[Music] welcome to the hybrid real estate professional podcast where we dive deep

into the intersection of career family and finances learn the mindsets tips and

strategies to help you on your personal journey to build a life of abundance and purpose for you and your family now

here’s your host Aaron welcome back to another episode of the hybrid real estate professional podcast I am humbled

and honored today to be joined by a very special guest two times Bigger Pockets author coach Chad Carson Chan who most

people just call Coach is the author of the small and mighty real estate investor which has quickly become my

favorite real estate investing book in addition to building and scaling his own impressive real estate portfolio over

the course of almost 20 years Chad has also been coaching and educating the next generation of investors through his

books mentorship and his Mastermind Community rental property Mastery of which I am a member Chad is a true goger

a dedicated family man and someone I truly look up to as I Forge my own real estate investing journey I can’t wait

for you to hear this conversation let’s get into

it all right welcome to the hybrid real estate professional podcast today I am

here with a very special guest Chad Carson AKA coach Carson Chad I’m so

humbled that you took some time out of your day to join me I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours

reading books and consuming real estate education and it wasn’t until I came across your book which I is up on my

shelf here the small and right Mighty real estate investor that I really found something that I felt resonated with the

the way that I approach real estate investing so on behalf of myself and I’m sure thousands of other people that

you’ve impacted I have to thank you for for coming out with that it’s a counternarrative to what we commonly

hear with the quit your job in 2 months and scale from Z to 1,000 rental

properties in the next 12 months and I just I appreciate that narrative and I wanted to thank you personally for for

putting that out there thank you that means a lot put when you write a book and you organize your ideas you hope at

least one person likes it so there is one person I appreciate that and yeah it’s just an honor to be here really

really happy to talk about it awesome before you put out two Bigger Pockets

books you spent I believe it’s almost two decades now building up a a real

estate portfolio you’ve had different eras in your investing career you had kind of

pre-recession you had a long kind of ebbing and flowing with a lot of different strategic shifts throughout so

I’m wondering if you can maybe just retrace in a nutshell what your Journey’s been like especially in the

early years yeah there’s a few big phases for me and I you know this but I

I I break my kind of rental property journey into three big phases like starter is just brand new you’re just

beginning and then wealth Builder where you’re really accelerating trying to turn a small amount of money into a much

bigger amount of money and then you have this third phase which I used to call Ender like I I got this from a teacher

of mine Pete fortunado I’m calling it more and more the Harvester phase because it’s there there’s no end you’re you’re never done financially you’re

always working but it’s a phase where you’re living off your money you’re harvesting it more you have a different set of priorities and so for me the

starter phase was right out of college I was 23 years old and there’s different

approaches to starting real estate I would say a large majority of people do I what you help a lot of people do is where you have a full-time job you’re

doing you’re investing on the side mine was a little bit different start and part of that’s just my DNA the way I

want I’m an entrepreneur I just really like jumping in an entrepreneur game but part of it was just luck and being able

I was in a place in my life where I didn’t have any college debt I I played football in college so I had a scholarship and so I was very lucky that

way that I got out of college and and really not having debt gives you a lot of options I think there’s a kind of a

bigger lesson there you know in general not having personal debt and paying it off and getting your CL slate clean

financially gives you a lot of options and in my case it gave me the option to be an entrepreneur flipping houses and

wholesaling houses in the very beginning and it wasn’t I didn’t make a lot of money like I had got started with a

business partner pretty quickly after I started and the two of I was just living in his spare bedroom like I didn’t have

what was the first year I think we made 60,000 bucks 50,000 bucks something

like that flipping four houses probably four or five houses and it was like big

swings that that was money for the two of us plus paying for expenses and marketing so it was just it was a fun

experience I loved it uh for me going out and having the challenges a lot like sports because I played football and I

played basketball and so it was just a big kind of Championship typ type challenge just to jump into it but I

didn’t have a family to support I didn’t have bills to pay and so I was able to do that and I’m glad I did but that kind

of phase began me making money with real estate but in parallel pretty soon a

year or two later I started getting into the wealth building game as well planting seeds buying rental properties

and I had to get creative to start off with that smaller down payments and seller financing and just figuring out

ways because as a person who’s an entrepreneur who has very sporadic inconsistent income you’re not very

bankable so going to the bank I could get a couple bank loans over the years but for the first five six seven years

of my career it was primarily having to go get other sources of financing partnering with people getting creative

owning a p of a property but having other people putting up some of the money or all the money so that was that

first step of my journey was just learning how to make money flipping houses learning how to find deals

figuring out a way to plant a few seeds on rental properties and that brought me right up to the Great Recession where we

really accelerated and started doing getting pretty good at buying houses but I think that initiated me into the

second phase which was you got to own properties you got to build wealth and flipping wasn’t we had a lot of

properties we had to keep after the Great Recession session started because we couldn’t flip them and so we had to it’s when you go through a big recession

or a big change in an economy at least in that case you just you have to button hatches down and just figure because

it’s like almost like you’re in a hurricane it’s like all right I don’t know what’s going on here there’s you know debris flowing flying everywhere

it’s hard to find your bearings and so that was a phase a huge transition phase

but in retrospect it taught me a lot about risk taught me a lot about how to

adjust to different strategies in the market and and so that began this kind of wealth building phase that lasted

pretty much until 201617 for me so what is that eight eight years later and then

I transitioned into more of a harvester phase where I took longer many retirements with my family I had a

family by then my wife and two kids and so we lived abroad for a Time lived abroad in Ecuador last year we lived

abroad in Spain and so that we could talk about some of those too I’m sure but that as far as the financial journey

goes though it was a a lot of ups and downs in between there but the the cool

thing about real estate is you see this as ups and downs happen you have this gradual up up up up up up that happens

if you stick with it and for me that was it was really cool because then harvesting some of that equity and harvesting some of that cash flow to do

some of the things I really wanted to do which for my wife and I was travel and experience new things that was sort of

what we really got to do a lot in the Harvester phase one one of the Harvester slender phase that was when I read that

in your book that was the first time I had really started to think to myself okay there’s you give yourself a little

permission to either take profits off the table or pay down debt or do things that aren’t just strictly growth mind

set yeah there is a time for growth but I think as you’ve seen I’m part of Chad’s Community I’ve been in there

talking about my hate rynolds I’m very proud of what I built but there’s a couple strategic things going on in my

life in my personal life and Chad and I had a one-on-one session about that that we just looking at the portfolio as a

chessboard and not just thinking oh I need to add forever there there are strategic things you can do over time

but I got to imagine that you mentioned that you started with wholesaling and flipping that is a very growth-minded

strategy at first your grow income and then you’re growing your ability to buy and add to your portfolio was there a

period of aggressive growth at the beginning it sounds like probably pre- recession and if so like what where did

that top out yeah there was a lot of growth it was that first year I mentioned three or four properties maybe

five flips and none of those were rental properties fast forward three years from there in 2007 and we had 33 Acquisitions

closings in one year and a lot of those were flips still I remember one flip we made we bought and sold a house that we

bought in a pre-foreclosure situation and we negotiated with the bank and got a short sale and we found is a luxury

kind of house we found a buyer for it a friend of somebody we just in our Network and and we closed the same day

bought it sold it made like 65,000 bucks in one one like double closing and that

to me was like the Pinnacle of my flipping career was Bam Bam there we go make some money so there’s cool deals

like that but then there was also a lot of Buy and Hold rental properties that we started entering in but yeah it was

definitely a growth period And if you’ve read my book it’s it was mostly good but a lot of scars that I had from the 2007

growth because I think it this is one of the reasons I wrote the small Mighty investor is because I I learned that in

that that you don’t have to have this manic crazy push to the top of the mountain and I know there’s some people

who want to do that and there’s tons of paths to get up the mountain so for the the X Games like Mount Everest climbing

explorers of the real estate World feel free to Sprint up to the top of the mountain and go for it that’s cool that’s your game you like you like

extreme sports that’s fine but for the rest of us you can actually just plot along and do the John Shaw Building

Wealth one house at a time type approach and I could have been a little less aggressive it had even just the same

results or even better results and instead I was going buying a lot of properties and I made I bought a lot of

properties that set us back because I made mistakes on locations I underestimated repairs on properties and

just the amount of mental load it took to survive that in 2008 n and 10 during

the recession and then pivot and change it just it taught me a lot about how

growth can happen in different ways and informed at the same time right when I that was happening I also read the book

The 4-Hour Work week which was about thinking about your business from the other side of your life to saying life

first here’s what I want my life to look like here’s the design I want my life to look like and then building a business

around it and that was such a different Paradigm for me because even today most of the real estate advice I hear is real

there’s kind of some lip service given to the life side of things but it’s always grow you’re successful when you have more properties you’re successful

when you’re growing faster and I just don’t think the cost of that and the

inputs that are required to make that happen are really put on the table enough and let people make an informed

decision about that and so I think that’s part of my mission is to show that there are multiple approaches to do

this and there’s a deliberate slow and steady kind of tortoise-like approach that can actually have just as good a

results or even better and but the really magical thing going back to the lifestyle is that you can you don’t have to sacrifice like giving up your life

now in order to someday enjoy life if you take this more deliberate approach a little bit more slow and

steady approach you can have these plateaus on your journey to the top of the mountain you can enjoy the scenery

you can have a picnic lunch on your way up you can you just had I love how you said strategic things are happening in

your life the twins coming into your life it’s a nice strategic event but yeah you can enjoy your family you can enjoy your friends you can take care of

your health those things that we’re really investing real estate to have in the end I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes we I’m pointing at me a

type personalities do is to put that Stu Stu off instead of integrating it into our plan in the first place and so I

think that’s really my mission is to show a real estate investing a business plan that integrates almost like a

intertwining of your life in your business so that you can keep first things the most important things the

things that matter keep those as a priority 100% And I think you providing

that counternarrative nothing against the folks that want to hyperscale and and go to the Moon as fast as they

possibly can but there are setbacks and trade-offs that they have to make and I

I’m very family-minded at this juncture in my life I know you have a family that you prioritize spending time with and

having very Unforgettable experiences including living abroad and those things probably can’t happen if you’re trying

to add 100 properties a year and manage flips especially if you’re doing it all across the country or a lot of the stuff

that gets pedal these days and so I appreciate that you provide that counternarrative not only in your books

but also now in your community but I think it sounds to me like you you learned some of those lessons in real

time and then you packaged them up so that hopefully you can save other people from maybe having to learn those the

hard way you mentioned John sha who I know is a mentor of yours I want to talk about the role of mentors and coaches in

your life from you seeking mentorship and then how that led you to become

coach Carson um can you tell us just so not I know you started as an athlete so I’m sure coaching came in there but when

did you first seek real estate mentorship and how did you how has that been a part of your journey yeah I love

mentorship and coaching it’s just my blood I had my grandparents my dad’s parents were uh principles and teachers

and coaches and so I think I I just grew up with that this respect for mentorship

and coaching and but my first Mentor was my dad actually and so not everybody has this Good Fortune of having a family

member who was in the rental business the real estate investing business but I I did have that good fortune and so I

was able to call my dad and ask him questions and my first year in business actually when I graduated from college I

moved back home and I just found properties for him to buy I was just a bird dog just going out and saying

here’s a deal I think this would be a good buy and I I was able to be aggressive on finding deals on one little part of the business and then get

mentorship from him about that’s not a good deal this is a good deal and so that was invaluable and just having that

support and so my my dad even today he’s further along he my he and my mom who

was a dentist had their rental properties business and when my mom sold her medical practice and my dad sold

some land they were able to pay off all their properties and live they live off their income and there I can see

firsthand this peaceful enjoyable existence you can have when you build up

and then pay off your properties and so they’re an example a lot of different ways both my mom and my dad and were

definitely my first mentors but then I’m just a I love learning I think if I had to say there’s any like skill set that

really like the top of my list is just a voracious curiosity and love of learning

so I consider books my mentors I consider Warren Buffett mentor of mine

from the distance never met him of course but he’s on my shelf you know pictures of him and and I consider the

books and the authors that I read my mentors and John Shaw was one of those early in my career I was reading a bunch

of people and I was still in the go- go big kind of mentality but he was always a kind of on my other shoulder was

somebody like John sha saying actually I’ve tried that I’ve bought hotels and commercial buildings and the best thing

that has ever happened to me is just single family houses and buying them deliberately and being patient with them

and so I think mentors are there for you when you make mistakes you need to Pivot a little bit and so I think that’s what

he has been for me as a is just a a really good role model in terms of a business model how to use real estate

investing and but then I think any Mentor you also build upon that and try to add your own flavor and so I I have a

lot of different I find it so fun to have different people you learned from and just I continue to read books and

biographies I’ve just read a book biography of Benjamin Franklin recently which is really interesting and so I

like reading leaders historical figures business people parents just to see

because I’ve got a lot to learn and I’m always a student that’s so cool yeah it’s a interesting parallel in my life

my parents are Real Estate Investors too and I started very singularly with them

I didn’t read Bigger Pockets books I didn’t go on forums it wasn’t until we had three rentals that started diving

into the more academic realm of real estate but obviously they had a similar story where they bought a bunch of

properties in the early 2000s and then scaled and ended up having to hold a

bunch through the recession and so I just learned firsthand from the resilience that they had to show they

held them until they at least broke even on them thankfully they didn’t sell anything at a loss or WEA anything that

they couldn’t a hole they couldn’t get out of but just having that mentorship

by osmosis and then also of course graduating towards the more academic and networking and obviously of course you

said it right like your book was on my bookshelf before I ever spoke to you so I’ve been able to absorb the lessons and

knowledge that you have and then ultimately find my way into your sphere into your Comm Community but mentorship

but this kind of parlays into something El I wanted to ask you about which is content there’s so much information on

the internet now you write all the time and you have for some time now I started writing I made that huge part of what I

focus my time and energy on is documenting my journey which is much less progressed than you are you done

great I love I love your sharing you do a wonderful job and your Twitter account is a must follow so I hope everybody’s listen watching that reading it for sure

no I appreciate that but you know one of the things I’ve always been impressed by is you’ve been doing this for I I don’t

know when you started writing so one of my first question is going to be when did that start but second I’ve always been impressed with pretty much any

question anyone asks you you can reply with a link to to some sort of Deep dive

or video within about 30 seconds yeah I’ve had this question before and here’s

30 minute explainer on exactly how to do it with worksheets and everything and so I’m just I’m impressed with the library

you put together so I want to know when did that start and how much of this chronicling was deliberate and leading

up towards this community that you have now it was like like a lot of things it started as a hobby by accident and

actually continued as a hobby for a long time my writing but I back in 200 about the same time I was trying to survive

the Great Recession 20089 and 10 I was fairly successful in my business and

just had I was part of a local real estate investment Association and so some of the leaders there would just say

ask me to come speak and come talk to and teach a class and at first it was on how do you find uh good deals which is

still something I teach classes on so I would talk about my marketing here’s what I’m doing right now and it was at

my best I always try to show here’s what I’m doing here’s what’s working for me not that this is the only way to do it

or this is the the best way that anybody’s ever done it but having that kind of learner mentality that hey this

is how I’m doing it hopefully it’s helpful for you and I think if you’re truly a learner the opposite of that and

the the kind of complimentary side of that is being a teacher and so I started just testing it out learning a little

bit and say this is fun like I really enjoy it it if you haven’t taught before that teaching makes you learn even

better because you have to articulate what you think and then you’re like wait a minute I don’t really know this yet got to study it some more so I think I

just got addicted to that that that process and I started doing a little bit of coaching locally so I had these

Mastermind groups was interesting now that we’ve come full circle and I’m doing these online community rental property Mastery that you’re part of and

mentoring and teaching there but I got my start just doing it locally I had I’d have six or seven people who would sign

up and we’d meet on Saturday mornings and a lot of the same stuff I’m teaching now but I would help them identify the

type of properties they wanted we’ help them market and so I I had alumni of those coaching groups that I did

probably start off 10 20 and then 30 and 50 and I started sending a physical newsletter to everybody who was either

alumni or who was interested in doing this so it’s a small membership site membership print newsletter essentially

it’s I laugh about it now because I was typing up this newsletter every single month and had my articles advice quotes

things I was reading just like an email newsletter these days but I was physically like paying somebody to print

this thing and it and stuff it and and people 120 people 100 people got it every single month and then finally

somebody said hey Chad this is uh 20 12 13 you can write on the internet now

there’s think on the internet like oh really there’s a there’s an internet out there so that’s when I started posting

those some of the same articles I was writing to 120 people to the internet and putting on a Blog at coach

carson.com and this really has another journey of discovery of being a content creator and posting and I’m not saying

I’m not can’t can’t say that I’m a fast learner with all that I’ve been plotting with that as well but I’ve just I think

more than anything my real estate investing business my teaching coaching business I really enjoy the craft of

doing it and really teaching more than anything I I I like the details of it I like understanding my student my

audience how do they what’s the thing that makes them tick how can I say this in a different way how can I tell a story or make a list or simplify this in

the best way I can and that’s a craft for me and it’s a it’s a fun process

so just writing the content has never been at least for now maybe it’ll be a boring at some point but I’ve just

really enjoyed it and early in my writing career I think I wrote for five six years

probably 50 articles per year every single week I was writing something I

started writing for Bigger Pockets as well that’s that they being a guest post coaster on Bigger Pockets started

getting me some new new subscribers and followers and then I went on the podcast bigger pocket podcast probably like in

the 80s show ad something with Josh and Brandon and Then followed up with that so I learned how the how that world

works and just became I really enjoyed it and that was all still a hobby though

until finally I realized I’ve got enough people on my email list and I’ve got people following me this is costing me money like I’m paying all these software

and doing all this and so I decided that uh it would be fun to also make this a business and to teach people and do more

Consulting and coaching and so that’s the current iteration where I I have more courses and uh uh online membership

Community where I’m teaching people and coaching people and I’m really having a ton of fun with that getting to have

conversations with you because I’m taking ideas in the book and these principles and getting the challenge of

figuring all right how can I help Aon apply this to his unique situation because every situation is a little

unique and that and I think about myself going back to those Sports coaches my grandparents and how you teach people

and Coach people and get the best out of people in the sphere of real estate investing and so still having a lot of

fun with it it’s so cool how it evolved organically I had a very truncated

version of that where I just started writing online I posted on Twitter once a day every day since March 2022 did

that for fun as part of a writing program called ship 30 for 30 where the whole purpose of it is to post once a

day for 30 days and then let the momentum carry you wherever it will but I just never stopped and the reason I’m

sharing this is cuz it started as just like a a fun thing I liked writing and I liked developing the skill of writing

and then that turned into launching my newsletter and then I committed to myself that I was going to write my newsletter once a week for a year come

hell high water or come Twins or moves or whatever may come up I’m gonna do it

and and I think you just said you took 50 you you wrote 50 per year when you do

that you start to build this library of assets and I I call them assets very intentionally because I think that stuff

compounds you’ve been writing for 11 12 years and that Library just grows and grows to the point where you can do what

I was saying earlier where now when somebody asks you a question even if it’s hyp specific you probably have somewhere you wrote about it and

answered it and there’s a compounding that goes on too like I know you probably talked about compounding wealth

it’s there’s a compounding of knowledge but also if you’re a teacher there’s a compounding of how you explain things and stories and you get a library of

best practices so it’s uh yeah I love that rep repetitive compounding effect

of anything you do whether it’s buying properties or writing articles and I love your descript deson of those assets

100% of and they I have a YouTube video that you could call it lucky but like it

was I made a bunch of videos that I thought were just as good this one has two million views now over two million

views and it continues to get views and it continues to get revenue and it continues to bring me new customers and

if that’s not like an asset I don’t know what it is it’s amazing absolutely one skill I’ve seen you use in your

education that’s something I would like to learn is illustration you’re a master of illustration when it comes to

teaching creative financing and taking these pretty dense complex not only the idea is complex but also the math behind

it is that something it just reminds me of what I would imagine being in a locker room would be like when they’re

breaking down plays is that where you got that skill from I think so or maybe even further back they said a lot of the

things that you really enjoy professionally at least I don’t who they said but I I find find that they were

also things you enjoyed as a kid and I was not like a wonderful artist as a kid but I I would sit there at home and draw

and draw and just enjoyed it and I think my thoughts were better with drawing so as soon as I’m explaining to somebody

I’m like okay hold on a second you’ve seen it with a zoom meeting like let me just open the Whiteboard because I got to draw this as I’m explaining it and so

I think just there’s a connection with me visually putting pen to paper and the

thoughts that come out of my head and I also think that the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words I really do

think there are if you can illustrate something it’s another form of condensing that idea it’s a it’s a form

of metaphor we learn we human beings learn in stories and metaphors that’s how we make meaning out of complex

abstract ideas and math and real estate investing and assets and finance are pretty abstract they’re not always easy

to understand and so you understand things in little in bites in little tastes and the metaphor is not 100%

accurate all the time but if you can say here here’s pretty much what it’s like this and let me draw a picture of it and

then somebody gets it they’re like okay now I understand it and they can go deeper and they can understand it but

the the worst thing that can happen as a for as a teacher is when you’re when you get that kind of Blank Stare or the

person who’s on the other side gives up because they think I can’t understand that that’s too difficult for me and my

rule always when I’m teaching is that there’s no dumb questions and you can

learn it I don’t care you know how it might take a little bit longer it might be more complicated for you up front but

the you know we we have amazing brains that can adapt and there’s different kinds of intelligence different types of

intellig IG so I find that fascinating I find why we learn how we learn fascinating and at least for me the

drawing and the is is just fun like I have a you see in the background I have a little whiteboard have these little

whiteboard clipboards that I use to try to draw I’ve got when I’m doing notes this is just my like uh this personal

note note paper here is like a drawing pad it’s not a it’s not a regular old little notepad like I have the drawing

pad and when I used to go to still when I go to events like just to study as a student I I bring this drawing pad out

people like what is that big drawing pad you’re taking notes on but I find for me I like to put ideas on paper and then

sometimes I’ll draw lines and connect them make mind maps out of them and the bigger the paper I have the more I can

connect ideas and not have to be constrained by this little small space yeah it’s that’s all I don’t know what

that all means or why that is but that’s part of my learning process as well no it’s really cool and I think you have

some of the best videos out there on the internet about breaking down topics like that and that is a skill that is not easy to develop working on it myself I

haven’t been able to master it enough to put anything out there that I’m willing to show the public yet but one day soon

yeah so as you were saying this it made me think about the distinction between educating and coaching right and I think

there is a pretty significant distinction at times right one is to teach concept and knowledge have the

other person gain a specific skill or piece of knowledge but coaching is so much more than that right there’s an

element of empowering enabling getting people out of their own heads and past

whatever their blockers might be and then also I think one of the most valuable elements I can think of is

preventing them from making a mistake so I always view the the role of an adviser or a coach as helping me navigate away

from the things that might tempt me that could be shortsighted or potentially prevent me from hitting my goals can you

maybe talk about that distinction a yeah I love that question I see a couple metaphors one I see a coach is somebody

who is if if you’re going out to climb a mountain like the real estate Journey the financial Journey the coach is the person with you they’re they’re more

like a guide and so I think they my my message to people as a guide or as a coach would be I’ve been on this path

before but there might be different weather there might be different conditions so it’s not going to be exactly the same but let me share with

you some of what helped me and that’ll help us prepare as we’re walking down this path towards your goal and so a

teacher I think a lot of teachers are coaches as well but I think a coach is the sports coaches I’ve had my past

they’re definitely teachers but they there’s a different level of getting down in the trenches with the student doing the drill with them of practicing

it with them of and and definitely empowering as well I John Wooden is one of my favorite coaches he’s a basket

Hall of Fame basketball coach for UCLA and I so many stories with with John Wooden but he would bring his team in

before the season started and just imagine he had these all Hall of Fame players like Bill Walton Kareem Abdul

Jabar just amazing players and he would sit them down for an hour and teach them how to tie their shoes and put on their

socks for an hour before they even picked up a basketball and can you just imagine like me exasperated what are we

doing tying our shoe for the 10th time or whatever and then you get them to that point of being frustrated say do

you know why we’re practicing putting our sock on and tying our shoe so so so many times because if you don’t tie your

shoe correctly or if you have a wrinkle in your sock you’re going to get a blister if you get a blister you’re gonna miss a practice or two and if you

miss a practice or two you’re not going to play as well in the game and if you don’t play as well in the game our team’s not going to play as well and

we’re not likely to win a championship and I recruited you because you’re because you have amazing talent and

amazing potential to win championships but it starts with this Wrinkle in this sock and this tie in your shoe and I

think that’s what a coach does a coach breaks it down to the simplest level and

also the psychology of that is this is a distinction between different types of coaches John Wooden was someone who

wasn’t like a dictator leader wasn’t a dictator coach his motivation of his people was his high expectations of

their potential it was saying I expect a lot out of you and he would actually kick

people out of practice he would say we’re done with practice this is a privilege to practice you’re not going to practice anymore we’re all going home

and the PE players like no no coach we’ll we’ll get it right and he would hold it he was tough but it was a

toughness of you’re better than that I expect more than that you have more potential than that there’s a lot of

coaches out there who take the drill sergeant I’m going to break you you’re a loser and kind of the fear put the fear

into the other person I’m sure that works I’m sure that’s worked in the past I’m not sure so sure in 2024 maybe ever

that’s really been the the best way to motivate people but I’m inspired by that kind of idea is that how how can I not

only have success for myself but bring people with me and help people see themselves as better than they see

themselves before being coached that I can see the value of them see the potential in them and then teach teach

them the skills they need that they can build the confidence in the vision and I can’t think of anything more exciting

than that’s really what motivates me these days is that you know you have your own personal success but I have kids so first and foremost I want to be

a coach to my kids the people around me but then the people in my sphere of influence that I can help in the real

estate world how can I help them Elevate their game how can I help them play better because they have participated in

this that’s pretty cool it’s a fun goal that I have yeah I love that and I can

tell you’re not the drill Sergeant type coach but I definitely see you all around elevating other people showing

them what’s possible in their own situation and just helping navigate right there’s no I think every situation

every investor has such a unique set of circumstances whether it’s the money or the family job or everyone has different

constraints but there there are some commonalities and the more you coach the more you can see how to navigate those

and I know for me personally like the I’ve now been group coaching programs and I just started my whole coaching

business last September but by far so far my favorite part is the one-on-one because I feel like that’s where you can

really get into the weeds and do the inner work and and it becomes about so much more than just real estate

investing and that’s definitely my favorite part absolutely 100% I agree so to tie off the mentorship portion

there’s a couple things in earlier that I wanted to pull on the thread of and they’re related so you mentioned that

you had a business partner and I believe you’ve had you’ve worked with him since essentially you started investing in

real estate and that was almost 20 years ago is that right that’s correct yep so

there’s a lot of marriages that don’t even last as long as your Business Partnership has for better for worse but

how so you guys were young sounds like you in your early 20s that is a really

hard thing to navigate as you not only grow through different phases of your life but also phases of your business

what is your secret to how you guys set that up how you keep your partnership healthy and how still in

business I will be honest and acknowledge that I think there’s always some luck that goes into it let’s just call that what it is that there’s

definitely luck that I could have picked the wrong person or or whatever just like any marriage could as well but a

Business Partnership is like a marriage in many respects and that I think you have to have similar values whatever

those values happen to be and that that was a I think that was something intuitively that I picked up having been

in sports and teams you just you notice the type of people that you resonate with and you click with and so we just

we were friends we were hanging out he had another business he had an online business related to Clemson Sports so I

played football at Clemson University so I just met him through that and just respected his work ethic and he was just

fun and he had said that his dad was also in real estate so my dad had been in real estate so we went to some classes together we were both Learners

and so we just got started having that similar kind of background similar just had friendship and then also importantly

I think is having a similar vision for where we were trying to go and I think a lot of people over time reason

Partnerships that I’ve seen from other people haven’t worked out as it’s just difficult to keep the vision the same

over time that’s a moving Target and so I think that’s part of where we were lucky and that as we evolve like we went

through some of the tough times in 20078 N where you’re strained and you got all right we’re having to eat into our

reserves here and to pay for bills and things didn’t go exactly like we wanted to you know a lot about somebody when

you when things go tough like that and I what I’ll say about him hopefully he could say the same thing about me was

that he wasn’t one to duck his head in the sand and say all right man this is horrible like why did you do that or if

one of us made a mistake it was always like all right how can we solve this let’s do this let’s figure this out so there there’s a value of an attitude of

can do like we we can solve this let’s get this done let’s F this let’s figure this out and so I think that’s like if

if you have a way to screen somebody in adversity before you get into a partnership with them that would be

really helpful thing to do the other I think is just uh humility and I think

this is a quality of a coach and a leader too the best one the ones that I respect at least is that they’re when

things go well they’re willing to let other people take credit for that and when things go poorly they’re willing to

say that’s on me and they’re not going to be S such an egomaniac that when things go well they’re like look at me

I’m amazing and then when things go poorly they’re like pointing at other people saying why didn’t you do your job

none of that happen with my business partner he was ready to say let’s just figure it out I had some mess ups that

I’ve screwed up there’s some things he screwed up I’m sure too but there was just that humility that let’s figure it

out let’s learn let’s adapt and then there was a kind of cool story back in 2007 right when we were having to Pivot

was when we were learning the small and mighty path we were about to take where we he actually suggested that we need to

slow down a little bit like I was like maybe we could grow ourselves out of this maybe we could buy and sell some more houses he’s like no no no no we

need to slow down and we did this exercise around that time where we both wrote down the things that were really

important to us like it it was this a vision exercise say if money were no object and I suggest people do this by

the way too and do it regularly if money were No Object what would you spend your time doing what kind of projects what

would your day look like what kind of activities like use your imagination because it might be hard right now you

might be stuck in a rut right now where you’re not doing any of the things you want to do but just write that down and I it was I was 27 years old I just

gotten married and I was writing down things like I’d like to go uh travel abroad and live abroad my wife and I

talked a lot about that but I also wanted to do things like just play basketball in the middle of the day I live in a beautiful part of the country

with lots of trails and Outdoors we have a 13,000 acre Forest around the Clemson area where you can just go hiking in

five minutes or mountain biking I wanted to spend time in the woods whenever I wanted to in the middle of the day I

wanted to be had kids and a family wanted to be present with them and be there when they got off the bus be able

to help them with their homework be somebody they know and so I started looking at all these things on my list he had his own list and they didn’t

require that much money at least most of them didn’t but what they did require was a lot of time and

flexibility and so I think I was lucky and that when I discussed that with my business partner he was already the one

saying now we need to slow down maybe we need to be a little smaller I also was like yeah you’re right we need to do this and we were able to adapt our

vision together and we were rowing the boats in the same direction and I’m not sure that always happens but how do you

predict that in the again beginning I don’t know maybe you can give me some advice on how that looks from the

outside but I do know picking a person who has similar values and also just someone you trust more than anything is

is the big deal and then you can figure out some of the mistakes you make and but if you get if you get into the canoe

with a bad person in the first place I don’t care how good your canoe is I don’t get care how good your strategy is

how good the market is that the partnership can break up even in the best of times if you don’t start off

with a good connection absolutely so I heard a few things there one is obviously former

really strong Foundation whether it’s a personal relationship or a friendship but really just understand the person

that you’re getting into business with not necessarily just so how much money’s in their bank account or what are the

skills they bring but who are they and what’s important and the second was you guys evolved together over time which is

the same characteristic creates a successful marriage when I think about I’ve been

married to my wife almost six years we’ve been together almost 11 we’re in our mid-30s like I was a very different

person and so is she when we first met but we’ve been able to grow together the things we for fun and the things that

were most important top of mind to us back then are not the same as what was most important to us now and so I do

apply that same mentality to a partnership right because maybe there’s a different version of the story where

you guys were loving gunning it and wholesaling and flipping and putting all that quick cash in your pocket but then

when you decided to go more small and mighty he lost interest right but instead you guys stayed Aline and

probably the communication and just Evolution your lives allowed that to

happen took away at least absolutely yes and communication is probably what I should emphasize there that maybe the

takeaway for people is that if you communicate ahead of time very well be slow to start but communicate a lot up

front discuss your vision discuss your values what’s important to you what your skills and strengths and weaknesses are

but then ongoing habit of communication that that whole conversation we had writing down our goals writing down what

we’re we want to do that was communication and for us sometimes people make a formal here’s when we have a business meeting and all that it was

just an ongoing always happening we just have a chat we used to do Google Hangouts now we do slack or check text

meage just like never ending ongoing communication but being willing to have uncomfortable conversations um I can

remember one let me give you another specific one because sometimes Partnerships you can get an animosity between partners if one person feels

like they’re contributing more than the other and there’s a moment where I was doing a lot of the buying of properties I was my skill set was negotiating and I

was talking to Sellers and I got pretty good at that and we had a string of properties where we were my Tommy’s job

my business partner was to like manage the remodels and then get it sold after we bought it like Fix and Flip or

rentals managing the rentals and that was tough in itself but we went through a string of we were flipping a lot of houses that he never even saw like it

was just me I talked to the seller I spent a lot of time I made an offer we bought it we made 10 grand we made 50

Grand we made 60 Grand and that’s cool like we’re we’re a 50-50 partnership but I it was happening enough that I went to

him and said hey could we do this how about we do this where if I find the property and I do all the negotiation we

just we pay like basically internally pay me the first finders fee pay me five grand or three grand whatever the number

was and then everything else above that will split it 50/50 because I had done a little I just had contributed more to

that particular deal so we worked on like compensation type things and that was just a a season of our life but to

his credit he was willing to listen to that was like yeah yeah shoot if you take the money that’s cool he’s never

been like when one person is doing a little bit more begrudging that person

maybe he did secretly I I don’t think he did but that that’s that was a very that was a very important moment because

that’s another one of those Evolutions where very often one person feels like the other one is not doing as much and

making the money if you can figure out a way to compensate the person who’s contributing a little bit more that can keep the partnership fa and keep it

alive dangerous if not the most dangerous feelings right that a person can have especially in a partnership and

so even by having an uncomfortable conversation maybe even if there was a little short term uh come on you by

getting through that upfront you save from that resentment building and speaking of things of compound resentment and cont and then it turns

nasty so on the flip side of that if you mentioned and this part lays in the last thing I want to ask you about which is

family so you had a couple mini retirements so I imagine in those you take your foot off the gas a little bit

and you’re not out there meeting people at the dinner table and Clemson negotiate seller finance deals instead

you’re abroad enjoying time with your family so in in those cases not only did you have to I’m sure work that out with

your partner were you able to really pull back from your business the way you wanted to when you had those

and I know they were like what 10 years apart yeah it was tough and this is

partly knowing your personality like I I am a go-getter personality like I I like to have goals I like to go- get it and I

still to this day like I’m never going to stop having goals I just beginning of 2024 now I just set a lot of goals for

2024 it’s just a fun game for me to do that and I’ve recognized in myself that

I like having a balance there too and taking keep my foot off the pedal a little bit it’s been good for me it’s

been good for my health my mental health it’s been good for my family relationships so go I just tell a quick story my first mini retirement that I

took in 2000 was I wasn’t financially independent but my wife we was pre-kids my wife and I just decided the middle of

the recession we at least survived we knew we’re going to survive but I was we just saved up money so instead of buying

a new car we saved up 20 grand and we got our backpacks and we went to Spain for a little bit for 6 weeks and I

started taking Spanish classes cuz that had been my dream for a while to learn Spanish and then we went to Peru in

South America and I continued to learn Spanish we lived with a family we hiked to Machu Picchu hiked to all sorts of

cool places in the in Peru and then we went to Patagonia and Chile and Argentina ended up in buos so we spent

four and a half months just roaming around but at the beginning of that trip it took me until five weeks five or six

weeks into the trip and I can remember where I was it was in kadas Spain on the coast and this happens to be this place

on the Mediterranean Ocean Northern Spain where um Salvador Del painted a lot of his like impressionist kind of

surrealistic paintings and we were just sitting on this little bench watching

watching the the sunset over the bay sitting out for hours like reading a book talking my wife and she took a nap

and like even watched the sunset and then this big huge like green shooting star like after the the sun went down

like shot across the sky and I was like this is one of those like crazy magical moments and I could physically feel this

knot like untying in my chest it’s just like I could just there it was like loosened up untied and it was a physical

Sensation that I finally let go of this like go go go go because what I learned

from myself is on the other side or behind ambition and hustle is this

anxiety that is tied to it for me at least and so that anxiety is just it’s like kind a low-grade form of fear is is

the we’re on the plains of Africa and our ancestors are trying to make sure there’s no lying and we’re just like don’t let your guard down be anxious

because that’s how you survive and that was what I was holding inside and that was such a wakeup call for me because

I’m like I’m 27 or 29 years old when I’m doing this and I have this not untying in my chest what would that have meant

if that thing kept going for another 5 years 10 years 15 years me personally I think that’s a health problem that’s a

anxiety attack that’s a heart attack who who knows what that thing turns into but I it convinced me the power of taking

these breaks of taking these many retirements and I know it’s a luxury item to be able to leave for four months

and be able to do that or fast forward to 2017 my wife and I and kids live for 17 months in Ecuador last year we lived

for 12 months in Spain these are absolutely luxury items but they’re what

we’re choosing to spend our money and freedom on we’re choosing to spend it on these times where you press pause on

your life and you turn turn the volume down you don’t acquire and we still might do a little bit of Acquisitions

here and there but you’re really pausing the climb up the mountain in in many ways and it was hard for me to do that

it was very difficult and maybe some people listening to this will’ll be hard if you try to do that whatever your pause looks like it could be starting a

garden I know people who done RV trips I know people who just start new hobbies during those kind of times but I’m such

an advocate that is an important thing to do and it really what it means is taking the dream you have some day this

ambitious dream you have and distributing it throughout your life and not waiting until you’re 60 70 years old

to live the dream and doing it throughout your lives and it’s it makes so much more sense it’s a health thing

it’s an enjoyment thing it’s uh it’s also maybe that goal is not that good

maybe you really don’t want to do that goal you want to do something different why not taste it a little bit now and

it’s been one of the one of the joys of my life and the best decisions I’ve made to press pause and it it’s probably

decreased my net worth sum don’t care at all it been the best investment I could

have ever made and it’s just been a big part of my own Journey as a person as a real estate investor I love that thank

you for sharing that it’s beautiful story and very guilty of masking anxiety

with um ambition right they are whether we like it or not they are related and

that feeling that nod in your stomach when you’re telling that story about that moment I thought to myself there

was another version too of that story where you could have been taking a phone call and just missed it so it took a while my mom and my stepdad both

recently retired and I watched both of them actually and my dad and so over the last few years I’ve watched all of them

go through this I don’t even know what to call it adjustment period yeah where

they have 30 40 Years of corporate experience like just that momentum

crammed into their head and and it took my mom almost a year just to get that KN

on time and she couldn’t even sit at a computer for a long time and and it’s an

interesting thing because if we don’t do that until we’re 60 then you don’t even

realize some of the stuff that’s happening in your head like you said some of that anxiety we’re carrying around so the mini retirement idea is is

really smart because youve gained that perspective earlier in your life and allowed you to reset and even retool

refactor some of your vision so that you could build the rest of your real estate Journey your business around the things

that are truly important to you but you wouldn’t have necessarily been able to do that if you get that perspective

exactly it’s it’s a journey of self-exploration Entrepreneurship and investing it seems like an outer Pursuit

but it’s really an inner Pursuit it’s as much as anything it’s it’s like the maso’s hierarchy of needs you take over

you get those like basic necessities taken care of your food your water your need for connection with other people

your security But ultimately like this is about doing the things that matter to you is I’ve heard it I think maslo say

it’s like Soul oxygen like to the extent that you once you take care of the necessities and security if you don’t

pursue the things you can do like the things that’s calling to you inside that manifests itself as mental illness like

his unwellness his anxiety attacks his depression and I know there’s other this more complicated subject right but it’s

I’ve seen it a lot I’ve seen lots of friends who had Financial Independence and were ma major depressions afterward

words and we human beings we are wired to purpose and production and being

helpful and being able to have that journey of self exploration earlier in your life is a gift you give yourself

it’s better than a luxury car it’s better than a yacht it’s better than any of those other things it’s a it’s the

the Pinnacle of luxury items that you can give yourself as that opportunity to get to know yourself better so that you

can then keep evolving and becoming hopefully a better person you use the word luxury when you talk about those

but I to me it’s more that you made a choice right you made a choice to prioritize those experiences and that

time with your family in that moment and from what I recall from other times I’ve heard you explain those it’s not like

you were living in some Villa that costs $155,000 a month like you guys paired it down and you live by the philosophy that

you write about which is keep your expenses under control and try and like tailor your lifestyle around what is

truly needed and I think there’s a lesson there and that it doesn’t have going and living abroad and doing these

things doesn’t have to be some big luxury event it can be just a deliberate choice you make toine around what’s

important in your life absolutely yeah good I think when I think of luxury I’m thinking of the alternative is we spent

20 grand on our trip for four months and when 20 when I was 29 years old or we spent 3,000 bucks a month in Ecuador so

30 40 Grand 40 grand for the year and in Spain we spent eight to 10 grand per month like those things we could have

spent money on other things that seem to be more fulfilling the bigger house house the the luxury car and there’s

nothing wrong with any of those things I’m just really suggesting I’m advocating for people to prioritize that

item and you don’t have to spend like in Ecuador we lived in a really nice apartment but we PID 600 bucks a month

we live when you use G Geographic Arbitrage you can live really well and not have to spend as much money but it

it is an investment in yourself that I think is the returns are just enormous

compared to the fancy car to the bigger a little bit bigger house and and yet it’s a little bit harder to measure it’s

a little less tangible but it’s been the most most important money I’ve spent and time I’ve spent my whole

life absolutely and I think as I look at where I am with my family and how old my

kids are and that intrinsic desire that I have to grow this last year in

particular I spent a lot of time ruminating on this idea of having permission to pause or permission to refactor and that was one of the

benefits of the conversation I have with you there’s some other you mentors and folks in my support network that really

helped me come to that conclusion okay great you bought eight Reynolds in six years that doesn’t mean you have to buy

20 to keep adding and adding because you will end up with that crippling anxiety you will end up letting it run away from

you especially like with the job and a lot of the listeners to this podcast have full-time jobs too but I think what

you’ve done not only with your life but with the education materials you put out to show that there’s a path to balance

this there’s a path to build methodically at a pace that makes sense

for individual I love all the examples in your books of different people real people who have deployed these

strategies and enabled whatever it is they’re looking for whether that’s early retirement or certain amount of income

or helping one spouse stop working so they can spend time with their families so there’s just there’s so many options

and that that’s why have chosen real estate investing understanding that’s why

you have ch uh chosen it to and I think you’re living proof of what it can look

like if you play out that so I know we’re we are out of time and I have a

million more questions I’d love to ask you but I guess maybe I’ll have to have you on again in the future I tried to go

a little different direction hopefully nobody’s disappointed we didn’t actually talk about real estate investing all that much but if you want to here Chad

talk about real estate investing he has his own podcast where he goes deep into all that stuff so thought I’d give a

little flavor here and get a little more into the backstory lifestyle I love the questions they were definitely different

and hopefully but also the foundational pieces of real estate Partnerships and why you’re doing this and and the

journey that you take is an important part of the the X’s and O’s and Logistics as well so I appreciate you

asking those absolutely thank you so much for taking time of your day to come on the show would love for you to plug

not only yourself but where can people find you how can they learn from you and what’s the best way to stay in touch

great well thank you thank you for having me this has been a lot of fun that if if you’re listening to this podcast and you like podcast I have a

podcast called real estate investing with Coach Carson have a new episode that comes out every Monday I might be

adding a few I’m toying with the idea of ramping up a little bit and having an Ask Coach episode every Friday as well

so uh if you go on YouTube and look for Coach Carson if you look on your favorite podcast player and search for Coach Carson you’ll find it there and if

you want to go beyond that I also we talked about the community I do my pride in where I’m putting a 100% of my time

these is in coaching people inside of this community called rental property Mastery and it’s for a lot of different people

but primarily it’s people who’ve already started on their journey and they already have a property or two or more

and they’re really looking to master the process of growing from where they are to having Financial Freedom and what

does that look like how do I find properties how do I get the money how do I negotiate how do I manage my

properties how do I build systems so I basically my goal is to turn the business that I have into this little

the systems in the process is almost like a little mini franchise where you can take take the systems off the shelf

apply them to your life and build your business and then I get to ride co-pilot with you and help you out as as your

coach and helping you keep it accountable and implement it so for anybody who’s interested in that you can

uh search for rental property Mastery and with Coach Carson and that’s that’ll be out there as well awesome thanks

again Chad I will drop all those links in the show notes so everyone can find you real easily and I hope to have you

back on again Sunday soon yeah love to do it Aaron thanks thanks a lot all right