BiggerPockets Podcast 026 with Chris Clothier Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 026: Building a Scalable Real Estate Business and Tenant Management Tips with Chris Clothier

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets Podcast, Show 26.

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Josh: What’s going on everybody this is Josh Dorkin, your host of the BiggerPockets podcast. Here with my co-host Brendon Turner.

Brandon: That was awesome. That was a good way to introduce me, I’m going to do it from now on.

Josh: Do you like it?

Brandon: Yeah. Hi I’m Brandon Turner.

Josh: What’s up Brandon?

Brandon: Not much, going to San Francisco today.

Josh: San Francisco? Really? Why are you going to San Francisco?

Brandon: I’m going to the Inman connect conference – a big real estate conference there.

Josh: Nice. Going to represent BiggerPockets.

Brandon: If anybody listening to this for some reason on Thursday morning and want to come hang out, tweet me.

Josh: Inman’s cool, it’s a great place to meet some of the business leaders in the industry and it’s exciting that you’ll be there. You’re going to have a good time.

Brandon: I hope so – I haven’t been before. This is actually my first official conference.

Josh: Oh boy all grown up.

Brandon: I even bought a tie yesterday.

Josh: And I told him not to.

Brandon: It’s a trendy tie – I’m going to look cool.

Josh:We’ll have to see. I expect photos.

Brandon: Lots of photos.

Josh: The reason I’m not going is I actually just had a brand new baby this past week.

Brandon: Well, your wife did.

Josh: Yes. She did. We’re little tied up.

Brandon: Well, congratulations.

Josh: Thank you very much. Enough about me and you and our wanderings and wonderful things – nobody cares. Let’s talk about this podcast really quick because I believe last week or something like that we officially kind of became the top real estate podcast on iTunes. Is that fair way of saying it?

Brandon: Yeah, we have the most ratings and reviews for any real estate podcast in the entire world on iTunes right now. That’s awesome.

Josh: Not only that but we have best ratings as well.

Brandon: It’s cool.

Josh: Yeah, 311 5-star ratings, 204 reviews. Feels kind of good six months in. Brandon and I worked really hard on this show and we definitely appreciate the listeners. Those of you who haven’t left the review or rating we’d love more. It certainly boosts Brandon’s fragile ego.

Brandon: It does. I cry in the corner sometimes until I get reviews and ratings.

Josh: don’t make Brandon cry – leave a review.

Brandon: Thank you. Let’s jump to Quick Tip.

Josh: My quick tip is – Its Brandon’s birthday today so wish him a happy birthday. Today’s Tuesday, two days before you will be listening to the show so leave him a lovely retroactive birthday.

Brandon: Belated birthday. My quick tip today is something I learned this week and I thought it was really cool. Did you know, Josh, that you can listen one and a half or two times a speed? You can get as twice as much BiggerPockets podcasts for the same time as you would one episode.

Josh: While I like listening myself talk and view for that matter, listening to us like Alvin and the chipmunks may be a little bit annoying.

Brandon: It doesn’t raise the pitch it just raises the speed but you can understand it. If you listening on iPod right now try it out. I don’t know the exact button but I was playing the other day with it and I thought it was pretty cool.

Josh: It’s on a mobile app, you can just click on the podcast. I think it’s not necessarily a quick tip I would agree with here.

Brandon: We’ll agree to disagree.

Josh: I guess we’ll have to do that then.

Brandon: I like to consume as many podcasts as I can get in. I’m a podcast guy. Anyway, let’s move on.

Josh: Today, we’ve got a little bit of a longer show guys but this things is filled with so much actionable content we’re just going to get right to it. Today’s guest is Chris Clothier. Chris is a real estate investor from Memphis, Tennessee. His company manages in over hundred million in assets and Chris is a thought leader on building scalable real estate business. Chris has been in real estate for a while now, he’s got a successful company. He’s not shy to take questions and help people out on BiggerPockets – he’s one of our bloggers. We’re certainly excited to have him on our show. Today we’re going to talk about growing not just a real estate portfolio but business behind it as well as a lot of tip, tricks, things like that about managing tenants and managing your rental properties. With that, why don’t we just get on with the interview?

What’s going on Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris: Thank you very much Josh, Brandon, good to be here.

Josh: Alright Chris lets hop right in on this one, we’ve got lot of things we want to cover with you. Why don’t we take it back to the very beginning – how did you get started in real estate?

Chris: Day one?

Josh: Day zero.

Chris: It’s kind of funny, I was watching TV and I saw an infomercial from Carlton Sheets. I actually still have that entire program from start to finish. That’s how I got started, the very first deal I ever did was watching Carlton Sheets, bought it, actually did use one of his techniques to do my first deal. That’s me personally, that’s how I got started.

Brandon: I actually talked to the investor yesterday who told me the exact same thing – just a local guy that he started with Carleton Sheets. I wonder how many of you older guys started like that. Carleton wasn’t on the air when I was looking into real estate. We have Flip this house and stuff but.

Chris: That did not take long for it to come out to this.

Josh: To the audience it is Brandon’s birthday today so be sure when you’re listening, if you’re listening couple days ahead but when you’re listening be sure to give him hard time about turning old.

Brandon: This will be old news. But I still do real estate in my twenties here so I’m ok.

Josh: What was that first deal – what did it look like?

Chris: I actually had a house that I was trying to sell and it was a personal residence, had a lot of difficulty selling it because it was outside of city, a lot of land. Just one of those houses that’s going to take exactly right buyer. I had a guy come to me, wanted to buy a house but he had a contingency and that was he had a house to sell first. I didn’t want to take the contingency but it dawned to me that he had a house that was right next to Rhodes University. That’s a beautiful university here in Memphis, great place from what I’ve read to invest so I made him an offer. I said I’ll buy your house to free you to buy mine. We both came off our prices a little bit kind of worked it into an area that I thought I could make money. Ultimately I did. I bought his house for a price good enough for me to rent it out to a student and that’s what I did – that’s how it happened.

Josh: How did that go thereafter in terms of renting out to a student – there’s a lot of people who listen who are like “Buying property in a university town is potentially a good idea.” Was it a good idea?

Chris: No. It was a great house but it was a single family house. I brought a student in, he rented it, went well for a first year. He moved out, broke the lease, didn’t trash the house – it wasn’t destroyed or anything, but I had a bit of work to come back and do which all investors expect. But the second time around I had a family that ended up renting the house, that was one of the first applicants I had the second time around, it worked out. I wanted them to rent it because they had a good application, they ended up taking really good care of the house, it was much better.

Josh: Renting out to folks that are qualified and who are less likely to destroy your property I guess is a good way to go.

Chris: Well it was a good lesson for me to learn because that was the first house I’ve done. Strangely enough I was living in Denver and the house was in Memphis. It was a long distance transaction, long distance deal but I was under a lot of pressure I had to get it done. This was my personal residence back in Memphis I was trying to sell I had to had it done, I had to be creative and kind of think outside of box. Unlike a lot of investors Id only thought about it this was the thing that said “Hey, you have to do this. You have to get started if you’re going to get going, its right here for you – go make it happen.”

Josh: You get this first deal done, you’re renting to this guy in Memphis, and you’re now in Denver. Do you continue to invest in real estate in Denver or what happens there?

Chris: I went to Denver. At that point, it’s kind of funny, that was an accident – I was lucky. That first investment deal I was just lucky on it. From there I actually started doing fix and flips in Denver. That’s where I really cut my teeth in real estate was buying and selling houses that I was fix and flip – that’s our terminology. I was buying it, holding these properties anywhere from six to nine months as how long it takes me to renovate them and then sell them back on an open market to an owner or occupant.

Brandon: Were you doing your own work at that point or were you hiring stuff out? Were you doing your own labor on stuff or was this stuff contractors?

Chris: No. If it requires anything more than a hammer and duct tape I’m challenged. We had a contractor that did that house. I had a partner in those deals in Denver but we had a contractor that did all the labor for us, we did all the rest of the work – finding it, marketing it, all that kind of stuff.

Josh: Ok, cool. What transitioned you from the “Hey I’m going to start and do this deal in Memphis to the flipping – the renovations.”?

Chris: Well, I was just interested. Like everybody else I was interested in real estate, this was early 2000’s. I got Carlton Sheet’s book, was just interested and kind of had this romantic idea that it was really cool to buy a house and renovate it and watch it go from what it was to what it can me. I romanticized real estate a whole lot in my mind. I thought this was this really awesome fun thing to do and it would be so enjoyable, I could make so much money out of it. So I looked at all the positive aspect of it and said “I’m going to get started.” I quickly learned that’s there a lot more than just that.

Josh: The rehabbing – what kind of tings did you learn? Obviously you can’t just jump in and flip a house. There’s some lessons, there’s some mistakes that you might have made. Share some of that with us.

Chris: Couple of things. I’ve shared this a lot trough different ways in the past, I brought a partner on which for a lot of people they had to and for others they don’t. I didn’t have to do it. I did it because I was nervous about doing it myself, the first time around. I don’t know if I was more scared of failure or success but one of the other caused me to bring somebody else on. Hindsight 20-20 I would never do that again. Other things I learned – you have to be really good at managing people. If you’re not good at managing people you’re going to struggle with hiring different contractors and all the different parts that makes a successful purchase fix and flip solid transaction. If you’re not good at managing people and delegating and preparing – you’re in trouble.

Josh: In terms of the partner – you don’t have to get into all the details but is there any reason in particular why you wouldn’t want to do that again?

Chris: Because I gave the partner a lot more credit than I should have and I gave myself less credit. In other words anybody could have done what he was doing and I was the money partner in it and he was, for lack of better way to put it, he was a real estate area expert. My own common sense should have told me that some of the advice that I was getting wasn’t good enough. This was the guy, I just want to make this real clear, he was a friend of mine, it’s not like it ended badly it just he wasn’t experienced enough in real estate, he’d only been a real estate agent for a very short time, he wasn’t experienced enough investor for me to give him the credit I was giving him. Looking back on it I was nervous doing my first deal on my own.

Josh: That’s fair. For other people who are just getting started or who are out there thinking “Hey maybe I should grab a partner.” Could you share a few tad bits on what to look for or how to maybe set up an equitable partnership that makes sense and how to manage that relationship?

Chris: Sure. It should be, in my opinion, even though I’m in a partnership today and it is a bit different that it was back then – it’s a different style partnership but just the same. The difference between the two – the reason the first one didn’t work out and this one does is the same reason why some should look for in a partnership and that is whoever you’re going to partner with they have to bring something to the table that’s different than you, either they highlight really good at your weaknesses or they really bring out your strikes. One or the other it has to be. Because if you get two people that are almost exactly the same in a partnership – you’re going to have trouble. It just tells you right off the bat you’re going to have trouble and if you’re both brand new in real estate investing neither one of you are good at organization and delegation it’s just going to be a struggle. That’s best way to put it. You have to find somebody that complements you – they bring strengths that you don’t have.

Josh: That’s great. We really want with this show to take things to the next level a bit. We want to start getting on to some more advanced topics. You’re flipping houses in Denver, today you’ve got this business it’s a really substantial sizeable business where you’re doing this turnkey properties down in Memphis. How did you go from that house flipper that was just figuring it out in Denver to this guy who’s now got this business today?

Chris: I was raised in the entrepreneurial family. I was just raised in a family that when you see an opportunity you create something out of it. My father is the one who stated this company back in Memphis and I was his first client actually. He knew I was buying houses, he knew I was doing fix and flips in Denver, he knew about that fist property I bought in Memphis and he had actually started investing in Memphis at the same time. He just simply told me if you want to buy more houses at the lower price point that was the key factor for me. I could purchase more properties in Memphis with the same dollar that I could in Denver. He said “Look, if you want to buy them, I would handle all of the leg work.” That’s really how it stated – I was the original client for our company. I had a lot of friends in the real estate field up in Denver and several of them were interested – “What are you doing? Let’s see what you’ve got going on down in Memphis. Maybe we want to invest.” And that’s how it all got started. My father was working in Memphis and he had the same conversations with other investors. I was working in Denver and having those conversations with other investors and pretty soon we had people coming to us saying “If you can buy and renovate and rent and then hold these properties long term yourself, would you mind doing that for us?” That’s the exactly how this whole thing started – one guy started saying “Will you do this for me?” then it became two and so one and so forth.

Josh: Perfect. To get from there to today you’ve got build a scalable real estate business. Why don’t we jump into that – how that happens? What comes first, ramping up your marketing or hiring people to handle it? Obviously you’ve got to start getting customers, right?

Chris: Where we started first was hiring people. It wasn’t ramping up the marketing because contrary to what a lot of people think when this style industry first started, I can’t speak for everybody out there, but I know for us we didn’t have clients all over the country. We had clients right here in Memphis. We had Fed-Ex pilots, we had executives in international papers, in autos. People that knew who we were, knew about our background and take that one step further we were extremely active in real estate investors association, a lot of people knew what we were doing.

Brandon: I think it’s important what you said right there, you were active in the real estate investor association. It think that’s of huge importance to get out there and let all the other people see who you are because you never know where you’re going to be two years from now, three years from now. The relationships you form now will definitely help later.

Chris: That the thing. So many people talk about marketing as if it’s like a very expansive thing that you have to do outside of your everyday activities and I could not disagree more. The best marketing you could ever do is talking to other people and if you add a REA, if you add a Chamber of Commerce, if you add a mixer – wherever you’re at the opportunity to tell people about who you are and what you do exist and if you just get out and shake hands and tell people what’s going on that’s the way we stated.

Josh: You went to the REA, you’re out there, you’re letting them know who you are and what you’re doing. Just shaking the hands and that’s kind of building your network, right?

Chris: Absolutely. We’re the kind of people that when it came to REA, there as local REA here was good but we also decided that, and this was my father that decided this, he wanted to do something more than that. He thought that there was something missing so he started this own REA. We were only REA’s in the country that had a lunch time meeting once a month. Kind of what we’ve done is we created an avenue for more people to hear about our story while they were learning about real estate.

Brandon: Ann Bellamy talked about that, back in the podcast we had with her, as well. She started her own real estate group because there wasn’t any of that met her needs and that were doing what she thought a real estate group should do.

Chris: Why not, right? If you’re going to go out three – go all in. If you realize and understand that your ability to make friends and network with people and earn others trust, that’s key to any business. Why not go out there and start a real estate investment association that’s going to teach and talk about what you firmly believe in? Before anybody things that’s really daunting task but very first meeting my dad had was around conference table with seven other people. They set there and thy just talked about what was going on in real estate market that day and questions of those other people in the room. That grew from seven people to few years later 300 people. And that’s all it was, though. It’s not like it has to be day one you have this huge group. It could be a handful.

Josh: Absolutely. I don’t mean to plug BP but one of the cool things about what’s been happening lately in BiggerPockets is you see a lot of this people doing that, people are setting up their keyword alerts for their meeting-up in Austin and Washington and all over the place. Essentially is just couple little people starting out but it’s amazing to watch it grow and grow, even on meetup.com and elsewhere. It’s amazing, just use the tools that are available to you to help you build your little local groups if there’s no REA or if REA that is in your area is one that doesn’t share your values.

Chris: The question that you guys asked, you asked what do you do first – do you ramp up your marketing or do you hire. For us the first thing we did was we hired somebody to handle some of the tasks that we didn’t really want to do anymore. That’s one of the very first things that we did because we knew that the marketing was every single day and it was a low cost and it was a whole lot more about being out there and letting people know what we’re doing and a whole lot less about the mundane and really tentacle side of it that we do today like SEO and the Blogging, all that kind of stuff. It’s much more hand shaking back then when we’re fist getting started. The first thing we knew we had to do was bring in people that would help us take the task that we didn’t want to do.

Josh: Sharon Vornholt in her post on Thursday said “Figure out what are your inner geniuses and run with that, don’t try to make something that you’re not good at. Don’t try to be the pro at that because you’re wasting your own time.”

Chris: I love that. I think that she writes a lot about that. It’s really, really, good stuff. She’s a big believer in outsourcing things at you’re not good at, that you don’t enjoy and don’t have the time to do, I couldn’t agree more. She calls it outsourcing, for us, we hire. But just the same.

Brandon: She talked about it, too – some people do it internally some people do it externally, it just depends on your business model. Definitely something I need to get better at because If you want to ramp up your business that’s important. Going back to hiring, who was your first hire when you first started?

Chris: The first person we hired was lady named Carol Henderson and when my dad hired her he told her that he wanted her part-time and he had really no idea what exactly she was going to be doing. He had an idea, a lot of it was going to be spreadsheets and reporting so that he could always track what was happening – how many offers was he making in a week, what was being accepted, which real estate agents were accepting this offer, who was working best with him, what was he selling to different investors, how long does it take him to close. This little bitty tracking things that he needed somebody to track for him, so that’s why he brought her in. Almost like an assistant. For nothing more than just helping him track his business so he can see what he needed to do to improve.

Brandon: I think this is really cool about tracking stuff like that – I don’t track any of that stuff. I should be, that makes sense.

Chris: I think Josh said a little while ago, when you’re talking about experienced investors and how to ramp up and get to that next position and keep going up the latter a lot of this stuff comes down to it, I don’t want to say basic, but its business concept it’s not so much about just real estate it’s about really the business side of it and what do you have to do to be scalable.

Josh: When is the right time to, say, move from your home office and suddenly start hiring that first person? “Hey I’ve done six deals, now I want to hire that assistant to start quantifying things and managing work.” – when do you do that?

Chris: It’s going to be different for everybody. For us, we moved out of our homes early on and into just small one man office. We had done maybe 60 deals in a year so you’re talking five a month. But a lot of that was also mentality. We wanted to feel like we’re getting up and going somewhere every single day and not just sitting in a home office. From there, small little 1000 square feet you got room to put Carol into. We actually made our second hire which was somebody that was going to come in and help us to market to the real estate agents, to help us actually make enough offers, get out and market the little properties – that kind of stuff. Those next progressive steps to building up a bigger company was bring in somebody in that could help us figure out where all those next steps where. We wanted to start a rental division where we actually manage the property – the property managing company. We wanted somebody that would help us make more offers but we weren’t 100% sure what those steps were.

We brought a guy in and we told him “It’s your responsibility out to start and get this thing up and going. We’re going to meet on a daily basis and you tell us the progress you’re making.” Almost like we knew what we wanted but we didn’t want to slow the business down to figure out. So we brought somebody else in and said “we want to figure out what those next steps are.” That was a great hire for us. I’m going to tell you something that may be a little bit shocking at first. We brought him in, he has gone out there now and he’s got his own company. We actually had half a dozen people that had come in, worked for us, learned this business and then gone out and started their own companies.

Josh: To compete with you?

Chris: In some respects they have. I wouldn’t exactly say that they do today but that’s not a negative. I’m not saying negative about them, I’m just saying they grew out from underneath our wings. They came to work for us, they ended up going out there becoming an entrepreneurial on their own. More power to them, you cannot be scared of that if you’re going to grow and scale your business. You have to bring in really quality people and understand they may leave.

Josh: Absolutely. Let me just plug the show notes here - This is a show 26 of the BiggerPockets podcast and you can check out our show notes at biggerpockets.com/show26 . Let’s jump back for a second here because there’s been some debate – we’re talking about scaling your business, growing it out and this hires. Some people are just going to say “Oh, who’s our next hire? How do we do it?” Let’s talk about business plans. How important are they and really how formalized do they need to be? Did you guys have a plan, would things be better if you did, if you didn’t?

Chris: I’m going to give you advice and answer here that’s going to be so contrary to what a lot of people will tell you. No we didn’t. But what I want to also make real clear that we were extremely experienced business people. We had started, between us, nine companies that have grown to over ten million dollars in annual sales. We had a lot of experience hiring, a lot of experience training. We knew what we were doing as far as scaling and growing your business. For somebody that’s just getting started, that never owned their own business or they’re working in corporate world they know they have the skills, they have the right attitude, there ready to get going, yeah, business plan is extremely important. When I say a business plan I mean laying out where is you want to go – what is your ultimate vision? This is not something you can do overnight, this is something you have to do a lot of heart and soul into it. Where do I want to do, why in the world would I want to do this in the first place? Then you can make a plan how do I get there.

Brandon: I agree completely. I always talk about that – a business plan is like a road map and it helps you figure out how to get there.

Chris: It also helps you say “Ok, I know I have to hire this person because I’m lousy at it. I’ve got to hire this person because I hate doing it and I’ve got to hire this person because I don’t have time for it.” Those are the reasons why you hire somebody else and since you’ve got to know this is what I’m going to have to hire. It’s kind of funny. I had this conversation with a lot of people that had talked me about property management companies. They call me and say “Just that one little piece, what do I need to do and what are the numbers and how do I manage, when I can be a profitable one?” Of course it’s always different but it’s one of the first things I tell them is to sit down with a business plan and begin to write out some of this numbers of what is going to take for you to get to profitability.

Josh: In terms of the hires - we’ll take a hypothetical. You’ve got this first hire and they’re helping you analyze and organize the market and all that stuff. Now you’re paying their salary so you’ve got to cover them, you’ve got to cover yourself, you’ve got to cover your partners, you may not have cash to hire that next person but you need that next person. Do you think then, perhaps, it’s better for these companies to just keep working on deals until that cash flow start to come in or to maybe, perhaps, take on some debt?

Chris: we never took on debt. We paid everybody out of the deal. Everybody’s tied to the performance, period. That’s the way we started.

Josh: Can you expand upon that a little bit?

Chris: We didn’t bring in a bunch of people and say “Okay, I’m going to pay you XYZ salary.” When we first started everybody was brought in as independent 10-99 as part of the team. If you did your job and I did my job and that lady or man did their job then deals close. And when the deal closed you brought in X dollars of revenue. Out of that revenue everybody gets paid, the bills gets paid and what’s left at the bottom is what I make as an owner – that’s how we started. Everyone got paid from the deal. For us, we thrive on the pressure. If you are an experienced business person and you know that you’re a good person, that’s a great way to start it.

It’s one of those things – we only eat what we kill or grow if you’re a vegetarian. If you’re not growing it, you aren’t eating it. That’s the way we started off and it worked really well for us because somebody that would accept that position they’re the same kind, they say “I like that challenge, let me do that.” That’s what we did, we surrounded ourselves with great people, we were honest with them from the beginning – this is how you’re going to make money. You couple that with the fact that we were super confident, we really believed in what we were doing and we were also very open and honest. We told everybody we had no idea where we’re going or how we’re going to get there. There wasn’t a whiteboard somewhere that had step one, step two, step three. There was just very, very, simply – we knew that we were going to do it and we sounded ourselves with people who believed in that. That’s how we did it – paid for out of the deal.

If you don’t do that Josh, to your original questions, I would say that you have to have capital in your business before you go out and hire somebody. It’s probably too short but – surround yourself with great people, surround yourself with experienced business people who can help you make sure you’ve got all of the questions answered, all the T’s crossed, I’s dotted, good lawyer, good accountant, good people that could say “Ok, this is what you need to do and how you’re going to do it.”

Josh: I think for some of the newer folks who might be listening, what you said actually presents the opportunity for them because there might be a guy like Brandon who is an experienced investor who’s doing well who needs to build his team. He’s looking for somebody who just wants to hustle. He’s looking for somebody who wants to work his backside off. If you are a local investor who’s “Hey I know this guy’s successful, I know I’ll work ill work my but off and I’m willing to only to get paid upon the closure of a deal for him.” – You go in there and pitch him. Hit him up.

Brandon: How can I turn that down? I’m going to make you money and it’s not going to cost you anything and really no risk.

Chris:: Let me tell you one other thing and that is for listeners out there – don’t be scared to share in the wealth of what you’re doing. A lot of times there’s just certain emotions that we allow to get in the way. It’s funny – sometimes people feel guilty about making more money. If you really thing about what I just said there, I can sell an investment property, for round numbers, at 50000. I do well and my team does well. But the marketplace says I can sell this for 55000 but I feel guilty selling it at that price because I’m doing well with 50, I do good, my team does good. If you want to build a scalable business that is built on good solid business principles you have to watch your market and capitalize as much as you can base on your market.

Josh: Let’s talk about that for a second. If you’re in a market and you’re thinking 50 and market’s saying 55. Now that 55 you surly have to have a top quality product, right?

Chris: Absolutely.

Josh: You can’t sell the bottom of the barrel property at the top of the barrel price.

Chris: No. Think about the other side of that too, Josh, is that if you’re surrounding yourself with really good, high quality people and because you’re taking on more responsibility because you’ve got more mouths to feed you have to get your price up, while you should also hold all those people accountable for something. I’m going to kid of tie around to something that Sharon had said – What is your core competency? What is, not just you personally, going to be your company’s core competency and that’s what you focus on, where that higher quality comes in.

What I mean by that, Josh, is are you the type of company that says “Our core competency is just selling properties super low priced. They’re not the best properties but they’re good, they’re serviceable, they’re going to bring me the top of return you’re looking for. But it’s going to attract the person that’s interested in a Toyota Corolla – it’s dependable but it’s not top of the line.” Or you’re the kind of company that’s going to sell at the top of the line and what you’re bringing is every bell and whistle, everything’s been touched and handled, the customer service is above and beyond. You’re selling the Lexus or the Mercedes of the housing world. That’s what I mean by that. And you nailed it. Whatever your core competency is – that’s what you offer and you base your price on that.

Josh: That’s great. Really quick, because we want to move on to some other stuff – at this show we can yap around forever.

Working on your business versions in your business. Clearly you get to a point you’ve got to look at it from the big picture view versus the hammers and nails. How does an investor step out of working in the business to working on the business?

Chris: It goes back to what I said a second ago – surround yourself with really good advisors, some really good people. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to hold a position of advisory – it could a really close friend of yours that you have a lot of faith in as a business person. But you take time to go meet with those people and away from your day to day activities. So many of us we jam up our schedules and we feel like we’re so busy doing really, really, important things that we don’t take the time to step back, we don’t make the time to step back and ask questions like “What do I need to be doing next? What I can hand off to somebody else?”

I’ll give you a great one, this is a question we ask a lot, every time we get ready to hire somebody new we always ask ourselves are we getting maximum effort and efficiency out of the people that we have. We have people that work in multiple different departments, they do multiple different things for us because when we original hired them for we couldn’t maximize them. My point is – step away, go to dinner, have a weekly breakfast, have a weekly meeting. Whatever it is get away from your bossiness, sit down with people that you trust around you and just say “Here’s my business – what do I need to be working on?”

Josh: That’s really good advice. Let’s shift gears a little bit here and move over and talk about property management a little bit. Why don’t we just start with what you guys are doing to give people an idea. How many units does your company currently manage?

Chris: A little 1800.

Brandon: A lot more than I thought.

Chris: It’s in the two cities. We’re in two cities now – a little over 1800.

Brandon: And how many people have you working in divisions of your company?

Chris: Just specifically full-time in those divisions is 14 and then we have about a half a dozen that are part-time, 10-99. There’s another half dozen or so that kind of lead over to help out in those figure divisions that work elsewhere in the company but they share responsibility over there.

Brandon: I want to know a little bit more about how you fill in vacancies. What’s the process for you, the unit goes vacant – what do you guys typically do?

Chris:From day one the way that we market properties, we’re a little unique, we actually put four rental signs in a yard.

Josh: Four signs? Are they all the same signs or?

Chris: They look similar – they’re blue and while. For those of you out there that are right now thinking “What the heck did he just say?” we created the system early on that was all about competition. We wanted, as I said earlier, people who were hungry, who really wanted to work and work hard and earn their living. We pay our rental agents very well. What we’ve done is each of them has their own sign that has their own independent number so we don’t have this one branded sign that sits in a yard, everybody has their own sign. They had to be blue and white. The person that rents the highest number of homes in a month gets to put their sigh as a very first sign next to the curb. All the signs are lined up, they had to be lined up vertically from the curb. From the curb to the front door you can see if from both directions, the first sign one the street is the lead rental rep. The second side from in is whoever gets out there next. We only allow four signs, we have about nine people at any given time that rent houses for us. This is in Memphis, this is where we have majority of our homes. It’s slightly different in Texas but it’s not really worth going into because it’s such a different market.

That’s how we do it here in Memphis and what happens is if you think about it, a renter pulls up in from of the property and they’re going to call that first number. If somebody doesn’t answer the phone they’re going to call that next number. If they don’t answer they’re going to call the next number. What it does in the way we train our people is if you’re not answering your phone – you’re not making money, you’re going backwards. If you don’t answer it somebody else will, they’re going to get that rental and pretty soon they’re going to pass you – they’re going to be number one.

Josh: I’m sorry, that sounds crazy.

Chris: The funny thing is everyone that comes to visit us and we do have entrepreneurial that come to visit us to learn about our systems, they just smile and they shake their heads “I cannot believe that this is the way this happens.” But we run on average vacancy rate of, this year anyway, 4%. It’s been a little bit under 4%, little bit over 4%, right around though there. Properties typically take less than 40 days for us to get not just rented but to actually have the tenant move in. What happens is we’ve got people two things – people who really, really, want to rent houses for us because they know they can make a lot of money if they’re willing to hustle. What we don’t do, and I don’t suggest anybody does is we don’t have that one branded sign, we don’t have that one call number where you have to leave a message and someone will call you back later. Because the tenant wants to see it is right then. That’s what we do. Our real agents, they’re not in an office, they’re out on the streets all day. It’s what they do and we pay them well for it.

Brandon: I like how you kind of gameify it, you make it a competition. That’s cool.

Chris: Every week in the office we make them to give us a goal. How many houses are you going to rent this week. They go and they come back and we’ve been known to ask people before “What are you doing here? For two weeks you haven’t rented a house, why are you even coming to this meeting anymore? What’s your purpose?”

Josh: Do they leave crying?

Chris: No, they don’t leave crying. We had a few that eventually stopped showing up but that’s ok. We want to surround ourselves with great people who are willing to work hard and in return for working hard there is a substantial reward there. A lot of times you hear people talk about “Hire somebody and for this position it’s a 25000 a year job or that a 40000 a year job.” For us its - we try to create as many jobs as possible where it’s you can make whatever you want to make. We always tell rental agents you cannot out rent us because as soon as, you will find this crazy but one of our conversations earlier this year was, when our rental vacancies are down below 4% we’re not buying enough houses. Our rental agents have become so proficient at what they do that they’re out renting us. That a sure sign of get more houses bought, get more houses sold, get more houses rented, go ahead.

Brandon: What are these rental agents doing to find tenants? Do they put ads in the phonebook or the newspaper, what are they doing?

Chris: 75% of our rentals come from two areas. One – drive by. That’s by far our biggest lead generators. When you see four signs lined up in a house you pretty much know whose house it is now. We’re not spread out throughout the city, we’re concentrated in areas that we like to invest in and we like to manage in. We’ve cut the city down into about the thirds. We manage and own and operate in about a third to a half of the city. We’re managing so many properties now that when you’re talking about 4% vacancy you’re still talking about 80 properties out there that have a rental sign up in them. We get a lot of street traffic and if somebody sees a house for rent but it may not be affordable for them or may not be the right size for them we can very quickly direct them to one nearby that meets their criteria.

Josh: I’m imagining seeing four signs and I’m like “What the hell is going on here?” There’s four different phone numbers, four different names. As a potential renter I wonder if there is any confusion there for those guys when you guys get people calling who are not familiar with you. Is there a “What’s going on there’s four different people renting this house?” Or do people think it’s kind of scandalous almost, a scam. Four signs – what’s up?

Chris: That hasn’t been said to us, I’ll put it that way. We haven’t had anybody come in and say it to us but one of the things that we really, really, do and you might have picked that up from me saying that is that we have a lot of accountability, we do a lot of training within our company. Those phone numbers, it’s not somebody picking up a phone sand saying “Hello?” or “Yo!” They’re answering their phone as “Premier Property Management” or we have one young lady that actually, I’m not going to say with our help, she went out there and she’s now an entrepreneurial herself. She started her own rental company that is an independent contractor for us as a management company. I you follow what I’ve just said there she went out and said “I can rent so many houses that I can actually afford to hire people and start my own company. It’s called Memphis Rental or something, where she goes out and she rents house for her.

She has people answering the phone as “Memphis Rentals” and they come out, they look at her properties, everything from that point becomes Premier Property Management but the people that we have doing this for us are very professional. We don’t have just core plus signs, we have a black metal rental sign. It’s much like a “for sale” sign would sit in. We want to try to make it as appealing and as professional as possible but we don’t to remove the competitive atmosphere. There’s a lot of debate in company that the bigger we get that maybe we need to make changes but man I tell you why change something that works as well as this system does? It is funny because the one thing we do get told, Josh, now people who recognize four blue signs – Premier Property Management.

Brandon: I noticed in my area when I try to call some property management company few years ago I was thinking about going into property management instead of doing it myself and every single one of them answered the phone with “Hello?”

Josh: Was it with that accent?

Brandon: It was exactly, angry, I hate the world. I just thought if I could answer the phone I would be one step above all these people.

Chris: I’ve talked a whole lot in the past about basic customer service. It’s amazing how low the bar is to be truly great. The way you answer the phone, Brandon, that a great point for the listeners out there, because no matter what you do I real estate, no matter what your business is, the way you answer the phone, the way you react to that very first phone call, very first impression means so much in whether or not you’re going to be successful.

Josh: Let’s talk a little bit about tenants. Why would immediately disqualify a tenant from renting from you guys?

Chris: Their breaking a lease with someone else to come rent from us. That an immediate disqualification on our part. Let me put it this way – it’s an immediate red flag. That something that we would have to think long and hard but I can’t imagine a scenario where we’d rent to somebody who’s doing that.

Josh: That’s interesting, that’s one of those out of the box things that people setup their own criteria, obviously within the law, but that’s a really good criteria to have because if they’re going to break someone else’s lease, shoot, you’re next.

Chris: You can go back and the reason why I kind of qualify that a little bit is because there’s always a reason for everything. Whether it’s a bankruptcy or it’s a eviction or breaking a lease – there is always a reason for it. Whether or not they can make us feel comfortable that a different story. Most of the times if somebody’s breaking a lease they’re not gin to be able to make us feel comfortable. But if they come to us and we can verify, we can go to their house and they got missing ceiling and water dripping in there and somebody won’t come out to take care of their house that a bad landlord, that’s a scenario we probably work with somebody.

Josh: Sure.

Brandon: Couple a months ago I wrote this guide called The ultimate guide to tenant screening, I think I wrote about 6000 words on how to screen a tenant. I’m curious, ill link that in a show notes, I’m curious about your process. What do you actually look for then in a good tenant? What’s the most important thing?

Chris: Most important thing? I want to know what their job and their job history are. Again, there’s not a lot of construction going in certain parts of the country so if you’re renting in certain parts of the counties you’ve got a guy that walks in as a brick layer and that is his trade and he’s been a brick layer for a long time and maybe he’s independent. What he can tell me he makes and he’s earning on top of his level, this is the maximum rent you can afford I may struggle to rent to that person. I’d had to think long and hard, have a lot of conversations about him because his income is tied to industry that’s hurting. That’s something I really look at – where they’re employed, how long have they been employed, what the likelihood that they’re going to stay employed and continue earning at that level. Doesn’t mean that I would rent to them but I may encourage them to rent at a lower rate.

Josh: That a great criteria and that’s something that I think a lot of property managers I’ve had experiences are most of them bad. As we’ve talked about the bar is so low when it comes to that stuff. If you can find somebody to look at the big picture like that it’s just so important.

Chris: You’ve got to remember that my property management business is tied take to my turnkey company. You’ve got to kind of remember that when we’re making decisions and the way we’re setting up our property management company it’s much more bigger picture so, Josh, it’s important that we don’t have failure. We don’t want investor to fail and one of the best ways to help an investor make sure they don’t fail is to help their tenants succeed – don’t let their tenant fail. If you’ve got a guy that wants to rent a house and they’ve fallen in love with it but tits too expensive for them the one month’s rent and nine percent income it’s not worth it to the householder it’s going to mean for that tenant who is your client and also investor somewhere who owns that house, it’s not worth it. It’s much better to set up everyone up for success from the beginning and we make a habit out of doing that. You build a business over time that just works that way. I guess that’s the best way to put it – you have to set everyone up for success. When you do your business will grow.

Josh: That’s great advice. Let me step that up a bit here. I’m an investor, I have a property management company and I’ve got a property that’s sitting for one month, three months. How do I insure that the property managers are doing their job? Obviously if it’s not renting then they’re not doing their job to make the tweaks that need to happen, right? How do I avoid not getting into bed with those guys? How do you screen the managers and I think that Brandon and I talked about this before, we really want to talk about this a little bit. I know you wrote a really brilliant piece maybe earlier this year or last year about screening property managers, one of my favorite articles I’ve ever read on that topic. Let’s dig into that a little bit.

Chris: You know, I’m biased on this so it’s hard to answer this question a 100% Josh because I’m don’t want to be too air horn on how we do things.

Josh: Of course.

Chris: I know that there are really good high quality management companies in every city, they do exist. I don’t know who they all are, I haven’t networked with all of them but I know that not all of them are going to be the horror stories that we hear about. There are certain things that I believe in any investor should look for. It’s kind of funny, it’s not real estate experience it’s not real estate license its business experience, its setup of their company, how many employees do they have, do they have the infrastructure and network setup to want be able to keep me informed what’s going on to be responsive to me and to the tenants. These are, in my mind, just basics. These are things that, unfortunately, property management companies they build their own reputation have often time been gone off the idea of stay small keep it all as an attitude. I don’t mean stay small as in rentals - I mean small as in staff. I know some guys that are managing the same number of properties that we are and they’ve got three four people maximum on their stuff. But they have vacancy rates in the low to mid-teens, they have turnover about every six to eight months and for some reason, whatever its location or whatever, the people accept that.

Josh: We can go through a thousand questions, we can go on and on and on about it. Say I’m somebody who is going to hire a property manager. Give me two or three key things to ask that property manager that I can use to screen the bad guys out and find somebody who is potentially going to be at that level of professionalism that’s going to kick some backside.

Chris: Every property management company out there is going to talk about their vacancy rate. That’s going to happen because it’s a number that anybody can pull out of their backside and say this is what it is, whether they know it or whether they think it it’s one of those numbers that people tend to throw out fairly quickly. Don’t ask them that. Ask them what’s their average length of stay. Next question to ask them is how many properties are they managing. The next one to ask them is how many properties did they rent last year. When you have those three pieces of information what you have in front of you now is are they a good company or are they not a good company. Because if they tell you that their average length of stay is two, three, four years and they have a 100 properties under management and they rented 50 last year. What’s their average vacancy? What’s their average length of stay, do you know? At that point you do and I’ll tell you how you know.

They’ve got a hundred properties, they rented fifty that means that they turn half of their portfolio in one year. On average, they’ll turn the other half next year. That’s means that your length of stay on average is going to be less than two years. It’s a quick little way to find out what kind of service they’re offering and what kind of service are they doing for their clients. That client being that tenant over there.

Some of the other questions I would ask, obviously, how many people do you have on staff, what are their job descriptions, what are their roles, what do they do for you. Then what should be very important to every investor out there that owns a property is going to have a management company whether they’re in town or out town is how responsive are they to the tenant. Ask the question – Tell me about your tenants. Tell me about your relationship with your tenants. You’re going to get really quickly if they have empathy which is required if you’re going to be a successful business that deals with people or do they have apathy where they could care less. It’s a business strategy.

There’s some dude in this company that dropped their rent of. You’d be surprised at the number of management companies that actually hate their tenants. They hate doing it, they hate dealing with them. I am going to tell you, as an investor, if you find somebody that’s that way you don’t want to do business with them. You don’t. Because they’re not going to keep your properties occupied, they’re not going to have a good reputation, they’re not going to have long length of stay, a longer occupancy. There’s a higher probability that the way they operate is “I’m good with people moving out. The more they move out the more money I make.”

Brandon: Let’s move to our last little section here - this is something we started a couple weeks ago and got a really good feedback. We call it, I guess, the fire round where we just ask a bunch of quick questions and you’re going to fire answer those questions. If that’s cool.

Chris: Awesome.

Brandon: We’re going to stick on the management topic for a little bit here. Section eight – what are your thoughts?

Chris: No.

Josh: Why.

Brandon: I’m going to ask why, too.

Chris: Strictly just my city every property is available for section eight but we generally rent them well before section eight ever comes around to them. It’s strictly our choice, we are so good at what we do, that is a little plug, that I don’t need section eight.

Josh: What are your thoughts on renting to tenants with pets?

Chris: I don’t like it and I especially don’t like it when they don’t tell us. If they don’t tell us they’re evicted. If they tell us it requires a hired deposit and approval of the particular pet they’re going to put in a house.

Josh: So you interview the pet?

Chris: We want to meet the pet one on one? No. I do want to know what kind of dog it is. There’s certain vicious breads that we have a policy that we will not rent to, depends on the size of the dog or the cat is how big the pet deposit has to be. It’s automatically forfeited from the front.

Josh: What if it was a cat person like Brandon who’s got like 17 cats?

Chris: Probably not going to happen but I can’t say for sure. It’s going to be questionable.

Brandon: How do you deal with problems? You already said evictions for that but say for somebody you expect them to be a drug dealer, what do you do?

Chris: I expect them to be a drug dealer?

Brandon: Suspect.

Chris: If I suspect them to be a drug dealer we’re going to get the authorities involved. We’re certainly not going to do it ourselves, it’s going to be the authorities that are going to get involved. If the authorities come to us that they’ve got case working against somebody that’s occupying one of our properties, the law has a process you go through so we just follow the laws process and evict them.

Josh: Tenant calls and says “Oh, I’m going to be a week late on my rent.” What do you do?

Chris: I ask them for the exact date and time they’ll be in. The exact amount they’re bringing in, I confirm it with them – I make them repeat it back to us and then we’ll send them email confirming that this is what they’ve told us. Then we update our notes and prepare to receive the rent on that day.

Brandon: Do you charge the late fees, still?

Chris: Absolutely. Now look, the question you just asked that they’re being proactive – you bet ill work with them. If they violate that they’re more than likely to be taken to what we call the eviction court just to get that process started. Doesn’t mean that we’re going to evict them its only to show them that we’re not going to let them to make an appointment with us to pay rent and then not keep it.

Brandon: For me, nine times out of ten they don’t tell me proactively ahead of time. They just disappear and I don’t hear from them until I issue a three day. I don’t like if it’s like that for you.

Chris: It is different for us and only because we as a management company we put a heavy emphasis on relationships with our tenants. Last year we did a dozen evictions and we manage 1500 properties in the last year. We only had a dozen evictions the whole year. A lot of that goes to just a very, very, open relationship. The other side of it, too, guys, you’re late the day you’re late we’ll start to let you know about it. It’s alright in our ability we’ll let you know every day that you’re late until you make arrangements with us to get it paid.

Josh: Pete Giardini who used to write for us a lot, he had a saying about training your tenants and I think that’s kind of what you’re talking about. Beyond just the relationship, were not talking about demeaning your tenants but literally training your tenants to know and understand what are your processes, how does it work, this is what happens. Up front, before the dotted line is signed, right?

Chris: Yes. Before the dotted line is signed. I’ll tell you Josh really quickly its respect. You show them respect and you expect them to respect you.

Brandon: What statistic should somebody look for when deciding a good city to invest in?

Chris: I personally like the economic side of it – jobs, companies moving into the city, one of the industries that provide most of the jobs for the city are they dying industry or are they growing industries. For me personally I like the economic side of it.

Josh:For the young guys listening – what should somebody who’s, say, 23 just out of college, do to get started in real estate investing?

Chris: I would either find somebody that has some really god experience and go to work with them, offer to, again, almost like a mentor-mentee type of relationship. I’m going to work for you but let him know up front I may want do this on my own fairly soon. That would be my biggest thing, get out there, let people know that you’re willing to work with them, have them teach you the job, have them pay you a little bit of money but get a whole lot of knowledge in the meantime.

Josh: Is it smart to purchase an investment property before your first primary residence?

Chris: Sure. Why not? I guess there’s two different things. One is the investment almost on the business standpoint and the other one is an investment from the personal standpoint. If you aren’t ready to settle down, if you’re good with condo living or apartment living or renting, get out there and invest in those houses it only helps you buy something better later on down the line if that’s what you’re hoping to do.

Josh: What color should you pain the exterior on an rental property?

Chris: Exterior?

Josh: Exterior – that’s the outside.

Brandon: This questions all came from the forums that’s why this one was in there, I thought I was interesting a very wide-open question.

Chris: I also saw on forum that someone said that they hate tan, the color tan. There was a whole big discussion about it but I’ll tell you that any of those type of neutral style colors, whether be a tan or light yellow or something that adds some contrast and allows you to do a good stuff with the trim, the face of the socket, come with the different color of your guttering. Things that allow you to put some contrast with the curb and the house, I think, works really well. I wouldn’t go with any crazy colors but those neutral tans, that kind of stuff, tan family works really well.

Brandon: Earlier you said, in Memphis a third to a half of the city you’re managing in – how do you decide what neighborhood to focus on?

Chris: Right now it’s from experience. When we first got started we were looking for a rental rate that was above the median rents for the city. If the median rates in your city that you’re in is $600 I was looking for 650 and above. I wanted to get higher in because I knew the demand for what I was looking for was from that style of property. That’s what we did – we looked for areas and neighborhoods where the rent rates were about the median.

Josh: For the last one – A person owns the house, they own what’s it worth and they want to move. Do they rent it or sell it?

Chris: That is absolutely the question that is based on what you can rent it for. I will tell you that I regret not keeping every house I ever owned. I look back and I wish I kept every house I ever bought and just rented it out but I didn’t. I sold them all. The reality is that I never made a lot of money on any of selling the properties. If you can rent it and either make money or it becomes an expense that’s small enough that it just fits right into your monthly budget I would rent it and keep it. That’s just me.

Josh: That brings us to the next segment which is our [inaudible][1:10:00] You might get into that Chris.

Brandon: Like that, Chris.

Josh: Do it.

Chris: A three person harmony probably wouldn’t sound as good as yours two person harmony.

Brandon: We do sound pretty good.

Josh: There is nothing harmonic about what we’re doing.

Chris: I’m speechless at this point which is hard to make me.

Josh: Favorite real estate book?

Chris: Wow, that a good one. I like Frank McKinney’s, I can’t think of the name right now.

Brandon: Make it big by Frank McKinney – is that it?

Chris: That is it. Make it big and 49 secrets to success - I love it. Excellent, excellent book.

Brandon: You can get it for a penny on Amazon actually.

Favorite non real estate business book.

Chris: Rework.

Brandon: Me too.

Chris: Rework is, I think, that’s a great book. I love it.

Brandon: I just want to tell a quick story here. When I met Josh I went to his house few months ago I left Rework sitting on this desk and said “You need to read this book.” How you’re ling that book so far Josh?

Josh: Brandon, I’ve opened it once, I turned a couple of pages. Actually that not true I probably opened two or three times, I’ve moved it from my dresser to my couch to my dresser. I haven’t had time.

Brandon: Now we’re both on you.

Josh:Thanks. You called me out, it’s fine I’ll get you back.

Hobbies, I know you have a nice great big family, what do you like to do outside real estate?

Chris: I’ve got four little kids, I do a lot of stuff with them. A lot of coaching their little teams, I was a real big into soccer, that was my original job. I thought that was going to be my profession as a professional soccer coach. I love playing soccer, love coaching. I do a lot of stuff with the kids, I still run. That kind of stuff – just getting outdoors and having lots of fun and doing lots of stuff with my family.

Brandon: Final question for the day. What do you think sets apart successful investors from those who never gain traction?

Chris: For me, I think that’s a very, very, easy question to answer. It is who you surround yourself with. If for a successful investor the difference between them and someone who’s not is almost always who they choose to surround and spend their time with, spend their energy with, spend their mind with. It’s going to be entirely who you’re surrounding yourself work with.

One last little thing and its luck. If you surround yourself with great people mixed with a little bit of luck you’re going to get there.

Josh: And you create your own luck with a lot of different things but I agree with you completely.

Chris: It’s one of those things you’re exactly right Josh, and if you’ve got right people around you and you’re in a right position when luck happens you can take an advantage of it if you don’t sometimes you miss it.

Brandon: One of my favorite quotes is “The harder I work the luckier I get.” I don’t remember who said it but I always liked that.

Chris: It is true. To the question – the one thing is who you surround yourself with.

Josh:Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show we definitely appreciate it. Lots of great tad bits and we hope that listeners got a lot out of this thing.

Chris: Me too. I’ve really enjoyed it, you guys, both of you know I believe in what you’re doing, I love it and I wish you all to have absolute best of luck in the rest of this year and on into the future.

Josh: Thank you, Chris.

Alright everybody that was our interview with Chris Clothier of Memphis Invest and Premiere Property Management. It was really good show Brandon.

Brandon: it was. I’d say one of my favorites because Chris is really rocking the business side of things and I think we focus a lot on real estate side which is important but when you’re trying to build a scalable business and you’re trying to get bigger you have to definitely to keep an eye out on business side of things.

Josh: Lot of great tips and definitely I thought it was fantastic. Definitely one of our higher level shows which we’re certainly going to be doing more as well.

Otherwise thanks for checking out the show, be sure to like us on Facebook at facebook.com/biggerpockets, twitter at twitter.com/biggerpockets, G+ at some really long string of things – just look for BiggerPockets and you’ll find us. Check us out on LinkedIn, we’re out there, we’re sharing content, networking, engage with us, not us being Brandon and I but us being the rest of the community. There’s a lot of great people interconnecting. Finally, of course, if you haven’t already please join us on biggerpockets.com. Set up a profile, jump in out our forums, engage in our blogs and connect. The more you do that as you’ll learn the better are your opportunities for interacting and meeting new people, partners – things like that. Make it happen, thanks again for listening, show 26, BiggerPockets podcast, Josh Dorkin, I’m out of here.

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