David Greene on Where Rookies Go Wrong When Looking for an Agent

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, Episode 81.

David:
Question is, what does investor-friendly mean? Even that is sort of skipping the responsibility of telling them what you want from them and finding out what they can give you. When we say I want an investor-friendly agent, there’s still the assumption they know everything and they know what to do and they know what I need.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with Tony Robinson and we have big brother with us today as our guest on the show.

Tony:
We’ve got an absolute rockstar, the Mr David Greene on today’s podcast. And, man, this was one of my favorite conversations. David is obviously a wealth of knowledge in everything related to real estate investing. And I shared, while we were interviewing him, that my own investing career started by reading David’s two books, right? The Long-Distance Real Estate Investing, and the BRRRR book. And, man, he just shared so much about how to get started as a newbie, how to work with an agent, how to become an agent, so just so many good nuggets. I got too many things written down, even try and give you guys what the tidbits are.

Ashley:
And he answers the most common questions, but he gives answers you’ve probably never heard before, but they’re also like oh, yeah, that makes so much sense. Like, should you work with an investor-friendly agent? Well, he actually breaks that down, what does that even mean, and then setting expectations. So, I thought everything he said was really great. Make sure you guys listen through the whole episode because he talks about not only working with an agent, but also if you’ve considered becoming an agent and what you need to think about before you even start through that process of getting licensed.

Tony:
And he’s just a super cerebral guy. His whole mindset, his approach to life, to business, I think that’s going to be, honestly, one of the biggest takeaways from this episode is the mindset aspect that he’s brought to this conversation.

Ashley:
Before we bring David on, make sure you guys go and like our new YouTube channel. Search Real Estate Rookie, and all these episodes will be loaded up onto there and we’ll also have an additional video for you each week. So make sure you subscribe to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube. Let’s bring David onto the show. David, welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Show, the other BiggerPockets real estate show. Thank you so much for joining us.

David:
Yeah. I feel like when you go to a family reunion and you meet your cousins. You’re all the same family, but you don’t all live in the same house.

Tony:
There you go.

Ashley:
That’s right. Well, if there is anybody out there who doesn’t know the superstar that you are, can you please go into a little bit of your background for us, please?

David:
You’re going to make me tell everybody why I’m a superstar?

Ashley:
Yes.

David:
Okay. While I was a police officer, I started buying real estate. I live in California, in the Bay Area, and it got too expensive to buy real estate where I am. So eventually, I started buying it in Arizona and then in Florida, then Texas, then in Arkansas, different states, and I sort of put together this system for … I’m just doing the same thing all the time, let me just document what I’m doing here so that when I go to a new state, I can quickly find the pieces I need. That became the genesis of Long-Distance Real Estate Investing. I wrote that book for BiggerPockets after getting interviewed on their podcast. I became really good friends with Brandon Turner. I started contributing to the site by writing blogs and answering questions for people. And then eventually, when Josh Dorkin stepped down from the podcast, I had just wrote the BRRRR book and that was doing really well, and I did so much promotion of those books that I, frankly, got good at talking. Talking wasn’t a thing that I ever realized was a skill for most of my life.
So when Josh stepped down, Brandon and I ended up taking over the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast and since then, I’ve got even better at talking, I hope. Well, actually, probably better at listening because Brandon does most of the talking, if we’re being honest about everything here. And I became a real estate broker. Stepped down from being a police officer, now I run a real estate team under Keller Williams, and I started a mortgage business also, where we service the loans of our own clients as well as other realtors who need a lending officer. And I’m, to sum it up, very passionate about doing things with excellence, so that requires some patience because nobody’s excellent in the beginning.
And in order to scale big, like what I’m trying to do, I have to do it with other people, so I have to hire people, train people. And all this knowledge about real estate that I have accumulated, being the host of the podcast and building my own portfolio, sort of goes into pouring into those people, teaching them about just how all these pieces fit together and how to do a really good job. So I’m trying to build a huge real estate empire, where people who want to buy a house or want to sell their house have a name and a brand they can trust that’s going to do an excellent job. What I tell everyone is we sell your house as if it was mine. If I was flipping a house, this is how I would market it, this is how I would price it, this is the way that I would negotiate the deals, and we’re going to be doing that for our clients.
And it’s been going on for a couple years and things are going really good. I just saw that we are top 25 … We’re the 25th top team in the company of Keller Williams, that has about 180,000 agents, so we’re taking really big leaps there and-

Ashley:
Congratulations.

David:
Thank you. The mortgage-

Tony:
Yeah, congrats.

David:
Company’s also number 25 in the state of California right now. That’s been a business for about 10 months or so, so that’s really good for as new as we are. And I now make my living, as oddly as it sounds, helping rookies buy a house or people that own a house, sell a house. And so I’m super stoked to talk to you guys because almost everything that I work on every day and had to develop excellence in is helping people who have not done this before do it the same way that I would.

Tony:
Yeah. So, David, you’ve obviously got a ton of experience. And for those of you that are watching on YouTube, you can see behind David, he’s got his three books up there. And just a quick side note, David, when I made the decision to start investing in real estate, the two books that I read were Long-Distance Real Estate Investing and the BRRRR book. And I think for a lot of the rookies that are out there, those are the only two books you really need to get started, if you want to go the traditional long-term renting approach. So David’s got a ton of experience, but he’s also very good at breaking things down for the rookies, so pick up those two books if you haven’t.
So, David, we want to spend a little bit of time today talking about the agent/investor relationship here. So, I guess, the first question that kind of comes to mind for me is, and this is a question that we get all the time, does a new real estate investor need an agent? What should a new investor expect from that agent? How has the role of an agent kind of changed in today’s marketplace?

David:
Okay, that’s really good. Let’s start with describing, I think, the appropriate perspective that a investor should have regarding their relationship with their agent. So the agent space is very unique. They sort of function in several different capacities. The barrier to entry is very low. It’s easy to get your license, it is hard to be good at what you do. And I point that out because many other things in life that function in a similar capacity, like a fiduciary, would be an attorney, a lawyer, a CPA, the barrier to get into those is high, right? So not every lawyer’s good, but the amount of lawyers that are good to bad is much higher with good lawyers because it’s hard to pass the bar exam. You’ve got to go through a lot of school to get a legal degree. You can get your real estate license really quickly.
And so, I think, right off the bat, a lot of people that work with agents are misled and have a terrible experience because their assumption is oh, they’re a licensed agent, they’re all the same. Could not be more wrong. Another assumption, I think, investors make when they’re working with an agent or just regular people is that I have hired this agent. That word gets thrown around, and I don’t love that word because when you hire someone, you are paying them. There is an incentive for them to do their job because they don’t want to get fired, they don’t want the money to stop coming in. But you’re not paying your agent. If you’re a buyer, you’re paying them nothing. They’re getting paid, usually, from the seller. And if you don’t actually close on a deal, they don’t even get paid from the seller.
So the agent is at a huge disadvantage as far as them not knowing if they can trust you, them not knowing if they should work on your deal, because if it doesn’t close, they don’t get paid. And let’s be frank, how many people are losing sleep because they had their realtor analyze a bunch of deals or drive them around in their car and never closed on anything? It doesn’t happen. Okay? In those scenarios, what everyone says is, “Well, that’s their job.” Okay? And, again, it’s this job hiring verbiage, but who works a job for free? Who spends all their gas money and their time without getting paid, right? The agent only gets paid off of a commission. So you’ll hear people say, “Agents are greedy, they only care about their commission.” Well, how many of you are going to work for free? Just let’s be fair. Okay?
So that’s another thing I like to say is I don’t like the hiring perspective, I like the partnership. I am partnering with my agent. If I can get a house that works for my needs and they can help represent me, we both won. If I can’t, we both lost. We both put our time, energy and effort into this and we didn’t succeed. And the same goes for selling a house. If the agent can sell your house and make it a good experience for you and hopefully nets you top dollar, they’re going to get paid, you’re going to be happy, you’re going to send referrals, you won. If the house doesn’t sell, you both lost. They spent a bunch of money on marketing, you couldn’t move on with your life, you were inconvenienced.
So, really, you have to find, what I’m getting at here, is a situation that you acknowledge as win/win or lose/lose. You win together or you lose together. There’s no I’m a boss and I’ve hired you and I’m paying you and you’re not good at your job. Well, you’re still winning because you’re still getting paid, but I’m not. Or if I hire someone, I don’t pay them very much, but they give a ton of value. Okay? In that case, maybe the boss is winning, but the employee’s losing. This is different than that. Now, I preface all that so people can understand. I think this is where almost every single missed expectation that comes between agents and clients is this is not laid out on the table. Clients are walking in assuming my agent will take care of everything, they know how to do all this stuff. There’s no conversation in the very beginning about expectations and what you want, which is a recipe for disaster. I mean, if you want to talk about hurt feelings and failed relationships, it always boils down to missed expectations.
To further complicate this … Are you guys okay with me going on this long-

Tony:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley:
Yeah, go ahead.

Tony:
Let’s hear.

David:
Okay. To further complicate this, if you look at the DiSC profile, most salespeople and real estate agents are high Is, which means they are very into interactiveness, talking, making people laugh, being liked. They’re very popular, they’re very fun. They’re typically not going to usually be really analytical or really detail-oriented, so they don’t want to tell you that I don’t know how to do this because they don’t want to let you down. They’re going to just skirt around the issue, which leaves the client feeling like are they supposed to do this? Am I supposed to do this? My mom said her realtor did this, how come my realtor’s not doing this? And it creates this Petri dish, where you’re going to have bad bacteria growing from the bad relationships.
So the first thing that I do with everyone who comes to me, and what I think that every listener who wants to work with an agent should do, is have a very detailed, and if it’s uncomfortable, who cares, conversation about what they need from their agents and what their agent needs from them. It has to be both. So I’ll give you an example. I started a real estate team in Southern California and I’m starting a new one right now in Hawaii, so I’m in Maui all the time. I’m setting up a team so people that want to buy real estate in Maui can work through the David Greene team. People will email me and they will say, “Hey, David, I want to buy a short-term rental. I know you’re buying out there. Can you put me in touch with an agent?” which is exactly what they’re supposed to do.
Before I just connect them with the agent, I will ask them, tell me what you want from your agent. Do you want someone that’s going to analyze this deal and provide the numbers and be really, really smart as far as creating a pro forma? Or do you want a pitbull that’s going to go after the very best deal you can possibly get and push, push, push because you know how to run your own numbers? That is such an important question to ask, and it never gets asked. Everyone just passes them right along as if all agents are the same. And many people will say, “No, I know how to run the numbers. I just need them to tell me what the rent would be, or help connect me with a cleaning lady for the short-term rental, or cleaning person, or connect me with a property management company or a contractor. But I’m good with the spreadsheet.” Well, I’m going to put them with an agent who I know is a pitbull, that’s going to get things done.
Others may say, “I suck at math, I need them to tell me what my return would be.” They’re going to get a much more analytically-minded agent who’s probably not going to have a strong personality, that’s going to drive things through. So I will tell that client, this is what you’re going to get. If you want this to happen, you have to tell them what you want. They’re not going to do it for you. They’re going to run the numbers and say, “Here you go,” and they’re going to wait for you to say, “I want to pursue it.” And if you don’t, you’re going to stall and you’re not going to get anywhere. I think just that little conversation, that sometimes is had over email, sometimes in person, probably increases our conversion rate by 50 to 70 percent. And I know that’s not happening across the industry. I’m really glad you guys are letting me talk about this because what most people don’t understand is this is a partner, you have to talk to them to get a feel for how’s our relationship going to work?

Ashley:
Because Tony and I were talking about that, even before you jumped on, as to a common question rookies ask is, do I need an agent that is investor-friendly? And we kind of talked about well, we analyze our own deals, we don’t need an agent to do that, so why do we even need an investor one? But I think the way that you put it as to you need to ask what you need out of an agent and there you go and that will kind of tell you if you … Doesn’t matter if the person is an investor or not, it matters what they can bring to the table for you.

David:
Before we go to Tony, the question is what does investor-friendly mean? Okay? Even that is sort of skipping the responsibility of telling them what you want from them and finding out what they can give you. When we say I want an investor-friendly agent, there’s still the assumption they know everything and they know what to do and they know what I need. Investor-friendly can still mean different things to different people, so, yeah, that’s a great point.

Tony:
So many good things in that tangent you went on, David. I’m trying to remember all the things I want to circle back on. But the last point about what you expect, I think, is the most important one. And, like Ashley said, we’re at a different point in our investing careers, so we have a little bit more confidence. But my relationship with my agent today is that they’re more so there to help me with the transactional part of the real estate buying process. They’re not sending me deals most of the time, I’m finding them myself, I’m looking through Zillow.
They might have a few off-market deals that come across my plate, but most of the time, I’m coming to them, I’m saying, “I want to buy this house. Help me do the transactional process,” and that’s what they’re there for. Or, like you said, they’re there for the networking. I can call my agent and say, “Hey, I need a good general contractor. Do you have someone?” or “Hey, can you refer an electrician?” So I think it depends on where you’re at in your investing career that dictates what your relationship will look like. But your point of having that conversation up front is a super, super valid one. I’m glad we touched on that.

David:
Yeah. And I spend a lot of time … You can tell where my heart’s at, it’s in trying to train agents right now. If somebody came to me and said, “Hey, my client’s Tony Robinson. He’s bringing me deals, he knows how to analyze them, all I’m doing is writing the contract,” the agent should be thinking what can I do to bring value since he doesn’t need me to work the front-end? So that agent should be like a concierge to you. They should be like, “Can I do this? Can I do that? Hey, I took the liberty of doing this. You might need this. Let me do it for you.” Feeling out the listing agent for every single hole they possibly can to get you a credit based on the inspection report, right? They can bring value to you by putting their efforts into something like that as opposed to scouring the MLS every single day.
And, I think, as the client, they kind of have to understand that. We have people that come to us that know nothing about real estate investing, that live in the Bay Area, that are spending 5000, 3500 dollars a month on their rent and they want to try to figure out a way to beat that. Well, there’s limited inventory where we are and there’s a very specific type of property that you can buy that you could even get, and then you have to basically rehab a little bit to make it work. Okay? So if we can find you a property with a basement and then finish it out and run some plumbing there and you can have a 20 to 30,000 dollar rehab budget, you can drop your rent from 5000 a month to maybe 700 a month. It’s huge, huge savings for that person. But I’m literally having to hire people to just go through the MLS every day to look for those deals because that’s how much time that it take …
Now, when we communicate that to our buyers, “Hey, what you want to do is big, but in order for us to get that, here’s what we have to do,” I think they’re much more lenient when something pops up in escrow that they thought we were going to take of, that we thought they were going to take care of. Because they know what our job is this and then you’re going to be doing this part, nobody’s upset. It’s when that conversation doesn’t happen and the assumption is there, that we’re also going to do all these other things, that I think that there’s an opportunity for that relationship to fall apart, which is what stops people from buying real estate. You guys know, once you get your first one, it just all seems easy, if you can get over that little hump. And that’s why I’m so passionate about this because I know if we can get agents and clients working more cohesively, so many more people will be able to invest in real estate.

Ashley:
So, David, we’ve touched on finding an agent, the expectations of an agent and for yourself, but what if someone wants to become an agent, and maybe they want to do this part-time, full-time? What is the first thing they need to think about before actually taking the step to become an agent?

David:
Okay. The first thing I would bring up to make sure they know if this is even the right move for them would be the tip of the iceberg theory, right? What you see of an iceberg is a very small portion of what the whole thing is. What people see about what an agent does, showing homes, writing offers, talking to listing agents, spending a couple minutes on the phone or whatever, that is the tip of the iceberg, but that’s all that anyone ever sees. So, the assumption is this is what agents do. They got paid a 12,000 dollar commission and all they did was write up a contract and submit it. Okay? And occasionally, you get that awesome one, where it’s like a Tony, he’s like, “Here’s a deal, I want to buy it, here’s my price,” the listing agent takes it, you’re like, “Ah, this is amazing.” Okay?
But for every Tony, there’s 90 percent of your other clients that are not Tonys. They’re people that are badgering you with questions about … They’re trying to get a free education off the back of the agent. Or they want to invest in real estate, so they start the process with their agent, but they weren’t completely committed to finishing it, so they chicken out when they’re 95 percent of the way there and you did all this work and nothing ever came out of it. Okay? When you become the agent, you see the whole iceberg, and that’s the first thing people should realize is there’s a reason that 87 percent of agents are out of the business within five years. Okay? Hardly anyone actually becomes successful in this. It’s incredibly difficult.
Because to get to that tip of the iceberg that people see, showing homes, writing offers, even then, that doesn’t guarantee success, but that’s what everyone’s excited about, you’re going through the 80 percent of your day, which is calling everyone you know, talking to people, trying to build your knowledge, holding open houses, sitting at the office trying to learn about what’s going on in the market so when your neighbor comes to talk to you, you don’t sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about. But then your neighbor goes and talks to the other person and it crushes your soul, or your cousin buys their house with somebody else instead of you and you just don’t want to get out of bed the next day. That’s all that is really going on. Okay? The part that HGTV shows is such a tiny piece of this.
So what I would say is you got to love, love, love either people or real estate. If you love people, you will do this irregardless of how much money you’re going to make and how much work you’re going to do. If you love real estate, you won’t mind 80 percent of the work you have to get there because the 20 percent of the tip of the iceberg is so worth it. But I don’t think that question gets asked, because I watch people walk into the office with their fancy pantsuit and they’re super excited about getting their business card taken. Then, they put a couple posts on Facebook about how excited they are about their new career and please let me know when you need any help with real estate, and they become the 76th person that everyone who sees that post knows that sells real estate. And three months later, their shoulders are slumped, their hand is hanging, they’re just getting their teeth kicked in, nobody wants to be their agent. When they do finally get lucky and they have one person who’s like, “Yeah, you can be my agent,” they fumble the ball once they start the process because they haven’t sold a house yet. It’s very difficult.
That’s what I would say, right? It’s kind of like I want to be really fit. All right? Should I go to CrossFit? Well, yeah, you should go to CrossFit if you want to be fit, but do you understand what you’re getting into when you go to CrossFit? It is not going to be fun. It’s not going to be HGTV, right? You’re going into an incredibly difficult thing and you better be committed before you start, if you’re going to start at all.

Tony:
David, I think you might’ve scared everyone away from being an agent right now. We’ll see. We might’ve lost a few people with that one, but I think it’s a good point. Sorry, Ash, I know you had something, but-

Ashley:
No, no, it’s okay.

Tony:
I think it’s a good point because people often underestimate the level of, I guess, committedness they need to have to actually be successful in something. And I’m just glad that you pointed out that, yes, it can be lucrative, it can be a good job or a good career to have, a good business to have, but it’s not without its challenges and without its obstacles. So, sorry, Ash, I know you had something, I just wanted to throw that in there.

Ashley:
Yeah. If someone does decide, even after listening to that, they do want to become an agent, do you think there is a huge benefit if you are an investor to become an agent, or do you think that there is little correlation, or do they have a higher success rate because they’re an investor and an agent? What does that kind of look like from your perspective?

David:
That’s a great question. So I think the wrong reason to become an agent is I’m an investor, I want to do my own deals. You’re already getting that work for free, you’re really not benefiting … You might get a commission on those things. So if you’re super good and you do a ton of deals, that could make sense. But most people are buying a house or two a year, it’s not worth the money you’re going to spend and the work you’re going to do. But if you are an investor … I think that’s why my career took off as an agent pretty quick. Whereas, most people walk into this business, they have to learn sales, they have to learn entrepreneurship, they have to learn marketing, they have to learn the industry of real estate itself, and then they have to learn how to put all those pieces together to become the person that can do it all. I didn’t have to learn real estate. I only had to learn sales and entrepreneurship. So, it gave me a huge advantage over every other new person that stepped in.
So I would say if you’re an investor and you want to make additional income selling homes, that’s the key. It’s not I just want to be able to sell my own house. It’s like saying I’m going to get a law degree to represent myself in court. You’re not going to be good at it, right? I don’t want to pay a mechanic, I’m just going to go get certified to be a mechanic and I’m going to work on my own car. Well, the years of experience it takes to learn to be a good mechanic, you’re getting a terrible ROI on your time. But if what you’re saying is hey, I’m a race car driver, I have a lot of credibility, I know how cars work, I want to go start a mechanic shop and I want to scale this thing, that’s a completely different conversation and I think that’s a great idea. We, frankly, need more people that are selling real estate that own it themselves.
And if I look at the people that join my team, the ones that struggle are usually the ones that don’t know anything about real estate and they have to go through that CrossFit process of getting their butt kicked. The ones who come in that own real estate themselves, that have some credibility with what they’re talking, that already understand the basics and fundamentals of this, with a little bit of coaching from me, they tend to do much better. So I don’t remember which one of you made that point, but yes, I think that is one reason people should get into this.
And I like to talk about this because many people think it’s either I work my W-2 job or I quit and I do full-time investing. Those are my options. And that’s a terrifying jump to have to go from one to the other. But I look at … There’s a spectrum of all these things that you could do in the middle, that start a W-2 job and work your way to being a full-time investor. You can sell houses, you can become a loan officer, you can become a property manager, you can become a contractor. There’s tons of skills people have that will get them out of their W-2 job, still allow them to make money, and get them exposed to the world of real estate where they’re going to have more deals come their way.

Ashley:
I actually have a great example of not doing something just because you’re an investor. I became a licensed insurance agent because I have all these properties, I worked for other investors that were going to let me write their properties on the insurance and all I could see was, “Wow, that’s a lot of commission, and that’s a renewal every year.” So I had a broker pay for me to go and take the class, he paid for me to get licensed and I wrote all their policies. So that first year, I wrote all the policies and I’m like, “I’m just going to live off that renewal … Well, not live off of it, but I’m just going to collect that renewal.” I know nothing about insurance anymore. I wrote those over maybe a four month period and I knew everything about writing a landlord policy, and now that has gone out the window.
That’s why some of these things you’re saying … If you’re only going to do a couple houses a year, you’re not going to stay up to date on things. I mean, especially insurance, things have come and gone, I have no idea, I would not feel comfortable quoting someone’s property right now. But I think that’s a great example. If you are going to do something because you want that extra income or because you think it will benefit your business in a way, make sure you know what that’s going to look like down the road. Because, yes, I did those three months, but I hated it and I knew that I didn’t want to do it forever. But what was the point of getting licensed if I was just going to use it for that short period of time?

David:
That’s a great example. Then, what we’re challenging is when people look at something from the outside and say, “Oh, well, how hard can it be? All you’re going to do is write a couple policies. How hard can it be? All you got to do is throw the house on the MLS and a market like this, it sells itself.” And all I want to say is if that’s what you’re thinking, it’s very similar to saying well, how hard is it to have a six pack? Oh, you got to go to the gym and just don’t eat bad food. Okay? But if it was easy, there wouldn’t be an opportunity for you to do it because everybody else will have already done it. There’s a reason that these things … You only have a select group of people that tends to be at the top and everybody else struggles because it’s not easy.

Tony:
David, can we talk a little bit about how you got to the top, right? Because, like you said, you had real estate experience, but you didn’t have agent experience, you didn’t have the entrepreneurship experience. How did you go about building your knowledge base, building your confidence and scaling your business?

David:
So what I learned is if you want to be successful with something like sales or anything that involves a form of persuasion, there’s two components, and I use this analogy like a doctor trying to give medicine to someone. The first thing you need is the actual medicine. If I can get this inside you, it will make you feel better. Typically, in our industry, that would be knowledge of how it works. I know how to analyze deals, I recognize a deal, I know how to negotiate deals. And the mistake is everyone thinks that’s all you have to have. If I just know the information, then I will be able to heal everybody and they’ll get better.
The second piece that’s needed is a delivery system. They need a needle or an IV or a pill or something to get it inside of the patient so the medicine can work. They could have shelves and shelves and shelves of a vaccine that will cure a disease or something … Maybe I shouldn’t say that because that’s a little controversial right now. But a medicine that will help people. But if you can’t get it inside of the person, it’s no good.
So what I realized was I knew more about real estate than just about everybody in my world, and everyone in my sphere knew that. I was the real estate guy. I owned all these properties, I talked about it all the time. But no-one was coming to me to be their agent because I didn’t have a delivery system. I was a little intimidating to a lot of the other cops that were in the department. And just to be frank with everybody, if you were not really good at your job, I didn’t really treat you with a ton of respect. I wasn’t outwardly rude, but I would just kind of ignore those people. And then I saw them buying houses with others and selling houses with others and I thought, “Oh, I get it now,” right? I didn’t value that relationship. And so the delivery system started to be developed. I had to have a relationship with these people.
I would work open houses and I was kind of feeling out the person that walked in to tell are you serious or not before I would open up, and that does not work. Nobody wants to talk to a stranger they don’t know who’s holding their cards really close to the chest. I had to learn how to open up about myself first. “Hey, this is what I do, this is what the market’s like. What are you guys into? Man, I just had this thing happen yesterday.” I had to share something about me so I wasn’t this stranger or this scary person, and I became approachable and then I could get out them what I would need. So the short answer to your question there, Tony, is I had to change me. There was things about David that would not work in this environment. I had to adapt to it and that involved becoming a little more charismatic, a little more friendly, a little less of a police officer and a little more of a salesperson.
Now, I think what made me more successful than … Because in my first year, full-time, I was a top agent in my office, was once the delivery system was in place, once I had the IV in your arm, man, I had a lot of medicine that I could shoot down that thing. I already had the knowledge. But it was eye-opening to me that I realized in order to make this work, you have to have both. If you have a great delivery system and no substance behind it, people aren’t going to work with you and vice versa. So, once I had that, I started getting a lot of clients. And then the problem I had was well, I can’t work with all of them and even if I could, this is draining me. This is a lot of time spent on my phone. I do not like talking and listening this much. I’m not a high I on the DiSC profile, this is not juicing me up.
So, then, I had to systemize what I did and hire people to do it, and I think where I had an advantage there was I had already done that with investing. I already knew what it was to build a system and delegate certain tasks to certain people. And I honestly think that became a strength of mine because I looked at this business like how do I make this passive? Just like my investing, right? When we’re buying a property, there’s a ton of work that we put in to getting that thing, identifying it, writing the offer, pursuing it, going through the escrow. It’s a lot of work, stress, worry, but once you’ve got it, it’s awesome, right? Residual money, your equity tends to grow if you made a good investment. So I sort of tried to structure the business to work in a similar way, and I think that’s why I was able to scale it so quickly.

Tony:
David, you’re taking this kind of in a really deep way, right? I love that you started with mindset first, because I think most people look at the tactical side of doing something, but your approach was what do I need to change in myself first, before I even start worrying about what to do? Who do I need to become in order to make this successful? So for the rookies that are listening, that’s often one of the biggest challenges. It’s not even about knowing what to do, it’s about changing yourself enough to get to that point where you can become successful. So, I’m so glad you started there.
But, I guess, one other question to take it even further back, when the day that David Greene said, “I want to become an agent,” what was the first step that you took? Did you go talk to a bunch of agents to kind of get their insights? Did you go out and get your license first? Day one, what did David Greene do to kind of start down that road?

David:
I talked to the one real estate mentor I had, Tim Rhode. We’ve interviewed him on the Real Estate Podcast. He said, “Go talk to David Osborn,” who’s involved with Keller Williams. We’ve interviewed David Osborn on the Real Estate Podcast and he’s helped write a book for BP, Bidding to Buy. He was very successful, by the way, so he wasn’t going to sit there and be my mentor. He said, “I’ll set you up with the Keller Williams. I’ll set you up with another guy, Pat Hiban,” who ran the Real Estate Rockstars Podcast. “Go take the class BOLD, go take the class Ignite. Come talk to me once you’ve done those.”
So Pat Hiban connected me with the office, I signed up for them, I took the class BOLD, I took the class Ignite. I realized I don’t really like anything that I’m learning here and yet, I still feel this pull to become an agent. It was very confusing, emotionally. It was like you know this is the relationship you’re supposed to be in, but you fight with that person all the time. It just doesn’t make any sense why this would be the case. Well, what you find out later was the fighting was you, it wasn’t them. You didn’t need to go find a new partner, you needed to be less selfish so that you wouldn’t fight as often. And all these character flaws in myself got exposed by being involved. It’s just like going to work out. Well, when you’re not in shape, it doesn’t feel fun. You’re realizing that you’re not in shape and it hurts. While we tend to run away from pain, what I did was I just didn’t run away, I just realized this is what I’m doing, I’m committed to it.
And so issue after issue after issue started popping up, like I described a couple of them with you guys. And then what changed for me was I went to a Family Reunion, which is a big Keller Williams event, where Gary Keller was speaking, and Gary was saying that when he first got his license, he was very successful, but he hated sales and he caught himself teaching his clients about real estate instead of selling them on real estate. And he stayed miserable until he stopped looking at being a real estate agent like it’s a job and he started looking at it like I own a business and I’ve chosen to play the role of employee in all the things that have to be done, which was the genesis of his mind saying hey, I could get somebody else to be a buyer’s agent and I could just work with sellers, hey, I could get an admin that could do all this backend work, then I can focus on the sales. And he really worked himself out of all the positions that he didn’t like in real estate.
And so that was basically the road that I took. I was like, “Ooh, that’s what I got to do. I’m never going to make it if I have to stay here,” and that required a lot more growth out of myself. And I think you guys are seeing what I’m getting at, is if you want to be good at anything, you have to walk into it saying who do I have to become to be good at this? The people that fail, you can tell who they are because they bounce from thing to thing to thing all the time. What they’re doing is looking for a thing that they’re already perfect for, I’m the perfect puzzle fit for this thing, and they never find it. But we have the ability to change, we have the ability to adapt, we have the ability, like I said, to look at our own character flaws. And real estate sales sort of became my CrossFit gym. I didn’t enjoy it, I got my teeth kicked in, it was really hard, but the result that I got out of it put me in this position where I can have an even more awesome life, buy even more real estate and help more people.

Ashley:
And I think, too, what’s important there is that, like you said, the people bouncing around, there’s not going to be that perfect position, so that’s why you have to change yourself, learn how to grow, but also that you have to find out what those pain points are and you have to work hard so that you can get other people to fill those positions and starting putting processes together and implementing them so that when the time does come, it’s easy to transition someone in. But that does take a lot of work, so don’t think that if you’re signing up to be an agent or insurance or real estate, that you can outsource those things, day one. Usually, it takes a lot of work to get there.
You had had Shelby Osborne on the BiggerPockets Real Estate. I can’t remember what episode it was, but we’ll tag it into the show notes. But Shelby talked about how, when she does something, she creates a process and writes a checklist so that she never has to do something more than once because she already has a template, she already has the whole flow written, and she gives that to her agents and just become a whole part of her business and I thought that was really awesome. For anyone, it’s Episode 406, so if anyone wants to check that one out.
David, I want to transition here. We went kind of deep into mindset and how to be a top producer, but let’s talk about social media. In your book, Sold, you mentioned how, especially today, this is a huge, huge asset and can be really beneficial to a real estate agent.

David:
Yeah. So there’s so many ways we could go with that. Are you saying how should agents be using social media to get leads?

Ashley:
Yes. Yeah. So for buying, selling, and once they have a listing, are there things they should be doing on social media too?

David:
First thing I’ll say that I believe about social media is social media is a reflection of how you want the world to see you. It is not a reflection of who you are, it is not you expressing your individuality, it is you choosing this is the way I want to be perceived. And we all know this because there’s people who live lives on social media that when you get to know them, it’s very different than what they’re actually doing. So, knowing that, I’ve sort of constructed my social media to limit how much of it is egocentric about David. Okay? You’re not going to see oh, I really like how these shoes look, so let me make sure I get a picture of myself in these shoes for everybody to see I have cool shoes, which is what a lot of people do.
And my belief is that most human beings are smarter than we think they are. Okay? Now, they’re not always conscious of it, they couldn’t always articulate it, but they know when you’re posting stuff because you want attention for yourself. And what that does is it sends a message to them, I don’t have to worry about bringing value to this person because they’re not bringing value to me. And the opposite is true if your posts are literally about I think this will help people. Okay? So we just went over a bunch of stuff about how to work with my agent, how to pick your agent, how to be a better agent. That wasn’t all fun to hear, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but people will recognize when they listen to this, man, they’re being real. They’re pulling back the curtain and they’re showing me the ugly about what goes on. That will make them gravitate towards a podcast like this because now it’s known for being real.
Your social media should be the same thing. It is totally okay to say I’m having a really bad day, I just made a mistake in something or I just blew it. It’s even better to be posting information that people who are following you want to learn about. Okay? And there’s some people that have social media that’s just them in a bathing suit at a beach all the time and they look really good and that’s why people follow them. They just want to see them, that’s why they’re giving it to them. But if you’re an agent, that’s not why people are following you. So when you’re posting things, post something that sets you apart from everybody else in the sense that you know more or you have more value to give or people didn’t realize that you could do this, right? Maybe a state of the market or a negotiating tactic. As specific as you can be is better.
So one thing that I’ll do if I meet someone that I don’t know that well and they say, “What do you do?” and I say, “I’m in real estate.” Just saying I’m in real estate isn’t going to make that person want to come to me when they want to sell their house. So I would say, “I’m in real estate, and I’m actually having a great day. We just put one of our listings in contract for way more than we even thought was possible, and here’s why. I realize that when I do X, I get Y, and so I did X a lot with this one and then when Y came, I did this. This is such a cool thing. I think any agent could’ve sold this house, but I think we got them about 80,000 dollars more than anybody else would’ve from this tactic. Tell me about your day.” That little nugget that I just dropped in there is going to leave them like, “Wait a minute, that was really smart. I want to know more about that. When I’m going to sell my house, I’m calling this guy.” But I didn’t just talk about myself and my awards and my production. Nobody cares if you sell 700 houses in a year. At least, very few people do. They care about what you can do for them.
So I take that same principle and I try to apply it to social media. Okay? Here’s an event I was hosting at this place, so you see what I’m doing. We were talking about how to help people build wealth through house hacking in this area. So if you live in that area and you’re interested in building wealth, you now want to pay more attention to what I’m doing because that could benefit you. And I really think just that principle alone goes really far. And then the last piece I’ll add is if you can add in a little bit of seasoning to make it taste good, little bit of fun, little bit … You two do that really well. When I see the stuff that you guys post on BiggerPockets’ page, there’s some fun to it, right? So there’s the medicine that you’re giving people, but you’re putting a spoonful of sugar around that. It goes down a little bit easier. That’s basically how I would advise people that they should use their social media.

Tony:
I want to follow up a little bit more about the lead generation, David, because, as you mentioned earlier, becoming an agent is like running your own business and the lead gen part is the lifeblood of that business. Outside of social media, what are some ways, for someone that wants to break into the world of being a real estate agent, can find those first few clients?

David:
It’s the same for if you want to become an investor. So Brandon Turner has what he calls the LAPS funnel, which is just basically a four-step process to closing in a deal. The first is leads. You need leads to pursue. The next would be analyze. You have to analyze those deals. Then, the next step would be … The P would be pursue. How do I go after this deal? And if I do that, the S is success, I’ll have success. As an agent, I’ve taken that same philosophy and just modified it a little bit for this. So what I did was I created the sales funnel, and I talk about that a little bit in Sold. In the next book I’m having, the sequel to Sold, it will be a lot more detail on it. But basically, it highlights the five classifications that you need to move someone through to turn them from a person into a paycheck, if you want to close on this client.
The first step in that is people. People are anybody that lives in the world. They’re typically referred to when we’re talking about people in our database. The next step is a lead. Leads are people that want to buy or sell a house and that know who you are. The next step is a client. That’s a lead that has signed a buyer representation agreement or a listing agreement. And in my world, what that means is you now have the right to a lot more of my time, my guidance, my information. I am invested in making sure that you’re successful once you sign up to become my client. The next step would be a contract. That’s a client that is under contract for a property. And then the last is a closing. And so you don’t really ever have to worry about the last step, they just happen if you do the first four.
So what we train our agents in is look at the specific thing you have to do to move somebody from one step to the next. No-one’s going to go from people to contract, they have to go through this process to get there. So the way we turn people into leads is through lead generation, and there’s a million ways this can be done. BiggerPockets has a pretty good system. But most of the ways that people offer products to agents to lead generate are not good and the reason people buy them is because everyone hates lead generation. It’s just like a diet pill, right? I don’t have to exercise, I can just take this pill? Well, there’s usually a side effect you don’t like with those pills.
My preferred method of lead generation is to work with people that you know, that you have a relationship with. Do your best to get around people that have either owned property already or have the means to buy property. If you do this to people that are never going to be able to get a loan, it’s not like they don’t have value, but to your business, they don’t have as much value. And talk about real estate nonstop. So the method that I teach agents, that’s in the book, is a strategy where every interaction I have with someone, my goal is to fill them with as much goodwill as I can. And I use an analogy of that goodwill is like water. I want to pump you up with so much value that you feel like you’re going to explode. It just feels wrong, like I want to give back, I got to get rid of all this pressure that I have inside me.
So that may be someone who’s really scared about buying a house and I set aside 30 minutes of time to talk to them about the process and they know they’re not ready to buy, or someone who’s really struggling in their relationship with their sister and they’re being driven nuts and I give them some advice or I’m just a listening ear. Whatever that person needs in their life is what I’m trying to figure out, and then dump as much goodwill into them. If I do that well, the law of reciprocity would state they want to give it back. Then, they’ll have this feeling, like, “Oh, I just love this person. I wish I could do something back.” The next step is to dig a trench from them to me for that water to flow down, and that trench should be I want your business when you know someone who wants to buy or sell. Okay? That’s the only way I want that water coming back to me. I don’t need you to send me a cookie in the mail or put a nice post about something. That’s nice, right? Write me a nice letter. What I really want are your referrals.
So by telling people, when they’re like, “Oh, I appreciate you so much. Thank you. You always know the right thing to say.” “Hey, that’s what friends are for. You would do the same for me. Can you just do me a favor and keep me in mind when someone at your office mentions that they’re having a kid or maybe someone says they’re getting divorced, because that typically means they need to buy or sell a house? That’s how I make my living. If you could just keep an eye out for me, I would so appreciate it.” Right? That’s organic, there’s nothing shady about it, there’s nothing salesman-y about it, it’s a win/win for both of us and I made it very clear for them to know how they can help me back, and they probably want to. Now that I’ve shown them here’s how you can help me, they’ll be grateful. If people just do that every day and are purposeful about having those conversations, your business is going to grow.

Tony:
So it’s really about focusing on education and value. That’s how you build inroads with people, that’s how you build a knowing, a liking and a trust with potential clients is through value, is through content. I love that approach, David. I want to take us to our voiceover, but before we do that, I have one other question for you. What are your thoughts on focusing on a specific niche as an agent? I know some agents, like, hey, we always sell the short-term rentals, or we sell the small multi, or we focus on this niche. Do you think that’s a good approach for a new agent to take when they’re getting started?

David:
I think I would look at that like an athlete, like, say, a basketball player that is really good at shooting three-pointers, you’re going to be looking to get three-point shots. I don’t think that you should say for my whole career, all I’m ever going to do is shoot three-pointers. If that’s where your bread and butter comes from, yes, but continue looking at how to improve your game. Okay? Because at a certain point, people figure out you’re just shooting threes and the coach can’t put you in the game if you don’t need threes or whatever, right? So, learn how to get around somebody that you can to the rim and then defense comes over to help and you can pass.
I think if you’re really good at short-term rentals, yes, talk about that all the time, advertise that on your social media, let everybody know you’re the short-term rental person. But if I’m talking to the person I just described, a coworker I used to have or a person I played basketball with a long time ago, who doesn’t want short-term rentals, that doesn’t mean I have no value. What do they care about? Well, they just want to buy a house or they have a house that they want to sell. So, learn how to help those people, right? Learn how to hit short-term jump shots. Learn how to play defense. Learn how to pass.
That question is a great one, Tony. It always comes up. Should you do everything, or should you do one thing? And I’m like, well, do both. Start with one thing and build out until you can do everything. And if you get to be where you’re too big or you don’t want to do certain things, hire somebody, systemize that, bring an agent in who’s hungry, that needs something to do, that just wants to play basketball, then bring them in your world so that they can do that.

Ashley:
I love that analogy, and I know Tony’s going to be telling that to his son today, who plays basketball. So, David, we’re going to kind of go into our segments now. So the first one is the Rookie Request Line. Anyone listening, you can call in at any time to 1-888-5-ROOKIE and leave us a voicemail and we may play it on the show. So today’s question is from Jessie Allen in Washington State.

Jessie Allen:
Hi, Ashley and Tony. My name is Jessie Allen, I’m from Washington State, and my question is if you are trying to do out-of-state real estate investing and nobody is calling you back, how do you get real estate agents, property managers and such to call you back? Thank you. Bye.

David:
This is a great question because we sort of prefaced the beginning of the show about how your relationship should be a partnership. So if you’re reaching out to the agent and you’re saying in the email or on the phone call, “Hey, I have a lot of questions about Washington real estate and I wanted to run them all by you. Can you let me know when you have a minute to talk?” and they’re busy, they’re probably just not going to call you back because that’s not a win for them. If the question is hey, I’m looking to buy a duplex in Montesano County and I know that the price-to-rent ratios are good, but what I really need is an agent that could tell me the difference between this city and that city. I’m happy to get pre-approved. Can we have a talk to see if I could help you and you could help me? That agent now recognizes you as a lead. I’m going to jump on it and I’m going to have that conversation.
The only other thing could be if you’re sending an email to someone who doesn’t check their email all the time or you call their cell phone from a number they don’t recognize. I mean, do you guys answer phone calls from numbers you don’t recognize?

Ashley:
No.

Tony:
No.

David:
Yeah. I can’t. I just get … Seven of them have happened when we’re here right now.

Ashley:
But then I also google them to see who it is.

David:
Who it is. That’s funny. So what I tell my team, because they say this all the time, they’re like, “I called them and they didn’t call me back,” and I say, “Oh, well, did you text them to tell them that you’re not a complete weirdo or somebody in India trying to sell them a product?” Right? They don’t know who you are, send them a text. Or another thing that I’ll do is I’ll literally take a video of myself and send them that. So if they’re not answering to you, send a video saying hey, I want to buy houses in this area. I heard about you from blah, blah, blah. That gives more credibility. This is my number. Can you text me or can you email me and I’ll let you know what I’m looking for and you tell me if you could help me? Very difficult for the agent to not want to call you back in a situation like that.

Tony:
Awesome advice. I’ve actually never heard anyone recommend that before. So if you’re having a hard time getting through to someone, send them a nice little video message. David, I’m afraid that you might have now invited the entire Rookie audience to flood your Instagram DMs with videos of them trying to get in touch of with you, so there’s some good and some bad-

David:
Here’s the problem with that.

Tony:
There.

David:
Every one of us that gets a video to our phone and it doesn’t look like a virus, it’s so hard not to want to watch it. Even when you’re busy, your curiosity is so big and … That’s what I learned. I started doing that, like if I got a lead’s name from somebody else, like, “Hey, my buddy wants to buy a house.” Well, that guy never wants to actually answer his phone when I call, but if I send that video, they would watch it every single time and the odds of them reaching out now would be better.

Ashley:
I’ve heard that with voice memos too, doing a voice memo-

David:
Yeah, that’s the other thing that we do.

Ashley:
Because you can’t see what they are. Yeah.

David:
I don’t know what it is. 100 percent, when you leave me a voicemail, I’m not listening to it. But a voice memo, for whatever reason, it’s in that text thread, I will listen to 100 percent of those.

Tony:
All right. So those are some good tips there. We’re dropping some knowledge. So, David, I want to take us to our next segment here, which is the random questions. So, obviously, you’ve had a lot of success, you’ve been in the game for a while now, but if we go back to David Greene when he was still a cop, before he became the David Greene, what were some of the misconceptions or assumptions you made about real estate investing that turned out to just not be true?

David:
Okay. That’s really good. I think I always assumed a catastrophic event was just around the corner and that’s why I couldn’t invest. So I would literally have these worries when I was first starting. I own Arizona property and I’d start googling what happens if Arizona runs out of water? I did this for a couple years. And I’d read all these long … Well, they’re dependent on this area and this dam’s the only one that’s going to these places. I’m like, “Ah, maybe I need to sell them all because what happens if they run out of water?” Okay? I suppose that could happen, but it’s hard to see the federal government allowing all of Southern California and Arizona to just die of lack of hydration because … Right? And so those type of thoughts would always be in my head. What if the ball just drops on everything, or the bottom drops out?
And I think what I’ve found, after seeing this for long enough, is that not only is that not very likely, but if that does happen, me investing in real estate’s probably the last thing I’m going to worry about. It’s not like I’m safer because I didn’t invest when the bottom dropped out. I would lose my job. Where am I going to live? If we go into a recession, you owning rental properties, is the bank going to want to foreclose on all these properties that no-one’s going to buy anyways? I think that I just basically built it up to be all these terrible, worst case scenarios that could possibly happen. None of them ever happened. And even if something bad did happen, there was always a solution.
It’s funny, Brandon and I were just talking about this on our podcast the other day. I’ve now become much more intentional of just saying look, I know that real estate is going to be a good investment. Over time, it just gets better and better. I have reserves in place and a plan in place for the worst case scenario. I’m just not going to listen to the little doubt that comes up inside me, the what ifs. I just closed on the biggest deal I’ve ever bought, and the only thing that I think about every time I think about that deal is the 85,000 dollar a month mortgage payment that I have. Of all the pieces of it, that’s the only thing that sticks in my head, is what if all of my 16 tenants in this commercial building all stop paying at the same time and I have to pay 85,000 dollars a month? That’s probably never going to happen, but that’s the only thing that’s in my head. So I just have to ignore it and focus on well, I thought that same thing 10 years ago, I thought that same thing five years ago and it never happened.

Ashley:
Yeah, but I’m sure you also have other exit strategies in place if, for some reason, that did happen or you could find other ways to pay for that payment. It’s not like you’re going in thinking worst case scenario and you have no plan for that worst case scenario.

David:
Oh, you’re exactly right. I have reserves of several 100,000 dollars in that bank account just for that. And here’s what’s funny. I don’t know if I’ve told everybody this. I actually got on the phone and called the bank because I couldn’t get this thought out of my head. And it’s embarrassing, right? Because I’m the real estate guy and it still was bothering me so much that I wasn’t focusing on other things. And I said, “Hey, Andy, let’s say, worst case scenario, every tenant stops paying and I burn through six months of reserves and I haven’t been able to get anything going. Are you going to foreclose and just take it?”
He’s like, “God, no. If that’s the case, why would I want it? You’re going to run that thing better than me. If you’ve run through six months of reserves, I don’t want to take that property over. That’s such a horrible scenario. We would work with you to put your payments in arrears or extend it. The bank doesn’t want to take that property back over, we want the interest on the loan that we gave you,” and I just felt so dumb. Why would I assume that the world would end if this happened? And if the world’s ending, what is the bank going to do with it? They don’t want it either. You’re asking me what do you wish the old David would’ve known? It was that type of stuff, right? The only regrets I have are that I wasn’t more aggressive at other times buying properties that would’ve done really well.

Ashley:
Even during COVID, I had a couple banks reach out to me for my properties and another investor that I manage his money for, they said, “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we want you to know that if you can’t make your payments, we want to work with you.” And this was even before they put a ban of foreclosures, this was … The bank reached out to us, we didn’t even have to reach out to the bank. And luckily, we didn’t have to do anything, but it shows, even them being proactive before being reactive, that they don’t want to take your property either.

David:
They so badly don’t want the property that they’re calling to tell you we’re not going to take it. Yeah.

Ashley:
Yeah. Exactly.

David:
Please don’t give it to us.

Tony:
Well, they’re not asset managers, right? They’re a lending institution. That’s not in their wheelhouse, so-

David:
Exactly right.

Tony:
David, you’ve dropped so much knowledge throughout today’s episode, but before we wrap up, Ash and I always give a quick shoutout to some of our Rookie Rockstars. So if you guys haven’t joined the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group yet, please do head over. I think we’re closing in on 30,000 people in that group now, Ash, right? So there’s a big, very active community in there on Facebook. But today’s Rookie Rockstars are Harry and Justine Zinskie from Richmond, Virginia. They got a property that was listed at 265, they bought it for 180, so they got a nice discount, put 10K into upgrades and now it’s renting out for 650 a month. And then they actually sold it a year after they purchased it to the people that were living there, to their tenants, for 265. So they got a bunch of cash flow, sold it for much more than they got it, so Harry, Justine, congratulations to you, guys.

Ashley:
Yeah. Tony, it was actually 1650 per month. You had said 650. But just so people know, yeah, it’s 1000 dollars more than what Tony said.

Tony:
Yeah.

Ashley:
I don’t want you to mislead anyone. Jeez. But yeah, congratulations to Harry and Justine. That is awesome. And one year later, what a nice return on that. And then, also, they mentioned they used their key lock from their primary and actually paid off their key lock and reusing the rest of their money in doing a 1031 exchange on their next property.

Tony:
Beautiful.

David:
Good for them. Great job, guys.

Ashley:
Well, David, thank you so much for joining us. I believe you’re one of the rare few that has been on every single BiggerPockets podcasts now.

David:
Well, like I said, we’re all family, right? So-

Ashley:
Yeah.

David:
I’m happy to spend Thanksgiving with you guys and Christmas with them and Easter with everybody else. Any time you guys need another guest or you just want to do this again, I love talking real estate and I’m so entrenched in teaching it to people, whether they’re agents or clients, that it’s always on my mind. So, it’s never a problem, I’m happy to do your show any time you like.

Ashley:
Thank you. And can you tell everyone where they can find out some more information, purchase your books, visit you on Instagram, flood your DMs with videos?

David:
There it is, right? My social media handle is davidgreene24. There’s a extra E at the end of Greene. I don’t know why it’s there, just the English are always throwing extra vowels into words that are not necessary, so don’t forget to throw that E into it. I also have a BiggerPockets profile, so you guys can reach out to me there. You can get any of my books at biggerpockets.com/store. They have all the books that are listed there. And then if you live in California, I definitely want to connect with you. I’m looking to grow my database of people in California because this is where we help clients. You can get me at davidgreene24.com, which is my website, and then just click the Connect tab, or davidgreene24/connect, and we can reach out to you and introduce ourselves.

Ashley:
Well, there you go, Tony. Tony lives in California, so …

David:
You in Southern California, Tony?

Tony:
Yeah, I’m outside of Los Angeles. We’re buying a lot in Joshua Tree, so if you ever set up shop out there, let me know.

David:
100 percent. We’ve put a David Greene team in Los Angeles now, so we’ve probably got about 25 buyers that we’re working with in that area. And we need to talk more and maybe we could kick you some business.

Tony:
Yeah, absolutely.

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today. I’m Ashley, @wealthfromrentals and he’s Tony, @tonyjrobinson on Instagram, and make sure you guys listen to the Rookie Reply on Saturday and we’ll see you then.