Podcast Episode 119 Transcript

Episode 119: Millionaire By The Age Of 30 From Single Family Rentals with JD Sustar

Folks. This week we're joined by J.D. Sustar. He is the finance cowboy on the Prereal podcast. JD's. Got a pretty remarkable story. He just started branding a year ago. He's up at 800 followers. He's absolutely crushing it on single family active positions. He's up to about 22 doors. We talk a lot about building the brand, how to build that personal brand, how to make that reach turn into opportunities, and, of course, profit. At the end of the day, he walks you through his pro forma, how to manage it from acquisition right on through the closing, and post management, how to do it at scale. So, JD, Sustar this week on the show. Don't miss it. Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of Prereal. And over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate. Each week, I'm meeting with outstanding investors, high performing individuals, and visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now getting it done. This podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the Prereal podcast. Welcome, everyone, to the Prereal podcast. We're joined today by J. D. Sustar. He is the finance cowboy. We're going to jump in with JD. We've talked a lot, folks, over the last year or so about the market and the importance of content and social media. We've talked a lot about taking your first steps and investing. We've talked a lot about vetting, where you're placing your money if you're not an active investor. And JD. Has an amazing story to share. He has grown his social media following up to 750 or 800 followers in a very short amount of time, and he's working to leverage that now into opportunities. JD, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today. What's up, man? I appreciate you having me. I appreciate you being on. These are funny times, and we've spoken so much about folks investing in themselves, investing in their brand, and trying to find a safe place at a time when the world seems to be upside down. At least the financial markets are. I think it'd be neat for you to give the audience a little bit of context about you and where you started, and then we can get into how you grew it. Yeah, definitely. And you mean from the brand side, the finance cowboys side? Yeah. So we were talking about this earlier before we started the show. I have a family member who is super way smarter than I am. They're older than I am. They're successful. They're like a couple of steps down from the CEO in a large hospital system here in the Southeast. And I have been investing in real estate since 2018, and it grew. My wife and I network substantially. We raised our cash flow. We're building all this wealth. And so I'm telling my family, obviously super excited about it, and this family member always I don't want to use the word blew me off, but it's kind of like JD is a little more blue collar, rough around the edges. We'll see if this works out for him. And he never, to this day, has bought real estate. Just kind of blew me off. So I stopped talking to him about, you know what? I don't care. We're doing our thing. I'm doing good. I'm just going to stay in my lane. And then last June, he decides to start sending me posts from this 26 year old on Instagram who had 300 followers, who was teaching people to invest in index funds. And so now this 26 year old with a very minimal net worth, but he had followers, had been able to convince my family member, who has never invested in before, outside his 401K, well, now he had taken the Dabble into index funds because this guy said to do it. And so I have nothing against index funds. I own some index funds. That's fine. But my whole thing is I couldn't get anything through his thick skull. Now this 26 year old did. I got to hop on social media and give this a shot. And so hence, that's how Finance Cowboy was born. I think it was July 1221. It was actually under a different name. The name was too niche. I was putting cowboy boots on one day, and the name hit me, finance Cowboy. And I used to talk a lot more about personal finances, and I still do. I think it goes hand in hand with real estate. But as I progressed and I kept growing, I would just throw stories out there about buying real estate. And it was interesting because the market on Instagram pushed me to wanting more information. People want to learn about real estate. So I went all in on that. And I get to teach the everyday person. Like, when I think of my avatar, who am I reaching? I'm a husband. I'm a father of three, another one on the way. I have a full time job. I'm in the community. I coach sports groups. I'm involved in church. And so who I help is that person, the everyday person. They got a job, and maybe they have a family. They want to have a family, and they want to know, how can I invest in real estate while doing all of this? And it's been a fun journey the last year and a half or so. The importance of social media and followers cannot be overstated. It is the currency of the day, and a lot of folks want to get going on it. And I think part of the problem, JD, is they don't recognize the value of the knowledge they have in their particular niche. We forget still to this day, that 30 years in this business, I've seen just about every kind of deal you can imagine. And what has become old hat and second nature for me is amazing. Valuable information to the next investor. So as you started to identify this, what type of content, specifically give me an example of a video that you put out. What exactly are you conveying in these videos? That gain to grip 75 to 80,000 followers in a year is ridiculous growth. I mean, you should be congratulations on that, congratulations on the success. God bless you with the family. You're incredibly relatable. Right? I think the fact that you're talking about being involved in the community, you're coaching for the kids, you're involved with the church, that's part of how the people find you. And I think people miss that and then conveying the knowledge is another piece. I failed miserably with not connecting. First, I was predicting markets. You can go back and look at what I've been predicting for the last ten years, nailing it market prediction after market prediction and not having the growth. And I didn't understand why. You can see some goofy video on social media, have 500 views, and here I am telling you where interest rates are going to go, when they're going to go, what to do to be in a position to capitalize on that, how to not get hurt. And I couldn't reach an audience. Where did I miss the mark? And how did you connect in such an unbelievable way? Because it is unbelievable. I appreciate it, man. It's been interesting and I've been learning along the way. I think, just before I jump into the types of posts, what you said about how important it is to build a personal brand on social media right now, I can't stress that enough. The opportunities it has opened for me in the last year that I had no idea even exist is quite amazing. It is quite amazing. There's so many people out there who are starving to learn and it doesn't you don't even have to be an expert. You said you've been in the industry 30 years. I've been in the industry for four and a half. OK, so I'm not over here. You could talk me up and down the walls on real estate because you just have more experience than I have. But I am teaching from the experience I have. And so even if you're not an expert or something, what do you enjoy talking about? What are you dabbling in? Get on there and teach people about your failures, right? People can learn from your failures. And the key there is just being consistent, showing up every day, and, like you said, being relatable, like, how can you tie in your messaging with the people? And the way I do that is I try to put myself in their shoes. Like, how is this person thinking? What can I do to grab their attention. And so it's all kind of a silly game, so to speak. The first five to 7 seconds of videos are important. You got to do something to catch them and draw them in. Sometimes it's cool stuff. Sometimes it's gimmicky stuff. But the whole point is we have a short attention span, so we got to pull them in quickly, and then we can deliver that value. And so for me, the types of videos an example of what has been probably my most popular type of video, and I do all types. You guys can go to finance cowboy on instagram, and you'll see, but some of the most popular ones is I am sitting at my computer like, this doesn't show me at all. I have my phone on my computer, and I am walking through analyzing properties. And so I'll talk about I'll go through every property that I've ever purchased or every property I've ever went through, and I'll say, let's analyze this property together. And I'll go through the purchase price and I'll go through what the interest rates are and the amortization and the maintenance and vacancy rates, all that, and I'm plugging it into this calculator that I have, this rental property calculator and I'm showing them everything that needs to go in it. And then it's spitting out the numbers and I'm telling them what kind of deal it is, what's the cash flow, what's cap rate, what's cash on cash return? They know why, and people are just enamored by it because they don't understand it. You mention it. What seems like pretty simple to us is that most people I want to say most people, a lot of people don't even know how to calculate cash flow. And so I will get messages. People will question my numbers because they'll be like, no, that's not right. Cash flow is just rent minus mortgage. And I'm like, oh, lord have mercy. If you can take what you know, simplify it, then simplify it again, and then simplify it again, pretend you're teaching it to a child, you have a good chance of connecting, because a lot of people are green, but they have the urgency to want to learn. So you're taking essentially what you're doing throughout the course of the day anyway, and you're documenting it, and you're showing folks how to walk through it. It's fascinating to me how there's something sexy about real estate, right? Like, people want to be a part of it, and when you're in the business, you definitely get numb to the things that you take for granted that you're doing all day long are skills that we've developed and honed and sharpened. For me, it's been decades at this point. So I think that's amazing that by boiling it down, you're landing with such a massive audience that is looking I think that's one of the byproducts of COVID folks are open to changing. They're open to just a different way. And there's a lot of people that are looking to trade that nine to five in and own a piece of the American dream here. Are you doing brand coaching as well, or is it more real estate centric? So right now I don't have any coaching program. We are so close to launching just our real estate coaching. I call it a rental academy. Now we'll teach fixing and flipping, but mainly it's going to teach that everyday person, how do we build that rental portfolio? Whether it be single family, multifamily, the course is going to be really centered on the smaller multi familyming. I'm not getting into syndications with large apartment, complex commercial buildings. But no, the next course or coaching that I come out with will probably be the brand because I probably get that question just as much as I do real estate. People want to know, hey, how do I do it? And I enjoy teaching that just as much as I do real estate. So I don't have that yet, but I would love to go and help people out down the road. So single family homes is the focus for you on the investment side? Ten years ago, I would have said, you're nuts. You can't scale it, you can't do it in any significant way without burning resources. Now we're finding some of the biggest and best real estate funds in the world are taking down huge single family portfolios. What is it about the single family that lands for you? I had some guys when I started, my best friend was already in real estate, and his boss is just brilliant, I think. And everybody has good strategies. Let me preface this. I don't think singlefamily homes is the only way to do good real estate. You can do good multi family's, commercial, everything. But when I was first starting, I was like you. We were talking before the show about how you want to take risk and take chances, but you want to do it conservatively, as conservative as you can, with as little risk as you can. And so I think when anybody's starting to invest in real estate, there's a fear. I can remember the fear, I don't have it anymore. It's just like second hand. It's almost like I don't use the word addiction. Once you get those first couple of deals down, it's like you just don't stop looking for the next one. It's like you're ready to rock and roll now. But when I had that fear, I wanted to mitigate risk as much as possible. And I looked at what appeals to the masses. And when you look at what appeals to the masses in real estate, it's single family homes, right? Banks, luggage. And why? Because everybody buys single family homes. That's the American dream. It's easy to exit them. Why? Because everybody buys single family homes. You're not just selling to investors, you can sell to an investor. I've sold rentals to investors. You can also put some lipstick on it and sell it to an end user who wants to buy it. So there's such a bigger pool and then there's an argument here. But I tend to think that you can get a little bit of clientele as renters in a single family home compared to an apartment. Now, commercial talking about businesses is totally different subject, but just looking at small multifamily or large multifamily versus single family, you get good tenants. When I look at that, it's easy to get into. It's easier management because the clientele and then the exit strategy gives you the best options. That's what I went with and it's really worked out. So you touched on a couple of things there. Is the academy going to include some coaching on mindset and helping folks get over those initial fears 100%? That is a huge part of it. We have a lot of pre recorded stuff that people can hop on, but there are weekly calls that we'll have as well. And that stuff will talk to cause you got to right? I mean, I don't know if you think back that far, you've been in it so long, but it's like most people have that fear. It's like riding a roller coaster. You're so scared, then you hop on it's like, okay, let's go now. But you got to have that conversation. The way I talk about it is we have to take that emotion, right? Because emotion is going to be there, but we have to find a way to replace it with logic. And for me, the logic is it's riskier for my future self to not invest in real estate than it is for me to invest in real estate. So without a doubt, to this day, I'm still learning. I guess I'm pretty damn stubborn, but I had a hard time even after all these years, JD. Realizing that if you have the deal and you have the experience, the money will come. I had it backwards for so long. I felt that if you didn't have the access to capital, then you couldn't execute. And what I found is when you reverse it and you recognize the access to the deals and just having the experience and that's 90% of it, I found that there's a whole world out there that's itching to get involved. And by growing your brand, that's how folks can get involved. So let's talk about let's get in the weeds a little bit. Where are you finding these deals? So I'm finding them in the upstate of South Carolina. Just to mention what you just said, you hit the nail on the head. So like, so many young people and young investors don't know where to start and they think they've got to be able to have this money. And the only reason I'm just reiterating this is because it's probably the number one question I get on Instagram and I tell people I want to trade market, find deals, get money. Like, hey, how do I get started? Learn everything you can about real estate and just go be a bird dog, find as many deals as you possibly can, then come back to me and I'll help you find funding. Because there are thousands, hundreds of thousands. We've got 300 million people in America. Okay, let's go. We can find someone to lend to you. But anyway, back to your question, where am I finding my deal? So I normally, because I'm in a good rental market, I normally stick to close to where I'm at. I'm in the upstate of south Carolina, and I live in a town called Anderson. So if you look at a map, we're essentially right between Atlanta and Charlotte. And I'm right near a city that's growing pretty quickly in Greenville. And so I am looking in b to c class neighborhoods in my area that we can do value adds right, so that we can do forced depreciation off of the get go. And so I've found in a number of ways, I just locked up two properties this month. I closed on one two weeks ago, I closed on another one on the 27th. Both of those came from the MLS. And we look at this market, I watched them the day they came on, and I waited until they've been on the market for over 30 days. And I went in, offered cash, $40,000 less than what they were asking, because that's what would make it a very good deal for me. One of them accepted it at $40,000 less. The other one, I got it at $30,000 less. Cash flows with a two week span. And like you said, I was able to lock those up and then go find the private money because they were hectic deals and make it happen. So that's how I'm doing. Those were on MLS. I've cold called and found properties. Networking has been huge for me. I literally teach people, just tell everybody, everybody you know, that you invest in real estate, get in with locksmith, get in with contractors, tell all the realtors. I've got so many deals, I haven't bought any recently from a locksmith. But I got a guy in my church, he's locksmith. He calls me every time he's in a house that they're about to sell. And so just really networking hard, looking at the MLS, cold calling if you want, throwing some stuff on facebook, marketplace, but really trying to keep those leads coming in. So you're headed into what I believe will be the greatest buying opportunity of our lifetime. I think that this is going to make 2008 look like tea with Gandhi. I think that there's going to be a lot of pain, unfortunately, but that does breed opportunity. And if you're not afraid to put offers out at what makes sense, that's another thing where folks get hung up. We don't know what's on the other side of that table. We don't know what the seller's real goal is. Many times it's not getting the most amount as they can for the property. Many times it's surety they need to or they want to exit. They want to exit quickly and cleanly. They need that peace of mind for a myriad of different reasons. So I would encourage folks, as JD just gave us, two examples, don't be afraid to make offers. You're not going to insult anybody. Go out there and if the deal works for you, put them out. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Right? It's famous gretzky line. So you never know what's going on on the other side of the table. I've seen people sell for things and go, you just don't quite understand it. Then as you get a little bit more experience, you recognize that getting the maximum dollar amount is often not the draw for you. So you're vetting these things on a case by case basis as they come in. You've got a spreadsheet you built out. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm doing. A lot of people are asking me, why aren't you waiting until next year when the market's going to drop more? Aren't there going to be good deals? I think there's going to be a lot of good deals, and I'm primed up and ready to rock and roll then. But why wait when you can get prices now for what they're going to be next year? It's like you said, the two people that I bought from, they needed to get out. Well, one of them needed to move to Michigan within three weeks. I said, Well, I can do a two week close. The other one is an estate sale. It's surely they want to get rid of it because everybody knows the market is looming. And so there's so many opportunities. And I would encourage you guys, don't just wait around and make sure you're vetting them right. Give yourself a buffer in there knowing that the market is going to slow. It's already slowing. It's going to slow more in the next year, year and a half, maybe two years. And so give yourself a good equity boost there and always run your numbers. I give out a free resource that people can get from my Instagram page, and it's literally a 19 point checklist I put together that gives everybody everything that they need to look for when analyzing a rental property. And so they take that 19 point checklist, they accumulate all these different items, right? And then they go plug it into a rental calculator, which I have mine, that people can get, or if you can get them online, if you have one, whatever, just go get a rental calculator from somewhere. You got to you got to have something to run a pro forma. Plug it all in there and then look at the numbers and I'm very conservative with that, and I want to make sure I have a good deal and look at the perform over the next three, 4510 years, and that's how I make my decisions. So it's interesting you touched on folks saying, well, why don't you wait till next year? It's a fool's errand, folks, to time the market. You're not going to do it, you just don't know. Decades in, we've got a sense of what's happening. But as JD said, there's money to be made up, down and throughout the life cycle, I found many times when folks are saying things like that, it's an internal issue. They're not ready to make that move yet, for whatever reason, they're not comfortable yet. But if they can get past that, then you're right, there's money to be made up, down and all around. So when you're vetting these things out, do you mind if we ask a little detail on like, metrics? What's important to you? Is it the cash on cash? Is it the net number at the end of the month? What works for JD? It varies deal by deal. That's a great question. I get asked that a lot. So I have a mobile home park, many of them. It's got seven mobile homes. When I bought that, it was strictly because of cash flow. Right now it's cash flow 6000 a month on a ten year note, right. And so I bought that based on cash flow because that's not a big appreciating asset. When I buy Airbnb, for me it's cash flow. I'm looking at. How can I maximize this cash flow? I own one in Charleston, South Carolina, brings me an 850 to 900 a month, which I think is pretty good. Could be better if I didn't have all the HOAs. But it's kind of like a beautiful scenario because I got good cash flow and it's on a gated community island with million dollar homes around me. So over time, the appreciation is going to be great too. And then with my long term rentals, man, I would be lying if I said it was all one metric, because when I started and still to this day, with a lot of my long term rentals, I really play the loan game. I really do. And so I'm not looking one to two years away, I'm looking 510, 1520 years away. And so, like the deal I just closed on two weeks ago, it's cash flow, $150 a month. And I think the cash on cash returns somewhere like 9.5 or 10%, which is fine, but it's not like a killer. So it might be like, well, why would you buy that? Well, let's say that this property doesn't appreciate 1oz over the next ten years. I still have a property that is right now worth $150,000. I'm making $150 a month in case crap hits the fan and somebody else is paying off that asset for me. And I don't have to do anything about it. I got property manager in place. And so if we look ten years down the road and I had no appreciation whatsoever, 1015 years down the road, I'm going to have a property free and clear, worth $150,000. And so I really keep that in mind and not try to get caught up on the year one pro forma because we have to look at more. And then what I really didn't do as a rookie. And you got to be careful. You don't want to just speculate. You can't just speculate. And that's why I just gave you the example without any appreciation. But if we use some common sense, history tells us there is going to be some appreciation built in there in the long run. And then rents based on history and data is going to keep appreciating well, so that year one pro forma is only going to get better. So, yeah, I may only make $150 in cash flow year one, but what's it look like at year five? What's the value at your five? And so that's a long story long. That's kind of how I look at these properties when I'm buying them. So you're flexible depending on the particular asset. And it's smart. You're diversifying and you're trying to COVID the bases because there are a lot of ways to earn in this business and appreciation is certainly something you can't look past when you're negotiating your deals. Are you doing inspections? Do you have contingencies? What do your deals look like? I always do a physical inspection, like a home inspection and termite inspection, obviously, title inspection. There are no brainers. There's somebody that wants to allow me to do it. I just won't buy a property. And some could argue that that's not the smartest thing. And I would say maybe you're right, because I could just get a contractor to go in there and look at it. But what I've learned over the years is contractors, oh, yeah, we can fix that. Not a big deal. We can fix that. Yeah, no biggie. Next thing you know, it's $50,000. And they're like, oh, no biggie. Whereas an inspector is going to go in third party. They're going to give you the nuts and bolts of everything. And so I do that for number one. The second reason I do a physical inspection is I really think true negotiations start after you get the property under contract and you have your inspection back. I don't know how many times I've got a property under contract, got the inspection. They'll be like, we're selling it as is. Well, don't let that think that don't let that make you think you can't get more money knocked off the deal as it means nothing to me. Right? It just means they're not going to do it. That's fine. You don't have to do it. But I just showed you $15,000 worth of repair in this inspection report. I'm. Going to need $15,000 taken off of this price. And the thing is, once I do that inspection legally, that's public knowledge. So if the sellers didn't know all this before, if they push me out and somebody else comes in to buy, they have to disclose that they're supposed to. And so it's like, okay, you can kick me out. Well you're going to have to disclose this to the next person. So I really think that inspection gives me a lot of leverage, without a doubt. So let's talk about getting to the closing table. Where are you pulling your financing from? I've done it a ton of different ways. I've done private money. I've used family, I've used friends, I've used friends of friends. I have used seller financing on the trailer park that we own. Buddy, the guy who owns it, seller financed it to us. I have put a lot of my own money into deals. As a down payment, I saved up and, and my wife and we first started before I really started Dabbling and understanding private funding and seller financing. We would save up everything we had. As soon as we had we were buying properties for $60 to $80,000 in 2018. So as soon as we had another twelve to 15 grand saved up, we'll literally just go buy another property. And so those are kind and then partnerships where I would do an LLC with a Buddy or a couple of us and we would split the down payment so it wouldn't be as much. I've covered the full game of things I haven't technically done hard money. Private money is very similar to hard money. It's just not a professional, so to speak. I have a lot of hard money lenders who message me pretty much daily, especially now that I have the reach. They all want to work with me, but I really like private money to somebody I know. I normally get better deals and I try to work in a way to not have to put any capital down. Sure. So are you using the private money for just the down payment or for the entire acquisition? Or are you going to like a bank and getting institutional debt for the second piece? So I'm doing the Burr method normally so that's buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. So I'm taking private money for the entire purchase and the rehab, buying it, rehabbing it, get a tenant in there. Reappraisal 80% in theory should cover all the private money that I had lent out, pay them back plus their interest for their fee. Now I have a banknote out. Normally my bank notes are 20 year AMS with a five year balloon. I do have a lender who does a straight 20 year amortization and so I actually refinance a lot of my properties into that. We talked about mitigating risk and so the majority of my properties are in that 20 year fixed and I'm working with a lender right now. Their interest rates are still very low. Like, I just locked a 5.25% here two weeks ago in a commercial loan. So, yeah, they have a five year balloon. But I'm like, I'm rocking with you guys. As long as that interest rate is staying in the low to mid five, I'll keep going with you. I'll refinance in the 20 year fix later with the other lender. So brilliant that you're going longer term on the rate, right? I've seen so many people make the mistake of when the market is getting shaky, they're not keeping an eye on that and they're still doing these one year arms and three year arms. You need to be able to get to the other side of the rainbow, right? This is a cycle, folks. It's going to go up, it's going to go down, but then it's going to come back up again. The trick is getting from where we are through the dip and back up on the other side of it. And to save that 8th of a point, a quarter of a point, I will speak from experience, folks, pay the extra quarter or half or whatever it is, get yourself some terms so you can get through this. Because JD is saying if you're doing your homework, you know your metrics on the way in, you know you're going to cash flow. In an inflationary period like this, chances are rent is only going to go up. You're probably going to be able to recast that and get more money than you are today. But if you're not fixed on your debt, boy, you could be in a world of hurt because rates are going to continue to do what they're doing. And that's where folks get jammed up a good bit, mitigate that risk with that debt as much. I don't like five year balloons. I think they give you enough time. Most of the time they're going to give you enough time, but I don't even like that. I mean, the 20 year fixed is my favorite and there's another one with a 20 year with a ten year balloon. And when I start doing that, I feel more comfortable. Like you said, when you start doing a one year Arm in this market. Oh, man, you're stressing me out. Just making me think about it. Yeah, I know you don't do a lot of syndications. We were talking offline folks before we got on, but there's a lot of people that were running around with these performers and they're not taking a look at tomorrow and they're taking real short term debt on these multifamily and banking on liquidity event after liquidity event and expenses going down, rents are going up. That's not what happens in real life. Right. You got to make sure you can get the other side of the rainbow. That's great advice. So what about the management of the asset post acquisition, the rent up maintenance issues. How are you managing all that stuff? Yeah, so on the front end, I factor in the performance. When I say cash flow, all that's factored in normally around 10% to 15% maintenance rate, depending on what we've done on the property on the front end. Right. 5% vacancy rate, you factored in taxes, insurance, all that. I now have every property managed by a company, so I don't do any management any longer. I used to manage and I used to manage my Airbnb for a year and a half, and I'm just at the stage in life. I got three little ones, another one on the way. I wanted to be completely passive, and so I have great managers. Not everybody can say the same. And it takes some time, I think, to find those, setting those expectations and interviewing. I hit the jackpot pretty quick. And part of that's because of my network, you just use your network to see who other people are using. People say, well, I find property managers. To me, the best way to start is calling other investors. Well, I don't know other investors. Okay, we'll download an app like Landglide or Prop stream. Get on there and look at all the LLCs listed, and then look up the owner of those LLCs, call the guy, hey, I'm a new investor. Can I take you to lunch? If you call ten on, one of them is going to let you take them to lunch, then you grow up their network. And so that's how I found my property manager. They do a great job. They're raising rents when people leave, when they're renewing. If the rents are undervalued, then we'll raise them up. They don't contact me unless it repairs over $500, a threshold we've set. So it's smooth selling for me. I've got a great system in place right now. Do you mind me asking roughly what percent of the deal they're charging you on those? 10%. So all my long term rentals are 10%. And then my one Airbnb, my mom actually manages it, so I got a great deal there. It's like seven and a half percent. Airbnb is usually 15% to 25%. So I hadn't told her that I probably need to bump her pay up a little bit, but nobody chased my mom down because I am crushing it right now. So, folks, if you can find a management company that is handling your day to day, your lease up, they're adjusting rents, they're handling repairs for 10%. It may sound like a lot of money. It is free. You can say that again. You can say that again. That 10% is the best money you will ever spend. If you're looking to grow and scale another mistake I made years and years and years ago, when we first started, there weren't all these tools for me to connect with a guy like you. Now it's easy peasy, right? And like you said, if you call ten, probably four are going to say yes. We found that the investment community, man, it is an awesome network. The best people want to help. And there's today you've got videos on everything. There is so much information and so much knowledge out there and it's easy to connect with folks. And if you take that stuff and you outsource it, it will give you the ability to scale in a really significant way. I made every mistake you can, JD, you name it, I screwed it up along the way. And for a long time we were trying to manage all that stuff and boy, oh boy, do you get jammed up real quick. And then you don't understand how it happens, but it happens where all of a sudden, a week, two weeks, a month will go by. You haven't looked at a damn deal. You haven't looked at one new deal because you're working what feels like all day long and you're just in triage. You're just dealing with the next headache, the next issue that's coming, the next vacancy, the next adjustment. You're doing homework on comps and what change you get knocked out of it. For me, I'm not a detailed guy like that. I'm a deal guy. I'm a deal junkie. Give me the deals. I want to gobble them up, analyze them, I want to have fun with them. I was miserable. I was trying to run all this stuff. And then you bring somebody in and man, oh, man, that is the best advice I think you could possibly give. If you can find somebody that will do that, that is a great, great way to help unlock the ability to reach the masses. And I always say, look, we're dealing with, and maybe this is naive to me, but the way I think about it is we're dealing with hundreds of thousands, if not million dollars worth of properties at this point. We got millions of dollars in our properties. Why am I going to try to skimp for a couple of pennies? Why? You know, that is going to take so much of my time away. It's just not worth it. It's just not worth it at all. And I'm assuming you've got all that in your initial pro forma anyway, right? So if you can't absorb a 10% hit, focus on your proforma, it's probably not the right deal for you. Exactly. So if you had to give a newbie some advice, is there any specific, like books or webinars or training any places or books that you've read that really help to kind of frame this game for you off of Junk Street? So I think everybody says that if you're just brand new to money in general, I think Robert Kiyosaki does a good job with his rich dad, poor dad, just teaching about debt, right? How to leverage other people's money. Really. When I started, I enjoyed podcasts like this. So any podcast that you can get on and listen to people talk about real estate. At the time when I first started, I couldn't find that many of the bigger pockets. I was like, everybody only knew about bigger pockets. Now there's so many other good ones. So listen to every podcast you can hop on every real estate book you can. I didn't really dig into books. People ask me, what's your favorite real estate books? I didn't really dig into them that much. I listened to podcast more, and then I went to guys, I think you can save a lot of time. I love reading books. I read a lot of them. But I think you save time going to somebody who's done it. And so I spent a lot of time with my buddy who was doing it in his team. Whether they wanted me there or not. I was on the phone here about their deals. I wasn't doing any deals. I was just listening and watching. And so I think you need to learn everything you can do. And then, like we mentioned earlier, once you get that foundation, you can talk to Lingo. You understand real estate. Learn how to be a bird dog. That should be step two. And when I say bird dog is learn how to find deals. Learn how to analyze deals. Even if you're not buying any. Analyze deals every day or a couple of days a week and learn. Okay, this makes sense. This doesn't make sense. Can I do something to this property? Like at a bathroom, turn it from a three one to three two, and now it makes sense. Just like thinking through all those things all the time, that's really going to help you. Because like we mentioned, once you start getting that down, once you can mine those gyms right, then you can find capital. Whether you say, hey, I don't have a ton of capital right now, you're going to find somebody who will probably lend to you. And so that was big for me. And then obviously I'm biased. I got a course coming out for beginners, so you can holler at me at Finance Cowboy on Instagram. I would love to help you, but really dig in and just build that base and start finding properties or start analyzing properties. So this has been great advice. Is that the best way for folks to find you on Instagram? Yes. Instagram.com/FINANCE cowboy. This was a fascinating chat, JD. Best of luck. Congratulations on the success. I think it's a great story. Congratulations on the brand. This is great stuff, man. Really, best of luck to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys having me. And like I said, if you got any questions, please reach out. Absolutely. He is the finance cowboy. Jd Sustar. Everyone, as always, stay safe.