How to BRRRR Your Way to Financial Freedom

0:00what was the thing that made you decide that you were going to make real estate investing happen for you that is a great question and let me take a step back because there there wasn't a single moment early on there was a moment but that wasn't until about five years ago so the first five years of you know my investing career I was an accidental landlord and I was making it all up as I went I did not have any idea that real estate could even be a career no one in my family growing up my parents I had no role model that said you can work for yourself and live by investing in

0:48Real estate didn't even know it so I grew up in Austin Texas I graduated University of Texas and they you know society says you get a job you have kids you buy a house you get a big girl job you know all these things and so I didn't do all of them but I did do some of them and I ended up buying a little condo in Austin that needed everything it was $992,000 and I had two roommates so I had my partner at the time and then I had a Craigslist roommate if that tells you how long ago this was you were still like what year was that like renting people yeah what year was it that was 2012 I started getting yeah we we bought it in 2012 and

1:36Got a roommate pretty much right away because you know even after 2008 and the banks were being more conservative but I don't know how they gave me this loan like honestly I did not qualify but they did they did anyway so I immediately was like how do I get this mortgage like covered without any stress on me so I got roommates they were paying my mortgage and we went on like that for like a couple years I mean it was pretty sweet and I just I really I was going along working my W2 I had no idea that this was like a model and then kind of a transitional moment my partner and I split and I knew that it would be crazy to sell the house just being in Austin and

2:25You know what was happening in that time frame that emotionally I could not live there and that I couldn't afford it to you know to pay rent somewhere and have a mortgage so in the span of two weeks I went from living in a you know my house that i' been in for a few years to having tenants moving in and like I just made up the entire process so it was it was accidental and it was kind of like really forced and not a decision that I proactively made yeah well you time the market with that purchase I mean 2012 everyone now says if I could just go back to 2012 and buy do you still own that one I do not no 2016

3:14Came along and real estate I I'll get to it but I quit my job and went to go travel for a year and travel the world and so this is the power of real estate right I had some income coming in it wasn't quite enough I only had three rentals at that point cuz the first one was working out so I did it two more times in the next two years nice yeah so I had roommates at the house I lived in and two long-term rentals that I had lived in Prior right so 2016 comes along and I kind of say forget everything I'm gonna go travel I go travel the world and I joke that I was like playing real life Monopoly because I was like you know around month eight 78 I'm like getting little on funds like I'll just sell a house

4:04So I did I just that's the condo I sold the condo and it I continued to travel wow what a blessing that that turned into right yes yeah real estate's incredible yeah wow yeah I had a similar experience with one that I bought in 200 2012 as well actually or no no I'm sorry 2009 2009 yeah it was in Hawaii because I just happened to be stationed there after the crash and Banks were kind of like freaking out and bought a foreclosure and then yeah it was a huge blessing many years later after I got married when we could sell it and tap into some of that Equity to do some other stuff and you know it just it's kind of how a lot of the times it works out so so so you traveled for a year and then you came back and decided that

4:52You wanted to kind of double down on real estate is that how it worked out or no not still no okay I still had I still I like at this point I fully knew that real estate was awesome but I didn't know that you could work for yourself and be a full-time investor so I grew up in Austin lived there until going to travel I knew I didn't want to go back and while traveling I met my wife and she didn't want to go back to where she had where she had come from so I was looking for a job I was like I need to I need to get a job and the job I got randomly was Columbus Ohio and I don't even think like I could have showed you where Ohio was on the map I was like sure I mean I just Googled like you know LGBT friendly

5:41It was like top of the list and pet friendly top of the list I'm like it can't be that bad so we just we moved here in 2017 without ever visiting or or anything wow it was it was a bold move but it was it turned out great still here so so what job were you working at the time then it was a project management working for a brewery okay and I was opening their like commercial bars so commercial property development I see okay it was fun yeah it really was very fun you know people all the time in their real estate Journey talk about the golden handcuffs where it's so hard to leave your W2 because you know they pay you all this money I did not have that problem I was working very very

6:30Hard and not getting paid nearly enough so I made it about 18 months before I this whole time I was going to my Ria to networking this is the the time when I realized real estate could be a career okay so in that 18 months you know my little the hamster wheels turning and I'm like figuring out how am I gonna do this take a wholesale course you know figure like I could replace my w2a income in like less than a deal a month like how how hard could this be so I quit my job did not make any money for six months and but the the whole time you know I knew once I got a taste of working for myself like that was it yeah yeah

7:19And so how did you decide when it when it was right to quit your job because that's a question I get a lot and a lot of people are thinking about is there is there sort of a rule rule of thumb you go by that you advise people my timing the timing was I was up for a review I was asking for a very reasonable raise based on the tasks that I was doing and they denied it and so I mean it it wasn't something I didn't set a date on the calendar and aim towards that date or anything it was that that moment I realized the job was never going to be what I wanted it to be and that the only way to create the life that I want is

8:07To do it for myself yeah yeah that's a great great idea sometimes the Stars kind of align that way one thing I was talking to people about recently is that I think people focus too much on their salary when they're trying to figure out how to get to Financial Freedom and they're like well I'm making 150 a year now so that's what I have to get to before I could leave and while they're working toward that then they're getting raises and stuff and it's like this moving Target that they're never going to get to instead of saying what does my ideal life look like and what will that cost me you know in getting to that number instead of just assuming I need 150,000 a year whatever your number is currently to live off of so it's sort of like a reverse engineering process but you didn't have that problem since they were

8:55Underpaying you anyway so I was so underpaid yeah yeah I was getting paid probably half of what I should have yeah wow wow so yeah I was like well thank you yeah yeah made it really easy so so but I talk to people all the time with who do have the golden handcuffs and you know it actually is hard to leave and I kind of you know give the same advice and I I think of this as far as like hiring someone as well you think oh I'm going to pay someone $60,000 a year I need to have $60,000 it's like you don't because you need to pay them $5,000 a month c three months in are they going to be bringing you in more than $5,000 a month if the answer is yes then you only need 10 15,000 for that onramp you know what I

9:44Mean so same thing with the the quitting your job it's like what's your on-ramp if you need six months of savings in case you don't make any money then get your six months and then start working and you like you can plan month by month exactly like you're saying yeah and and all a sudden you have 40 plus hours of capacity a week to start to figure this out over that six months most people can you know start to create some streams of income with all that time during that time period so that's a great point and if you love real estate I mean I absolutely love what I do and I imagine you you love it as well and so it does I work more now but it doesn't feel like work exactly so that 40 hours a week it's like I have no problem getting up

10:32Early I have no problem like get putting my head down and doing what I need to do yeah yeah it's fun so if you have that in you like yeah go for it yeah yeah absolutely so so you left your job you focused primarily on wholesaling it sounds like for the first little while there now you're known as the the the queen of burs so how how did the transition happen from wholesaling to to this bur model I was wholesaling everything for two full years because you know I did have the real estate in Austin and I was able to you know I had a pretty decent profit from that the condo that I sold so I had some on rant for marketing but I didn't I I was I

11:20Was saving 20% down to start buying rentals so I also was making money for the first time in my life and it was fun so I probably should have bought more real estate early on but I was like let's make some money so I was I wholesaled everything for two years and I did save enough to start buying some with the 20% down and it just it was so slow it was so slow so it wasn't until January 2021 we had about 11 doors at that time that's when I I I knew what the bur method was but I wasn't and no one sat down and really showed me the power of the method so once I got I got a mentor January 2021 who

12:09Like was like you're doing way too much pick something right I was in Airbnb I was an agent I was wholesaling still I had my couple rentals like I was doing everything he said pick a strategy so I picked Burr and from 11 Doors it has been less than three years and we're just like about to close number 70 wow wow that's incredible so for for people who aren't familiar with with the bur I mean most people probably have heard of that but can you explain what it is and the the power of the Burr method yes yeah I really wish someone had explained this to me sooner so the power well so bur it stands for it's B rrrr buy renovate rent refinance repeat and the idea is that whatever you put into the property you

12:57Are able to pull out in the form of a loan at the time of refinance you pay off yourself your private your hard money lender whoever it is and then that money is freed up to go and do the process again so the power is that you are creating Equity through your labor of you know renovating this property and you're creating an asset that's going to have very little maintenance because you have ideally new Mechanicals new Cosmetics you have a market rate tenant who is in theory well qualified because it's you know a nice unit you're not just taking anyone off the street so you have like a beautiful package to sell you put your market rate you know renter in place

13:46And you take this beautiful package to the bank and they're going to lend against your like shiny new asset and you you know they're only going to lend 70 75 80 % depending who you work with so the rest of the money there between what it's worth and what you borrow is your Equity it's your yeah you know your payment for all the work that you did that's amazing yeah and so it's brilliant so that the one of the best parts about it is that you can just recycle then the same money so you know like you talked about you don't have to save that 20% down payment because you're pulling out all the money once you refinance and just putting it into the next deal so you can basically do this in a perpetuity