Mastering Virtual Real Estate Investment While Keeping a Full-Time Job with Brandon Baker

Brandon Baker: [0:00] In Little Rock, I am at 21 doors today. Six of those are duplexes. There are the other 15 are all single family homes. And as of right now in Little Rock, I have one that is getting completed today. And then I have one, two, three, three more doors under construction.

Speaker 2: [0:21] Welcome to the collecting keys podcast. The show where you'll learn how to use real estate to create massive income, not just passive income. Real estate doesn't have to be a get rich slow game. Listen to the country's top real estate operators, and you'll have all the tools you need to replace your w two income and go beyond in under twelve months. Ready to take things to the next level? Let's jump in with our hosts, Mike De DeHaan and Dan Austin for today's episode of the Collecting Keys Podcast.

Dan Austin: [1:01] Hey there. On today's episode, we have my guy, Brandon Baker. Brandon has I met him about a year ago. He's had huge impact on my life. He's just such a great guy, and I had to get him on the podcast because he is working a w two job that he in fact likes, and doesn't have any intention to try to leave. That's not why he got into real estate, but he has gotten into real estate, he's built an amazing portfolio, investing virtually down in Arkansas from Dallas. He's also taking massive action, and talks about how he sets his goals, and it's so amazing. Get to the end of the episode, when this thing airs, it's gonna be the perfect time for you to really analyze what does your vision need to look like, what are the steps you need to take to reach your goals for 2024, and Brandon has some step by step stuff to actually do that, which I'm taking part. He's helping me set my goals for 2024. I'm super pumped for it, and so you'll hear more from me, But definitely reach out to Brandon. He gave his Instagram handle at the end of the episode, so if you want to talk to him about that, or just reach out to him and learn how he's been able to self manage a virtual portfolio, why he's acquiring properties, why he's managing construction costs, construction, and the construction process for his properties, while he's working his day job and traveling around the world, he's your guy. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, I know I did, so I think you will too. Brandon, awesome man, glad to have you here. I think we met probably at least a year ago through GoBundance, we're a GoPod together, you've been super impactful in my life, I had to get you on the podcast, because you're doing some awesome shit out there, like I really have been impressed just seeing what you've done in your life, from day I met you till now, it's just awesome. So for those of our audience members that don't know who you are, can you just give us a little bit of a brief background and who is Brandon Baker?

Brandon Baker: [2:43] Absolutely, thank you for having me Dan, and hopefully my story lives up to the intro that you just provided. So Brandon Baker based out of Dallas, Texas. I have been in a sales role with a W-two for about thirteen, thirteen and a half years. I have known I've wanted to be involved in real estate for about the same amount of time, maybe slightly longer. Just like everybody, I read the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and it changed the way I viewed At that time, it wasn't necessarily all about real estate, but it was about how do I change the way I earn money to take advantage of certain laws we have in the country, right? And not take advantage of, but leverage them. They're there for a reason. Yep. So I knew that I wanted to get into real estate investing, but several key events happened in my life, which was relocating and changing jobs and in and out of a relationship. All of these things kind of kind of put me on the sidelines for a while, or maybe I leveraged those or used those as an excuse so that delayed quite a while. But then in early twenty twenty, I jumped right in with full of real estate and have not looked back and couldn't be more happy. So I focus on single family homes and the BRRRR method, believe it or not, it is still around providing that you dig deep and find the right opportunities. But yeah, that's my sweet spot, and I've now built out teams across two different geographies or two different locations, and still acquiring properties.

Dan Austin: [4:11] Okay, so this is impressive. So you started really, your first real estate acquisition was 2020?

Brandon Baker: [4:15] Yep, it was, I actually bought three properties of the same day. Wow. As my first transaction, and they were turnkey, and yeah, they were 05/30/2020.

Dan Austin: [4:28] Wow, so I have a bunch of questions we're gonna get into, I just A quick answer to this one. So between 2020 and 2023, would you say that's when you accumulated most of your net worth, was buying those with that real estate property, or were you just like independently wealthy, and you're just buying shit because you're rich?

Brandon Baker: [4:44] No, it's what, yeah, I built up most of my net worth.

Dan Austin: [4:47] Through real estate, not that you're not, because I know you're a high earning w two guy, but I mean, I'm just speaking of the power of real estate, and how fascinating within a three year period what you were able to do. So you said two markets. You're spread across, you have teams in two markets, what are the markets?

Brandon Baker: [5:00] Yeah, so Little Rock, Arkansas, and Jackson, Mississippi. Okay.

Dan Austin: [5:04] So I didn't realize you were Jackson, Mississippi. Maybe I did. Was that your first location or was Little Rock your first location?

Brandon Baker: [5:11] No, Little Rock was my first, and I just started building out teams in Jackson probably nine months ago.

Dan Austin: [5:19] Okay, that's making sense. I was kinda getting confused there, because I knew you were there, but wasn't insured. So you purchased properties there now though?

Brandon Baker: [5:25] Yes. I just closed on my third one about in Jackson two weeks ago, and it's already under construction.

Dan Austin: [5:31] Super impressive. So okay. Let's go back why you chose so you're in the Dallas Metro. Like that's like a booming hot market. Tons of opportunity. I know a lot of guys there that have made some major wealth. You're not investing there, which is right where you live. Yep. Why did you decide to go to Little Rock?

Brandon Baker: [5:47] Yeah. So there's there's several things. When I first started looking at the markets, I'm a little bit of a hands on person, meaning that I'm not gonna swing a hammer, but I wanna be able to drive by and see my houses, like, for whatever reason. That might change one day, but for whatever reason, I was like, I gotta be able to drive there within, let's just say, five hours. So I started analyzing the markets and I looked at Texas and I looked at Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. And when you started looking at the price point and you know, how low of a price point could you go and cash flow well, it just kind of ruled out Texas or at least DFW. There were some outskirts, yes, and small towns you could still focus on. But I just ultimately, I made the decision to focus on Oklahoma City and Little Rock. And I just started calling and working on building out my team, and all of a sudden it just things just started clicking and taking off in Little Rock. I was like, alright, I gotta stop looking everywhere else and just focus and double down on this area.

Dan Austin: [6:45] Okay. Fascinating. So I'm with you, there's something cool about driving by a property. I don't know if it's eco, if it's pride, or if it's just liking to see stuff, it's like

Brandon Baker: [6:55] All the above.

Dan Austin: [6:56] Yeah, all the above. You're like, I own that, you know? Like, I could drive around to our hometown with my daughter who's six years old and I'll be, hey, we own that house, and she looks around like she's like, what? Like, what are you talking about, you know, and it's like, oh, we own that one, we own that one, you can just drive around in all the corners and you find stuff. So there is some something satisfying with that. Okay. So I wanna dive in and like really get granular on Little Rock and that market, and how you kinda got started there, how you built your team, like let's go back to the very first property you bought, like how did you make that work? Because of course, you don't live there, you've never lived there, and like it's a market that you just shared, like how you kind of like the criteria you used to pick it. So a lot of people are fearful about going remote because A, they're worried about being able to find deals, and B, when they do find deals, are they good deals, or do they just look good to you from the outside? You've cracked the code on that, so I'd love to hear, starting from like property number one, how

Brandon Baker: [7:46] you did it. Yeah, so there is a lot in your question. There's a lot of things to look at because you asked how did I build out my team and how did I focus on the market? So I'm just gonna give you several answers that are gonna apply to all of the above. First of all, one of my favorite books was I believe it's called The Millionaire Real Estate Investor. And inside that book, there's a chapter talking about building out your team and all of the people that you need to be successful. So I didn't wait until I found a house to start calling all the people that I needed in my team. Like I knew I needed a lawyer. I knew I needed, you know, a banker or a lender. I knew I needed real estate agents. And I started calling all of these folks, and I got turned on to a particular lender who was not He lends across multiple states in The US, and I was chatting with him and talking about what my plans are. Keep in mind, I had zero properties. And he said, Listen, I have an idea for you. He goes, I know a couple of turnkey providers that I could send you their way, and they basically buy properties, they fix them up, and then they fix them up with the intent to rent them out. He turned me on to a couple of these turnkey providers.

Brandon Baker: [8:55] One of them was in Texas. One of them was in another one was in Arkansas, and I think there was a third somewhere else. And I called all of them and asked them just I had a list of questions, you know, and I asked them questions around the market, like the average price point, occupancy rates. I asked about what are the demographics, like where are the people making their money? Is it one industry or is it a variety of industries, which in my opinion is extremely important. That way, if one particular industry hit takes a hit, you're not taking a hit because the market is supported by various different types of income streams. In all of that, I narrowed it down to one turnkey provider at time that I liked, and that was in Little Rock. And so when I started taking a look at the opportunities, I was like, wow, I can make, you know, 15 to 18% cash on cash return, and I'm not doing anything other than buying this property. And so I'm looking at all their properties and I'm an engineer at heart and an engineer by trade. And I understand the whole phrase paralysis by analysis. I knew at some point I was starting to hit that. I was like, I'm just gonna pull the trigger and jump in, so I just said, I want this one, I want that one, and I want this other one down here, and I just bought three of them.

Dan Austin: [10:07] What were the price points on these at the time?

Brandon Baker: [10:09] I think the cheapest one was 75,000 and the highest one was like 99,000.

Dan Austin: [10:14] Wow, so you kinda just bought those traditionally, right? You went to a lender, got, you know, what do they request, like 20% down, you had some monies in the bank, you bought three properties. What did they, what was the cash flow, did they turn out to be what the turnkey provider said they were? Was it everything you hoped for better? Like what was the result?

Brandon Baker: [10:32] Okay, in terms of cash flow, yeah, they were all cash flowing $203,100 bucks a month depending on which one. And in terms of did they all turn out to be everything I hoped to be? I would say no. There's out of the first four, by the way, I added one more thirty days later from that same group, and then I never bought any more.

Dan Austin: [10:53] You just love these guys. Like, I gotta buy another one.

Brandon Baker: [10:55] I was like, I hadn't even closed on these and I was like, hey, I put this other one under contract. I thought I'd hit the gold mine. The reality is is turnkey providers have a model, a very specific model, and their goal is to sell as many properties or as basically flip as many properties as possible to investors. Let's just say one of the properties, I have all of them still today. There's one of them that I should probably get rid of. It's a little tougher to rent out. And it's in an area that if I had it all over to do again, I wouldn't go buy in that particular area. But with that being said, when I bought the property, was renting for like I think $7.95 or something a month. Now it's renting for $10.50. By the way, that fixed debt hasn't changed. So, I mean it's cash flow and probably $600 a month on a $18,000 investment. So it's still, it's a solid investment. I just, I wouldn't go back to it, but they're, you know, they're building or rehabbing properties for investors, which they So know they're gonna rent sometimes they cut a little corners here and there. You just have to be aware of that stuff. I don't go with that model anymore because I do all the rehabs myself, but they're still, they turned out to be solid properties.

Dan Austin: [12:05] So the the turnkey rental model, you're right, it's an interesting model because they're just house flippers, and their business is very transactional. They have to sell properties to make money, And when they, if they buy wrong, they're still gonna try to sell it to somebody, which means they either do the right thing and lose money on it, or they try to pass the cost on to you. And there's a lot of turnkey providers out there. I don't know any, I'm not gonna say any names that are good or bad, like when I know that I've heard the horror stories of some of these turnkey providers. It sounds like you didn't have that bad of a situation, but you found just a better way to buy properties, because when you're buying with a turnkey, you're paying for them to do all the work. So if you do the work yourself, as you said, there's a lot more margins for you and the ROI's a lot higher.

Brandon Baker: [12:48] Absolutely. When I originally started investing, I wanted to do nothing but park cash somewhere and let it grow. Yeah. It took me about thirty days to say, you know what? They're making on average 25%. Like because I went back and did the research. I was like, alright. When did these houses sell? When I'm looking at the pictures, I'm like, oh, they were pretty

Dan Austin: [13:09] rough. Yeah.

Brandon Baker: [13:09] And I could see when they bought them, and then I could see what they're selling them to me for, and I'm like, wow, they're making, you know, 25% on top of every one of these deals. I'm like, why don't I do this myself because I could scale that much faster.

Dan Austin: [13:22] Totally. Yep. Which makes a lot of sense. You can control the lead funnel, with them, you're only, whatever they sell is what you can buy, right? So let's talk about that. So you got four with them, what did property number five look like then? What was that fifth one that you started doing it on your own, you went away from the turnkey provider?

Brandon Baker: [13:38] Yeah, so that was only two months later. I put another one under contract, and this one was, believe it or not, on the market. And I remember correctly, I think I picked it up for 80, right at about $80,000 I put, I think right at 20 in it. So I've got, you know, dollars 100,000 in it. Today that property rents for $15.50 a month. And yeah, solid property in a great little neighborhood. I say great, I mean it's class B neighborhood, so solid little Yeah,

Dan Austin: [14:11] so that's interesting. So you found that on the MLS, what gave you confidence? Because you just, you literally just skipped over a major part, which is I put $20 into it, the renovation of this thing, that's no easy feat. Like, people like, even in my hometown here where I do all my investing, I have a hard time finding contractors. How on earth did you get one that actually did the work for $20, and I'm assuming he didn't rip you off?

Brandon Baker: [14:34] Correct. I wanna answer this in two ways. The first one is is when I talk about my story, people often say, well, how did you go from immediately, you know, buying properties? Like, I mean, sixty days later, you're going to do rehab. And I tell them, well, first of all, I used the turnkey model. It did serve a purpose, and it taught me the number. Like forget about the rehabs for just a second. I got to the point where I could analyze a house in three minutes and be like, I know whether this thing's gonna cash flow and how much it's gonna cash flow. So it taught me all the numbers. It taught me the lending, and I started building relationships, etcetera. Now when I started doing the rehab, I took advantage of those first four properties because keep in mind, they had to give me a list. They didn't have to, but they do. They give you a list of everything that they upgrade. I was running the numbers, and I was like, okay. And I would call all these different trades people and say, hey, how much is a roof for a 1,200 square foot house? You know, a basic roof. And I would start to do my analysis and understand what I thought they were spending on the rehab down to the line item. Yeah. So when I went into this rehab and I looked at it, I'm like, I think I could rehab it for, and I was off a little bit. I was like, I think I can rehab this for $17.

Brandon Baker: [15:46] Well, costs $20. Not

Dan Austin: [15:47] bad. So I

Brandon Baker: [15:48] was slightly off. Now, in terms of one of your other questions is how did you find somebody that was willing to do the work? That same book, I believe it was the same book. There's a mention in there that every time you call somebody in the industry, talk to them, introduce yourself, you know, you're building a relationship and then ask them, who else should I know? I do it every time. Like even to this day, I'll call a new real estate broker and I'll chat with them and say, hey, you know, and I'll give them my pitch and I'm an investor and I'm looking to buy this amount of properties and here's my model. By the way, do you know any trades people or local lenders? And it is the way that I've built out teams in both markets. Even to this day, I still have that same conversation.

Dan Austin: [16:32] I mean, that is such an underrated point. So I get this question a lot, especially when it comes to like how you how do you analyze the rehabs, or how do you know what it costs, or just anything in general in real estate. And the first thing I always say is like, well, get rid of the the unknowns. Like, are certain things you're just not gonna know. Right? You're not gonna know when you buy a house, if you tear down the wall that there's fricking skeletons in the closet, you know, whatever. There's certain things you just can't know, but there's a ton of shit you can figure out that you can know. When it comes to rehabs, you could go into a house and say, I wanna put LVP in here. It doesn't even have to a house you're gonna buy, go look at the house or wherever you're living, calculate how many square feet you have, go to the flooring store and ask them, what would it cost to put this flooring in my house? And then when they tell you the cost of the flooring, ask them, do you know any flooring installers? And when they say yes, here's five business cards, call those people, get quotes per foot, or whatever they bid it in for that type of job, get that from them, average it out, and now you know exactly labor and materials, what it's gonna cost to install flooring in any place that you go to. Again, there's still gonna be unknowns. But then, back to your point about the team, like, just talking to people, like you have a, it's a sales process almost, I kinda wanna dig into this a little bit, because you're calling people, and then the key question is, do you know, else should I know, is so valuable, because they're not gonna refer you somebody crappy, because they want to refer you their best people, because that's their name. When you're referring somebody, that's partly your brand, right? So, they don't wanna just give you Joe Schmo, so you should be getting great contacts from them.

Dan Austin: [18:03] But, I digress. My point being is like, this sales process of finding these people, building your team, is there anything on the front end? You mentioned earlier like, hey, I knew I needed a lawyer, I knew I needed a real estate agent, I knew I need these people. Did you just literally just target several people, and then you found people that fit in each category within your system? Or how did you create that process? Because sometimes, let's be honest, people are gonna blow you off. They're gonna be like, yeah, this dude doesn't know anything. I'm not, he's never even done a deal in this town. Why would I bother with him? Like how do you break through that?

Brandon Baker: [18:33] Yeah. That is a great question. And yes, to your first part of the question is absolutely. I just, first of all, I think it's important that you understand how you work, how you like to work with people. And if you understand, do a little bit of that introspective work. It's easier to find people that you think you're going to work well with.

Dan Austin: [18:52] Yep.

Brandon Baker: [18:52] And if you know like am I a person that wants updates on Fridays from my major rehabs and that's it? Then you need to make sure that you are finding a contractor that's good with that. Because if you want updates every day and a contractor's like, I don't have time for that, you guys need to establish that up front. So I think it's really important. And yes, I just, I would call multiple people and I would sometimes I would give multiple people a shot for different, you know, in the same role. I've used multiple contractors actually to be very honest because I'm probably overselling how easy this is. I've been through multiple at every one of the trades. Sure. But that's you just have to do that, but you could you're gonna eventually find the right people that wanna build a team. And I would say for everybody that's listening, don't underestimate the value and the impact you're gonna have on the people that you're working with. Because if you go in and you start doing ten, twelve, however many flips a year, you are a steady stream of income for these people. They do not wanna lose your business. You're way different than somebody that just needs a repair at a house. You have something to offer that other people don't, and don't undervalue your impact to their business. So valuable, yeah.

Brandon Baker: [20:01] One thing

Dan Austin: [20:01] I do also know about contractors is they like to work with investors, because homeowners are a pain in the ass. Like every contractor will tell you that. And so they're willing to, they're willing to go and do the work for you, especially if you're gonna bring them additional work down the road, because it's so much easier for them. And if they don't have to fight and argue with you about the grout on the tile backsplash, and like they just know that when you give them the freedom in the system, it's not gonna come back to them and be like, I think it's kinda ugly, let's re change it. Even if they're getting paid to replace stuff, contractors don't like to go back and redo their work. Yep. Point being, is homeowners can be a lot tougher than investors, so they already wanna work with you, and it's just a matter of establishing that relationship, and then establishing the accountability and the goals for the whole project beforehand, so that you don't get screwed, which inevitably you do, and I'm assuming you probably at least have one story of a contractor not holding up their end of the bargain.

Brandon Baker: [20:53] Yeah, most definitely. I would say that I I don't know if I would say that I got too anxious, but I mean, as you get into this and and or as I got into it and I started finding myself where I had multiple rehabs going on at one time and then one particular rehab at this at this one given time, I had one steady contractor and I was already looking for new contractors because I was ready to scale up, and my primary contractor was still stuck on this other job that was taking a little bit longer than I wanted. Well, I landed not one, but two additional properties within a couple of weeks of each other, and both of them were going to be turned into duplexes. So it's a lot of work. And I found a new contractor, decided to give him an opportunity. And normally, now this is me. Normally, I never pay anybody a draw. Like, I don't care. I don't pay anything up front. If you need to bill me in one week for just cleaning up the yard, then that's what we'll do. In this particular instance, the individual had started working on the house and I was up front with him. They're like, okay. And they started doing some structural work, and I was like, all right, I need to see pictures so that I can pay it out. Well, he sent me some pictures on that and he sent me some pictures on something else, And then all of a sudden he went radio silent. Now the reality is is I think it cost me probably around $7,500 That was my learning experience, but he never really showed back up.

Brandon Baker: [22:20] And then when I went there and come to find out, yeah, the work had to all be redone anyways. The electrical wasn't even in code. In fact, the mayor of the city's calling me going, hey, you don't have you do not have, permits on this. And I'm like, wait. He said he took care of it. So, yeah, it was a little bit of a disaster, but you know what? You learn. You live and learn.

Dan Austin: [22:40] Yeah. That's part of it. Right? That's your education, and it helps you build your system out to be a lot more foolproof. You gotta have that. I've definitely been ripped off by contractors. I've failed to manage contractors properly as well, know, I've had everything under the sun happen to me pretty much, and so it's just part of the game, and you just have to understand that, and you learn a little bit every time that that happens. Okay. So, talking about properties, so where are you at in the Little Rock market? Like how many how many properties have you bought now? So we talked about getting to your fifth property and now you've bought several since then, what does your portfolio in Little Rock look like?

Brandon Baker: [23:11] In Little Rock, I am at 21 doors today. Six of those are duplexes. There are the other 15 are all single family homes. And as of right now in Little Rock, I have one that is getting completed today, and then I have one, two, three, three more doors under construction. Okay. So that's a lot

Dan Austin: [23:34] in the pipeline. Yep. Let me ask you this. How do you manage it? Because you self manage all these, right? Like let's talk about that system really quick.

Brandon Baker: [23:41] Yeah. So in a way, and when I say in a way, we do self manage, but I have a virtual assistant. So I'm a systems and processes guy, and I love documentation and documenting systems and processes because the more that you can rely on that, it takes a lot of ease off of trying to recall certain things in your brain. So we use a couple of different pieces or I guess we really, yeah, we use a couple pieces of software. We use property management software and then we use like a task managementproject management software and that is Asana. And so everything that my assistant does is set up in Asana. So for instance, say we get a notification in Asana that we need to reach out to a particular tenant because in ninety days, and this is how far out we do it, ninety days their lease is up. And it says, literally it pops up and tells her contact the tenant. And she reads it. Okay. She contacts the tenant, say the tenant decides they want to move out. Boom. It kicks off a series of steps that she then needs to go execute to, you know, turn utilities on and get the property listed and and start doing showings, all of that stuff. So we use that software to do all of the tasks that she's responsible for. That's awesome.

Dan Austin: [24:51] And so when it comes to the property showings, do you have like a keys? Like, how do you get these keys to people? Like, I mean, you're not there. Like, is there, like, a lockbox, a digital lockbox? What are you doing? I know it's a stupid question, but now I'm, like, curious.

Brandon Baker: [25:01] No. This is an awesome question, and here's the reason why. Because it goes back to talking to people. My electrician, his the owner, his son is also on the in the company and is an electrician, and they just say he just happened to have a sister that is a part time bartender who needed some additional work, and she was she was like, hey, can I clean your properties for you? And I'm like, well, I got something even better if you wanna be my showing agent. And so I literally pay her. She's my local person in Little Rock, and she does errands for me. So for instance, I have signs. Anytime a house goes vacant or we have one under construction, she takes one of my signs out, sticks it in the yard, she puts the lockbox on the door with the code so we let in people to work on them. And then when we're ready to show properties, she's my showing agent as well.

Dan Austin: [25:49] Dude, I love that. First of all, it's creative, and it's logical, because you're like, I need somebody at some point you gotta have boots on the ground, because that is the one cool thing about having a virtual assistant, is they can be anywhere, and you can like work with them, but the problem is, is they can be anywhere, but if they're not where you actually physically need them, you have to have somebody else to pick up the slack. Like, I just posted on Instagram this week, like, this whole idea of like, Uber is going to have like a TaskRabbit type service, which I love because like, there's so many little things, even if you're in your hometown that you just don't wanna do, like, because it'll say, know, if you could pay somebody $25 to go and run and do a showing, so much easier if you're trying to self manage your properties, as opposed to like, running around yourself, or then peep most people will be like, well, I just have to have a property manager because I'm virtual. You're saying you don't have to have property manager, because you're getting creative, you're finding solutions to all these little problems. And I know you're a systems guy, and I know you've vetted out these problems. A lot of people say that, but they don't talk about the shit show that they have behind the scenes. Which I'm sure it's not easy for you to day to day to manage, but you're doing it while also working a full time w two job that you in fact love. I wanna talk about that in a minute, but I don't want to forget a couple points, a couple more questions I wanna ask you. So, door count, you have quite a few doors there.

Dan Austin: [27:00] You talk about cash flowing. Like, what is the average? Let's just look across your whole portfolio. Like, what

Brandon Baker: [27:05] are you averaging in cash flow per door? Per door, probably let's see. Okay. I wanna explain the numbers real quick because although I said I have 25 properties, keep in mind that we've got one, two, three, four, five, about six of those, maybe even seven that don't have tenants in it, because they're either just got completed, I just closed on them, they're under construction.

Dan Austin: [27:34] Yeah, guess how about I should ask this, what is your target per door that you're averaging that you will, when you buy these properties, you're like, this is where I'm gonna be at for me to buy this.

Brandon Baker: [27:42] So I won't do anything for less than $300 a door net. Now that's after I've already taken out for expenses and all of that. My portfolio is probably averaging more like $600 a door, maybe maybe $500 a door.

Dan Austin: [27:58] That's pretty amazing. And do you find more efficiency and value in the duplexes you own or the single family or is or is that not the case where you're where you're at?

Brandon Baker: [28:07] Well, none of the duplexes are completely rehabbed yet.

Dan Austin: [28:09] Okay, so you

Brandon Baker: [28:10] don't know. But I'm going to say I don't think so. And in fact, one of the properties that is under construction right now, it is going to be my most expensive property and I'll still have zero dollars in it and it will cash flow way better than all the other ones. So I'm kind of rethinking my model. I've always been focused on the price point of between ARV of 120 to let's say 160, but this one's gonna be more like $2.20, $2.30, and it's gonna cash flow quite a bit. I mean Yep. And you're buying these now. Are you going are you just buying it from wholesalers now? Is that

Dan Austin: [28:45] where you're finding these deals? Like how because I know you're not marketing for yourself. You're actually still relying on other team members down there. What does that look like?

Brandon Baker: [28:52] It's a combination of on market and off market.

Dan Austin: [28:55] Okay.

Brandon Baker: [28:55] Most recent property was on market. Okay,

Dan Austin: [28:58] and you're just seeing the value, because you're buying value out, and you're just seeing the value, and today, with interest rates, which I'm assuming, where are you coming in, interest rate seven ish percent, seven and a half percent?

Brandon Baker: [29:08] Yeah, seven and a half percent.

Dan Austin: [29:09] You're still burning it, you're still getting your cash out, and you're still hitting your targets for cash flow. That's incredible. So, there's something to be said about that, somebody said about your system for finding these, I mean, that's an incredible feat to still continuously buy because I've been watching this last year, there really hasn't been a month where you haven't been buying or under construction or stabilizing something, right? Yeah. A lot of people had to slow down.

Brandon Baker: [29:30] I think it's a numbers game. I met with, you know, another go bro probably a year ago when I was explaining at the time I had a little, I think it was about a year ago, had some challenges. I was trying to figure out how am I gonna grow as fast as I wanna grow for the year that we're in now. And he asked me, so well, many people do you have looking for your deals? And I said a couple and he said, well, you usually have 30 and I was like, got 30 people and I was like, that's gonna be my goal then because if it's working for him, then that's what I need to do. So I picked up phone

Dan Austin: [29:59] That's crazy.

Brandon Baker: [29:59] And I started calling real estate agents saying, and gave them my pitch. Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [30:03] I mean, it's logical, again, and you're just basically taking out all the unknowns, and you're basically stacking up everything you can that you know works. I know you're huge on that with goal setting, so it's like, if you know you need to look at 10 properties by one, or 20 properties by one, you've gotta get 20 properties in front of you. If you're not looking at 20 properties, you're never gonna get to the goal you wanna get. It's just that it's a simple numbers game.

Brandon Baker: [30:25] Yep. So That's exactly right. Simple numbers game, work your math backwards.

Dan Austin: [30:29] Exactly. Okay. Let's talk about how you're doing this. So you you work at w two, a lot of people get into real estate because like, oh, I hate my job. I wanna leave my job. I hate the man. But you're good at your job, and you like it. So how do you do both? Because I know you're a busy guy, you travel a lot as well for work, but you've figured out the systems for this.

Brandon Baker: [30:48] Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there as well. First of all, I think it's extremely important that you change your mindset in terms of the amount of hours you're supposed to work. Meaning that most likely anybody that's listening to this call is probably supposed to provide a product or an output at their job. If they could do it in four hours versus eight, then that's totally acceptable. That's the same thing in my role. My boss doesn't care or the teams that I support, they don't care how many hours I work. It's all about am I delivering on the deliverables? Right. And so I think that the first thing is you have to change your mindset that's been instilled with us from first basically that eight hours or nine hours a day is how long you're going to do something. First it was go to school and then it becomes, you know, your college and then it becomes your your W2 after that. And then, you know, there's a variety of books that I really rely on, but then I also think it comes back to, I love the book called The One Thing, but at the end of the day, there's several books to kind of focus on. You have to learn how to prioritize. Like if I want to do, say I've got four things that are important to me. It's my W-two, it's my real estate, it's my health, and it's my relationships. Well, what are the one thing you're gonna do in each four of those categories on a daily basis to move each one of those forward?

Brandon Baker: [32:07] And until you do those four, you shouldn't be doing anything else. And so that's the way I approach my day every day. I mean, I I use a planner. I write in it in the morning. I write in it at night to set up my next day. And in the next morning, I'm looking at that going, oh, I've already identified. Here are the things I have to do to move these things forward. And that's kind of the way I structure my days, which lead into weeks, months, and

Dan Austin: [32:29] quarters. The quote you said is like, what is the one thing I need to do today to move closer to my goal? And it's so valuable, because there's I've been caught doing this myself, where you set a goal, but you don't set like the plan to get to that goal. You think you do, but it's not in a way that you can really understand what you're actually trying to do each day to accomplish that goal. Because, hey, I wanna become a millionaire, or I wanna buy 20 properties. Okay, what are you gonna do every single day to buy 20 properties? And you really have to break it down to such a granular level, and I'm excited, you're kinda taking me, and a couple other guys through this, going into January 2024, for our annual goal setting. You're taking us through this process of how you've used to set your goals, and I would love for you just to explain at a high level for the audience, of like, the real tactical approach you have taken to build out your basically system for goals? Because I've seen you actually accomplish goals at a faster and a higher rate than most people, and I think it's super valuable, and I'm excited to do it myself.

Brandon Baker: [33:27] Yeah, so I'll have to mention a couple of books here, But as I mentioned it, I'll kind of describe what each one of them is. The first thing that I think is really important is you have to understand where you want to be in a given time period. Now I'm going to use three years because the book Vivid Vision is focused on three years out. You read the book Vivid Vision and just to net it out for anybody on this that's listening to this that hasn't actually read the book. It's all about identifying what something looks like three years down the path. So let's back up and take me for just a second. If my W2 is important and real estate's important and my health is important and relationships are important, what does my life look like in three years around each one of those pillars? And so you just need to spend some time and the book is really clear and it says, hey, you should break away. Get out of your office. Go sit at a park or at a coffee shop. It doesn't matter, but get away from your normal life and just focus on this and do it for several days because you need to get very clear about where you wanna go or you're not gonna ever get there. Right? Or you're never going to know if you've got there because you don't know that's where you were trying to get to. So understand where you want to be. The next thing is, is let's just take real estate for just a second.

Brandon Baker: [34:39] Say somebody says, okay, in three years I want to own 30 single family properties. Well, now we need to break that down because that's too big of a goal to start executing on. So we've got to break it down into smaller steps. So you take your 30 properties say, well, that's easy. That's 10 properties per year. Okay. Now I've got something a little more clear. Now what I'm talking about here is it comes out of the book called Traction and Rocket Fuel, very similar. So you're taking your three year goal, breaking it down into yearly goals, and then you take that yearly goal, which we just said was I need to buy 10 properties down into quarterly goals. Okay, well that's gonna be somewhere around what? Two and a half properties per month. But what is the activities that going to allow me or drive me towards acquiring two and a half properties? We know that you gotta analyze properties. We know that you've got to make offers. So now what you're doing is you're taking that ninety day goal and breaking it down into a weekly goal. Well, how many properties do you need to analyze on a weekly basis to be able to make an offer?

Dan Austin: [35:48] Yeah.

Brandon Baker: [35:49] So all you're doing is working your way backwards with the mask. So, you know, for me, I just use, and I think this came from Brandon Turner. I don't know that it even holds true anymore. The numbers might be off, but it was okay, I need to analyze 100 properties to make 10 offers to get one deal. And so that's, I still use the numbers again, they might be off, but if I know that I wanna acquire 10 properties, well, you can do the math and say, this is how many properties I need to analyze and how many offers I need to make. Yeah. And that's all I do. And I do it in all of the pillars that are important to me. So like I literally have it broken down. I wanna have an amazing relationship with my parents. You know, they're in their early seventies. And I want to know I want them to know that even though I've moved away and I'm doing all these things in my life are still important. I literally hold myself accountable to call them every week. And you know, there's a variety of different things in there that I do towards my health and all these different things that I check off every week that, yes, I'm doing these things, and if I do these things, I know they're gonna lead to this three year vision that I have. Right.

Dan Austin: [36:50] It's so simple when you say that. It's obviously harder to put in practice, and you have to show up every day to accomplish this, but I just love like that you figured out a way, you just have to get started, and you have to say to yourself, you said it earlier, what is the one thing today I'm going to do to get closer to that goal? And it doesn't have to be a dollars and cents, passive income, rental properties, you're doing with relationships. Like, what are the things that I know that if I do every day, or every week, or every quarter, they build up to having what my vivid vision for a relationship, in your case, with your parents is? And it's taken me quite a bit longer than I had hoped to really start understanding my vision. I did a vivid vision, gosh, a couple years ago, and it was just really hard for me to make it stick and understand it, because the vivid vision was just this vision without a plan to get there. And also my vision has changed a little bit, and what I really want, I've gotten down to like the root of like what I really, really want. And so now my vision that I'm gonna write out is I feel like is gonna be a lot more focused. And then the importance of those like actual daily, weekly tasks are going to be the key to success. So I wanna use you as an example because you had your vision, or at least your plan for 2023, to buy a certain amount of properties.

Dan Austin: [38:02] What was that vision that you were going to buy? How many properties were you gonna buy this year and how many have you bought this year?

Brandon Baker: [38:07] My vision was only to buy 10.

Dan Austin: [38:09] I

Brandon Baker: [38:09] can't remember it was 12, but I think it was 10, and then I know I've at least bought 10 and it might even be 12. Right. I need to go back and look at it, but I think it's actually 12 doors.

Dan Austin: [38:19] All I know is I remember you talking about it, and then you were tracking exactly what you just said. You're not fluffing anything. What you're saying is exactly what you did, and you've met that goal and accomplished it. And anybody that I've ever talked to that has followed their plan the way you've done it actually accomplishes it, or does more than they actually set out to accomplish. And then they're informed for what they're actually capable of, and then the following year, they can at least meet those goals, if not even more. And it's just like a feedback, it's this constant feedback loop. It's like the better you get at managing your goals and the processes needed to reach your goals, the bigger your goals are and bigger your accomplishments are.

Brandon Baker: [38:54] Absolutely. And ultimately, this all boils down to designing the life that you want and then executing on it, which is cool because to me, that's what's, I don't know, gets me excited to know that I can go out and design and that's what we're doing, or we're talking about it. Literally designing the life that you want. It's not gonna happen to you anymore. You're gonna experience the life that you want because you're gonna design it and then you're gonna go execute

Dan Austin: [39:15] Absolutely, 100%. Okay, we're getting short on time here. We gotta get into our initial questions, but I could do another hour of this episode easy, just ask you questions, because honestly what you've accomplished is amazing, and it's just fascinating how logical and simple you make this approach, To what for most people is a really hard, big, ugly, hairy thing, that is just hard to get our arms around, but you have to start somewhere, and that's really planning out what you want your ideal life to be, and then going backwards from there. It's all hard, but simple at the same time. Okay, let's get to our questions here. So, first question, what is your craziest real estate investing story? Good, bad, win, loss? We've had it all, but I'm excited to see what yours is.

Brandon Baker: [39:58] Oh man. So the one house that I mentioned earlier in the episode where I talked about I I probably wouldn't buy it again, I got a random text one night. I don't even know where this lady found my phone number. And I pull it up, and I'm looking at a video of a car on fire melting the front of the house, and then I realized it's my house. Oh my So somebody had set my tenant's car on fire because apparently they had a dispute with some neighbors down the road, whatnot. And anyways, their car melted the front of my house. Nice. So that is the craziest story. Come to find out, they were running drugs out of the house, etcetera, and I don't usually, not usually, I don't focus on neighborhoods that have that kind of an issue. This one is borderline like that, and yeah, that's insane. Live

Dan Austin: [40:50] and So you did you have to do like an insurance claim on this thing or like, was it You did?

Brandon Baker: [40:56] Did. I had to do an insurance claim and I think the outside damage was probably, I mean, wasn't crazy, it was probably grand.

Dan Austin: [41:05] Nice.

Brandon Baker: [41:05] But I mean, the inside damage was really rough because you know, the cops were looking for drugs and they had to, they poked a bunch of holes in the walls and stuff like that and there's Not lot of damage

Dan Austin: [41:17] just from the tenants, but from the police. Yeah. Dang, okay. So tip, if you have to run-in this, we actually had a private insurance adjuster, David Melzer, on here. Can't remember what episode he's gonna air on, but go back and listen to it, because he'll give you some tips and tricks on how to handle those types of insurance claims. Because there's a lot of things in that situation too, that the way you talk to your insurance company will either bite you in the butt or actually get you to have a ton of renovations. Right? Because, like he was saying, if a tenant trashes the inside of your house, the insurance company's not inclined to actually help you, because they'll just try to say that's, oh, that's just normal wear and tear. But you have to make sure that you let them know, like, it was a single event, and prove to them that it was a single event of them trashing your house excessively compared to like what normal wear and tear is. In your case, at least you got the cops that were busting up your house, you had a police report, you're like, yeah, they poked holes in my wall, but of course if there's other tenant damage, you can loop that in to your insurance claim, you know?

Dan Austin: [42:16] So anyhow, Next I question. One piece of advice would you give to a new investor or somebody looking to get started in real estate?

Brandon Baker: [42:24] Network like crazy. I just, I think that at the end of the day, no matter what business anybody's in, even outside of real estate, we're in a relationship game. And the more people that you can build relationships with, the better. And I just, I would encourage people to anytime they reach out to anybody, just have that conversation around who are some of the other people that I should know. And I know there's, it's awkward because sometimes you're asking people for a lot of help and you're not offering anything in return, which is the one thing that we're often coached not to do. But you'd be surprised how many people wanna help you. And then that way maybe you get the opportunity to repay the favor. So I would just say build as many relationships as possible because they'll go

Dan Austin: [43:12] a long ways in helping you achieve your goals. Absolutely. It's funny how common that piece of advice is from people, but it shows the immense value because what you've done is realized that value by going to a market you've never like invested and lived in, and somehow built out a really successful team that has carried you quite a ways. I mean, let's be honest, like you've got a great profitable portfolio, and a great system for buying houses, renovating them, and getting them back stabilized on the market. So, networking obviously does help, so if you listen to this, he's not lying. Okay, last question. Where can people reach out to you if they want to chat or learn more about what you're doing? If not, it doesn't matter, but.

Brandon Baker: [43:52] Yeah, you can find me on Instagram bkbaker.

Dan Austin: [43:55] Bkbaker. Bkbaker. Cool. Definitely reach out to Brandon, he is awesome, and one thing, I don't know, maybe we'll start it here, is like, I know Brandon just talked about doing goal setting retreats for people, and so maybe one day he'll get enough of the Collecting Keys listeners to DM him, and say that they're interested, that you'll be setting up an enterprise where you can go and do a badass goal setting retreat. Something I definitely wanna do, because I think there's a ton of value in what you said about the vivid vision of like, getting away from your day to day, and really focusing on you and your vision, and it doesn't happen in an hour or two hours, it has to happen over a period of time, you really need to like dive into it. That's something I've learned a lot about myself, I really, you gotta get in the headspace before you can even start thinking about your vision and where you're going. So, hit up Brandon if you think you might want to be participating in that, maybe we can talk him into starting to do those on a regular basis.

Brandon Baker: [44:46] Absolutely, I would be happy to, and just a piece of advice for everybody who starts to play around with trying to do their goal setting, just know that at first it's not gonna feel natural. At first it's gonna feel a little bit clunky and whatnot, and you might not appreciate like what your end product is. Just keep working with it, keep massaging it. It will get better and better each time you go back and visit it and work with it until you've built a system that works for yourself. But yes, please reach out. I'm happy to answer any questions and help.

Dan Austin: [45:16] Heck yeah, cool. Well, I really appreciate you being here, Brandon. This has been super informative for me, and I hope all of our listeners really found value in this, because I think the fact that you've done so much, I'm not gonna say a short period of time, because you said you started looking at this like thirteen years ago basically, and it took you until 2020 to really be able to dig in and get through 2023. So this is a success overnight, but it only took you thirteen years. So, you know, I think we can all relate to that. You gotta put in your time. Anyhow, thank you everybody for listening. If you want to learn more about what we're doing over at Collecting Keys, you can hit me up on Instagram at investorrandan, or my co host who is not here, Mike DeHaan at mike underscore invest, or just go to collectingkeys.com, and you can go check out all the cool stuff we've got going on, and potentially go see our next Keys Con event, that we'll hopefully be doing summer of twenty twenty four, or if you just wanna be in our free Facebook group, our free Facebook community, go to Facebook and check out the Collecting Keys podcast community, where you can see a bunch of other cool stuff, plus be in the community for free. Anyhow, have a good day. See you.

Dan Austin: [46:18] Yeah.

Speaker 2: [46:19] Thanks for listening to Collecting Keys. Drop us a five star review on iTunes and send us a screenshot to mike@collectingkeys.com for your chance to receive a free collecting keys t shirt.