love it. It’s pretty awesome. I got it a week or two ago here in the mail and I’ve been devouring it. It’s awesome. Yeah. Very, very cool. Good idea to put that together. That was awesome. I like it.

Ken:
I appreciate that. You might’ve had a little help in that. I’m not sure if you didn’t.

Brandon:
No, no. I don’t think so, but we did have a conversation about it, but it was… You asked me what I thought about it and I was like, “Ooh, it’s a really good idea.”

Ken:
You pushed me over the edge. Yeah.

Brandon:
There you go. That’s what I’m good at. All right. So let’s review, again you can go get the book at biggerpockets.com/profit book, but let’s go through the list. We’ve got discover their niche and they really hone in on that niche. Then we’ve got the personal connections. So really building your personal brand, connect with people in your local market. Number three, they see those hidden opportunities, the opportunities where other people don’t see them. And the way you do that is by just talking with a lot of investors, reading books like this one, and just getting a general knowledge of how real estate works in a lot of ways, you start picking up on these little things. What else you got for us today?

Ken:
There was an interesting common thread too, that a lot of times it was the one deal that changed the trajectory for somebody. They’re operating in one sort of status quo and they’d stepped out in faith and like, you know what? I’m going to try this niche and see how it works out, or I’m going to market to this area and just what… And all of a sudden, instead of getting $15,000 per wholesale deal, they land $100,000 wholesale deal and it changes everything. I mean, just a mindset of, wait a second it doesn’t have to be the way it’s been. I just opened my mind to something new and for most of these investors, it changed the trajectory of their business. And it’s interesting how all it takes is that one deal if you’re willing to step out in faith and do it.

Brandon:
That’s really cool.

David:
You know what? I want to ask you, Ken, do you remember in your own life one of those moments where something worked out either a hire or a deal you did or something and you thought, “Oh, wait, it can be like that.” Then it changed your trajectory?

Ken:
I mean, early on… I think for me early on, it was as simple as I was really just wholesaling very early on, back in 2005, I was connecting people. I wasn’t buying anything and it was finally, you know what? I think I’m ready to buy a house. I think it was like 2007. I think I bought it as an owner finance and I think I turned around and wholesaled it. No, no. I actually bought it and resold it. So it was one of the first houses I actually put my name, I titled it in my name and resold and made like $75,000. This was in 2007.

Brandon:
Wow.

Ken:
I’m still in my twenties and I just remember being like, “Holy cow.” I went from making four to $6,000 per wholesale deal to making $75,000 on one deal and it’s just like, that’s it. I’m buying houses and selling houses, forget wholesaling. This is where it’s at for me. I mean, that was more than the salary I’d made in the corporate world. Bam, in one fell swoop.

Brandon:
That’s cool.

David:
Brandon, how about you?

Brandon:
I was going to ask you the same question. But I’m going to say that when Ryan Murdoch brought me that first mobile home park, what it did it taught me that I could put together big deals with other people, so I raised the money for that deal from Mindy Jensen one of my partners on that one. I put some money into it, Ryan put some money into it and we did a big deal and we’re like, “Whoa.” That wasn’t any different than doing a hundred thousand dollar deal and we did a million dollar deal. And so that changed the trajectory, then I went full into mobile home parks and that really was a beginning and kind of a soft way of what Open Door Capital is today. Now we’re launching like… was it $50 million last year? Now we’re on fund three. I think we’re just launched now. And so we took off in a completely different trajectory because of that one deal. What about you David?

David:
The investment deal that did, that was when I bought my fourplex. Before that I didn’t even consider ROI as a thing. I didn’t look at it from numbers. I sat down and said, “Well, how long would it take me to get all my money back?” That was just how I looked at it. And I realized it was three years, which was like a 33% ROI. And I thought that’s not normal. Everything else takes a lot longer than three years. How did that happen? And then I kind of reverse engineered and saw, “Oh, this real estate thing is really big.” And that’s if rent doesn’t go up and rent goes up out here all the time. And that was when I made up my mind, “I’m going to do this. I’m giving everything I have into it. I’m going to work a hundred hours a week. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to buy these houses.”
And then right after that, the market dropped off in California, but because I had this huge swell of just passion, I wanted to do it I started investing at a state before anyone else really talked about it and that’s what got me down that path. But it was a moment where your emotions were affected not just your mind. It wasn’t like, “Ooh, that’s a piece of information I needed.” Something switches in you, Ken, when you realized I can make as much on one deal as I did in the entire year. I’m doing everything I can to put my attention on this and this. Everything I pour into it, I’m going to get more out of it, I think and maybe that’s a good barometer to look at is that moment when you know, I’m not going to think about how much effort I’m putting into this because I know I’m going to get back more than whatever I put in.

Ken:
Right, right. It was for a lot of people, at least in the book, it was interesting it was making that move from single family to multifamily. I think we have the three stories in there where people made that leap because Brandon, to your point, it’s like, “Wait a second. This was not that different. I use the same private lenders I’m using in my single family business. I just moved them into this multifamily property and next thing you know I’ve got 2 million in equity instead of 50,000 in equity. What just happened? Why am I focusing on single family when I could be…” And these people of… that’s what they do now is just multifamily.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s really good. So if you could kind of sum up that… like a tip for people for the… I mean, obviously one trajectory kind of change this thing. What do you have for a tip for people in terms of like to get to that point, to find that deal that changes everything for them?

Ken:
I think part of it is just mentality. It’s your mindset. What do you believe you’re capable of and not capable of? And a lot of people, I think have self limiting beliefs that, “Yeah, I’ve done some wholesale deals, but I’m just not ready for that next big one.” But the truth is you’re always laying the groundwork for the next best thing, you really are. And whether it’s in the same space, the single family or multifamily, there’s always that step up project that it’s going to come in your path and are you willing to grasp it? Are you willing to take that risk or not? Now that doesn’t mean… You don’t want to take bad risks, but when you know how to analyze a property and there’s an opportunity and you believe in yourself, you’ve got good people around you, you’ve got partners, potentially you’ve got investors that trust you, seize the opportunity to take that step up into that next investment.

Brandon:
That’s so good. Yeah. I talk about in the book that I’m launching next year, it’s going to be a while before it comes out, but the new multifamily book Brian Murray and I are writing. We talk a lot about this, a lot of investors get stuck in their comfort zone forever because they’re comfortable there, right? It’s nice there. And then there’s the way far outside that is the inability zone, which would be the danger zone where you shouldn’t… You’re not just going to go from a single family up to a 40 unit or a hundred unit apartment building, knowing nothing, right?

Ken:
Right.

Brandon:
But in between that there’s a stretch zone. It’s like, let’s get outside the comfort zone, let’s try something… Let’s expand our horizons and so if you’ve been doing single family and duplexes and triplexes for a while, maybe it’s like, hey, you know what? The 12 unit, the 15 unit, the 20 unit, that’s totally attainable or switching, “Hey, I’m going to add some flips into my business to generate some more capital so I can hire more employees so I can do more of the bar that I’ve been doing.” Whatever that next thing is. I actually wrote this down because it’s such a good quote. You said you’re always laying the foundation for the next great thing and that’s so true, but people don’t realize that, they just keep laying the same foundation and then they never build on that foundation. They just keep laying it even though… And they have it, they just maybe lack the confidence needed to start building the next big thing.

Ken:
That’s good. I like that. Stretch zone. That’s perfect. It’s that place in between where you’re ready for that, but you’re not biting off something more than you can chew.

David:
I feel like there’s someone out there that needs to hear that or maybe a lot of someones. Because if you think about skyscrapers, I would bet you 80% of the work is in laying the foundation. Once it’s laid, you’re just like every time you drive past it, “Oh my God. It’s that big.” It goes up really quick. But creating the foundation is what takes so long. And single family construction’s the same way. When they’re first laying a foundation, building the framing, it takes a really long time. Once all that’s up, it’s like the drywall goes up, the finishes go in and the roof is done and boom, the house is ready. So if you’re spending all your time just on that foundation and you never start scaling, you’re putting in all the work and you’re never actually getting the benefit of that work that you did.

Brandon:
I think we need to write another book. Dave is going to write this one called skyscraping, the art of growing your… Building a solid… You guys could write it together. Ken and David, skyscraping, the art of laying a foundation so you can reach mile high. I don’t know heights.

Ken:
Mile club, wow.

Brandon:
You can get the mile high club and lay a good foundation. All right.

Ken:
That’s really good.

Brandon:
Thank you for Kevin by the way, our producer Kevin for the assist on skyscraping. That’s a great name for a book, actually. Kelly Blue Fishing. Have you guys read blue fishing by the way?

Ken:
No.

Brandon:
Yeah, phenomenal book, phenomenal book. We should get that off on the podcast.

Ken:
What’s it about?

Brandon:
Getting outside your comfort zone, but I’m dying here. Hold on.

David:
Brandon is choking on his own brilliance right now. Let’s give him a minute to get together.

Brandon:
I’m choking, hold on.

David:
So Ken, I’ll ask you this. When you have a foundation laid and you’re ready to scale often one of the things that holds you back is capital. So with the people that you talked to in the book, how do they address that problem of, “Hey, I know what I’m doing. I’m ready to go. I’m ready to let this thing loose, but I don’t have unlimited funds.”?

Ken:
That’s a great question. So I’m thinking through the people who… The most obvious ones were the ones that scaled in the multifamily and most of them… Apparently it’s contagious, Brandon.

Brandon:
I’m still dying over here. I don’t know.

Ken:
Amazing. Power of influence apparently. Most people, part of laying that foundation in single family homes is working with private lenders. If you’re really going to be a serious… even an intermediate flipper, you found people to work with in terms of raising capital. So you know how to raise capital. And a lot of times, if you’re transitioning to multifamily or commercial, you’re going to take those same lenders with you or your same banking relationships with you. In fact, I remember a number of years back I scaled up into a large commercial property. It was like an eight acre self storage facility. It was a boat and RV storage facility. Did really well on it, but again, I had a local banking relationship, and I had private lenders that I used for the equity and it was the exact same relationships that I was using in single family that I took with me to that next step and it’s not…
I think people get intimidated by capital. It’s there. There is hungry capital out there right now, especially right now and nobody knows what the stock market’s going to do. There’s hungry capital looking for stable investments. And the second you figure out how to get one or two or three private lenders, you’ve figured it out. You’ve got your pitch down. The sky’s the limit. There’s an opportunity to raise a lot of money if you’re willing to buckle down and do it.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s really good.

David:
A lot of people are asking the question, when this comes up other people’s money, I would say the first objection everyone has is fair, yeah, I don’t want to lose other people’s money, which is a good objection to have. I don’t want you to lose other people’s money. I don’t want you to lose my money. My advice would be don’t go start borrowing money until you know you know how to do this and you’ve done it well, at least on a smaller scale, right? When the foundation is late, then you can go up fast. Don’t try to go fast before the foundation.
But the second piece would be, there’s like a guilt aspect. Like why would they let me borrow their money if they don’t get any chunk in the deal? And ignorant people that aren’t aware of what’s happening in the financial world don’t understand that there’s people with a lot of money that are itching for somewhere to put it. They’re hiring people to say, help me find a way to deploy this capital that you are actually the answer to someone’s prayers when you need money to start investing. And I think when you understand that it will change the reluctance to go after private money to fund these deals.

Ken:
Yeah, absolutely. It was funny… You didn’t even mean to, this is a great segue. This is the fifth one I was going to talk about is one of the common threads throughout the book is the fact that these people are almost all using other people’s money, whether it’s private lenders or it’s an owner finance. It’s somebody else’s money if they’re the one that got the loan and now you’re coming in with the subject too, and using their good credit. But other people’s money is a absolute must. It’s a common theme throughout all of real estate investing, including this book.
And once you can figure out how to tap into it… This also brings up a good point that I remember Stacy Rosseti talking about is when you ask for… You don’t ask for money. You present an opportunity. I think this is where people get stuck. They think, “Well, I don’t want to be the guy with my tail in my hand meagerly asking for their money.” You’re not asking for their money. You’re presenting a financial opportunity and they’re lucky if they get to invest in your project. That’s really the mentality you have to have when you approach anybody about investing.

Brandon:
Totally.

David:
If you just think about the lending industry, you’ve got these really big banks that say we’ve raised all this money we need to lend it out, we’re going to charge interest and they pay people like me, a mortgage broker to go find people that need to borrow money to buy a house, right? There is an entire industry, a huge one built on, “I have to find somebody who can help me make money by borrowing my money at an interest rate.” And the same principle applies on the smaller scale when you’re dealing with private money, you’re absolutely bringing someone an opportunity. And the way I look at it, that money that they are not lending out is losing value. As inflation continues to go and their money just sits there, they are literally losing money. So you are helping to prevent that from happening to them while you are making them money, because you have a skill that they don’t.
These are people that aren’t listening to podcasts, and they’re not reading books and they don’t know about Ken and Brandon that have so many good ideas that they can’t even talk without choking in the middle of it because they’re all rushing to get out of their throats, but we do right? We know how to make this happen. So you are helping bridge the gap between people who have money and their inability to do anything with it.

Brandon:
Yeah. I had a common question. I want to fire that at you Ken, and people ask me that all the time. So I tell stories a lot of times about, for example, one of my first deals ever I discovered the burst strategy as I bought a property, couldn’t sell it. Was just trying to flip it, couldn’t sell it, brought in a partner they helped me refinance it. Then later I bought a triplex. I brought in a partner and that partner put in all of the money needed for the down payment and I put in no money whatsoever. Today I flip houses doing the same thing, but now I’m on the money side. And whenever I tell these stories, I mean, even in my fund, right? Like we raise a bunch of money and we go buy a big mobile home parks. People always ask the same question is, well, why would they ever give you money and then split it with you when they could just go do it themselves? Why wouldn’t people with money not just go take that deal and do it themselves? So what’s your answer to that?

Ken:
I mean, most of the time the people with the money are busy working a 9:00 to 5:00.

Brandon:
Yeah, yeah.

Ken:
Right? They don’t have the time or the expertise. They’re not the boots on the ground. I can’t think of one of my private lenders who has the expertise to find an off market deal in my market to renovate it and then turn around and make money on it. So they need conduits. They need people like us, who are the boots on the ground who know how to make the transaction work. It’s funny. I never get pushed back from my private lenders. Like, man, I should be making this…

Brandon:
Yeah, me too.

Ken:
They’re thrilled to be making that money. They’re thrilled that there’s somebody with some level of expertise that’s doing it for them.

David:
I wonder if we thought that way in things that weren’t real estate investing. Why would you open a restaurant? Why would anyone go eat your food when they could cook it themselves? Why would you open an auto mechanic shop? Why would I pay you to fix my car when I could just fix it myself? It’ll never end. There’s always a way that you can look at it like that, but there’s an obvious reason why we go out to eat and why we pay someone else to fix our car. It’s the same thing with this.

Brandon:
Yeah. I think people tend to look at other people and they put themselves and their mentality in other people like, they love real estate, they love the idea of making a lot of money and that’s like the big thing for them right now. So they don’t understand why everyone else isn’t the same way. But I put a lot of money into my flipping business and I don’t… like my partner, Greg he runs all of it. I mean, he runs the business and he doesn’t have to put any money in. So it’s great for him. And people are like, “Well, why wouldn’t you just go take all the deals Brandon?” Because I’m busy. I don’t have time to go and to do all the things that Greg does.
Yeah. As soon as you realize that, that people have different things that they’re interested in and that they’re good at. Like I’m good at money right now. I just have the ability to raise a lot of money and I have a lot of money on my own. That’s my strength right now is I’m well capitalized, but I don’t have time. I just do not have time.
And there are millions of people like me out there, millions of people like me out there that have money, have an interest in real estate. Because everybody loves real estate. If you were to go poll the average American, everybody likes the idea of real estate. Just most people will never do it because they don’t think they can. So give them an opportunity to, and now all of a sudden you’ve got yourself a partnership with potentially no money or at least low money down.

Ken:
Yeah. Well that, again, that’s a big part of this book is so many of the people that leveled up used partnerships. And I would tell people partnerships are an amazing thing because you take somebody else’s strength and you take your strength and you combine them and sometimes your strength might be the money, like you said, but sometimes a lot of cases, it’s somebody else’s money. That’s what they’re bringing to the table. And who cares if they get 50% of the deal? It doesn’t matter. Just do more deals. It’s figuring out what somebody else brings to the table and not being afraid to partner with them.

Brandon:
Yeah. I love that question, if you can… I think we asked that even recently another episode where I said, if you brought in a partner who had every skill that you lacked and had motivation and drive and expertise and was that you guys worked together well, if you gave them half of all the profits, could you do twice as many deals? And the answer is with the right person, a hundred percent, a thousand percent, you can probably do 10 times as many deals if you had the right setup. So stop thinking that scarcity mentality if I could have it all myself and start thinking what’s possible if I had the right team around me and that applies to really every business. It’s really everything.

Ken:
It’s good.

Brandon:
All right man. Well, we’re going to slowly get out of here, but I have one more kind of follow-up question for you. What is your best deal ever?

Ken:
Oh man.

Brandon:
Ken, what deal strikes you as one of your best deals or the one that stands out as like, that was it?

Ken:
I’ve had a couple of Whoppers. I mean, I hit mostly base hits, singles and doubles and triples occasionally and I’ve had a couple home runs over the years. I’ve probably talked about it in the last podcast so I’m going to talk about one maybe I didn’t talk about the last time I was on there. Well, here one recently is a deal that I bought… It’s a commercial property on 18 acres and the reason I bought it is because it had the potential to subdivide and this gets back to what we were talking about before, see the potential, right? We build houses, we need land, we love small minor developments. And I was like, you know what? Let’s peel off eight of those acres and build some nice custom homes on them. There’s a building there I can move my office into. So let’s move our construction office in there for a little bit. And we did that. So we had two uses.
I mean, I basically took a $600,000 property peeled off 300,000 of it, which went into lots for properties that we built and made good money then the other $300,000, went into a building that we were using up until just a couple of months ago, we moved out, found another office and I’m currently lease purchasing that property for 800,000 getting 6,000 a month in rent. So our nut on it was about 300 an hour. We’re selling it for 800.

Brandon:
Wow.

Ken:
And again, it’s just seeing the potential to peel off land. That’s another theme in the book is people miss that, when there’s opportunities to subdivide, that land can sometimes double and triple in value from what it was worth as part of that initial property. And in our case, 18 acres down to 10 acres, nobody cared, nobody missed those eight acres that became custom homes. And so it didn’t really hurt our value in terms of selling that building and now we’re selling the building for about 500,000 more than what we paid for it.

Brandon:
Yeah. That kind of reminds me of that old… I’ve seen an Instagram meme or whatever you want to call it, a motivational picture a lot, but it basically was like… it says a bar of lead is worth like $12. Right? But you divide that into… I don’t know, let’s call it dice. Like little metal dice and now it’s worth like $80. And then you divide that into whatever and you get smaller and smaller and then the smallest one was like into watch springs. It’s worth like $350,000. Because you can make 350,000 little springs out of this bar of lead. In other words, when you really niche down and subdivide something, you can get a lot more out of it. So the same applies to the bedroom account, right? You rent by the bedroom now you make more individually than you would as a whole.
And I think that applies to subdividing property as well. People think like, how do I get more out of this on a small level? How can I make this smaller? You can usually make more money. Kind of like Super Bowl ads, right? Like there are national $2 million, $3 million Super Bowl ads and you can also buy a local ad on the Super Bowl. So the Super Bowl is selling, let’s call it a hundred grand for an ad in one market, but they can sell that 50 times across 50 markets and they can make $5 million on that same ad spot that normally was only worth 2 million. So subdividing in any industry is the cool strategy, a good hidden potential.

David:
And it makes so much more sense than saying, where can I buy a bar of lead for $11 instead of 12 and spending six months trying to find where the cheaper lead is. Right?

Brandon:
That’s right.

Ken:
Right.

Brandon:
We’re cool man. That’s awesome. That’s a good deal. So where are you headed in the future? Last question, before we go into the Famous Four, where are you headed in the future? What do you see your business going? What’s your life look like in the next few years?

Ken:
Well, so we’ve got a couple of projects in the works with HGTV right now and so we’ll be filming the end of this year and the beginning of next year. And again, for us, the whole reason we were on TV is to build a brand, to build businesses. That’s it. So it’s fun to see where that… It’s honestly it’s fun to film. We legitimately enjoy it. It’s fun making TV, again, part of being an entrepreneur is creating and so it’s fun to create television. And our goal is to just grow this machine, grow this brokerage, grow the mortgage side of the business, see how big we can get it. See if we get a regional and see if we can get it national. And again, there’s only so many businesses that scale well, and I feel like we’ve kind of stumbled into one that scales really well and so we want to see how big we can scale it. It’s going to be fun ride.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s awesome man. All right. I said that was the last question before our Famous Four, I have one more, what do you need from our audience? Like what can our audience bring you to add value to your life? Is there something you’re looking for specifically, whether it’s deals, whether it’s investment, what is it that you need right now that would help you in your business?

Ken:
Well, I’m still an investor. I mean, I love deals. I look at deals every day. I mean, I still make sure that I’m on every wholesaler’s email list and I still scan, now I don’t open them all. I wait until I see a zip code I like or… But I still open them. I still like looking at deals. And if I see something I like, I usually send it to my acquisition manager and say, “Hey, research this.” But send us deals, man. I still like investing in houses. I still think there’s opportunity. I will say this. We probably won’t be buying and holding a lot this year, but I think in the next year, two, three years, there’s going to be another real opportunity to buy and hold and so keep them coming, man. I like looking at deals.

Brandon:
All right. Well, with that said, let’s get to the last segment of the show, it’s our-

Speaker 5:
Famous Four.

Brandon:
All right, these are the same four questions that we ask every guest every week here on the show and I know we asked you this last time, but we’re going to ask you again maybe they’ve changed. So number one of the Famous Four. Oh, before I get to that, let’s hear what’s going on this week around the BiggerPockets Podcast network.

Felipe:
Hey, it’s Felipe from the Rookie Show and last Wednesday we talked to Amy and how she built a portfolio that’s spitting out $6,000 in cashflow all by just delaying her gratification. Just go back and listen to last Wednesday show.

Brandon:
All right. Let’s dig into the Famous Four, the four questions that we ask everyone. Number one, favorite or current… either current favorite or just like all time favorite real estate related book, other than your own of course.

Ken:
Yeah. Well, I was going to say Profit Like the Pros for those of you that are watching could very easily become your next favorite real estate book. You know it’s funny I don’t read a lot of real estate books. I feel like I’ve got masterminds and whatnot that sort of keep me current on stuff, I probably said this last time, I don’t remember, but I’ll go back to my favorite resource and it’s the resource that got me into the business, which was Carleton Sheets. No Money Down. I mean, I go back to Ken Corsini 27 years old found it at a garage sale and I listened to those CDs and read those workbooks for a year straight and it changed… It really did change my life. It’s what got me into real estate.

Brandon:
Very cool.

David:
Okay. What about your favorite business book?

Ken:
So I just read one here in the last handful of months that I really, really… It really resonated with me. And again, I even mentioned this in my book, I don’t read it ton of business books, but this one resonated with me a lot. It’s called, Called to Create by Jordan Raynor. Not sure if you’ve read it or not.

Brandon:
No, I haven’t.

Ken:
It draws a really cool parallel between God being our creator, but also being the first entrepreneur and how us being created in His image we’re entrepreneurs, because He was an entrepreneur first and that… It really changes your motivation. It really lets you see people as my… Again, I know we keep harping on this, but we’re in a people business, being in real estate, it’s about people and being created in His image, we should be about people more than we’re about product. And it was really satisfying to draw those parallels between how He is towards us and how He feels towards the world and how we’re created to be.

Brandon:
That’s awesome, man. Very cool. All right.

David:
Yeah. I mean, I was just thinking about a lot of the stuff you’re saying. We could probably go for a long time down that rabbit hole. That’s really, really good. Because when Brandon and I interview people that are successful almost every single time, they aren’t just smart. They’re good. They do good things that help other people. They create win-win opportunities, their businesses making opportunities for other people’s businesses. It’s very rare that I come across someone who’s just pure smart and they don’t have a good heart because like we were saying earlier, they don’t usually stay in business. So by focusing on like what you said, Ken, people first, it’s going to give you an opportunity to take your good ideas and to take your hard work and actually put it into play and get some traction going.

Brandon:
Cool.

Ken:
Cool.

David:
Next question. What are some of your hobbies?

Ken:
It’s funny. I always joke that I had hobbies before I had kids and now my kids, I feel like are my… I think my hobby right now is being an Uber driver for my kids to all their sporting events. Because it’s just… Well, we coach baseball and we coach basketball and… But I will say this in and between literally daily sports activities with all my kids, we have made a conscious effort to become campers. So we went out and bought a brand new camper this summer. I think COVID probably played into that a little bit because we like to travel and this is a great way. And we started exploring our local state parks, which I’ve never really done before and really have started to appreciate what’s all around us, all these amazing camping opportunities in these parks. And it’s a great way too, for us as a family to get away and unplug. It’s like no devices, turn your cell phone off. Kids, put the iPads away and let’s sort of just reconnect with each other and reconnect with nature. It’s been a really good investment for us.

Brandon:
Yeah. So good. I’m jealous. I want to do that. All right. Last question from me, what do you think separates successful real estate investors? That’s like the whole episode, but what do you think separates successful real estate investors from all those who give up or they fail or they just plain don’t get started?

Ken:
It’s funny right before the show was like, “Okay, I got to answer this question.” So I thought about it for a second and a common thread in real estate and you guys know this because you’re in, is adversity. I feel like every day you come to work, what adversity am I going to face today? Because it doesn’t matter what you’re doing in real estate. You’re facing some level of adversity and there’s a huge percentage of the population that doesn’t know how to persevere through adversity. And it’s funny, even in my inbox. Soon as we get off this call, I’ve got an inbox full of just things we got to deal with, we got to work through and things go sideways and inspections don’t come back the way you want them or financing falls through. And I feel a lot of people get into real estate and they get out really quick. Maybe that postcard campaign didn’t generate what they wanted it to generate or that first deal that they were expecting $10,000 in commission, they made a thousand dollars in commission and just didn’t feel worth their time.
If I didn’t push through all the adversity I faced in real estate over the years, I mean, I’d have given up for forever ago. It’s the people that stick with it and push through that find the unicorns, that find success, that end up in a book like Profit Like the Pros because they were willing to stick it out.

David:
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Brandon:
Very good, man.

David:
Yeah. I often remind myself that the opportunity exists because there’s adversity, that if the adversity went away like we all want so would the opportunity. And so you have to learn to be grateful for that. I mean, just being a real estate agent, you realize that it’s very easy to start getting upset when things go wrong. Like, why can’t it go smooth? But the minute that every deal goes smooth, why do you need an agent?

Brandon:
That’s right.

David:
You go do it without an agent. Right? And so the best thing that could happen for that profession is that there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. And I think that principle applies to everything. If you learn to be grateful for the obstacles, you will figure out a way to persevere when everyone behind you leaves and that’s why there’s so much out there that you can go take.

Brandon:
It’s a really good point.

David:
Thank you. All right. Last question of the day, this has been fascinating and I’m sure everybody is on the edge of their seat wanting to get more Ken, where can they find out more about you?

Ken:
You can actually check us out on our website, redbarnhomes.com. We’ve got resources there for buying and selling houses, for building houses, for renovating houses. We’ve got some resources there for investors as well. We also talked a little bit about our nonprofit that we have out there called Roc.Star Kids which you’re welcome to donate to or learn a little bit about. Again, redbarnhomes.com. Check us out.

Brandon:
All right. Cool man. And of course they can get the book by going to biggerpockets.com/profitbook. Consider should do that. And I don’t know, man. That’s all I got for you today. So thank you for being a part of this show. Thank you for all those videos on YouTube. I mean, they’ve been blowing up over there as well. And thanks for writing the book. I think it’s [crosstalk 01:04:46].

Ken:
Thanks for having me on guys. Always a pleasure to talk with you gentlemen. Had a good time.

Brandon:
Thank you.

David:
Awesome job. Thank you, Ken. Everybody please go check out Profit with the Pros. Leave a review.

Brandon:
Profit Like the Pros. Come on David.

David:
What did I say?

Brandon:
I don’t know.

David:
Oh I said Profit with the Pros. Didn’t I? It’s because I’m trying to hold the book up on the screen and talk at the same time.

Brandon:
No, you aren’t.

David:
And I clearly [crosstalk 01:05:03]-

Brandon:
You can’t chew gum and walk at the same time either.

David:
But at least I can talk and breathe. You can’t say [crosstalk 01:05:08]. This is David Green for Brandon choking on his own brilliance, Turner signing off.

Speaker 3:
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