Turning Setbacks into Freedom: The Power of Resilience and Real Estate with Anson Young

[0:00] welcome back to the rei agent i’m here with anson young anson so thanks so much for joining us yeah thanks for having me this is awesome uh yeah stoked for this conversation for sure uh we were talking a little bit about you being based out of uh denver and uh talking about skiing a little bit but it’s a passion of mine but tell me give me give us a bird’s eye view of what you do um and then we can kind of dig into your story yeah sure um i mean obviously i’m licensed real estate agent which is why i’m here but um i’ve actually been investing longer than i’ve had my license and uh you know so what i kind of do now is i i have a handful of clients that i help um maybe do 12 to 18 transactions a year with my license but i’m kind of mostly focused on my investment business and um you know we can get into what that all entails and unpack it but uh but yeah like as a split it’s probably 70 30 60 40 somewhere around there and uh and yeah there’s not a lot of agents who do invest which is sad but um hopefully you know through shows like yours we can get more uh to get in there yeah it’s kind of interesting right i mean i think it’s it’s yeah like it’s it’s such an easy

[1:15] thing to understand um uh you know with maybe it’s the horror stories people i know a lot of people are scared to do it and there’s horror stories about bad tenants and and then you know we come across that as well as agents and when we see uh the results of a bad tenant but it’s not all bad it’s it’s a really good thing and as agents uh you really get some awesome benefits uh for investing in real estate now with tax depreciation etc accelerated depreciation um but what what got you started into real estate and also uh you’re an author as well right yeah i am um so yeah what what got me started was uh like everybody in the kind of dot-com boom i got laid off from it uh this was like 2003 ish and uh i didn’t like that feeling of you know somebody else telling me that i can’t get money anymore um and so you know i was in like a little transition period i’ve been married for two years uh and i bartended i kind of you know bounced around just trying to you know make some money and try to figure things out i loved bartending because i get to talk to people and just hang out uh not very sustainable

[2:25] i quickly found out after about a year or two i couldn’t imagine being like 50 and still bartending so i knew i needed to do something different um and so at the same time um you know my wife and i decided since we were in this kind of transition we’d move down to arizona for a couple years to be closer to my brother who they just had their first kid so it was like we’re you know i’m not fully employed let’s let’s go down there and see what that’s about and um on the way like right before i left a good friend of mine paul handed me rich dad poor dad so i have like the most basic origin story for an investor um yeah it was through rich dad poor dad but i uh i read that book on the way down there like literally when my it was kind of my wife’s wife’s turn to drive the u-haul you know i’m reading this thing and it’s blowing my mind and you know i i was like how do you get two mortgages that’s who’s gonna lend you money for two mortgages that’s crazy um you know obviously like um and and so you know i read that on the way down there i figured you know new city new opportunity new everything and so i had a choice

[3:32] to either double down on it go get some more certifications um you know i had a mentor lined up to get me through like a lot of the hardcore cisco stuff on the hardware networking side and and i had this other opportunity of like let’s figure out real estate and so i actually um actually like i started down the it path again and i got about halfway through kind of the first certification and i was just like i can’t do this like i don’t want to be in a cubicle for the rest of my you know 30 years or 40 years or whatever um i just can’t do it and so i i literally just dropped uh out of that and i just started going to every uh real estate investor meetup i could find um uh and and every you know cash flow one-on-one game like totally dating myself like back in the day but like just trying to get around as much real estate as i could while i was just you know bart bartended at night and you know try to learn everything i could about real estate during the day and so that was kind of my journey from like employee to laid off to trying to figure out this new thing well you know it’s it’s amazing you you talk about that being like a bad thing or whatever the

[4:44] rich dad poor dad but i mean that book has changed so many people’s lives like it it is crazy how often that comes up and it’s just this this paradigm shift it’s just this you know breakthrough people get when they read this book where they just have not been experienced in this world and especially coming from your position where you you were you know quote unquote in the safe job you probably went through school you probably you know that this is the future you know you’re going to be in demand forever and then you realize that you are not in control and then all of a sudden your whole world can change um and when in in that context i mean you’re then reading this book that talks about kind of taking your own life into your own control and then like you know creating your own uh wealth and your own opportunities and i could see why that would really speak to you now you’re also married you said right so like was this um was this a did she have to read this book as well i mean when you started going back into the it was that like you know the safe smart choice uh that both of you were

[5:48] deciding did you get her on board at some point to to switch and go out of that field that i mean that’s a great question i don’t think enough people ask that those kind of things of like how your partners affected through you know these kind of things um we were young enough to where you know we could take risks um and you know rent was super cheap and our expenses were super low and so you know taking these kind of risks i had i was making more than enough bartending so like there’s no real pressure there um i didn’t like quit to do it full time and just had nothing going which is which is ideal so um um you know once once she saw a results you know she was on board um that’s and that’s the and that’s like the that that’s the thing you get your first check and it’s the you know the culmination of all that hard work and it finally has paid off um you know there were obviously some times where i’m out you know at network networking events three four nights a week um and she’s like what are we doing like what’s going on uh you know and then once once all that paid off it it kind of just made sense it was

[6:59] like okay well you can make you know large chunks of money our first deal was a live-in flip and so through that entire process uh we we got a place to live we had our first house uh we got to fix it up and you know a year later we ended up selling it moving it back back to colorado so through that entire process you know she’s uh she was there for it and supportive and you know once once we sold that property and had you know um sixty thousand dollar check it was like boom like oh this makes sense and we can do it proof yeah exactly there’s a salary uh your salary um what uh yeah but did you make her read it did she did she read the book no no no i don’t i have i have probably like i don’t know 300 books on this side of my office and um she’s just not into it she loves she loves design she’s a bookkeeper uh but she’s not she doesn’t really care about that stuff so she was i get it she’s like i trust you we uh we had uh i think uh erica ended up reading rich dad poor dad because so many people on this podcast were mentioning it and so she’s like i think i need to read this book but then it

[8:15] was kind of almost like underwhelming because it was like built up so much and she kind of already had this base understanding of like kind of what it was talking about but um anyway okay so you guys move back to colorado so you’re you’ve you’re you’re on board you’re fully you know this is real estate’s going to be the good thing so are you where are you investing in uh in in colorado yeah so at that point um and to give you a timeline and it was 2000 the end of 2006 when we moved back to colorado so arizona just started like just started crashing um colorado wouldn’t really start crashing for another like year or so uh and so when i came back i actually just started working for a for an agent just uh i was actually doing bpos like most of my time was spent doing bpos and if you’re not familiar it’s a broker price opinion it’s kind of a light appraisal for a bank um and to value their assets before they go into foreclosure or after they’re in foreclosure um so instead of paying for full appraisals they pay an agent to go kind of do this light appraisal on it and so i was doing about

[9:25] i was i was doing a ton of those you know probably like 20 a week something like that which is a lot and but but i’m so thankful for that experience now i can kind of evaluate anything just by like looking at you know looking at the comps and the data um so after doing about 800 of those uh you know things were getting really rocky on the uh on the retail side so in my the agent i was working under is just a retail agent and you know i i took on some short sales uh kind of learned that process and then um and then i ended up getting my license it just made sense like that agent was just going to let us all go uh because his his uh business was all retail so retail was kind of crashing at the time and so uh you know i kind of went out and i i joined an reo team so we were selling bank code foreclosures and that’s when i started investing again so it was about 2007 um when we moved back so it’s about a year gap between our first investment and our second but you know that next one the next like five were just flips just buying reos off of the mls and flipping them knowing that the value is

[10:36] dropping every month you know pricing them right and you know thankfully we were able to sell those and do just fine and over the course from like 2007 through you know basically now um i’ve primarily been wholesaling and flipping in inside of the agent or excuse me inside of the investor business and you know in 2022 started investing more out of state and so um we we’ve done denver for so long and then kind of we’re chasing cash flow and cash flows a little bit better in lower appreciation markets and so uh it just made sense to go go out of state but i have a lot of experience with with managing remote teams through the reo process and i could take that and basically um be totally fine doing it remotely which is not for everybody but you know i like one of these markets i’ve never even visited like once it’s just like it i don’t need to i don’t want to be a bottleneck in that process and so the data is good the people on the ground are great we can do deals in that market without ever going out there which is ideal now you’re scaring people tell me about tell me about explain why that’s okay

[11:51] why you can do it this way um and yeah and what you’re looking for in a team what you’re looking for in you know the boots on the ground aspect the data as far as you know the the overall demographics of the area etc tell me tell me about what you’re looking for yeah exactly and it’s not for everybody it definitely is not like everybody has a different risk tolerance um i found that you know we had been managing a remote reo operation in uh two markets in colorado and then one in arizona without ever going to see any of those properties and so i had a few years of experience doing that sure and when i was wholesaling um there was this one deal that was maybe like 20 minutes from my house and i got it under contract with an agent that i knew i sold it to another actually i think it was another agent um without ever going to see it and it was like wait and it was just one of those light bulb moments where i was like wait i’ve been doing this for a long time remotely and if i could do it with a house that’s 20 minutes away from my house i could just do it like we do reo and so um you know as as far as

[13:00] kind of evaluating the market you know definitely there’s a ton that that you evaluate that goes into it at least i do but um you know you’re definitely looking at growth economic growth population growth um appreciation rent to price ratio uh crime rates you’re looking for are other investors you know buying in this market or in these areas of this market uh how are flips doing um how strong is the rental market you know vacancy uh all of that good stuff and and you know we evaluated probably 50 markets and narrowed it down to a top 10 and those top 10 were probably so close that you could just throw a dart and hit one and it would be the same as any of the others um and so we committed to one to start and branched out now into three markets um out of state and so and then to your other question of like what are you looking for building a team and having people on the ground uh my first person that i go to is an agent um you know being an agent for so long i’m going to go find a good agent who knows the area who knows kind of what’s going on on the on the investor side and really creating a partnership

[14:12] with that agent because we generate leads from the top down and a lot of those people just want retail prices for their home so we’re you know we’re not just doing this one-way trade of information like gimme gimme gimme we’re trying to give value to that agent first you know giving them leads letting them close some deals and then when we do ask for you know some uh some bpos or some comparative market analysis they’re totally fine you know reciprocating because we’ve actually provided that value first but yeah agent uh contractor property manager the contractor and property manager are usually referrals from said agent or other investors that we’ve networked with and then my secret weapon is somebody on the ground who’s not incentivized at all by the transaction so it’s a third party um think of a task rabbit or a task type service somebody who’s going to go out there who has no attachment to the deal they don’t care if i close it they don’t care if i burn it down for insurance money they don’t they don’t care what i do with it they’re getting paid to go take pictures and do a video walk through so that i can keep my agent my uh property manager and my contractor

[15:29] all accountable while i’m sitting you know 2500 miles away in my office um and so they they go through on a weekly basis and they’ll you know take pictures of the projects that are under uh under rehab or if they’re being turned over uh you know we’ll we’ll uh send them through there too so we know where where the projects are at and if the contractor is telling us one thing and the pictures and video are telling us something else we at least have accountability there so that’s kind of the the team on the ground that’s really smart i love it i you know i i talk about um writing a book myself so i talk about um how the differences in investing in uh you know an appreciation heavy market and really general would probably be the coasts right where the midwest would be more uh cash flow heavy and um yeah it’s just i think i think there’s there’s a lot of wisdom into what you’re doing uh because you can if you’re getting started and you don’t have a ton of cash like you can do a live in uh flip live in you you know uh house hack that kind of stuff and and build up some equity through through taking

[16:41] advantage of lower down payment in an appreciation heavy area um and you can bounce around if you’re young and flexible you can bounce around in different houses and kind of build a portfolio that way um but at some point you can take a look at you know your equity your return on equity and decide if maybe you should move some of that into you know a cat more cash flow heavy market and i think keeping your options open keeping your your you know brain open to those kind of things is is really smart and you just laid out perfectly how that is not that scary it’s not that crazy to do so i love that

[17:18] take take me through take me through your book that you wrote uh because we shouldn’t gloss over that and when did that happen um so between 2015 and 2016 is when i wrote that book um basically i’ve i’ve been a bigger pockets user since year one uh so since 2005 and learning that they’re based out of denver when i moved back to denver in 2006 2007 uh you know i basically just started like hanging out at their office like i was just kind of that guy who was just like kind of like how when i started in real estate i’m just hanging out with other investors just trying to learn as much as possible um you know i’d go down and visit their office when they had like three employees and so um you know getting to know the founders and all the employees that have been over the years has you know has been great you know a lot of them are are good friends of mine and and it was just one day uh you know i got approached about like hey when are you going to write a book for us and i had like no no i had honestly no intention to write a book i’d been writing articles for their uh for their website and blog i mean i’d probably written maybe 20 or 30. yeah their blog at the time i wrote you know 20 30 at

[18:34] the time and you know they were like when are you going to write a book and and they didn’t have any of their publishing side set up at the time um they were just starting to like hire their first person on that side and i was like i i’ve never thought about it but and i went home and i was like if i don’t do this i’m gonna regret it like every day that i didn’t take this opportunity and and do it and so you know i wrote uh kind of an outline uh submitted that they approved they were like write it you know write us a chapter like we already know what your writing style is like um write us a chapter and we’ll see if we want to green light it um i got so excited i wrote two chapters uh sent that over and they were like yep you’re good to go like we’ll uh you know we’ll have someone draft up a contract and send it over and and yeah it was basically just that and we brainstormed some ideas for it and i was kind of off to the races uh it took me longer than i expected because i was doing obviously full-time agent and investor around that uh but you’re trying to do uh yeah um you know like not to drop not

[19:46] dropping names by any means but um i’m on a shared uh i’m on a shared google drive spreadsheet with uh brandon who was writing the i think it was the blue a rental book at the time and we would just keep each other accountable on we’re trying to do a thousand words a day so he would enter how many words he got in that day and i’d i’d enter mine and i would be busy and so mine would have like a week of blanks and then he would like be consistent and um one thing i’ll give him huge credit for is his consistency which is why he can put out you know way more books than i can but uh but doing it you know having a goal to at least do you know 500 a thousand words a day uh keeps you and that takes maybe an hour i don’t know maybe a little bit more but you know carving out that time and then being held accountable helped me get through that otherwise it probably would have taken me five or seven years so uh so i was a little a little late on my delivery but uh but yeah it was it was a whole it’s a whole story in itself but uh but finally got got it done got it edited um did the book uh the audible or the audio

[20:57] narration to it and you know their their job is the publishers to package it all up and you know go out there and sell it so that was so what’s the title is how that kind of happened yeah what’s the title it’s called finding and funding great deals perfect yeah of course it’s uh finding and funding great deals it’s it’s it’s really about getting you from zero to the closing table so it’s it’s not you know it’s not a wholesaling book it’s not a rental book it’s not a flip book it’s kind of all of those it’s just about finding the best deals for the type of business that you’re in the type of marketing budget that you have uh different strategies in there all the way through obviously funding like how you get to pay for this deal and getting you all the way to the closing table so i don’t care what you do with it you know what you do with your property after that like i’m gonna get you there and then um if you applied everything in the book you would have found a good deal know how to analyze it know how to get financing for it go through the closing process and then repeating it like basically scaling that after you’re done to your next deal and your next deal so um in a nutshell

[22:10] that’s that’s what it’s about oh that’s awesome and what amazing timing you said they were they were like uh small at the time or they were you know hanging out with this up and coming which you may not have realized they’re going to be up and coming um yeah at the time but yeah what good timing it’s the yeah it was good timing it was a little bit of growing pains because we went through that first uh the first publishing uh hire that they had so they were new to that side of the business too they i think they published like three books or four books at the time and so you know they were new to that site and i was new to everything so i was like i don’t know what i’m supposed to be doing but you tell me what to do so yeah no it’s true i am going through uh editing rounds and uh there’s like this five rounds of editing and the first one i think i did way too much because i was only supposed to focus on certain things it’s just uh it’s a whole new world basically but uh it’s awesome it is okay so okay so now are you retaining any of the the properties you find for uh i mean you said you’re moving to

[23:18] new markets for cash flow um when you were in looking at places in denver were you considering like doing some sort of burr or something like that to to keep some of these properties if they’re in a good location um what is your strategy for like buy and hold basically yeah in in denver uh you know price points a little higher than uh you know than the midwest so you know the whole time i looking back every investor says i should have just kept everything that i i ever bought and looking back i definitely should have uh but i i didn’t have the risk tolerance for it i was like i could be in and out in three months versus you know years and years and who knows what’s going to happen and obviously i started my real estate career kind of during you know 2007 2008 surviving through like 2011 2012.

[24:12] so i was pretty risk adverse i guess um and so uh you know it was all just short-term projects here in denver and when i was like finally you know looking into uh cash flow you know the burr method is is what i primarily use um actually pretty much 100 and so uh you know in these markets we’re just looking for deals like we would on a wholesale or a flip so we’re basically a lead generation business that happens to deal in real estate and i just have multiple exit strategies for those for those leads so if they need retail price and it’s not going to work for a burr property you know we have agents that we partner with and can sell those you know through they can still get their help that they need um if it’s a deal that we that’s okay that doesn’t work for a burr you know we’ll wholesale that to another investor um and then the ones that we obviously the you know kind of keep the best but um the ones that work out best for burr we we burr those so that’s the that’s the main strategy and if anybody’s listening that doesn’t isn’t familiar with burr this is another pick in pockets uh term

[25:25] but it’s a buy uh rehab uh rent refinance repeat is that the right order of things sounds good to me so basically so basically instead of realizing the profit you create through fixing up a property by selling it and and getting that equity you’re just keeping that equity in the deal and getting all your cash out if you do it right so it can be this amazing way of kind of reusing capital it can be an equity line it can be cash i mean it could be even hard money right i mean you could do it a number of different ways um so it’s it’s uh yeah it’s an awesome strategy when it works and um has it been harder uh with the interest rates being harder to to find deals that do pencil out not really i mean even up in you know like our dscr refinance would be like eight percent you know uh a year or more ago

[26:23] i mean there’s they still pencil it’s it’s just it’s all that buy and and where you can buy it at and if you’re if you’re good at finding good deals if you’re you know if you’re a wholesaler and you you know you know how to get those types of deals then a bur should pencil out as long as the the rental side makes sense for that market so even with higher interest rates uh in that eight percent eight and a half it’s not like super fun but uh you can still make deals pencil you can still get you know 75 uh money back out and uh you can still you know usually we would there’s like two levers you can pull you can pull the you know what price i’m buying at lever or the you know what price i’m renting at and then everything in the middle is not really in your control um and so obviously you’re trying to find the best deal possible but then you’re gonna underwrite it as a long-term rental

[27:20] to make sure it makes sense in the worst case scenario um but what if you move that lever to mid-term rental or to uh not really we don’t do a lot of short-term rentals but you know room by room rental or you know there’s a detached garage can we do a midterm rental and rent the garage out to somebody else and so uh with that you can mitigate you know higher interest rates by just changing your exit strategy on you know long-term rental is great midterm rental oh this is actually kind of exciting and a good deal and if the interest rates go down you know below seven or even below six you know we can refinance and this deal make even more sense at the end of the day but it’s gotta it’s gotta underwrite on long term like i’m not gonna say stretch uh you know this only works as a short-term rental no don’t do that don’t do that so right this only works if it eventually the interest rates go down yeah that’s a terrible idea yeah no i think i think that’s the key there is like making sure it pencils out now and and and don’t be discouraged because if it pencils out now like likely it’s it can only get better

[28:30] like so you know usually rents go up over time and um then also if interest rates do go down low enough uh then you’re gonna be sitting in a much better position so i talk about this a lot like i know i don’t think we’re gonna see the rates we saw in covid necessarily but you know i had a friend that refinanced like 30 houses and he would never have been able to buy 30 houses when the interest rate rates were low so they don’t sit around and wait for entries to come down to to do anything like you’re not gonna you’re gonna be way worse off than somebody who yeah keeps buying that makes sense yeah yeah or you’ll be waiting forever and just never do anything that’s the unfortunate truth for a lot of people um taking action is is and and you know like i think again base hits are are great like you don’t need to feel like you you you need to take this on like like your strategy of investing in a different market um is more complex and and may may not be perfect for somebody getting started you might need to get your feet wet by buying something with 20 down in your backyard you know in your city um and and just kind of starting to make that progress um

[29:41] but if you don’t take any action you know you won’t get to a strategy like that because i think sometimes people like they want to read every single strategy that’s out there um and then end up not really acting on anything because there’s like a new strategy that might be the this is the way and then you know they don’t do anything with it here yeah i’ve i’ve been there my first year when we first were analyzing my very first deal was i had a mentor that was you know he had like i think i still have the binder somewhere but it was like 10 strategies to you know to make money in real estate and i’m looking through and i i think we tried to lease option that property we tried to what’s now called wholesale that property um i was going to put a renter in there uh and finally you know once i laser focused and and my wife was just like like why don’t we just move into it and fix it and you know live and flip wasn’t really a term that that people knew um it just made sense and then after that it was like well what do i want to do next and once i laser focused on okay i’m going to find the

[30:44] best deals possible and that’ll give me a lot of options i can flip them or i can wholesale them like once i laser focused on that it was like all the the lease option and the you know sub two and everything else just kind of goes away now i’m laser focused on this and i try to do that now with you know my out-of-state businesses i’ll get approached with you know some exciting thing that’s super sexy and i have to go you know you have to say no because i’m i’m laser focused here and if i divert my attention i know how i get and i’ll you know i’ll crash my business over here to chase something sexy over there and it never works for me at least yeah well and there is the education is great and and learning all these strategies is great and i think that it is helpful to have a lot of different options in your tool belt kind of like you’re talking about with like you know midterm rental that kind of stuff can be really helpful um and multiple exit strategies it’s always good to think strategically like that um but yeah sometimes it’s just the simple way is that there’s the best way to get started so don’t yeah for sure don’t try to play chess when you’re learning to walk yeah but i

[31:50] hear you um yeah that’s that’s awesome man so um you’re still active in the denver area as well i assume so it’s just uh less uh doing like the burr style in the denver area you’re just more about the flips also yeah um in denver i’ll i’m still wholesaling here and there uh just stuff that randomly comes across my desk i’m not actively marketing in denver anymore uh so i don’t have you know top top of funnel leads coming in i’ll still get calls off of marketing from two plus years ago which is good um shows that it worked over time which is nice but uh but for the most part uh in denver i’m mainly doing my agent business and uh a few you know scattered deals here and there it’s just not my main focus um i’ll get approached with like a flip or something and i just know i know a guy who will buy it uh i’m not going to take on that that deal here because it’ll distract me from kind of the long-term goal so sure that makes sense and and that ultimately is to build the the cash flow uh right yeah yeah exactly yeah building cash flow as a you know exit strategy so i don’t have to grind every day in real estate yeah yeah the uh it’s always you know nice to

[33:13] to try to get to a point where you can be 100 percent um like you know have your cash flow cover 100 of your expenses so that you’re free to do whatever um and then you know grow that too so that you can increase your lifestyle which is which is tough for a lot of people i mean um you know a lot of agents getting started are going to be tempted by you know wanting to show like they’re that they’re successful by having a fancy car or whatever and so like i think it’s it’s good to have some voices like this like okay like try this way uh try to limit your uh expenses at the beginning build up some portfolio um you know get some rentals if you want to have that fancy lease uh to pay for it before you you go for it and then you’ll be sleeping a little bit better when yeah when things get a little slow when things get a little lean in the sales business yeah yeah and they will don’t worry like i i feel bad for those agents who started off in you know 20 yeah 2017 or something and yeah covid was like a it was a slight hit but then like obviously things just kept kept going crazy through 2021 and and like they probably just thought everything was so easy where i started in 2007

[34:24] and it felt like the sky was falling every day and um that gave me a mentality of you know like i have to like grit this thing out and when times were good it was always just like well when’s that shoe gonna drop because i know it is so maybe i’m a little traumatized from uh from that process but i feel like that uh in my personal ethos is basically like i have no like extravagant expenses at all i’m never gonna be the guy who buys a lamborghini or anything more than like a you know a nice toyota 4runner or something like like i’m never just gonna be that guy i’m not gonna have a boat i’m not gonna like buy a plane i’m not just not that guy i don’t care so i’m not here to make a bazillion dollars i’m here to like help people and like you said sleep okay at night to where i don’t have to worry about you know um market shifts or being laid off or anything like that yeah i love it it’s good it’s good advice good way to live and i agree i started in 2014 um so a little bit before what you’re talking about and it was definitely slow at the time um so it was a good good time to build up a business organically

[35:35] and it yeah it has to be really hard if you start when things were like just hot hot because uh you might have been so busy right off the bat and overwhelmed that you maybe didn’t have the systems in place to follow up with a uh your clients and all that stuff but um that doesn’t mean you can’t make it keep at it uh just know it’s different no yeah you can yeah and there’s uh right around there i’ll have to check in when it was published but there’s a book called uh from gary keller called shift and it was like right around i want to say 2011 2012. um and that was like that was when reos were dying out and short sales were were pretty rampant and we had we had basically shifted our business from uh from reo to short sale and you know after after reading that book i was like like man if you’re not changing you know inside of the business to react to the market or even before the market where that was their only business and they burned a bunch of bridges by just being a jerk reo agent like a lot of them were back in the day um then once the market shifted back over to retail they were just screwed like

[36:42] they went from you know 20 assignments a week from their banks to like one a month you know and like so they like they all like let their staff go they all let their offices go and it was like them like trying to get down back in the trenches like two years too late in on the retail side which they hadn’t done for five or six years so it’s it like that’s still i think a great book to read on like like how you can change your business inside of like the shift the shifting market it’s a great great thing to to point out and i think i’ve heard a lot of people talking about like you know there’s there’s opportunities in kind of every market and uh but it’s really what you’re saying is is paying attention to it and understanding where where things are going trying to to to move with it to shift right um but that’s great um i’m curious if you have a golden nugget for our listeners yeah yeah so i mean i was thinking about this when uh when you sent over kind of your questions and um and i think for like i think right in line with with what i was just talking about is basically um you know not not

[37:53] only being aware of what’s going on in the market and being able to react to it um thankfully i think i read that like right when short sales like started dropping off and i knew that i had to like jump off otherwise i was just going to get stuck like like those guys um what i did inside of that is is this ethos of kind of leading with value and so when i was going back into kind of like the retail space focusing more on investing that was outside of short sales and reo now i had to go back into kind of off market direct to seller um was basically like like letting them know what the benefits are uh leading with the value first inside of all of the all of the communications and interactions i had with with clients and you know potential leads and with with that kind of like i’m going to help you first and not expect like every you know anything on the back side that helped my business so much and it and i continue to do it through networking um you know people that i meet all the hobbies i have you know i don’t go out there and be like i’m a real estate agent if you want to sell your house sell

[38:59] it through me i don’t even mention that i just say i’m in real estate like if they want to pry we can talk about investing or whatever i’m not i don’t want every interaction to be them feeling like i’m going to try to sell them or i’m you know i’m there to like get their business or whatever like um so you know i’ve helped a lot of those people when uh when tax assessments come you know how to fight your tax assessment and i have no i have you know i set that out to clients to friends to people that who aren’t even in my client database it was just people i know through boy scouts or through um you know things that my son was involved in and i was just like hey if you want to fight your property taxes like here’s some education and here’s how to do it and here’s the success rate it’s not 100 but if you do these things there’s a pretty good likelihood that you’ll get it knocked down and doing that kind of stuff with no you know no uh reciprocity or expecting anything back um that that’s that’s huge that helps me sleep at night so i’m not like you know always like having to worry about selling but

[40:02] it does come back in organic ways whether it’s like a referral or um like hey my uncle has this house that he’s lived in for 30 years and you’re the first person i thought of you know i didn’t have to go hard sell that person i just have to like lead with value and be like a normal a normal person and it’s helped in my agent business and my investor business immensely um whether through networking or actual just deals so like yeah shift and lead with value i love that no i love that that’s so true and and i think you talk about uh you mentioned a good example of that kind of in the investing space where you’re making partnerships with agents that are in this these markets and you’re able to provide them leads um through what the marketing you’re doing um and so it is it is that’s a very value forward uh proposition you can go to an agent with and yeah that’s i love it it’s a great way to to to do business um so then the next question would be if uh and we already mentioned brishtad poor dad but you said you have 300 books to beside you so what would be a fundamental book you think everybody should read or maybe uh one that you just currently really enjoy yeah i um

[41:14] i always go back to and i even pulled it out for you but um obstacle is the way uh by ryan holiday it’s uh it’s it’s my favorite book of all time i i reread it every year i have about seven or eight copies back there that i just give out um i have it’s probably my most gifted book um and people are probably pretty annoyed uh that they’ve gotten one from me unless they’ve read it and they understand but um you know it’s definitely you know next to rich dad poor dad i guess um it’s been like the next transformational book that i’ve ever read and and it’s just given me a toolkit for dealing with life and dealing with people um and just it kind of like boils hardcore down into like i can only change myself and how i react to things i can’t change anything outside of that and so if somebody’s super mad and they’re yelling at me like i can choose to react to that i could choose to get offended or i can you know basically choose not to and not have it affect me and not have it you know hurt my feelings or whatever that is i can’t change the news i can’t change what’s going on you know in the country i can’t

[42:20] change what’s going on across the world i can only change like what’s inside my skull and that’s about it um you know i can’t you know choose if my wife decides to leave me or something like that or you know if a bus you know hits my uncle or something like that i can’t change those things uh but i can change how i basically react to it and how i can turn that into growth i can turn that into opportunity i can i can turn that into ways to provide value and add you know service to people um but it it definitely helped me with a lot of just you know worrying about external things that i can’t change um now i don’t have to worry about that stuff it doesn’t affect me nearly as much as it used to so um in a nutshell that’s about it but you know stoicism’s basically changed changed you know the way that i think about a lot of things and this is my my gateway drug to that so that’s my favorite book i love it i love it and i think it’s so true that um you know i think people spend a lot of times uh consumed and and focused and and on on things they have no control over and i mean i think politics is probably one of the the big ones like especially with how we have social media

[43:34] and all this stuff kind of geared towards just making us very angry and like why do you want that but people are just like pressing that dopamine button or whatever they’re getting like the rat with cocaine or whatever they’re like stars themselves and it’s like you have no control over this um you might make a very thoughtful post on facebook but it’s just going to piss the other side off more it’s not going to help anything so let’s just like i there was a distinct moment for me where i just i had that like you know i want to focus 90 of my energy on what i can control um and you know so i let the rest go and it’s such a game changer i love it it is yeah it frees up so much uh room in your head and and honestly you know a lot of social media i’m not on like as actively as i as i used to be just for my own health like i i had logged on and i was like cleaning up some of my uh my instagram and i had just done like an internal story to to friends and it was just it was just random it’s just some song i was listening to or something but i got a couple texts that were like man we haven’t seen

[44:37] you in forever like i hope everything’s like good good to see you back and i’m like i’m not like back to stay i’m going to post stuff to you know for uh for brand stuff that i’m doing or uh updates to family or some stuff like that but you know um i’ve been so much like healthier without going on to facebook or instagram like i used to and so yeah we’re i like my ethos is or my my theory is like humanity wasn’t ready for the internet or social media and um it’s it’s like so true like we just were not ready for that much information or twisting of information or whatever that looks like it’s just it’s insane so you know where you can cut back and you know claim back parts of your of your sanity for sure yeah go out and get some sunshine yeah touch some grass as a kid so yeah uh that’s awesome uh so where would be a good place for people you said you do some branding still on social media um i imagine people would pick up your book on on bigger pockets or maybe amazon as well where can people find you yeah for sure um uh instagram’s a decent place uh i’m starting to do some more stuff over there so um

[45:54] that handles at young anson uh i also have a real estate focused uh podcast on the investor side where i talk to investors about um their process and their uh you know basically their wins their their fails getting getting through to like the story of of the deals that they’re doing and and how that’s changed them and um and that’s uh and you can find that at property squad hq.com and uh yeah you can reach out there uh you can reach out on instagram you can find me on bigger pockets uh still uh still i’m on there and and get messages through there all the time so yeah definitely uh hit me up if you have you know any questions or anything that you need from me for sure perfect well i i want to say quickly i think we had a little bit of technical issues i think we might have had a bit of a delay so um if anybody’s still listening to this that just explaining that quick but um yeah thanks so much for being on the show it’s been a really it’s an honor it’s a pleasure so i really appreciate it let’s stay in touch yeah thank you so much this is great awesome thanks for listening to the rei agent if you enjoyed this

[46:59] episode hit subscribe to catch new shows every week visit reiagent.com for more content until next time keep building the life you want all content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy it is intended for entertainment purposes only