Taking “Bite-Sized Steps” to Go from Broke to $20,000/Month with Bryce Stewart

Brandon Turner:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 442.

Bryce Stewart:
I just tell myself every day, “Okay, there’s something I can do today. Whether it’s just print out a stupid little form and leave it on the printer for tomorrow, I’m just going to take one stinking step today that benefits my portfolio, that gets me headed towards my goals.”

Speaker 3:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon Turner:
What’s going on everyone. It’s Brandon Turner host of the BiggerPockets Podcast here in the sea shed with my buddy David Green. David, how’s the book selling? I know Sold, came out a few weeks ago, how’s it doing?

David Green:
Sold is selling.

Brandon Turner:
Sold is sold.

David Green:
It’s actually really cool, I talked to the publishing coordinators and they said this is the most orders they’ve ever had for a book launch in the history of BiggerPockets Publishing. And based on what I’m seeing from Amazon sales, they’re already ready to order another 5,000, it’s only been out for like a week or two.

Brandon Turner:
Look at you, it’s impressive.

David Green:
I didn’t think it would because it [crosstalk 00:01:12] ages.

Brandon Turner:
I didn’t think it would either. It’s a book for real estate agents. So I thought like, “Well, our audience is real estate investors, are they going to buy them for their agent?” And it looks like they are.

David Green:
That’s exactly the key. What you just said is BiggerPockets audience is so awesome that they’ve been buying this book to give to their real estate agents as a thank you when the house closes or, “Hey, I care about your career, I just want to give you something that will help push you forward.” It’s done incredible because of that.

Brandon Turner:
In fact, I’m going to do a voice memo or a text on my phone right now to my assistant. Text Bell, Hey, let’s order David’s book and send it to Jason and Patrick. There we go, I’m going to order it later because I got my agent in Washington and an agent here in Malibu.

David Green:
So we just showed people how to buy a gift for someone to make them like you, how to leverage a personal assistant to do your work for you. How to be productive with three seconds and during a podcast.

Brandon Turner:
In the middle of a podcast. All right, good stuff. All right, with that said, let’s talk about today’s show. Today’s show is with a guest that we’ve had on the show before but we went a different route with him today, really good stuff. Bryce Stuart, so Bryce was the guy, if you remember back in the day, who had the really cool analogy that we talk about all the time about vacuuming your truck. If you don’t know what that means, you’ll hear about it in today’s show. But vacuuming the truck is that guy. We cover a lot of stuff today like how he bought basically 21 units for basically no money down. He doubled his cashflow while actually reducing the geographic area of his portfolio, he shrunk down to one specific spot, very, very cool.
Then he even, you guys are going to… I think of this hilarious, Bryce is a funny dude. He pulls out a guitar and he serenades us with a song on the podcast today. You’re going to love it. It’s something every landlord should know he’s super passionate about it so he wrote a song just for us today. I think it’s the first time that’s ever happened on the podcast. So stay tuned for all of that. But before we get to it, let’s get today’s quick tip.

David Green:
Quick tip.

Brandon Turner:
Quick tip is buy books for people in your life, it doesn’t have to be a BiggerPockets book. But books are such a great thing, we talk about the importance of giving gifts to people, books are cool because what you do is you buy the book and then you write a note on the front cover or inside or on a post-it note. It’s like, “Hey, I thought you would like this book because A, B, and C. It just shows that you put thought into something that you get for somebody. So the quick tip is start building relationships with people by buying them books and then include a note with it. This is a really, really good way to build relationships.

David Green:
David Alexander bought me Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. It changed my life and then it changed my business’s life because we started incorporating that. It affected the way that I speak on the podcast and then it led to us getting Jocko Willink to be on the podcast.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that’s cool.

David Green:
If he would have said, “Hey, you should check out this book.” I’d have said, “Okay.” And I never would have done it again. But he actually went out of his way to put it in my hands and it changed my life. So now I think of him every single time I think of that thing. It’s an awesome way if you want to impact people’s lives positively.

Brandon Turner:
That’s very cool. Very cool. All right, well, that’s today’s quick tip. All right, folks, that’s it, let’s get into today’s show. Again, I think you’re going to love this, so grab a pen and paper, take some notes today and make sure you’re listening for the song you’re going to love it. This is our interview with Bryce Stewart. Bryce, welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast, man. It’s been a long time coming, I’m excited to get you back and see what you’ve been up to. What have you been up to?

Bryce Stewart:
Thanks so much, I’m really excited to be back on. I’ve had a lot going on in the last, I guess, two and a half, nearly three years since you guys had me on. So I’m excited to talk about it.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, well let’s get into it. So maybe first for those who didn’t listen to your last episode, what number was that again? I know I have it in here somewhere.

Bryce Stewart:
276.

Brandon Turner:
276. So for those who didn’t listen to that, maybe give us a quick two-minute rundown on who you are, how you got into real estate, and what your portfolio looked like when we last talked to you.

Bryce Stewart:
Sure. The brass tacks are this, I had been a sixth grade teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and I went from being essentially about $50,000 in debt with a wife and young kids at age 27 to being completely retired at age 35 and having a portfolio that was delivering me around $10,000 in monthly passive income, so I was able to retire. The big takeaway that seemed to hit most people hardest from our first episode was a story I shared with you guys about vacuuming my truck as a convenient and tidy parable for how to approach real estate investing. Is that ringing any bells for the two of you?

Brandon Turner:
It is definitely ringing bells for me. I still actually give that analogy to people all the time, I just tell them that I invented it not you, I’m just kidding.

Bryce Stewart:
I won’t go through the entire story, but the point of it is this… sell a truck and it was overly complicated. I had to decide that the very first step in selling my truck was to go and vacuum out the truck. Instead of being intimidated by the entire process of getting rid of a truck that I had a loan on, I just had to focus in on the first step, being to go outside, get my shop vac, and vacuum the thing. Then the next day after that, take it to the carwash and then the next day after that. Eventually, it got to the point where I was able to sell it, but I never could have anticipated how it would go before I started taking those steps. I think it’s a good parable for investing in real estate because a lot of times, for the listeners who are on here, you’ve got a watermelon in front of you that you have to eat and you keep telling yourself, “My mouth is not big enough to swallow this entire watermelon.”

Brandon Turner:
Nope.

Bryce Stewart:
The answer is, well, you need a knife. Nobody can swallow an entire watermelon, you have to be able to cut it up into pieces that are bite sized or you’ll never get it down. And you shouldn’t eat the rind, maybe that’s a lesson in there too somewhere.

Brandon Turner:
Probably. Well, you could try but you might get some painful experiences out of it. Which also relates to real estate, sometimes you try stuff. I love both those pictures because they just show that people oftentimes don’t take action because they can’t see the full picture. I like to say, the analogy I use often is like driving through the fog. You can’t see the deer that’s in the road two miles down the road so people pull over to the side of the road. That would be ridiculous, but we do it all the time in other areas of life. But when you’re driving, as long as you just keep moving down the road, you always can see a little bit further. As long as you keep asking the question like, what is the next step? What’s the next logical step in this process? You’re always going to get the answers that you want as you get through that. So I think that made a huge impact on me and hundreds of thousands of other people.

Bryce Stewart:
Well, and the good part about it is that it actually applies to every stage of your investing career, whether you’re David Green, Brandon Turner, Bryce Stewart, or just starting out, that’s something that everybody has some next step that’s bite sized. We’ve talked ourselves into not taking it because we think it’s too big. Or what often happens is this I find, you run into some barrier, which is like a lack of knowledge barrier, you get to some point where you’re like, “I don’t know what to do next.” And then you freeze. So whether it’s starting a fund, whether it is hiring an admin for a real estate business, whatever it is, you get to some point where you’re like, “I just don’t know what to do next.” Then you stop. The key in continuing to go forward is finding out how to either get help or to break down what you do know into something that you can do next.
So for the listeners who are out there look, I want to give value to everybody who’s listening to this podcast today. Whether you’re a beginning investor or a seasoned investor, I’m hoping there’s something from what we talk about today that you can really take away. But in each case it’s going to be that you have to break it down and take the next step. When you’re a real estate investor, there’s a lot of those things that if you just push the boulder up to the plateau, the effort ends and you get to reap the benefits of it long-term.

Brandon Turner:
I love this concept. I think when you were on the show the first time I really started in my mind working toward this idea. I say it now on the podcast all the time, and I really think you were probably the origin of this is that every difficult thing in life there’s nothing hard, I would say, there’s nothing hard, it’s just steps that you haven’t defined yet or practiced enough. In other words… Then I also say everything can be broken up into five minute tasks, everything. Building a nuclear bomb is a series of five minute tasks, it’s connect this wire there, install this piece of plutonium there. Everything could be broken up into five minute or less tasks that a fourth grader could do in almost every way, in almost everything,
So, yeah, when you take that time to really ask, “Well, what is the most important next step? What is that next thing? What is the vacuum my truck moment in this thing?” All of a sudden you realize you could go and build a gigantic real estate fund or you could go and buy properties out of state or you could do a number of them, you could go to the moon. It’s so freeing to realize that it’s not difficult it’s just steps. So once you define what those steps are, you’re going to figure it out. And once you practice them, then it becomes easy, then it becomes who you are. You and I would go buy a duplex tomorrow, it wouldn’t be a big deal because we’ve done the steps, we’ve defined them.

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah, and you stop telling yourself you have to eat the entire watermelon.

Brandon Turner:
Yes, yeah.

Bryce Stewart:
It’s time to cut it up.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Bryce Stewart:
The one difference is you said a fourth grader can do it. I’ve taught fourth graders before, remember I was a teacher. Here’s the difference, fourth graders will ask for help.

Brandon Turner:
Uh, yep. Yeah.

Bryce Stewart:
So one other thing I’ve done in the last three years since I was on you guys’ show is I mentored a 20 year old who came to me after the show. Now he was a friend of a friend, it wasn’t just some random thing. But he heard the podcast episode and he came to me, he said, “Hey, we both know this person and now I know you. Will you mentor me? I want to be a real estate investor.” 20 years old, he opted not to go to college, which for him was the right choice, it wasn’t the right time to incur debt, and he wanted to start investing in real estate. But it was still at 20 years old, a lot of it was still over his head and it wasn’t dumbed down enough to the point where it was like, “Hey, go and get this form in this particular county and go and do this.”
So it’s really helpful when you’re starting out in real estate that you have somebody who you’re talking with or who you’re with who can define the parameters for you and give you an ecosystem in which to be stupid and ask really stupid questions. The one thing that I had him do and this is something everybody who’s listening should do right now, if you’ve never done this, this is the first step. I hereby as king of the universe I forbid you to reach out to a mentor until you’ve taken this step. Go on Google, search a blank agreement of sale for your state. In Pennsylvania, it’s about 19 pages long to get the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors Agreement of Sale. I had him print out all 19 pages and I said, “Take this home, read it through seven to 10 times, don’t you dare call me again until you’ve read through this agreement of sale seven to 10 times. On the 10th time that you read through it, take a highlighter and highlight each section of the agreement of sale that you still don’t understand after your seventh time through.”
Because honestly if you understand an agreement of sale, that’s real estate 101 and that’s a superior education that most people never get because they don’t take the time to understand the tool that they’re using. So with this kid, he did exactly that. He was a great mentee. Is that the word, mentee?

Brandon Turner:
Sure.

Bryce Stewart:
He printed out an agreement of sale, he marked it up, he brought it back to me a week later and we went through it together and looked at, okay, here’s the parts he still didn’t understand. Then he understood how to analyze a deal, here’s good numbers, here’s good rents for what the price is, but he didn’t understand how to make an actual offer on a property. He understood this one would be good if I was able to rent it, but how do I actually go and get it? So he and I we took a bunch of paper agreements of sale and we plugged in dummy properties. At first, stuff that was never going to leave my office, just him and I going through it. We plugged in the amounts, we plugged in the sales data.
Here’s the crowning irony. When he goes to a real estate agent, they’re going to use DocuSign or something similar. What’s it called? Dotloop to do this. It would be done digitally but he would never have been comfortable filling out a DocuSign agreement of sale without me going through and doing the whole highlighter and pen and writing into a normal agreement of sale to get him ready to make his first deal. That was really key for him.

David Green:
A lot of people will ask that question, Bryce, what do you do in an escrow? What happens here? What happens there? You’re making a very good point because everything that occurs in an escrow is coming right out of the contract.

Bryce Stewart:
Exactly.

David Green:
That’s what spells out everything that you’re going to do. So if you go through there and you understand, “Okay, I have a 15 day inspection contingency, what is that for?” Well, you will want to make sure that the property you’re buying is in the condition you want it to be in or the right neighborhood. But you don’t have time to do all that work before you write an offer, so there’s a period that you have to do it where you can back out if you see something that you don’t like. Well, what kind of stuff do we get inspected? Well, let’s look for termites, let’s look for a home inspection. You can really systematically break down everything that goes into buying real estate starting with that as your skeleton.

Bryce Stewart:
Absolutely. And the problem is this, most people don’t look at an agreement of sale until they have a time deadline deal that they’re trying to get. Then all of a sudden, they’re trying to learn their way through an agreement of sale, all 19 pages of it, and they’re up against other offers or there’s a highest and best due and now they’re trying to educate themselves on an agreement of sale. Because the realtor can’t just tell you here, sign here, initial here, sign here, initial here. That’s not the right thing for a realtor to do you have to understand what you’re signing and how you’re making an agreement before you do it. You don’t want to learn when you have a hot deal in front of you that you don’t want anybody else to get a hold of. That’s not the time to try to figure out an agreement of sale.
So for me, I had put in a bunch of reps on all the properties that I already own and gone through it so much, but I realized this kid needs to put in a bunch of reps, we’ll call them dry reps, without an actual deadline on the hook so that when we have one ready to go, he can do it quickly and know what numbers and everything he’s going to put into the agreement of sale.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Bryce Stewart:
That was absolutely 100% free step. I don’t know, it costs me 19 pages of paper and however much printer ink I used to get it into his hands. But it was a really free step that turned him into actually a much more sophisticated investor over a fairly short amount of time.

David Green:
So that’s how you’d recommend that new people trying to get started, that’s one of the ways to make your [crosstalk 00:15:59]?

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah. Like I said, if I’m king of the universe, I’m going to forbid you to call Brandon or call David or call anybody else until you’ve put in that level of work. That’s your test, will you do that? Will you download an agreement of sale and do that part and then come to somebody with an AOS an agreement of sale that’s marked up and say to them, “These are the remaining parts I don’t understand, can you explain to me how this goes?” It’s a lot easier for them to help you instead of them taking a toddler and trying to turn them into a real estate investor.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that’s cool.

David Green:
It certainly shows more respect for the person you’re going to talk to as well.

Bryce Stewart:
Absolutely.

David Green:
You’re trying to skip the learning process by going right to the source and saying, “Just tell me what I’m supposed to do.” But then you’ve got to come back a million other times to ask a million other questions as opposed to really having a grasp of understanding what goes on. I think that’s pretty nice.

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah. Then let me throw this out there too. The deal that this guy ended up buying, the triplex that he bought, I did not go to see it with him. I told him, “I think this is a good deal from the outside, but I don’t know and I’m not going to tell you whether you should go through with this or not because honestly, I don’t want to be culpable if things go South after you buy and move into the place. So I’ve given you all the knowledge I know how to give you, I’ve prepared you with what I know. But now you have to walk through the threshold of that investment property on your own like a man. So man up and do it and I’m out of the picture. Call me if you have any questions or anything on how to do whatever’s next, but this is you alone doing it. Your name’s going to be on the deed, not mine.”

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that’s good for-

Bryce Stewart:
So we walked him through it and he did it. It was terrific and now he’s a landlord at 20 now he’s 21.

Brandon Turner:
That’s cool, man.

David Green:
That’s really cool.

Bryce Stewart:
So he’s a landlord at 21 years old.

Brandon Turner:
So let’s go back to your story again a little bit. I want to get more caught up on what you’ve done in the last year now or the last of years since being on the show. So what was your portfolio size before? What have you done since? And then let’s walk through that last couple of years.

Bryce Stewart:
So I’m going to give this caveat, when I’ve, I’ve listened to a bunch of you guys’ podcasts, and sometimes you guys interview people that seem so incredibly accomplished that I listen to the podcast and what I come away with is the same emotions of scrolling Facebook and seeing people’s vacations. Their photos from their vacation and you come away and you’re like, “Well, it must be nice to be them but I can never have that vacation or whatever.” So before I say this, I know the temptation it’s like I’m trying to flex or whatever and people are going to hear it and say, “Oh, that must be nice to be him.” But there really are ways to do what I’m doing and hopefully we can spell some of those out. So I basically doubled the revenues from my portfolio, I went from 23 to 37 units and I did that while simultaneously decreasing the geographical radius of my portfolio.

Brandon Turner:
What do you mean? You just bought all my area?

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah. I was tired of driving, I don’t like driving a whole lot. So I bought places that were adjacent to the places I already owned by 1031 exchanging out of other places that I owned that were farther away.

Brandon Turner:
Interesting.

Bryce Stewart:
You’re going to think I’m a spoiled brat because a lot of investors that I talk to are like, “I would kill to have all of my properties in one city.” But for me, I wanted to control the block and the neighborhood that I already had invested in deeply. So I can actually show you guys if I screen share here, this might be needed.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, do it.

Bryce Stewart:
My market is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For those of you who are just listening and not looking, my market is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is essentially an hour and change West of New York City. It is about an hour North of Philadelphia. Bethlehem, Allentown, and Easton comprise what’s called the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. It’s the third largest Metro area in the state, it has about 850,000 residents. For my money, it’s a perfect area for a number of reasons. One, it’s growing, it’s one of the only areas in the Northeast that the population is growing like gangbusters. And two, it is a gigantic logistics hub, FedEx and Amazon both have freight hubs in the Lehigh Valley, which means they land freight here. Then in the Lehigh Valley as essentially one legal trucker’s day drive to half of the nation’s population.

Brandon Turner:
Oh, wow.

Bryce Stewart:
So that’s key because it means it’s a great area for logistics and also the land here is I would say, as cheap as you can get as far East as you can get in the United States. So if you keep going East from where I am, you’re in New York or you’re in New Jersey and prices tend to get a lot higher in those areas. Whereas the Lehigh Valley, by comparison is, still very well priced. Well, guide my screen here so it doesn’t get too crazy, sorry. So it’s a terrific downtown, Bethlehem is. This is another reason I’ve invested in this area. The downtown is a historic downtown, it’s somewhere that a lot of young professionals want to live, it has a lot of restaurants which meant something before COVID and will mean something again briefly. But it’s somewhere where actually it’s fun to live here.
The Lehigh Valley is a great place to invest and if you’re a remote investor like David from California or somebody like him, this is an area that a lot of investors have moved into because the price ratio to the kind of rent that you can charge is very good. So this is main street Bethlehem, there are restaurants, there are shops, there’s outdoor shopping and dining. All of my properties are basically within a three to four block radius of this hip hop happening downtown.

David Green:
Oh, wow.

Bryce Stewart:
So what I’m talking about happened with this as a context, I don’t think it would work everywhere. But it worked in my market because there’s a high demand and I can re-rent my places very quickly. I have somewhere close to zero days vacancy every year in all 37 of my units. So the strategy that I utilized was I basically BRRRR’d inside od the deal.

Brandon Turner:
What does that mean?

Bryce Stewart:
I can explain what that means to all the listeners who do… I’m assuming most of your listeners know what a BRRR is.

Brandon Turner:
Buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. But for those who don’t know. It’s like a flip they hold on to.

Bryce Stewart:
Exactly. Step one is I found an off-market deal because I went in and started talking to a 92 year old real estate investor who knew other 92 year olds. And they’re looking to unload their portfolio without leaving their heirs with a gigantic mess to clean up. So I found an older gentleman who was trying to sell a 21 unit portfolio and he wanted $1.6 million for those 21 units. Now, there’s a five unit in there that I did not want and I also did not have $1.6 million nor would I have gotten approved for a loan to buy a $1.6 million portfolio. So I talked to the guy and I convinced him to peel off the five unit and sell me 16 contiguous units that were adjacent to mine.

Brandon Turner:
Where this multi-family or single-family?

Bryce Stewart:
It was two duplexes and a 12 unit they were all completely contiguous. So here’s how I structured the deal, we negotiated a price of $1,050,000 for those 16 contiguous units. I still did not have $1,050,000, in fact, I was rubbing pennies together. I went to my father-in-law who might have borrowed money out of a HELOC from before. That was how I had to use hard money in the past was to utilize a HELOC from my father and my father-in-law and then refinance out and pay them back.

Brandon Turner:
Sure.

Bryce Stewart:
This was my biggest ask ever, I borrowed $315,000 from my father-in-law. Now, when we brought the deal to the settlement agent, they divided up these two purchases on separate HUD’s. So the two duplexes were able to be conveyed on one deed that was four of the 16 units and the 12 unit needed to be a standalone transaction. I used the $315,000 to buy the two duplexes with cash for a purchase price of $265,000. They appraised for $330,000 right away.

Brandon Turner:
Nice.

Bryce Stewart:
I went to a bank and said, “I would like to get a refinance loan based on the $330,000 valuation.” Now, this is where it hearkens back to what we were talking about before. Remember, banks want to loan money based on the value of the collateral assets. So even though I had just purchased this property for, what did I say? $265,000, it appraised for $330,000. The bank was willing to loan me 80% of the 330 not 80% of the original purchase price. Now, not all banks are going to be willing to do that, but I found a local bank that was willing to do that. So I immediately refed back out, what would that be? $267,000 of the $330,000 purchase price. I still hadn’t bought the 12 units, but now I had $267,000 in cash still in my hand because I had refinanced it back out of this two duplexes which I now owned. Then I went to settlement on the 12 unit and used the $267,000 as the down payment for the remaining $785,000 purchase price for the 12 units.
So I essentially BRRRR’d, it was within a month, I BRRRR’d within the deal, bought those properties. I still had a little bit of change left over I did some renovations and within a year, the value of the 16 units was $1.5 million. I refinance it back out and paid back my father-in-law his $315,000 and gave it back to him. So that was $0 of my own money, I didn’t hurt my father-in-law at all because I was willing to pay the ongoing interest on his HELOC every month, and I was able to grab property and make sure it cash flowed, get a new valuation and pay everybody back out. And now the equity is all mine and the cashflow that these properties throw off is all mine.

Brandon Turner:
That’s cool.

Bryce Stewart:
So when you’re a real estate investor, this kind of stuff crops up. When you can drive the value of the property up, you can borrow more money against the increased value of the property, that’s the BRRRR method. Now, I want to throw out something here that’s a lesson for every advanced real estate investor and that’s this. I ran into some hard times when I was renovating the 12 units. First of all, it was filled with tenants who were not great. Within eight months, two of my tenants had died, I was carrying Naloxone or Narcan around because one of my tenants get… Which by the way is how you revive someone from a heroin overdose is Naloxone or Narcan. My tenant had said, “If you ever find me unconscious, use this to revive me.”

Brandon Turner:
Oh, my God.

Bryce Stewart:
The day before settlement on a 12 unit… Yeah, exactly, now I’m carrying around. The day before settlement, the seller called me and said, “Hey, by the way, in the front hallway, you’re going to find a head hole in the drywall because two of the tenants got into a fight in the front hallway and one of them put the other one’s head through the wall. Just so know, that’s waiting for you when you take ownership.” So it wasn’t all easy breezy, I walked into a really difficult situation. My wife and I had to figure out everything from tracking down next of kin for a deceased tenant, to dealing with a funeral home who didn’t have next of kin, to doing an estate clean out for an apartment with food on the table and in the refrigerator, and honestly drugs and other stuff up to your knees inside of the apartment. It was not great and this place was in not great condition.
But over the course of the year, the reason that the value went up so much is I busted my butt, I managed contractors. I did a lot of the work to add some equity to the place. And we turned around all 12 units to turn it into something that now is highly desirable, it’s clean, it’s neat, it’s trendy, it’s somewhere that my tenants now want to live. But it was not easy and it took a lot of hard work.

Brandon Turner:
That’s cool, man.

Bryce Stewart:
Something else I want to throw out to you guys, David and Brandon, this may help. I also had a contractor who was working on that 12 unit. Now, I didn’t pull permits because the contractor was not doing work that required permits.

Brandon Turner:
Sure.

Bryce Stewart:
He was replacing flooring and cabinets so there was no need for me to get a permit from the city. He injured himself while he was working in my place and I had simply taken his word that he was adequately insured before he started doing work on my property. Landlords out there, that’s a no-no. You want additional insurance certificate from your contractor’s insurance agent before he even darkens the threshold of the door. Because if he’s not adequately insured, that can come back on you as the owner of the property. I’ll throw this out there too, if you’re just doing side work like you hired a high school kid to clean out your gutters or something like that and that kid falls off a ladder, the first thing that they ask at intake at the ER is how did you injure yourself and they want to know whether it was a work-related injury or just a normal injury. That triage is where the insurance claim goes to.
So even if you’re a big wig real estate investor at this point, you need to protect yourself against potential stuff like this. Thankfully, with this contractor who hurt himself, I was able to make the case that I was not his employer, which that’s the first thing they look for, and therefore I was not obliged to carry workers’ compensation to have this guy working on my property. I didn’t have workers’ comp because I don’t have employees, there’s actually no way for me to get it. I had to go through a whole rigmarole with my insurance agent he’s like, “Why did you not have this paper in hand?” I’m like, “You didn’t tell me I needed to get it in hand from everybody.” So I don’t know if you guys have ever run into that or if you’ve operated without ever having to deal with a problem like that. But you’ve got to protect yourself when you have this kind of work done. Even if you’re a big wig or you have lots of units, that can come back and bite you, and it’s a precaution that you need to take.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, yeah.

Bryce Stewart:
So it was trying and difficult. And the number one point I walked away with was either you have to have somebody who has an insurance certificate that they’re sending to you. Or if you’re having somebody do side work on one of your properties and they’re not an insured contractor because the kind of work that they’re doing is not something that’s insured, you want to have somebody, and talk to your insurance agents about this, you want somebody who has what’s called a workers’ compensation waiver form. It’s them agreeing to not pursue a workers’ comp claim if they happen to be injured. They’re waiving their right to workers’ compensation. So talk to your insurance agent about a workers comp waiver form.
There’s probably some big investors out there right now who tomorrow are having people doing work in their properties who do not have a certificate or it’s somebody’s cousin helping them do demo because they’re doing demolition on a unit and the person doesn’t have adequate medical insurance. Guys, this is so important that I actually wrote a song that I’m going to play for.

Brandon Turner:
No way.

Bryce Stewart:
To drive this point home for all of your investors.

Brandon Turner:
No, did you really?

Bryce Stewart:
About how there’s a lot of really dumb decisions that you could do.

Brandon Turner:
Bryce is grabbing his guitar right now for those who can’t see this.

Bryce Stewart:
If you can’t see it and you can hear it, this is called the-

Brandon Turner:
This a first on the podcast. This is the first.

Bryce Stewart:
This is called the have your workers sign a workers’ comp waiver form. There’s a lot of dumb things you could do, but this one is dumb to not have them do it. Are we ready? Here we go, coming through.

Brandon Turner:
I hear it.
(singing)

Bryce Stewart:
Remember it even if you’re a big investor, I hope that song plants in your brain.

Brandon Turner:
Bryce, you have a way of making statements that people are going to remember forever.

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah, I hope so.

David Green:
That’s funny.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, I have been there.

Bryce Stewart:
Those are some big lessons. That I learned that stuff comes to you one step at a time. It starts with perfecting the step that you’re on, it starts with doing those little steps that you have that are right in front of you, it starts by asking for help from people who know how to define an ecosystem of answers for you like I did with that kid who was just starting out. He could really ask stupid questions and make mistakes on paper with me that I could tell him that’s not going to work out. He was willing to do the work to get up to that point. So for me, a few things have helped drive that home. One, is that again, I joined the M1 Mastermind, I’ve found a lot of great answers there from how to do a wholesale agreement. I had never done a wholesale deal, I did one of those in the last three years. I made $40,000 off of it, that was terrific.

Brandon Turner:
Nice.

Bryce Stewart:
And each step you’re going to be able to ask for help, but you have to make sure you’re not afraid of looking stupid like asking how to go get a form on a website so you can take yourself past the finish line. The other thing I did in the last three years was I wrote a book on house hacking.

Brandon Turner:
Nice.

Bryce Stewart:
It took me a really long time. You guys have both written books so you probably know how this works.

Brandon Turner:
It takes a long time.

Bryce Stewart:
Writing a book is like giving birth to a pine cone, it hurts and it’s slow and it is not always a fun process and that can get messy.

Brandon Turner:
What’s it called?

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah, my book is called House Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Essentially it breaks down my journey in house hacking one stupid little step at a time from the perspective of me and my wife going from being again, scared kids who had just gotten married and were in debt to being financially free. Now we have four kids, we live in our dream house, it’s been funded by house hacking essentially.

Brandon Turner:
That’s awesome. Hey, first of all, where did people get the book? Just so they can go and check it out.

Bryce Stewart:
You can buy the book on Amazon. The show producer said he’d put a hyperlink in the show notes, so you can do that. But it’s on Amazon, you can buy a paperback copy or get an e-copy for your Kindle or for any other e-reader that you have. If you just search House Hacker’s Guide it should be one of the first choices. And I’d love it if you read it, it’s, like I said, a stupidly simple perspective on how to take each step one at a time in the process of house hacking.

Brandon Turner:
That makes sense. Cool, man, cool. Congrats. Yeah, writing a book is a battle, it’s a process. I wrote one this year, it’s coming out next year. Also it’s a journey, it’s good for clarifying your thoughts and then just mentoring people. But yeah, it’s awesome. So congratulations on that. All right, Bryce, I got a few more questions to throw at you before we get out of here today. First of all, if you had to sum up the last three years, or if you had to create a theme since you’ve been on the show last time, what’s the theme of the last couple of years? If you had to sum it up, let’s say you’re going to write a book, a biography of the last two years of your life, what’s the title of that book? And what are the biggest lessons you learned?

Bryce Stewart:
I would say the biggest theme is this, one, I know this is going to be long, but I’m not a disciplined person. I’m not self-disciplined, type A people are a mystery to me. Even people who are able to get up early and knock it out of the park every day, that’s a mystery to me too. The only thing I’ve got going for me is I’ve been willing to move, I’ll put it like this, I’ve been willing to move the ball three yards on every down. I just tell myself every day, “Okay, there’s something I can do today whether it’s just print out a stupid little form and leave it on the printer for tomorrow. I’m just going to take one stinking step today that benefits my portfolio, that gets me headed towards my goals.”
You have to have goals so you know where you’re headed, but once you have those goals in place and they’re clear to you and you love the goals and they look like something that you really want, then you just have to say, “Okay, today I’m going to call this person, today I’m going to do this Google search and download this form.” And you’ll run into stuff where you’re like, “I don’t know what’s next.” Okay, call somebody who does know what’s next. So I would say the theme is move the football three yards tomorrow and then three yards the day after that and you’ll keep getting first downs.

Brandon Turner:
That’s so good. That’s so good. Answer with this question, what’s one thing in school that should be taught that is not? If you were the emperor of the galaxy what would you force students to learn?

Bryce Stewart:
I am, Bryce is the ruler of the galaxy. Well, one thing I’ll say is this schools in a lot of ways is a cruel setup for kids. If you think about it, if you guys had a boss, if you had a boss anymore and your boss gave you a project and you worked on that project for a month, and then after a month your boss came in and said, “This is all wrong, this is not how I wanted it.” You’d be like, “I just spent one twelfth of my year doing this. It would have been really nice to know on day two that we were headed in the wrong direction.” And it’s because humans really like a tight feedback loop, they don’t like futility, they don’t like their work to be squandered. So they like to know quickly, am I headed in the right direction with this or am I headed in the wrong direction with this?
The cruel thing that we do to kids or we have historically is we teach them some concepts in class, they get homework that they take home, and they try it out that night. Let’s say they get it completely wrong, they bring the homework back the next day, the teacher, if they’re a great teacher, collects it that day and then takes it home again to grade that night. By the time the kid gets the feedback loop, I did this wrong, it’s three days after they actually did the real assignment. It’s impossible for them to quickly correct when the setup is like that. I’ll say the one blessing of digital curriculum is that in some ways, if done right, it can provide a much quicker feedback loop. This is why kids like video games because video games have a very tight feedback loop. “Oh, I died, okay, reset. Start it over again, I got to try that all over again. Okay, I died again. I’ll do that again.” They can modify their behavior quickly and start experiencing more and more success with each iteration.
That’s why you need a mentor when you’re first starting out because they can give you that quick feedback loop and say, “That’s not going to work, the seller’s never going to go for it, try again, start over.” Instead of failing through bad deals, you want somebody who can really provide you with a tight feedback loop. So if I could change anything about education, it would be a tight feedback loop, especially on money and financial education.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, agreed 100%.

Bryce Stewart:
By the way, instead of finding out after you graduate college, that you’re 100 grand in debt and you didn’t pick a major that’s going to pay that debt off very quickly, that’s not a very good feedback loop.

David Green:
1000% agreed.

Brandon Turner:
All right, so Bryce, I we talked earlier about mentorship and mentoring people and talking to people. A lot of people listening to show maybe are in that position that like that 20 year old that reached out to you. So what I’d like to do is a new segment of our show I don’t have a catchy phrase or catchy title yet for this section. But basically we’re going to call it, I’m coming with it right now, we’re going to call it for those just getting started, how would you answer the following? So in other words, if somebody… That’s a lame title for this section, but we’re going to work on that one. But imagine there’s people listening to show that are brand new and you’re really good at explaining concepts. I want to throw some of the most commonly asked questions from new investors at you and see how you would advise people in these situations, sound good?

Bryce Stewart:
Got it. As long as I’m not taking on any moral culpability.

Brandon Turner:
Yes, exactly.

David Green:
Sure.

Brandon Turner:
All right, would you buy this exact property? I’m just kidding. First question is, if somebody says I can’t invest in real estate, I don’t have the money, how do you respond to that?

Bryce Stewart:
My first go-to is where’s all your money going. I’m going to stay this, real estate investing is not a transactional thing, it’s a long thing. So if you are saving up money to make towards a down payment, the saving up of the money is part of real estate investing. So if you have a car that’s way too expensive, by the way, the number one selling car in the United States is an F150, if you have an F-150 that you don’t need and it cost you $40,000, the way to start investing in real estate is to liquidate what you don’t need and to start having more money so that you can make a down payment. You can’t just say, “I can’t begin investing in real estate because there’s no deal on your desk it starts with the choices that come before.
So my first piece of advice would be sign up for YNAB, which is youneedabudget.com. Sign up for that, make sure you know where all your money is going, and then we’ll talk about you not having money to make a real estate investment. If you have really bad financial habits and I walk you into a real estate investment, guess where all the profit from that investment is going to go, it’s going to continue to go towards your bad spending habits. So in one sense, look, this sounds really bad, but you have to deserve to make profits from real estate by tending the money that you already have well. For some people you’re not ready, you need to pay off your school debt or your car debt before you even think about investing in real estate. Those steps are part of investing in real estate because once you dispose of them, you’re ready to actually buy a property.

Brandon Turner:
That’s so good, man. That’s so good. Yeah, it really does begin with that financial foundation. People are like, “Well, I don’t have any money, I can’t invest in real estate.” Well, are you at least willing to commit to living on a budget? I love that you mentioned you need a budget, the YNAB, they’re actually a sponsor of this episode of the podcast earlier. I don’t think you knew that, they’re a legit company though that I’ve known about and used for a long time. It’s just, where’s your money going? Live on a budget and make it easy and simple, easy to follow. So, yeah, great advice.

Bryce Stewart:
Well, let me throw this out there too. There’s probably really experienced real estate investors out there who are making lots of money. Then the minute it comes under their roof in the form of profits, they’re not taking care of it. So all this work that they’ve done out there going and landing a really great property, they’re still pulling their hair out in their home not budgeting correctly. Let me say this in YNAB’s defense, it costs $50 a month which is less than it costs for one session of marriage counseling. My wife and I went from our budget being, it was always a retrospective discussion where we looked at, okay, here’s our bank ledger and we yelled at each other there, “Why did you spend money on this? Why is this on the credit card? Why did you do this?” Budgeting to me was always guilt inducing and retrospective.
YNAB is essentially the envelope system digitally so that instead of budgeting being about looking backwards at what you spent, you are allocating all of your money going forwards. It helps okay after everything is earmarked, here’s how much disposable income I have leftover to actually go and do something with like invest in real estate. But it gives you a much better picture of where your money can go in the future rather than to me, budgeting was always looking backwards and feeling bad, it’s a key difference.

Brandon Turner:
Makes sense.

David Green:
That’s really good. I like that it’s empowering basically. And it changes your whole mindset towards, “Oh I’m excited, I’m allocating $200 towards entertainment. How do you think we can stretch that $200 as far as it’ll go? Where should we go?” Versus, “Why did you go spend that money on entertainment?”

Bryce Stewart:
Right. I’m telling you it changed our marriage, it really did.

Brandon Turner:
That’s cool.

David Green:
Okay, next question for you here, for those just getting started, how would you answer this? There are no good deals left, the market is too inflated.

Bryce Stewart:
I would say you’re probably right, let’s watch Netflix.

Brandon Turner:
There you go. End of the show. All right.

Bryce Stewart:
No. Well, I would say you want to buy David Green’s book because David is in a market that a lot of people think is bloated, which is the Bay Area. They feel like I can’t even break into this market, but the good thing about being, let’s say you live in the Bay Area is you can use California money and California equity and arbitrage that to go find a cash flowing property in the Midwest or in the Southeast of the United States. Now, granted you might not be able to house hack that and move out there the way that I did. But if you own a house in the Bay Area, you could have millions of dollars of equity that is right now frozen that with a very easy home equity line of credit or with a cash out refinance, you could reallocate that money and go through David’s protocols to go find a good property manager in a market that is going to cash flow as soon as you buy it instead of just closing your eyes and looking around at what happens to be in your neighborhood.
And it’s a very advantageous arbitrage by the way because prices and also values in California, are super high. I’m going to throw this on there right now. If you’re listening to this and you already own a home, right now, while you’re listening to this podcast, go take showing grade pictures of your house and save them on your computer and have them always ready along with a showing description of your home ready to rock and roll. Because if your life goes sideways or you need to move or you want to move, having that stuff ready to rock and roll can mean that you can sell your house more quickly or you can even refinance more quickly. It doesn’t cost you anything to have pictures of your house cataloged on your computer. Since the last podcast we did, my wife and I sold our house. I had my wife take pictures of our pool and landscaping in May with nothing on the horizon. We didn’t even know what we’re going to do but I knew this, I knew that come September we were not going to be able to go back and take May pictures.

Brandon Turner:
Oh, that’s true.

Bryce Stewart:
So in May you take May pictures, you catalog them, and you say then the flowers are new, the mulch is new, the pool is clean. Then when we went to sell it in September, those were the outside pictures that we used to sell our place.

Brandon Turner:
Yeah, that’s smart.

Bryce Stewart:
And honestly, we had an offer within 24 hours of listing our place on Zillow.

Brandon Turner:
That’s cool, man. All right, next question, we got a couple more for you in this section of how would you respond to this question from a new investor?

Bryce Stewart:
Sure.

Brandon Turner:
And I need a better name for this. My spouse does not want to invest, how do I convince them to invest in real estate?

Bryce Stewart:
Well, first I would say this, when you start out and you have a dream of being a real estate investor, it is like a fledgling bird. Its wings can barely open, its eyes can barely open, it has to have worms chewed up and fed to it, and that is your real estate investing dream. The people that are closest to you, they will accidentally step on that baby bird and kill it before it has the chance to grow into something that is sustainable. So I’m going to say this, don’t go to your significant other right away with your dream because one, they may have had a bad day, they may be stressed, they may not have read all the books that you’ve read or listened to the podcasts that you’ve read, or they might be the kind of person who is too analytical. They’re going to shut you down preemptively while your dream is still fledgling.
I would say do this instead, get your own private journal, like a mole skin journal, something that folds flat and as easy to write on, and start writing down what you actually want and how you think best you can get there. Read books, listen to podcasts, and write notes on it, and give that dream some legs and some life before you expose it to anybody’s criticism. Because even the love of your life may inadvertently kill your dreams before you know. So do that and then show them, bring expert testimony when you actually have the idea and say know, “I’ve done a lot of work on this and I have answers that I’m bringing you instead of guesses and postulates.”

Brandon Turner:
There you go.

David Green:
I think that’s probably sound advice overall is don’t take every single idea or dream you have to your spouse or your significant other, they’re not a one stop shop for everything that you would want. It may be their best to interest in their own head to shoot that idea down because that’s a risk that’s going to lose them money. So don’t pit yourself against the other person where each of you are trying to look out for your own best interests. Okay, I’ve got another question for you.

Bryce Stewart:
Sure.

David Green:
I want to invest in real estate, where do I go to find the best deals?

Bryce Stewart:
Geographically where?

David Green:
Website, geographically, realtor, just what do I do if I just want to get a good deal?

Bryce Stewart:
Well, I would start by analyzing your local market because you’re going to have at least some boots on the ground knowledge of where you happen to live. Again, it may be that you find out it’s overpriced, it’s bloated, and there’s no deals there. But that’s something you should go and find out first is in your local market. So for me, that’s where I started. It just so happened that I think I lived in one of the best places to invest over the last 10 years, on the Eastern Seaboard. I lucked into that one, thanks a lot. But do that first because you’re going to know boots on the ground. Okay, this is where the street is where I wouldn’t invest past this street because what the neighborhood turns into as it goes here. And you’re going to know this area is up and coming, we ate at that restaurant, we went here, we went there.
Start with your own knowledge, then I would say, if you’re up for it, get on a realtors auto email for not just your neighborhood but your county or your zip code or whatever. If it doesn’t bug you too much, have Zillow plug stuff into the zip codes around you. It’s scary to invest outside of area, I think you always need somebody with boots on the ground knowledge to invest in any area. Otherwise you’re taking too big of a chance. I’m assuming David, when he invests in out of area properties, he at least has somebody who knows which street it becomes not a good investment on and which street is up and coming. Maybe he built a relationship of trust there, but that’s the person that he asks because he built that network. So start where you are, start even with your own house, how can you optimize that? Can you refinance into a lower interest loan? Can you get a HELOC? Can you cash out, refinance? Then start concentric circles outside from there.

David Green:
When I wrote Long?Distance Real Estate Investing, what I realized was that it was really a book about systems. It’s the same process, Brandon I’m sure you’d agree, Bryce, you’d agree, it’s doing the same things over and over and over, but it’s a different solution at every step. You can’t repeat the same solution but the steps are almost always the same. I realized that I needed other people to do those things. So like you said, Bryce, that’s exactly right, you get a person who knows the area really good, often your property manager. Well, you’re already going to need a property manager, so boom, two birds with one stone. You’re going to need a person who is going to find you the deals. Well, that person often has lenders that work with investors because if you work with an agent who invests frequently, they need to find people that can do financing so they can get their deals closed. Boom, two birds with one stone.
A lot of the stuff we talk about when we’re discussing all the work you have to do, people erroneously think they have to go find 50 different human beings to do every step. The reality is you find your agent, they recommend a home inspector, they recommend a roof person, and they can go give you a quote on work that has to get done. The property manager might have a handyman if the agent doesn’t. Both of them know what lender in town tends to work with investors and maybe they put in a good word for you. A lot of the people in your core four, are finding out the periphery positions that you would need to do. Then you just keep cycling through those people until you find the ones you like and boom, you’ve got a system.
So I know one of the things that I’ve noticed that new investors make the mistake of is they think it’s like buying stocks. We’re like, “Well, do I use the Robinhood app or do I use this app?” Like, “Can I just listen to what stock that person bought and I’ll just go buy that stock?” Real estate investing is very different than stock investing, it’s not one road that you take every time to get into that deal. There’s a bazillion different roads, there’s sometimes the handyman himself or the home inspector has like, “Well, I know that house down the street needs a lot of work, no one’s buying that thing.” And you never would have even thought of it if you weren’t talking to enough people.

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah. And tell me if you agree with this too, David. That kid who I mentored, who bought the triplex, he wanted a deal but if I right away had walked him up to that triplex and again just handed him a DocuSign and said, initial here, sign here, initial here, do this here, that would not have achieved the result that I wanted because I couldn’t just hand him a deal. I needed to turn him into somebody who could be a real estate investor. He had to grow and learn and then we had to go get a deal. It sounds like what you’re saying, David, is that a lot of people come to you and they’re like, “How do I find a deal without growing personally and increasing my own skills? I just want it over and done with.” The answer is you should invest in a REIT or you should be a-

David Green:
A limited partner in a syndication.

Bryce Stewart:
Yeah, should be a limited partner in a syndication because you want an app based solution to real estate investing, you don’t want to grow into a real estate investor.

David Green:
That’s what I loved about your answer when you said that, “You can’t, just go watch Netflix.” That really is the best answer to give that person. Sometimes I get this as an agent when they’re like, “Okay, David, I want to fix her up or that I can BRRRR and I want it to cashflow at the 2% rule but it has to be in the best school district and I really want a view. But my mom, she also has to approve because she’s going to come bang all the time. And it needs to be the worst house on the block, what do we have to do?” I’ll say, “You should just keep paying rent.” That’s the only answer you can give someone who has the expectations like that. They have not yet worked through this process to have realistic expectations and a clear path for how to get what they want. So the takeaway is sometimes that’s the best thing you can do. Yeah, just don’t, tell me how it feels in 10 years when your rent went from $2,000 a month to $3,800 a month.

Bryce Stewart:
Right, yeah, I’m not knocking Netflix, there’s some good stuff on there. The crown is great, there’s some other [crosstalk 00:57:04].

David Green:
But you spend enough time not taking action and you start to realize that you were getting in your own way. Looking for an app based solution to the I want to retire from my job and not have to work anymore. That’s a really serious undertaking, that’s not something you just make a couple of clicks.

Brandon Turner:
Just buy Bitcoins you’ll be fine.

Bryce Stewart:
Right. Let me save you the grief here, I’m sure you guys both agree with this. We are all investors, if you’re listening to this, as king of the universe, I here by dub you an investor, you are now a capital I and investor and there’s no going back and you don’t get to outsource that title, you are an investor. Whether you ever buy real estate or not, you are investing in something. In my book, I say, “If you’re a renter, you are a real estate investor because you are paying to live somewhere and there is some opportunity for optimizing your financial scenario with that renting.” My wife, when we were really struggling and we were renting, she shopped like crazy for a cheap enough apartment for us to get into. It meant a $200 or $300 difference at a juncture when that was a really important $300 a month, $300 of cashflow differential.
So my wife was real estate investing when she was looking for a more optimal renting scenario. I’m glad she put on the investor hat to try to, I’ll call it to bring up the NOI for our little family corporation. We need to look at it like that and most people, they never internalize that lesson that you’re an investor already, you’re the CEO of your homes corporation, and your job is to maximize the income to begin to minimize the expenses so that the NOI on this endeavor is profitable. You’re in that game whether you like it or not, so you better start getting good at it.

David Green:
There you go.

Brandon Turner:
Man, this has been fun, this has been fun. So we got to get transitioning out of this episode. I got a Brazilian jujitsu instructor showing up at my house in a few minutes so I’m going to let you all go. But before we get there, let’s get to today’s…

Speaker 5:
Famous four.

Brandon Turner:
All right, the famous four. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. Bryce, you’re ready for the famous four? I know you answered this last time, but I don’t remember your answers nobody else does either, and maybe they’ve changed. So number one, favorite real estate book.

Bryce Stewart:
My favorite real estate book was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, now it’s the book on real estate investing by Brandon Turner.

Brandon Turner:
Oh, man. Thank you.

David Green:
Great.

Brandon Turner:
Wow, I felt so good. I’ll send you your check later.

Bryce Stewart:
And my own book.

Brandon Turner:
Of course, your own book.

Bryce Stewart:
House Hacker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Brandon Turner:
That’s my favorite book.

Bryce Stewart:
That’s my [crosstalk 00:59:49] favorite one.

Brandon Turner:
That’s my favorite book. I haven’t read it yet, but that’s my favorite book in the entire world. You should send me a copy man.

David Green:
All right, question number two.

Brandon Turner:
I’ll pay for it, but I want a signed copy from Bryce Stewart.

Bryce Stewart:
Absolutely.

Brandon Turner:
This is going to be good.

Bryce Stewart:
I’ll sign.

David Green:
It’s a [crosstalk 01:00:02] guide to the galaxy.

Bryce Stewart:
Exactly right, thank you.

David Green:
Very clever.

Bryce Stewart:
Thank you. Someone’s educated.

David Green:
All right, number two, what’s your favorite business book?

Bryce Stewart:
The last time I said, Think and Grow Rich, which is an unorthodox answer, I just rewatched the episode. I’m going to stick with it and here’s why Think and Grow Rich is a mindset book from the 1930s. Businesses are made up of people and people have mindsets. So to the degree that you can improve your own mindset, that will pay out dividends in whatever business endeavor you happen to be in. With a side note of, since meeting with you guys, I read the E Myth, which stands for the entrepreneurial myth, Revisited, that’s a great book about what David was talking about, building systems that allow you more passively and more freedom. So Think and Grow Rich and The E Myth Revisited.

Brandon Turner:
Awesome, man.

David Green:
All right, what are some of your hobbies?

Bryce Stewart:
So I like playing guitar on podcasts, just kidding, that’s the first time I’ve ever done that. So I have four daughters and we’ve been homeschooling them since quarantine, which means right now my hobby is being a principal and a warden and a teacher and sometimes a police officer. I’m arresting homicides in progress recently in my own home because they’ve been quarantining. But yeah, I like that. I’m involved with Young Life, which is a ministry to high school kids all around the country, it’s a non-violent organization.

David Green:
Yeah I love Young Life.

Bryce Stewart:
Young Life is terrific. Last time I was a Young Life leader at this point, they demoted me to board chairman.

Brandon Turner:
Oh, there you go.

Bryce Stewart:
So now I’m in charge of raising funds and allocating resources for Young Life.

Brandon Turner:
Fun, very cool, man. All right, well. What do you think separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

Bryce Stewart:
I’ll say this it’s custom designing your future life. I’m not going to say setting goals because I hate setting goals, it feels like homework. But people who are willing to custom design their life as if it was a product and then figuring out how to reverse engineer that ideal life, they tend to be successful because their actions can be directed towards a real target. They’re not just meandering or flailing around, they have defined what they want to produce. It’s like an iPhone, they didn’t just find a bunch of plastic and glass and circuits and then say, “Hey, we should build an iPhone.” They said need to make an iPhone and that means we have to go out and find glass, we have to go out and find silicon, we have to find germanium. They knew what to go get very definite end product. Successful people in any endeavor, they start with what’s the definite end product that I want and then they know what pieces to grab along the way.

Brandon Turner:
That’s so good, mic drop.

David Green:
That’s awesome.

Brandon Turner:
I’m Bryce.

David Green:
I really like your thinking there. All right, last question of the day, where can people find out more about you?

Bryce Stewart:
So my website is brycestewart.net, that has a link to my book, it also talks a little bit about me as an investor, about the journey that I’ve been on. If you want to go to my properties page and see, my properties are really nice, nicer than my house nice. Those are all listed on bethlehemrentals.com. So both of those ways are ways to find out about me. And then YouTube channel which you can look up by just looking at Bryce Stewart on YouTube, Bryce Stewart real estate might dial it in a little bit more specifically. That kid who I helped invest is going to help me do this YouTube channel both from a pro perspective and a rookie perspective simultaneously.

Brandon Turner:
That’s awesome. Very cool, man. We really appreciate having you here, it’s been a fun show. It was great last time, it was great this time. But just learning from you and obviously as a former teacher, you know how to explain these concepts well. So it’s always good to have you teaching everyone how to do this stuff. So thank you for joining us today, it’s been awesome.

Bryce Stewart:
You guys are terrific, I’m pleased.

Brandon Turner:
Thank you.

David Green:
Thanks Bryce, it was great having you back. This is David Greene for Brandon top real estate book Turner signing off.

Speaker 3:
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