Go Small Or Go Home w/ Chad Carson
In this episode, Coach Chad Carson joins us again to talk about an important article he wrote for BiggerPockets on making sure your investment goals are in line with your life goals.
Link to article: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/go-small-or-go-home
Link to Chad's website: https://www.coachcarson.com/
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Transcript
Michael:
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co host, Emil Shour. We have a very special guest with us today. Chad Carson is joining us again, and Chad's going to be talking to us today about his article that he wrote for BiggerPockets. Why the Massive Real Estate Empire you think you want won't give you the life you imagine? So let's get into it.
Chad Carson, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast, man, we so appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to hang out with this.
Chad:
Happy to do it. Thanks for asking me back.
Michael:
No, of course, of course. So you wrote an article that got published on BiggerPockets. And we're gonna link to that in the show notes. But the article is called why the massive real estate Empire you think you want won't give you the life you imagine? So we're gonna have you read an excerpt from this article. But I would love to know to kick things off. What made you write this article was kind of your inspiration.
Chad:
Yeah, I wrote a lot on bigger pockets I haven't written as much lately, but also wrote a book for bigger pockets. And so I just I love the ecosystem of BiggerPockets. I love the team behind the scenes. It's just a great service to real estate investors and was immersed in a lot of that, though, I think I heard a common refrain. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. But a lot of the podcasts, a lot of the articles you read the ones that really stood out, were the ones talking about get as big as you can, you need to syndicate, you need to get it 1000s of units.
And that was exciting. I guess it makes you know, my podcast hosts your podcast, it makes exciting, you know, headlines when you have this person who bought 50 properties in one year. And that's amazing. But as I thought about it, like the people I knew, both in like the non famous people, nobody even knows who they are, but they have tons of lifestyle, and they have flexibility. And they do what matters to them. A lot of these people had like five properties or three properties, and they had paid them off. And they were really simple. And it was nothing to write home about supposedly.
But if you measure things a little bit differently, it actually was pretty incredible. And so I wrote the article to try to tell that story and to explain kind of my point of view on that. And the headline was, you know, go small or go home, because the Grant Cardones of the world are saying you need to 10x otherwise you're no good, you know. He in particular, you know, maybe I get Grant Cardone on my show one day and have a discussion.
Michael:
Have a chat with him.
Chad:
Yeah. But I wanted to be kind of the the foil to that not because that's wrong, not because people shouldn't get big and go big. Like, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is all of us who think keeping things simple, and going small, is just perfectly fine and actually preferred. I wanted to give a voice to that for those people and make an argument, why that's actually a better thing, in many ways.
Michael:
Michael:
Awesome. Love it.
Emil:
I love that I stumbled on this and like the perfect time because I was starting to have that internal conflict where I'm like, man, am I just not thinking big enough? Like, I think this is what I want. But you see it everywhere, like you mentioned, like everyone's saying, Oh, I just took down 100 units here. And he starts to be like, is that what I need to do to be successful? And I love that this reframes that. So yeah.
Chad:
Yeah.
Michael:
All right. So let's jump into a chat if you want to kick us off here and tell us this a story of three real estate investors.
Chad:
All right, great. Yeah, I'm gonna get my place here. So a story of three real estate investors. And I got to give a little background to this before I start reading it, because I actually got this story from other people, as many stories come from actually a real estate investor named Jack Miller, who was a teacher for many years, he's now passed away, but he was a really good teacher. And I used to go to seminars with him early on in my career, and pretty sure I got the story from him. He probably got it from somebody else as well, but I adapted it for my own purposes.
The story goes that there were one summer there were three real estate investors, and they were their couples. And they traveled together to Europe and these investors that originally met each other as beginner investors in the BiggerPockets forum, and they liked each other a lot. And they helped each other kind of grow along the way. And so they became friends. And then about 15 years later, they each had experience some success with the real estate business, and they wanted to kind of go and enjoy the fruits of all of their efforts, because why not? Right, so they decided to go spend 14 days together visiting the Mediterranean coast.
First they were going to go explore some ancient cities in Italy, like enjoying some amazing foods and good wine perhaps. And then they were going to continue with a high quality kind of a Mediterranean cruise that would stop at Croatia and Greece. And they even go to one of my friends. Another bigger pockets author, his home country Arian Shehi lives in. It was from Albania has family still in Albania. He's from there originally. So another cool place.
So could these investors afford a nice trip like this? So you can imagine going to Italy and go on the Mediterranean coast? Well, let's take a look at the financial scoreboard to see how they could afford it using their real estate.
So couple number one was Liz and Tom and they are in their 50s and they live invest in self manage their properties in Missouri in the state of Missouri, and over the last 15 years they've bought 10 single family houses one by one and good neighborhoods. Liz and Tom search hard to buy these houses as fixer uppers. So they needed some work, they were able to buy them below value because of that. And they use the BRRRR strategy to recoup most of their cash on each deal. So they would kind of recycle their cash, buy another deal, fix it up, get it rented, do another deal. And then they would use what's called the Debt Snowball technique to pay off their mortgages early. That's something I talk a lot about as well. So they started with a BRRRR, they got loans, they paid off their debt. And so now their houses produce $7,000 per month, or $84,000 per year in positive cash flow. So that's number one.
Number two, Tiffany and Darius are in their early 40s. They live in New York, and they invest in North Carolina using a property manager. And 15 years after they started, they now own 150 unit apartment building, Tiffany and Darius began with smaller properties. And then they used a 1031 exchange. So a tax free exchange to kind of trade up from the smaller properties into these bigger properties until they had enough equity for a down payment on that the big 50 unit building. So they have 50 unit building has a solid fixed interest, 25 year mortgage. And the property itself after paying all their expenses produces $10,000 per month or $120,000 per year in positive cash flow. So that's couple number two.
Couple number three is Mike and Martin. And they're in their late 40s. They live in Nevada, and they own properties all over the country. 15 years after they started, they now have 500 units, Mike and Lauren began with their their rentals, but they because of their ability to put together great deals. They also began syndicating deals by pooling money from other people. S…