Making $10K/Month with a “Small and Mighty” Rental Portfolio

David Greene:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast, show 795.

Chad Carson:
We actually made a list of things my business partner and I did. What were our priorities? Why do we get into real estate in the first place? I wrote down things like, I want to play pick up basketball in the middle of the day for two hours. I want to travel. If I have kids, I want to spend time with them. Some of those things cost money, like you got to pay for travel, but most of the things we weren’t doing at that time were not because of money. They were because we didn’t have enough time.

David Greene:
What’s up everyone? It’s David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast here today with my partner in crime, Rob Abasolo. And if this is your first time listening, we’ll congratulations, you have found the biggest, the baddest and the best real estate podcast every week, bringing you stories, how-tos, answers that you need to make smart real estate decisions now in this current market. Today’s guest is a repeat guest. It is Chad Carson, also known as Coach Carson, who we’ve had on several times before. He’s well-known within the BP ecosystem, and he’s going to be talking with us about what he calls the small and mighty approach to real estate investing. It’s all about enjoying life now based on the portfolio you have. Not getting sucked into this idea that you have to have seven million properties and actually enjoying the life that a portfolio can provide you. Rob, what should people listen to in today’s episode to gain value for their own real estate investing journey?

Rob Abasolo:
I mean, this was the ultimate most refreshing episode we’ve done, I think. It gives a reason for thinking about real estate investing in a different way, and you might find that by the end of this episode you’ve been thinking about real estate investing backwards. So be sure to keep listening, to figure out how to turn your strategy around if what’s next or finding out when enough is enough is really troubling with you and you’re trying to do that while you’re trying to scale, so a lot of golden nuggets. This was not just nuggets man, this was just an entire mine. We went down into a mine shaft and we mined a lot of nuggets.

David Greene:
We’re coming out full of nuggets, so check these out. They’re all for you, but before we get to the show, today’s quick tip, you’ve heard of your FI number, but you might not have heard of your small and mighty number. Go look up Chad Carson, buy his new book and calculate your small and mighty number for yourself. Since you listened to today’s show and you’re a loyal fan of our podcast, we have got a discount code for you. Use code small 795 to get 10% off at biggerpockets.com/smallandmighty. That’s biggerpockets.com/smallandmighty check. Chad Carson, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. How many times have you been on now?

Chad Carson:
I believe this is number three or four, but it’s been so long ago that, it’s hard to remember some of those.

David Greene:
That’s a nice flex.

Chad Carson:
Early days.

David Greene:
I don’t remember, man. Three maybe four, possibly five. I’m so busy that the biggest real estate podcast in the world doesn’t really-

Chad Carson:
I do remember.

David Greene:
Move the needle.

Chad Carson:
No, thank you for having me back. It’s great. Great to be here.

David Greene:
Yeah, so we’re excited to talk to you. We’re excited to talk about the book that you have written. I think it’s going to be good for a lot of people that are struggling with … I mean, Brandon is not here. He used to be the guy that came up with names. So there’s like mom guilt, there’s real estate investor shame. I don’t know, we got to come up with a name for it, but this feeling that someone goes to a meetup and they’ve got the beer in their hand and they’re sitting around talking to a bunch of people and they’re all saying, “Oh, how many doors do you have? Oh, I’ve got 74 doors,” and they’re doing this whole thing and someone is like, “Oh, I suck at life. I only have three properties,” and it could lead you into this just hole of shame. I need to come up with a name for describing it. And your book sort of combats that. And so before we get into the show, I’m just curious, is that what motivated you to want to spread the message that you are?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, it was definitely an emotional push and part of it was my own journey, which I know we’ll talk a little bit about, but it was also those conversations in the hallways where people feel like, “Man, I’ve got three properties or I had one property per year for the last five years,” and I thought that was good, but I look at this other person and they’re doing so much more. Really what I want to do, I wanted to first of all, validate that small investor and say, “You know what, not only is that okay, but let’s show you how that could be amazing. It could be mighty. You could do everything you want to do with a very small portfolio.” And not to say the big portfolio is bad either. It’s the, “Hey, let’s pat the back of the little investor and say, hey, good job and here’s a way you can even take that to make that even better within the book.”

David Greene:
Well, it’s good to have you back. You initially made your first appearance in the Marvel Universe in episode 84 of the Josh and Brandon show and most recently have been featured on episode 293, so it has been a minute, everybody, if you want to learn more about Chad, go check those out. A little bit of background on you, you’ve got 100 units across 34 properties, both single family and multifamily. You’re a 50/50 partner on most of those. You’ve been living in Spain with your family for the last year and your rental income has paid for that all and your Spanish is really, really good.

Rob Abasolo:
It is.

David Greene:
Better than mine. You and Rob, were going back and forth. Rob, what do you think, you give him the seal of approval there?

Rob Abasolo:
Absolutely, absolutely. I would be honored to do a Spanish podcast with you anytime.

Chad Carson:
Wonderful.

Rob Abasolo:
I can’t say it would go very well, but we could at least hold our own.

Chad Carson:
I really love that because actually, last year I’ve been studying Spanish and that was my goal. I said I would love to do a podcast at some point in Spanish, so let’s do this. Great.

David Greene:
All right. Well you’ve done this using what you call the small and mighty strategy. We will get into that method in a second, but just to show people how effective the strategy can be, can you paint us a picture of what your life looks like right now?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, so this last 12 months has been a little abnormal for us, but I have two kids. I have a 12 and a 10-year-old and my wife and for us, travel and not just travel and like vacation travel, but just living in other places has been one of our dreams since we first met. My wife and I first met 17 years ago, and so living in Spain has been what we did the last 12 months, and we lived in a city called Granada in Southern Spain. Our kids went to local schools there, became fluent in Spanish. I took Spanish classes as I mentioned, every day and tried to improve that. So it’s being able to do that. Real estate investing obviously plays a big part of that and being able to pay for your rent abroad and living expenses and travel.
We haven’t had to skip at all and also, just having the time and flexibility to do that, that’s been a big perception a lot of people have is, “Oh, real estate, you have to be local or you have to go check it out.” So having the ability and the flexibility to live there and not have to be on site in South Carolina with my properties has been a big part of it.

David Greene:
I’m curious if you read long distance real estate investing and used any of the techniques to manage properties that you bought local but then you moved away to manage.

Chad Carson:
I definitely read it, I loved it and your other book as well. I think the big one for me has been your big three, but I would just like my big one, my property managers have been huge and with our portfolio, we have student rentals and so we have some single family houses with long-term tenants with families and those are a little easier to manage, but we have student rentals which average about a year and a half of each tenant who stays about a year and a half. So that has more turnover, more leasing costs, more just hassle there. We have two good property managers who sort of approach it different ways. One is a small kind of boutique property manager. Another one is a bigger with a lot of operations and systems.
And they both work really well. Yeah, that’s one of the big lessons of course, took from your book there was that team. You got to lean on the team and then systems has been the other part of that as well.

Rob Abasolo:
Yeah, yeah, I mean it sounds like you’re living quite the life, you’re living abroad, you’re learning Spanish and for anyone who might be skeptical or who’s thinking, no one does this without some other form of income or wealth, we got a couple questions for you here. How much of your life is the actual real estate income from your portfolio actually supporting?

Chad Carson:
Yes. I mean, I don’t mind sharing numbers here. When we live in the US we live a little cheaper, but we’re paying for travel, things like that. It’s been eight to 10 grand per month, plus or minus while we’ve been in Europe and 100% of that is real estate income. I look at my bank account every month. Here’s the real estate income that comes in from my partnership that I have and a couple other properties we have. That money pays for 100% of our living expenses and a little bit extra and that’s it. I do have other businesses and things that I’ve built over the years too, but real estate has always been my main thing and I’ve turned other things on and off and taken breaks and things like that.
Yeah, real estate income specifically, I used to flip houses, I used to wholesale, but living off the rental income is the name of the game for me and my wife and my business partner.

Rob Abasolo:
Yeah, absolutely. Well that’s very interesting. So you mentioned that you have other businesses. Do they make up a large part of your income as well or are they just more side incomes or side hustles? Give us the breakdown there because I’ve always been a big fan of … yeah, I always tell people don’t spend your real estate income, just always dump it back into the portfolio but figure out how to make money other ways to support your life. And obviously, that’s not what you’re doing, but I’d love to hear your take on that.

Chad Carson:
Yeah, a couple of my businesses that were my first active businesses are basically in dormant status. I was flipping houses, fixing and flipping houses. We did that a good bit early on. That’s how we made our money. That’s how I paid the bills, that’s how we saved up money for rental properties. I also got my real estate license so I wasn’t into it as David is and having a whole team, but I would make some commissions on the side and do that to make active income and then, eventually got into doing a little bit just more consulting. So, I’ve done consulting on and off over the years, taught some classes, but the good thing about that is when you have that base of rental income, for example with my teaching and consulting, I’ve turned that on and off over the last five years.
Some years I’ve made 10 grand in that. Some years I’ve made six figures in that. So, it just depends on what I want to do with my time. And for the last … in Spain for example, I didn’t teach any classes. I didn’t do much active income just because I wanted time to learn Spanish. I wanted time to be with my family and just focus on exactly what I was doing in that moment. And that’s the beautiful part about real estate, about entrepreneurship is that you just have that flexibility whereas you have a W-2 job, you can’t turn that switch off and on. You’ve got to either be there or not. Luckily, that’s been the case for me.

Rob Abasolo:
That’s really cool. So you mentioned you’re taking about eight to $10,000 of distributions from your real estate side, are you also saving a little bit of your real estate income for the sake of reinvestment or are you taking all your profits and living the kind of retirement life or the mini retirement life in Spain?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, we definitely retain more. So, just for people who I knew kind of behind the scenes, I have a 50/50 business partner, so if you have an LLC or some other kind of corporation that money goes into that corporation or LLC in our case. Then, you choose to distribute it to the partners, the owners and we retain a good bit of that as well. So, I can talk more about some of the asset allocation and capital allocation that we look at, but a lot of that over the year, last five, six years has been paying off debt on our existing portfolio,, and that’s been important for us. Before that, I distributed a lot less early in my career where you just live on as little as you can and make money from active income.

Rob Abasolo:
Sure.

Chad Carson:
And do what you were talking about, retain 100% of it if you can, and we use that to grow … to reinvest in down payments to buy more properties, but we made a switch at some point and one of those switches was we don’t really want to grow anymore. We might buy a few properties and sell a few properties, but it was more about restructuring our capital and restructuring how much income we were getting and stabilizing the portfolio to keep the best properties and sell some of the worst properties. So, it was just sort of a, it’s a different strategy, but it also had to do with whether we retained profits or not. I wanted to actually live off the income and travel and not have to live off the active income. So we started distributing a bigger portion of the profits as well.

Rob Abasolo:
Very cool. Yeah, we’ll get into that strategy here in a second, but I know you mentioned you have property managers that sort of help manage this portfolio, but on average, how many hours per week are you working? Because I imagine you still have to sort of manage the property managers, right?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I’ve actually tracked this because I told people this casually a couple of years ago and they’re like, “No, that’s not true.” And it’s been less than two hours a week throughout this year while I was in Spain. Some weeks, like if we’re doing a tax return and I still do bookkeeping and my business partner and I, we don’t do our own taxes, we have CPA, but we handle that kind of stuff, administrative stuff. The day-to-day stuff, like I’ll get a text message from my property manager for example, “Hey, we had a septic tank go out on a rental property you have,” and I hate septic tanks by the way. Don’t recommend them for rental properties. This particular situation, they said, “Here’s the issue, it’s not good. We need to spend money on this. We have a contractor lined up to fix this. Here’s how much it’ll cost.”
Do we have authorization to do that? And that was all over a text message and I said, “Go for it. Let’s do it.” One sentence, two sentences, and that’s the kind of stuff I do deal with during the week here and there, but other than that is some weeks might be three or four hours, other weeks might be 30 minutes, but that didn’t start like that. I know people are kind of thinking. Yeah, whatever that doesn’t … you can’t buy rental properties on two hours a week, and that’s true, where we are at a stabilized portfolio where we’re not buying any properties at the moment, we’re not selling a bunch of properties, it’s much more in a stable phase and it’s definitely been two hours or less for a good couple of number of years now.

David Greene:
So Chad, you bring up a good point there with people expect it to be a efficient, productive, the way that you’ve got a portfolio would’ve been 10 years or so that you’ve owned your portfolio.

Chad Carson:
It’s been 20 years actually.

David Greene:
20 years.

Chad Carson:
We got our first rental properties, 2004. We started in 2003, but yeah we really … we ran into 2007 and eight and had a bunch of rental properties there and we were leveraged. So yeah, it hasn’t happened overnight. This has been … it’s something you build up to.

David Greene:
So 20 years of increased cash flows, let’s not forget about that. Rents go up over time. Stabilized units, a lot of the time stuff starts breaking in your houses when you first buy them, “Ah, this thing broke, that thing broke.” It just feels like craziness and then, it slowly settles in and you start to expect, “Okay, I know the roof is going to be due at this point.” The HVAC has already been repaired. 20 years later, you’ve got the right property managers, there’s a system, you know how to solve these problems. It’s smooth, but we expect that in the beginning. People here talk about real estate, they hear different influencers saying, “Hey, you can quit your job and live off the cash flow,” and they think it’s a six-month thing. I’d like to talk a little bit about the delayed gratification versus the immediate gratification.
This is a balance here. It took some time to get to where you’re at right now, but I know you’re a proponent of why wait 40 years before you take advantage of some of the real estate, what advice do you have for how to set up a portfolio that you can enjoy right away? And then, how do you balance delayed versus immediate gratification?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I look at this, let’s just imagine you’re climbing a mountain and your big financial goals are at the top of the mountain. You’re down at the bottom when you’re first starting in real estate investing, and there’s one argument that says, let’s just push it hard and let’s go all the way to the top of the mountain, we get there as soon as we can. My experience, I started that way and I sprinted up the mountain and then, I kind of got slapped in the face a little bit by 2007 and eight, and the recession. I also read at the same time books, The 4-hour Workweek where it was sort of saying reverse your idea of your business. Your business is there to serve your life. You should work it backwards from that.
What do you want to do with your life? What do you want your business to help you do? That was right about the time when the recession was happening. That was right about the time that we had grown a lot. We gotten really … we bought a lot of properties in one year. We sort are experiencing what you’re talking about, David, where you’re having all the problems and the property is right off the bat. They’re bleeding cashflow. There’s storms on the horizon, so we were just in a state of mind where we’re like, “Wait a minute, not only is this not what we got into, but I think this is a strategy that maybe doesn’t … It’s not giving us what we actually got into the business for in the first place.”
So the delayed gratification part was like, “I want to build my business such that as I’m climbing that mountain, I like to be able to take some plateaus. I like to be able to take a break as I go up the mountain and how could I build my business in a way that’s flexible enough to sort of push it, push it, push it while you sprint for a couple of years and then, plow back some profits, maybe stabilize that with some refinances, with increasing your cash flow a little bit. Then, for us in 2009, we took a four-month break, my wife and I did, and this is pre-kids for us, but we got our systems to a point, our cash flow is not financially independent. We weren’t like where we could live off all the cashflow yet.
We had a little bit of cashflow but we had saved up some cash, but it was sort of a test for us to say, “I’m 29 years old, I don’t want to wait until I’m 43 where I am now or I don’t want to wait until I’m 35 or 65 to be able to experience all the benefits of this real estate investing.” So we committed to having these mini retirements, these pauses, these plateaus along the climb throughout our career. For us, it’s been travel. So, going to South America for four months with my wife was the first one. Our family, when my kids were three and five, we moved to Ecuador, in Cuenca, Ecuador and had a 17-month trip there, and just lived there and went to school. So for us at least travel has been sort of a force multiplier.
It kind of forces you to detach yourself from your business, build your systems, build your income, and it forces you to play the game. You got to do that. You’re going to leave, you got to figure out who’s going to manage it for you. You got to figure out how you’re going to pay for things. I think those plateaus are so crucial along the way because they not only help your business, but they also, at least in my case, reminded me why I was doing the business. It got me out of that point in that business in 2007 where I was spending all my time and spending my wheels. We actually made a list of things, my business partner and I did, what are our priorities? Why do we get into real estate in the first place?
And I wrote down things like, I want to pick up basketball in the middle of the day for two hours. That’s what I do. That’s what I like to do. I want to travel. If I have kids, I want to spend time with them. Some of those things cost money. You got to pay for travel, but most of the things we weren’t doing at that time were not because of money they were because we didn’t have enough time, we didn’t have enough free time. So that’s really where the small and mighty idea came in. It was let’s find a business that not only gives you money but it gives you those other currencies, your time, your flexibility, and what strategies would you use, what tactics would you use? And that’s really the whole encapsulation of this idea is building a lifestyle oriented real estate business model.

Rob Abasolo:
I love this. I love this for a lot of reasons. I think like David was saying, there is sort of this keep up with the investor Jones’s, right? Where everyone is … the door dash if you will. The dash for more doors. I should start an app called that, but basically, trying to acquire more and more and more doors so that you can … you feel like your portfolio is growing and you’re calling them plateaus, but I honestly, wouldn’t even call it that, because if you really think about hiking a mountain and if it’s a really big mountain, a lot of times you’re setting up camp and you’re enjoying a little bit of that experience. The thing with doing that is when you’re actually stopping, cooking food, sleeping, you can enjoy the view because you’re resting a little bit, whereas if you’re always climbing the views in front of you, but you’re just always grinding away.
So, it’s really not nearly as enjoyable and I think it’s a really strong way to do it. I love your coming in and saying this and saying like … you’re kind of answering this question of when is enough enough. I have a pretty good idea of that, but I understand that, is this sort of what shifted your strategy just like you found your endpoint pretty quickly and so you decided to kind of re-strategize how you allocated your funds?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I mean it definitely … living in South America for example, it’s just going to like, specifically with the culture I was in. When you travel and you see what makes people happy, we were in a place where super awesome people and people were making a lot less money than we were. So, there was just that of, “All right Chad, what do you really need to be happy here? What’s enough for you?” And I personally needed that. I’m a type A. I think a lot of us real estate investors who like to climb, we’re good at it. We have those skill sets. We’re ambitious. I think those are great. I love those traits and I think it’s good to be reminded that we need to enjoy the climb, we need to enjoy the process. I love that about Latin America. I love how they have two-hour meals and they enjoy family and they take their time.
So I learned a lot just about balancing life and how do you take siestas for example, let’s take a nap, let’s enjoy this. At the same time, going back to your business question, there is a difference, if you’re always in climb mode, if you’re always in build mode and growth mode. It’s just difficult. There are always those little tinkerings you have to do with your business. Like David was talking about, there’s always … and no matter how good you are at business, there’s just going to be a fire you have to put out. So, I wanted to get to the point along the way, where let’s get the business stabilized to where there’s not a lot of fires. There’s always going to be little things here and there, but let’s have these three to five year goals that you get to and your business grows incrementally.
It gets better incrementally, and you can build a foundation not only on the systems and the team you’ve built, but also on the capital structure. For me, paying off debt has been something I didn’t originally plan to do, but over time, plowing back some of our profits, to use a poker metaphor, let’s take some chips off the table so that we have a … we’ve de-risked our portfolio a little bit. We’ve increased our income and there’s a kind of gradient on how much you could do that. There’s a Dave Ramsey pay off 100% of your portfolio.

Rob Abasolo:
Sure.

Chad Carson:
I’m sort of somewhere in between there, but I do believe that over time, having a portfolio that’s smaller probably means you’re retaining profits and paying off debt instead of reinvesting that into more and more and more properties. So that’s been part of my own journey as well.

Rob Abasolo:
I think that’s fine. I think that is the other … the very aggressive leverage, leverage, leverage, and to some degree I’m guilty of this, right? I do like to leverage, but sometimes it feels good to see that balance go down. I’ve been paying an extra thousand dollars to one of my mortgages for the past year. A lot of people are going to be like, “What?”

Chad Carson:
Why, what it’s doing?

Rob Abasolo:
For me, it’s made a big difference, because I look at my mortgage statement now every month and I’m like, “Dang, that made a really, really big difference because you are …” it does give you a little bit of that peace in mind. So like I said, I think enough, enough is enough, enough kind of question is always going to be that big conundrum. David, I’ve never asked you this and I’m going to put you on the spot in front of everyone at home, but have you thought about that answer? When is enough, enough for you?

David Greene:
Nonstop all the time? I mean how deep do you guys want to go with this? Because there’s a lot of ways you can answer it. There’s the fact that if I say enough is enough, stop buying, you slowly stop losing relevance to the audience because most of them are not listening to a podcast to learn how to manage a portfolio that you already bought. They’re like, I want to improve my position in life. I want to get out of my job, I want to make more money. I want to be able to take naps in the middle of the day or siestas, if you want to sound fancy. So what do I got to do? So if I’m not buying property, if I’m not seeing today’s current hurdles, then I don’t have as much value to offer in a podcast and on our YouTube channels and our businesses are basically built on educating people about real estate space.
So that’s one concern. Then, there’s the concern I have of inflation. I had this … My plan was to stop at eight properties. I had eight properties I really liked … do you guys remember when the Corvette Stingrays came back around?

Rob Abasolo:
Yeah.

David Greene:
And Corvettes looked really cool. They stopped looking like an old man car and it was like, “Oh, that’s actually a cool car.” I was just going to get one of those and be done. I’m going to quit my job as a cop. I’m going to spend $50,000 on this Stingray and I’m going to retire because that’s what all the guys in Go Button were telling me to do. I had this sneaky little feeling like I’m not feeling that good about quantitative easing. Inflation is gnarly. And I’m glad I listened to it because the five grand a month I was making a passive income would be very difficult to live on in Northern California, especially if I had a Stingray that I had to put gas in. So I’m glad I didn’t stop, right? The economic environment sort of dictated that I had to keep going because the money that I had saved up and the money I was making was becoming worth less and less every year.
There is also an element where Chad is speaking that it doesn’t do you any good to making a butt load of money, but all day long you’re just recording content, analyzing deals, dealing with employees stressed out 14 hour days that you hate your life. Your business should work for your life, not your life for your business. And so I think it’s a balancing act and the way I sort of reconcile it is that right now I’m single so I can work hard on this stuff, but someday I may have a family that I want to enjoy like you guys do. And I won’t want to be working this hard. I’ll want to be able to take my foot off the gas pedal and I want the freedom to do what you’re doing. How’s that Rob for an answer being on spot?

Rob Abasolo:
That’s a good answer. Love it. Thank you, I appreciate that. And listen, you may not have gotten that Stingray Corvette, but you’re driving around a hot pink Camaro these days and I think that’s a better look for you anyway.

David Greene:
Taylor Swift just sounds better coming out the speakers of a hot pink Camaro. I don’t know what it is, but it does.

Rob Abasolo:
Facts.

Chad Carson:
You guys mind if I jumping on the inflation comment because I think-

David Greene:
Please.

Chad Carson:
While it’s fresh in everybody’s mind, this is not something I haven’t thought about as well, and I think one of the … every portfolio has to be individual because we’re all different and we have different situations, but the inflation thing we all have to deal with. One way I think about it is you have to pick a number and I think it doesn’t matter if you hit that number exactly once you get there, but I think about it, financial independence numbers and for me, my number was 5,000 bucks as well. It’s like “All right, 5,000 a month, as soon as I hit that, we’re good.” Then I had kids and that number starts going up and up, or if you live in the West Coast, that number would go up and up.
I live in Clemson, South Carolina, so it’s a little simpler to live off that, but I think picking a number, some kind of like, all right, here’s my lean financial independence. Here’s my just basic expenses. Let’s just get that taken care of. Having a really clear idea what that is today. Things could change with inflation, but let’s just think about today. Let’s get a normal financial independence. Going out to eat and taking some vacations plus paying for the normal expenses. Then, I would take it even further from that and say let’s build a big cushion on top of that. So if your number … let’s say your number is 5,000 bucks a month, but there is inflation, there is the fact that you might want to grow a little bit, you want to travel a lot. Maybe that’s 10,000 bucks a month or 15 or 20, just pick your number.
Whatever that number is then my strategy was not to say I’m just going to live off income, pay off the debt and that’s all I got, but I like to build an income floor basically saying one part of my portfolio is going to be super safe. It’s going to be I’m not going to slide back down the mountain, I’m going to pay off properties. I’m going to have income coming in and that’s going to cover my essential expenses first. Then it’s going to cover my normal expenses. And where we are today, that income floor covers, all of it. It covers even a fat financial independence if you want to call it that, but on top of that, so you have inflation 100,000 bucks today or 120,000 bucks today, 10 years from now, you have to pay a lot more for the same lifestyle.
So having another kind of growth portfolio behind that. For me, that’s having retirement accounts with stocks and index funds. That’s having some properties outside of that free and clear portfolio that have leverage on them and having those as well. So sort of just overshooting your goals I guess is the long … long story short is having, having your cake and eating it too, having this de-risked portfolio and having this part of your life that can be flexible and grow and not have to be just fixed income on a lifestyle, eating toast 10 years from and not be able to enjoy yourself.

Rob Abasolo:
I love it. Well yeah, let’s get into the small and mighty strategy because I know it blows up some common real estate myths that a lot of people believe. So if it’s okay with you, I’d like to go through some of those myths and Chad, maybe you can explain why they’re false.

Chad Carson:
Yeah, let’s do it. So myth number one here is the more doors myth. Can you walk us through this one?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I mean we talked about this in the beginning, but there’s just sort of an unwritten conversation that successful means you have more doors and it of course depends on what your goals are, but I like to just give a specific example. What’s your number? So we talked about a financial independence number and if your number was $10,000 per month, that’s what you needed to pay for your lifestyle. Just nice round numbers. If you work that backwards and you say … and the way I like to think about it is how many properties would I need to pay me $10,000 per month? And let’s just keep the math super simple. I don’t want to get crazy calculus or something here. Let’s just say I had properties, single family houses in my area rent for about 1800 bucks a month.
I know that’s going to vary depending on where you are, but let’s say I had 10 houses that rented for $1,800 per month and my operating expenses on those properties have taxes, insurance, maintenance management, things like that, were about 800 bucks. I’d have a thousand bucks per month left over if I didn’t have a mortgage payment. So if you paid your mortgage off, and so a thousand bucks per month times 10 properties is $10,000 per month, $120,000 per year. I know that’s a real simple scenario.

Rob Abasolo:
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Carson:
I just like to mention that it’s like 10 properties could pay you $120,000 per year and if somebody says, “Hey, 120,000 a year is what I need,” I’d just like to remind them that you don’t have to have this big a hundred unit portfolio to pay you $10,000 per month with that simple scenario. And it just is … I find that to be sort of liberating from having to think about going big and 10Xing and doing all that, that’s cool too, but if your idea is that I want to have this portfolio that I spend an hour or two per week on, pays me $10,000 per month, that’s a valid portfolio. And it could be really … I call that a small and mighty portfolio and there’s a lot of people who’ve done that over the years, I know a lot of them personally, and it’s worked very well.

Rob Abasolo:
I like it. I like that because a lot of people do come to me and they say, “Hey man, I want to make $10,000 a month.” And I’m like, how much do you make now? They’re like, “Nothing, I’m just getting started.” I’m like, “How about we get you making a thousand dollars a month, let’s figure that out, do it 10 times,” but if you’re trying to start with that big lofty goal you’re talking about, it can be pretty overwhelming because you’re trying to find deals that get you as close to possible to that number versus doing exactly what you said is reverse engineering it and breaking it into smaller chunks. Yeah, great point there. Myth number two, creative finance is only for when you’re debt stacking.

Chad Carson:
Yeah, so I think this is another one which people get into. They love using debt, I love using debt, I use financing. I started with a thousand bucks in my bank account to get into real estate investing. So understandably, we focus on leverage. Leverage is great. I think about it though, as we have different stages of your real estate investing career. When you’re a starter, when you’re just getting into business, that’s your first stage. Of course, you got to use leverage who has … unless you have a million dollars laying around and you’re a trust fund baby, we have to start with what we have and we have to use a lot of leverage. And eventually, you own a few properties and you get into the wealth building phase, and this is where we’re really glad we had books. David’s BRRRR strategy, the BRRRR strategy is amazing because you could turn a 100,000 bucks into a million bucks by leveraging your equity and putting in the next property and that’s great as well.
I think we get so caught up with the thinking about that tool that we forget about when you get to the final stage, which I’m calling it … I had a mentor of mine, Pete Fortunato called it the ender phase, which I’m a little hesitant because I don’t plan on ending my career anytime soon, but it’s a harvesting phase. You get into this phase where as we talked about earlier, you have enough income, you have enough properties and using debt as a tool. And so sometimes putting debt back into the toolbox could be okay. That’s the myth I think is that you should always use debt. You should always think about using the tool that got you there. And actually, if you think about transferring from being a wealth builder to actually living off your income, my experience has been, it’s kind of like a football game.
I used to play football at Clemson University, so I like football metaphors, is that I used to have coaches when they’re into the game and you’re winning the game. They would get super, super conservative. They would like … you have three minutes left in the game and you’re winning by 10 points. What do you do? The quarterback takes a knee, you just say, “I’m done. I’m not going to run a play because if I were to run a play and pass the ball or do something and get intercepted, I could lose the game.” I think that’s a little extreme in real estate investing, but there are investors who, if you’re in your 60s or 70s and you are not planning on going back to work and you have enough, you should stop playing the game. You should probably take a knee and be very conservative with your portfolio.
That’s a reasonable approach. For me, I was in my 30s when I hit that number and a lot of people might be, they want to think about inflation, they want to think about long-term growth. So you don’t want to necessarily take a knee, but I think you switch to a different game. You don’t just play the game of maximizing leverage. You play a little bit different game where maybe you pay some properties off, maybe you start focusing on increasing your income. Maybe you start focusing on decreasing your risk and it’s a different mentality that’s not talked about as much, but I found that switch, that psychological switch and also, the practical strategy within your real estate business to be a really important switch to start playing that different game of being an ender or being a harvester instead of just using debt perpetually.
I called it the perpetual debt religion, always using debt. It’s a great tool, but at some point, putting it back in the toolbox.

David Greene:
I noticed that I had this thought the other day when I was working and I don’t know if other people have thought it. My guess is it doesn’t come up very often. When you were talking about how debt is used to scale. That’s really … you could get more when you take on debt, but there’s more than just, do I have enough money to buy? The thought that I had is what I realized. The parts of my business I’m paying attention to do well the parts I don’t, always fall apart. I’ve just understood this as a principle of physics. You cannot get away from it. We often say what you focus on expands. It’s like a Keller Williams quote, but when you use debt to leverage or just scale to a big size, it becomes incredibly difficult to keep life in all of your properties, all of your businesses, all of your employees.
Things don’t run well when you don’t pay attention to them, which is why this idea of passive income is incredibly difficult to achieve. I just noticed like, “All right, I’m having a conversation about this thing. This is really good. This person’s energized. They go forward. They make progress, but then that thing over there fell apart,” and I’m like, “Ah,” and I’m running over there and I’m trying to put these pieces together and come up with a plan of putting a lot of attention. Well, while I’m doing that, this property manager over here is doing a terrible job with my short term rentals. The pictures look horrible. They’re not paying attention to it because they’ve delegated it to one of their employees who isn’t paying attention.
This principle occurs all the time, and you absolutely can hit a point where you’ve grown too big for your own attention to sustain the portfolio that you’ve built, especially if there are many different things. You’ve got properties in different states, different asset classes, businesses that don’t have synergy between each other. You just saying that about debt sort of clicked in my brain. Yeah, you can find a way to get the money to buy the house, but we always talk about it, like you just need the money in the deal. No, there’s like a constant management. Go ahead Chad.

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I love that, and I had that same realization because it was not … I was really good at getting the money and I was really good at growing, but I started thinking about what I enjoyed about the business and I thought about some of the little stuff in the business I actually enjoyed doing. If I were to scale and outsource a hundred percent of it, not only would I not pay attention to it, it would be harder to have 200 units than a hundred units or I would stop paying attention to it, but I also wouldn’t enjoy the craft of being a real estate investor as much. I have found, as I interviewed a lot of small and mighty investors over the last year, writing this book is that I noticed some of the … ones who really enjoy what they’re doing. They do the things that everybody says not to do.
If you wanted to scale your business, they actually go cut their own grass. Imagine that. Who would want to do that or they actually paint their own walls or they install cabinets, and I’m not a handyman at all. I can’t do that stuff and don’t want to do that, but there are small mighty investors who love doing that and they pay attention to their five properties or their 10 properties and they put their 100% of their effort and their attention on it and they enjoy it and they get pride out of having a good house for a tenant and taking care of their community and getting involved in their community, and I think that’s one of the best things that we real estate investors have to offer to our community.
We get a bad rep sometimes, not just because of this mom and pop investors, because of the big huge investors, the hedge funds buying up single family houses and subdivisions. I think it’s important to emphasize that we offer a ton to our communities that we have these small and mighty investors who might have a few properties that they’re retiring off of, who are providing affordable housing to somebody. They’re taking care of that house, they’re investing in their community, they’re putting their time and effort into the community. So you made me think of that as well. David there’s this craft and there’s this pride of ownership that happens when you have enough and when you’re not having so many properties, that you can’t pay attention to that and you can’t engage with them as well.

Rob Abasolo:
Yeah, I love that. I love a lot of the juxtapositions within the small and mighty investor mindset. Have you ever thought about, if you were going to compare yourself to someone in the real estate space, influencer, thought leader or anything like that, who would you say you line up with the most?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I was thinking about this recently. Pace has been in the news a lot with the BiggerPockets and wrote a book recently. I would say I’m somewhere in between Pace Morby and Dave Ramsey. That’s kind of my … that’s my combo there. I love the creative financing space. That’s what me started, I used lease options and seller financing, even did a few subject twos. At the same time, I really enjoyed and appreciate the simplicity and the conservatism of the approach that Dave Ramsey takes. And I think there’s a time and a place for both. I guess going back to the whole, using debt to grow and putting the tool back in the toolbox, I think there’s a place for both of those and those messages are both needed.
And if you can find a way, my goal with the Small Mighty Investors to combine the best of those and to say, “Hey, if you’re new, if you’re starting, if you’re growing, pick up the creative financing tools. Use them safely. Don’t just go crazy with this, but then, eventually, have the goal of being more conservative with your portfolio, maybe even paying off part of it and living off your income so that you can have time to do all these things that matter to you.

Rob Abasolo:
All right. So Pace Ramsey. Got it. Stupid. Stupid.

David Greene:
I was trying to think of a thing. Pace says, I don’t think he has a recognizable line like Dave Ramsey has a lot of them.

Rob Abasolo:
Yeah, he says equity comes and goes, but the cash flow will always flow. If you’re stupid. There you go. I just mixed them both.

David Greene:
Yeah, Dave Ramsey one definitely sticks with that. Give me some time in a Southern accent and he’ll get there too. All right. So myth number three, you should keep a mortgage for the tax benefits. What say you Chad?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, this is one of my pet peeves here. The thing is, I’ve talked about paying debt off and this will be a fun conversation for people to have, even after the show and think about it. There’s some people who are just not in this camp and that’s cool. I’m fine with that. Usually, one of the objections I get is like, “Chad, you can’t pay debt off because there’s so many tax benefits having that debt.” And my first response is, “Well, when I pay my debt off, I still have the depreciation on the property.” Nothing’s changed about that just because I don’t have a debt. I have the exact same amount of depreciation. It shelters the exact same amount of income. Then, the second thing I say is how many times in business have you reduced your expenses? So that’s what paying off debt is.
You’re paying less interest. How many times have you reduced expenses and said, “You know what, I don’t know that I want to do that though. My contractor gave me a bid to fix my deck, but I want to pay him twice that because my deck expense is deductible, so therefore I want to have more expenses.” That’s essentially what it’s like when you say you shouldn’t pay off interest because interest is an expense and business 101 is you want to reduce your expenses. Now, we could have a discussion about whether you should reduce this expense or invest this money somewhere else. There’s a good discussion there, but there’s just a kind of flat out statement that’s often said, it’s like, “No, that’s a bad move because there’s not … you’re going to lose the tax benefits,” which most people when I press that they’re not really understanding the way taxes work.

David Greene:
Yeah. Do you think that comes from the misunderstanding that when you have a primary residence you can write off a portion of the interest? I think it’s up to like 500,000 right now, do you think that’s where that belief that there’s a tax benefit to having debt on rental properties comes from?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, it might be, because in your personal life, there’s a lot of expenses you have that aren’t deductible at all. So they’re not even considered for taxes, whereas your interest on your home is. So that’s definitely a real black and white comparison, but yeah, with business expenses, I think it kind of bleeds over into the business world where we would never just increase expenses just for the heck of it anywhere else, but we do that when it comes to debt.

David Greene:
It’s like when people justify buying something that they don’t need and saying, well, it’s a tax write off. It’s this, “Anyone listening, you’re stupid.” Stop doing that.

Rob Abasolo:
Okay, cool. So let’s get into the next myth here, which is paying off debt is a bad return on investment. I know we just covered this a little bit, but I’d love your take on it.

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I want to give you an example, because this is something that I just had to sort of stumble into. When my business partner and I were entering that phase and those plateaus where we’re at, we started considering paying debt off. We listened to some Dave Ramsey stuff and said, “This is not what everybody’s telling me to do, but what if I did this?” And I looked at some of my loans and for example, we had a property that a thousand dollar per month payment, and it was approximately a hundred thousand dollars balance. So that property had about $500 per month in cashflow, above and beyond what we were paying our mortgage every month. So yeah, it was in good shape, right? We’re making 500 bucks a month.
We said, you know what? We have 100,000 bucks that we could go buy more properties, but what if we paid it off? And if we paid that $100,000 loan off, we would free up $1000 per month. That’s $12,000 per year, and in my new phase that I’m thinking of, this harvest phase or this ender phase where I’m trying to increase my cashflow, I’m trying to decrease my risk, trying to simplify my life. I spent 100,000 bucks. I make $12,000 per year in cashflow. The reason that was the case was because that loan had been paying down for 10 years. I owned the loan, I started off owing 150,000 or 180,000 and it paid down over the years. That was an example to me of like, “Wow, that’s a pretty good strategic decision to make a 12%, quote, cash on cash return by paying this debt off.”
And to say that’s a bad return on investment is like, for me, from a cashflow standpoint, it jus wasn’t … that wasn’t the case. The other way I thought about it though is that there’s this concept in investing, not just in real estate but in the global investing that you have to look at the risk adjusted return of any investment decision you make. So you can’t compare paying off debt, which is a decision that’s reducing your risk because you’re getting rid of a debt to doing something else. Like buying five properties, for example. Splitting up that $100,000 bucks into a bunch of down payments and buying five more properties. You could do that and you’d probably make more money, and if you’re in the growth phase of your business, that’s probably a smart move to do that.
Where we were at that point, paying off the debt was essentially buying a treasury bond. We’re paying off a 6% interest loan or a 5% interest loan, and we are reducing our risk. We’re increasing our cash flow, and it’s almost like we were taking the place of the bank in that case. And so it was just an interesting exercise to think about it, that if you look at the risk adjusted return of making that decision, paying off debt could actually be a really good decision.

Rob Abasolo:
I love that, especially when you consider that worst comes to worst, you could always pull a home equity line of credit on it possibly, or cash out refi and get that money back if you really needed it for another investment down the line.

Chad Carson:
Exactly.

Rob Abasolo:
Nice. Nice. I love it, man. This is all very refreshing because it, some of these things innately are going to be a little bit more on the conservative side, but not necessarily, but I do like, just having a very mixed approach to this, whereas I do feel like people always lean one way or another, but this is a really good way to share philosophies in a way that I think can build a lot of success.

David Greene:
For years, I have been one of the people that have said, it doesn’t make sense to pay off your mortgage. You’re better off to reinvest the money. That was in an economic background of 3%, 4% mortgages and cash on cash returns that were significantly higher with relatively little work and massive appreciation that was happening from all the quantitative easing. That is now not the same. You’re now looking at seven, eight, nine, if you’re me, 10% interest rates and no cash on cash returns and way less appreciation for the near future because we’re sort of in a gridlock, and I have said I would change my opinion on paying off debt if rates were different. It doesn’t make as much sense to pay off 3% interest as if rates were at 14%, like they’ve been at certain times in history.
So for anyone who’s heard us give that typical advice like, “Why pay off debt just go scale?” That was for a specific economic environment. Chad you’re making a very good point. Paying off 9% debt, 8% debt might be a higher return than you could get buying a duplex somewhere else, and it also won’t increase your workload as much so, just a little … put a pin in that.

Rob Abasolo:
I think that’s important. I do want to say that when we talk about this stuff and we share philosophies, it’s always going to be relative to the-

David Greene:
To that moment.

Rob Abasolo:
To the economy that we’re in. Yeah, because there are people that are like, “Well, five years ago you said that.” Well, yeah, it was a completely different world and guess what? People change, they evolve, they grow. We are much smarter investors now than we were back then, and that doesn’t even necessarily mean that we were wrong back then, but we change our philosophies. So just for everyone at home, there are people that get onto us for that kind of stuff, but it’s like we’re always talking about our particular situations in the particular climate now, and sometimes our philosophies and our opinions change.

Chad Carson:
Not only is it you have to think about the economy you’re in, you also got to think about where you are in your phase as a real estate investor. Are you a starter? Are you a wealth builder? Are you somebody who has enough and you now want to start playing a different game? You got to ask yourself that question first. Otherwise, you can’t really answer the question, should I pay the debt off? Should I reinvest you? You got to know all that context as well.

Rob Abasolo:
Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. Okay. Well awesome. Final myth, “But debt-free rentals will hurt you with inflation.”

Chad Carson:
Yeah, so we got into this one a little bit earlier, but I want to make one point about owning properties. So I now think about my portfolio more from a kind of asset management standpoint. I’m kind of above my business saying, “All right, what’s the best move here? What’s the kind of best monopoly move?” And one of the things I’ve been interested in the last three to four years is my free and clear properties have appreciated just as much as someone’s leveraged properties, someone’s properties with debt. So I looked at some numbers before we got on the episode today, 2022, depending on the market you’re in, the appreciation on houses has been 15 to 20%. Pretty crazy. Those are crazy numbers. Way above the historical average.
The inflation rate, who knows … you could argue about what the actual inflation rate was, six to 8% during that time period, right? Historically, my house is … and I’m in Clemson, South Carolina, so I’m in less of a growth market, a nice stable market, but two to 4% appreciation of my properties, whereas inflation’s been two to 4% historically. So, my point is a free and clear house is not quite as good of an inflation hedge as having a leveraged house because you could have three houses instead of one, and if you have three houses, you have three properties that aren’t appreciating instead of one property, but it’s still a good inflation hedge. Owning free and collect property is not a negative inflation hedge.
Your properties are going to tend to keep up with inflation if you buy the right locations, if you buy in locations that have good demand, low supply. So that’s been the case for me is that if you have 10 properties that produce $120,000 today, there’s a good chance … it’s not guaranteed, but there’s a good chance they’re going to at least keep up with inflation. And then, I would add to that, you don’t want to just depend on that, but that’s going to be a good bet. You could also then build an additional cushion in there by having what I talked about earlier, having your retirement portfolio, having a couple of extra properties more than you need. So there there’s ways to combat inflation other than just having a 100% of your properties leveraged to the hilt.

Rob Abasolo:
Awesome man. All right. Well I mean that right there is a masterclass, not just in the small and mighty philosophy, but really just for all real estate investors at home. We talked about the more doors miss, how creative finance is not necessarily if you’re debt stacking, why you shouldn’t necessarily keep a mortgage for the tax benefits, why paying off debt is not a bad return on investment, and last myth, debt free rentals will not hurt you with inflation. So I appreciate you talking through all of that. David, do you have … I feel like I took all the takeaways, but anything you want to add to that?

David Greene:
That on your inflation point, Chad? I was thinking about some of your points there. If you’re investing in a market that is not seeing a significant amount of appreciation, so I’m working on a framework of how to look at real estate and find all the ways it makes money outside of just natural cash flow, and I call that market appreciation equity. So a market that’s going to appreciate more than the surrounding area. I do agree that you’re not getting hurt by inflation, by not taking advantage of debt because the whole point of debt when you win with it is where you buy a house for $500,000, you put a $100,000 of your own money into it. Then if the house appreciates by 10%, that $50,000 ends up being a 50% return on your down payment instead of a 10% return as if you had paid cash.
If properties aren’t going up significantly, if they’re kind of just steadily plotting along and you’re getting one, two, 3% appreciation, it does make sense. Taking on the leverage doesn’t give you the big benefit. So the risk reward to it doesn’t make as much sense. If you’re investing in an area like California, Southern California, Southern Florida, some of the markets in Tennessee that are exploding and you’re going to get really big gains in value, taken on the debt does make sense, and I love that you’re highlighting this because it forces us to get out of the, “Well, should you or shouldn’t you? Is debt good or is debt bad?” It’s a tool. Sometimes that tool works well in this area.
In other areas, that tool, would never … you would never need it because those homes aren’t built that way to where that tool would ever be applicable, and understanding your market, understanding your goals, taking the tools that we’re giving you and applying them is the wise approach as opposed to saying, “Well, I believe in debt, or I don’t believe in debt. Get out of that polarized way of thinking.” What do you guys think about that?

Rob Abasolo:
That’s great. I love it.

Chad Carson:
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think the kind of meta lesson here, I think and what I’m … I’m just trying to create kind of a contrast with what some people think is the general conventional wisdom that, “Hey, that this is a tool, debt is a tool, use it wisely.” Understand where you are, what market you’re in, but I kind of sound like a broken record here, but also, understand where you are in your career. That was the big huge lesson for me is that the same tool I used the same way as a rookie, as a wealth builder, it was not the same tool I used 15 years later, 20 years later. It’s okay to change how you use your tools when you finish building a house, put the tools away, use a different tool, and you can still accomplish a ton of really, really great financial goals.

Rob Abasolo:
Well, awesome man. Well, where can people find out more about you? I’m going to plug it for you. I know you were probably about to talk about it, but if you liked what you heard today, today’s blew your mind like it did ours. Chad’s book comes out July 20th. You can get it on the BiggerPockets Bookstore, you can pre-order it on Amazon. You can get it in so many different places. Chad, can you tell us a little bit about this book? I know this whole podcast is basically that, but anything else you want to add?

Chad Carson:
Yeah, it’s coming out soon. It’s on the BiggerPockets Bookstore for the first month, and there’s a lot of cool bonuses too. It’s called the Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor. A lot of the stuff I couldn’t put in the book because they reminded me, the publishers did said, “You can’t put all of that in there and have a 500-page book,” so we have some really cool bonuses. I have a bonus chapter. How could you be a small and mighty investor in a changing economy? So some of the stuff we sort of talked about today with inflation and different challenges we’re facing in 2023. I also had a calendar and agenda showing how I actually spend two hours per week, what I do with the rest of my time, and how you can build your own calendar to only work two hours per week eventually with your rental properties, and some other cool bonuses just for people to pre-order.
So a lot of cool stuff if you go buy it on the BiggerPockets Bookstore, and I hope it’s going to be a helpful book for people who want to learn how to be a better small and mighty investor, how to build their portfolio and how to win as a real estate investor in any market.

Rob Abasolo:
Awesome man. Well, actually that book will be out by the time you’re listening to this on your radios, in your AirPods, wherever. So go order that and you can use BP promo code small 795 for 10% off over at biggerpockets.com/smallandmighty. Again, that’s BP promo code small 795 for 10% off over at biggerpockets.com/smallandmighty.

David Greene:
All right. Well Chad, thank you very much for your time here, and thanks for sharing your perspective that we don’t often hear. For people that want to connect with you or find out more about you, where can they go?

Chad Carson:
It’s been a pleasure talking to you guys. Thanks for having me on. I have a platform called Coach Carson, so I also have a podcast, so people who are listening to the podcast and want to listen to another one, they can check me out there. Just search for Coach Carson on YouTube, on the podcast platforms. And I would love to hear from you. Leave me a comment and this episode as well. If you’re watching on YouTube, love to hear how this landed with you. If you have any questions or comments, I’ll definitely be checking out the comment section and would love to have some interaction with you as well.

David Greene:
There you go, and if you want to hear Chad on the BiggerPockets network, check him out on BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast show numbers 84, 141 and 293. He was also on the Money Podcast episode number 19 and was just a guest on the Rookie Podcast, episode 306. So you are all over BP right now, and if you know someone else who’s been turned off from real estate because they’re intimidated by all the investors with crazy high door counts, private jets, Lamborghinis, big talk, 10X stuff, just know that they are often seeking freedom in their life, and it may be the way it’s being presented that they don’t like, share this episode with them. Do it right now. Let’s get more people involved in this space with a reasonable plan that have focus on families, not on incredible luxurious lives.
I mean, that’s the thing I’ve always just been irritated by. Every time a guy wants to post something on his Instagram with all of his money or some fancy car and some eye grind harder than everyone else does, it’s just like a thirst trap for dudes. Every time I see that, it’s like, “Stop with this.”

Chad Carson:
Yeah, there’s a little posturing in there, but hey, there’s different ways to be successful, but there’s some different ways here. So hope people resonate with that.

David Greene:
That’s exactly right. The Siesta Method with Chad Carson, How to Have a Portfolio Pay for Your Midday Naps.

Chad Carson:
There we go.

David Greene:
Now, me on the other hand, don’t judge me. I’ve got my pink Camaro. That’s different. That’s not me posturing. That’s just me showing off that I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world. Right.

Chad Carson:
Love it.

David Greene:
Rob, where can people find out more about you?

Rob Abasolo:
You can find me over on Threads, over @robuilt or on Instagram or on YouTube. Same thing robuilt. I teach you everything that’s in my brain, but on camera and much goofier depending on the time of day. Sometimes I record at 2:00 AM and it’s like, I’m a runaway train on camera. So go check that out. What about you, David?

David Greene:
You can follow me, @DavidGreene24. I’m also on Threads. I’ve started posting stuff on there that’s sort of like the stuff no one will tell you, just the opposite of what everyone is excited about. So my feed is full of people saying, “AI is going to make you seven million dollars with no work,” and I’m just like, “Come on. Let’s talk about the other side of how this could go.” So you can follow me there. Follow me on YouTube @DavidGreene24 or Instagram Every Social Media, @DavidGreene24 and I hope you guys do. All right. This has been awesome, Chad. I appreciate you. Any last words that you want to leave everybody with who are struggling with trying to figure out what their identity should be in the real estate space?

Chad Carson:
It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you both for having me on and just want to encourage everybody, this is … the market is changing. Things feel a little overwhelming at times, but I think keeping it small and mighty is the approach. You could also just say, take one step at a time, one property at a time, and that’s how all of us move forward. So just think big, but also just take it small and you’ll get there. You can do this.

David Greene:
Think big, aim small. Love it.

Rob Abasolo:
Awesome.

David Greene:
This is David Greene for handsome Rob, “The Italian Job” Abasolo, signing off.