Business Design: Buying Multifamily to Spend More Time with Family w/ Bryce Stewart

Bryce Stewart, what's going on? My man. How's it going? Good to be here and good to have you. What do we call this? What do we call this world that we're living in now? Post COVID. Did we call it that? Pre again, post COVID post Armageddon one pre Armageddon two, depending on what the news channels want to take up. But you were just sharing a story with me off camera about the whole wacky world of four kids homeschool 18 months, putting all of your projects to the side. Talk about.

Yeah. So for those of you who are in my shoes out there, I'm a full-time real estate investor. And I'm with spaced in heading into COVID maybe I don't know, maybe some of your listeners Brian can relate to this heading into COVID. I didn't know whether I was looking at like a 50% vacancy portfolio or that I was going to lose all my income stream. I also had some stuff lined up that I just pulled the plug on him because my wife and I have four daughters who we, who were sent home from school in spring of 2020. So we remote schooled them to the end of that school year. And then we withdrew them from school and homeschooled for an entire other school year. So we had kids at home for about 18 months on 24 7. And it really changed what I thought was going to happen over the last two years. That's true of everybody.

Yeah. And then you've got an eight year old, a 13 year old. And then how old are the other two?

I had 8, 10, 12, and 13. So much angst in that household. Yeah. It's they're all girls and there's a lot of singing. There's a lot of crying. There's some times I'm arresting a homicide in Brooklyn. And I have to tell her you can't kill her. Sorry,

not legally.

Yeah, exactly. It's tough. And there's a lot of investors who were in my shoes, which I'm already, I don't have a W2. I'm already retired. My, my motivation for retiring and for building a real estate portfolio was that I'd have more time to spend with my family. And then I got it in droves over the last two years. And I was like, whoa, I didn't mean this much family.

So it's funny. It's an interesting perspective that you have, right? Because a lot of people are working to retire, spend time with their families, spend time with all this, but I've, I find that the balance between meaningful work and your family is the suites. 'cause it sounds like that's what you were missing too, I feel like it's a game of working on, what you want to work on when you want to work on it, right?

Yeah. So in general, I most people who have gotten to my spot and maybe even most of your listeners, if you're listening or watching Brian right now, you're already conscious of this fact that if you can get something set up, that's going to generate. Without you being there that frees up your time to do the things that are really important, be with your family, whether it's going on vacation or just making sure that you're home every afternoon for me and for my wife, one of the things she asked me to do was to build my days around being home at three o'clock so that as my kids are coming home from school, I'm there to whatever help with homework, help prep dinner. Take people to lacrosse practice. So that's the real, I would say that was my goal initially. And it's a lot of people's strategy is how do I set something up that makes money so that I get back my time so that I get to do the things that I know are going to be long-term meaningful important. And for me that's relationships. So no matter how rich I could get in this current day even if I'm super rich, a decade from now, my daughters are never going to be 13, 12, 10, and eight again. And if I miss that now I can't pay money later to come back and get this. So thankfully, I saw that maybe a decade ago and thought, I want to be able to have money coming in without me needing to work like crazy hours in order to get it. And I want to be provided for, and for. So that's the real where you shoot at, yeah. I love that.

And then whenever we look at, the Warren buffets, I'm sure that they would give up half of their net worth, or maybe even all of their net worth to have their youth back.

Yeah, I think so. And their time absolutely. You also, the other thing Warren Buffett has said, and I think this is true is that you want to have meaningful work that you're doing so that you actually, it's not drudgery to the to the degree that you have to do it. And you're not trying to balance an awful work, a small, but awful work life with abundant time with your kids and your family. You'd like it to be that the work is enjoyable. And yet can be contained. And then it generates a sufficient income to let you live the life that you want to live.

Yeah. Cody Sanchez said something that. That I use now with my degrees of freedom, you have your kind of has less power you have needs, but now I'm adopting her framework on the show, which is you have different levels of freedom, which first one is financial freedom. So a lot of people that are listening to the show are either in pursuit of that, or they're within an arms grasp of financial freedom, right? You're like, okay, I've got almost have enough to cover my baseline expenses or you have enough coming in. What do you have? 20, 20,000, 25,000 coming in.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I It depends on if you're counting, let's say principal pay down or or just straight cash flow. 1819.

Yeah. So you're pretty you're pretty deep into financially independent. So as soon as you find financial independence, then you find personal independence is so financial freedom, personal freedom. So then personal freedom is having your finances taken away to where it's not a normal cause of everyday stress. And now you can focus on. Doing what you want when you want with who you want. And then a step beyond that is philosophical freedom to where now you're so unburdened from the normal causes of stress for everyone that you can actually. Looking into, what are my internal drivers? What's my internal causes of happiness. What's this life really about what kind of impact do I want to leave? Stuff like that. So I think it's an interesting character arc and I thought your story was interesting to begin there because I thought that was a pretty unique perspective because you've hit financial independence.

Let me let's create even more nuance and detail while you're talking about. There's a lot of people in my case, I haven't been real estate. Okay. Mostly small multifamily and it's all local. I've been pretty choosy about what I've acquired because I haven't wanted to go too far outside of my comfort zone or geographic zone. I may have missed some opportunities with that, but it means I have a portfolio that's pretty easy to manage that I've worked to get. Financial freedom is there's a difference between I don't have a W2 because my real estate investments cover my monthly budget. That kind of financial freedom. And I'm on a sailboat in the Mediterranean. And I don't have to check my phone for a week. Financial freedom. So I'm the first. And I'm not yet the second one. That's part of what I'm working for in the next year. Maybe two years is to completely build myself out of the machinery of my business. So I self-manage for now because I've created a portfolio that's so geographically condensed all my rentals are within two miles. Mine. So I'm not driving and half hour, one, one direction. And the other I have a maintenance guy who lives close to 34 of my units. He shovels, he Moes grass. He vacuums common hallways, but like I still have to check up on his butt, make sure he's doing his thing. I'm still doing my leasing, my lease writing. I'm still managing this portfolio, I'm still a hundred percent being a full-time real estate professional in that regard. And that's one level of freedom, but it's not the, I can just take off and go whenever I want. And have other people take care of it. That'll probably be, if I get a PM who a good property manager, willing to take care of it all, and that's what I'm shopping for in this next year. I just have wanted to. 120 right now, and I could go get somebody and raise rents enough that after paying the property manager's fee, I'm still at $20,000 a month in income. That I'm happy. What I don't want to do is hire a PM now and have it start taking away from that 20 grand a month in passive income. So I have a little bit of work to do this year to get that set up and make sure it's somebody I trust I'm not shackled to the wrong.

Yeah, this is this is a cool concept. I like where this is going already because it's not just the number. It's really not just the number and I don't feel like I've listened to any shows that really talk about this that much, I think it's just as important about the design of your business as it is the net cashflow, because now you've got the net cashflow, you've got 20 grand coming in. Right now that's probably like your baseline number to be able to support your entire family and everything.

Somebody listening right now and you're, maybe you already have a bunch of rental. The one thing I would say is this, I grew faster than I knew how to organize. Okay. And that forced me into usually. Yeah. That's everybody. But there are ways to how do I say this? There are ways to marginally increase your passive Vivity. Even for me, I've worked really hard to get, to just make slight changes, slight investments that, that increasingly build me out of the machine. Or that make the running of it easier. I'll give you a really good example when I first started, and this is going to sound old hat to a lot of people, but of course, when I first started, I just had my nieces on my laptop as like word documents and then I was printing them out and going to sign the leases with tenants. Okay. And they would, I'd give them keys when we signed the lease or we maybe we'd sign beforehand and I'd meet them later on to give them. And then I'd explain to them how to not destroy the unit that they were renting from me, what the expectations were. I'd remind them that if anything went wrong, they call me, all this stuff. And then when my wife started helping me out, she was like, we're not doing paper leases anymore. I'm sorry. She does the push, the tech bubble for me. And I don't do it naturally. I'm, obviously the answer you get DocuSign or dot loop or whatever. So now, we just don't do paper leases anymore. So that was a shift that ended up saving me time. But honestly, I was doing renovations, being a landlord parenting and all this stuff, but I didn't have enough time set aside to figure out how to even integrate. Like a DocuSign account and thanks, Lynn, my wife came in and was like, stop. We're doing this. Definitely. Okay. That's an example. DocuSign costs money, right? It costs a little bit of money to have a DocuSign account, but that shift has freed up more of my time. And it has made me more independent because now I already, now I know how to just create a PDF, drag it to DocuSign, send out the Lieutenant and the tenant doesn't want to print it out. And nobody else, none of my tenants own printers. Yeah. Yeah, so they need to be able to DocuSign and that's how we will, I'll give you another example. We used to have proprietary applications, so I have my own application that I had, cobbled together from boiler plate stuff from the internet. And then the procedure was tenants. We want, they've seen a place they want to apply. I would email them a PDF attachment of a application. Again, they would either have to have Adobe that. Type a, text insert on a PDF application or they'd have to print it out or they'd have to like type in their answers to a document and then send that back to me. Okay. And then I would have to run a tribe bureau credit, check on those tenants, a background check and all that stuff. And if it was a multiple application scenario, I'd have to, if it was paper, I'd have to shred the applicants that I didn't know. Because it has some social security number, their driver's license number banking info, that's a lot of freaking work. Yeah. But at the time when I was still doing that, I wasn't ready to hire a full-time property manager because I couldn't afford to pay the fee that a property manager was going to charge me. So the answer is, of course I just started using Zillow for applications. So now I advertise themselves. I have all my tenants, if they want to apply, they'll respond to a Zillow ad. We do the showing. And if you want to take this, fill out the application on Zillow and then direct it to me. And that was, they don't pay me for the application. They pay Zillow. Once Zillow runs their tribe, bureau credit check, Zillow does their background and everything, and then they just send me the results. And again, by, it costs a little bit of money to have a Zillow listing. Now, like it's a per week chart. But I get maximum exposure. Cause that's still how all my attendants are shopping for apartments is on Zillow and they outsourced the delegated a large portion of the work that I used to do embedding and approving tenants. So if you're listening right now and you're not yet ready to turn everything over to a property management company, the way I wasn't. And I guess I'm still not yet ready to do. That's how I get it. That's a house solution to what you ultimately want to be a food solution, but if you're not, if you can't afford the who solution. There are a little ways to, slightly improve the management of your rental portfolio that will save you time. And by that time back for you,

You and I started this conversation with me. I just finished my onboarding call with my virtual assistant. That's starting full-time this week. And then me and Bryce were both going back and forth and I was like, nobody. Everyone talks about how easy delegation is. They're like, oh, this part of my business, I just delegated out and I'm like, whoa, okay. So let me take this intricate thing that I do. And now how do I systematize this? How do I develop a process around it? Create a loom video on it, teach someone else how to do it.

Yeah. The answer might be that you have to take it. And that takes some work. You may have to take it apart. Cause there could be part of that process that you can 100% automate without involving a person. And if that's possible, that's usually the best choice is to automate something that doesn't require an employee or a person because people are messy, they screw stuff up. You have to explain it to them. Four times they get a different job. You're not a good enough motivator as their boss. So I, I think. A lot of tasks or job descriptions, take them apart, figure out if any part of it can be digitized. And then the next step I think, is figuring out if any of it can be outsourced to a vendor who does it better. So is Zillow 100% systematized or automated? I guess not, it's not because there's kind of people involved, but yeah, I'm not Zillow's boss. I don't have to motivate Zillow. I'm their customer. And I would prefer to be the customer. Cause it puts me in the driver's seat rather than the manager seat. Yeah. That makes

complete sense. And

To the degree, you're a boss, you're probably not. Because all bosses have to, whenever they're turning the lights on, they're turning the lights off. Even if that's figuratively speaking they send, manage the people who are involved. This has become

such a cool conversation about freedom in general, because I know guys that are making a million dollars a month, like passive technically, and I'm about to go try. And do a bunch of extended travel. And you said, dude, I'm making a million bucks a month that I can't even do that. Yeah.

That's all relative. They gotta have their foot on the gas the whole time. Hundreds of people working for, and I get it. If you can build that scale and sell and then whatever, just have your money work for you at some point, that's a good way to do it. I'm not knocking it. If you really know how to leverage it or if it's work that's life-giving for you. That you really don't mind showing up to work? I don't revel in a lot of the tasks of landlording. I don't enjoy vacuuming common hallways. I don't enjoy, making sure that sidewalks and parking lots are shoveled or plowed or whatever. That's not enjoyable. I have to do it to get the money. Yeah, I have to make sure it's being taken care of. Yeah. So if you're an in my spot and you're like or you're coming up to my spot, maybe you not yet off the W2, but you're driving yourself nuts because as soon as you're done with your job, you gotta go take care of your real estate portfolio. There are ways to marginally incrementally, increase your freedom and lower your stress. In, in real estate investing before you get to this, let's say next level, I'll give you one more example. When I first started I house act, okay. So my wife and I moved into a duplex. We collected rent from the one unit and we lived in the other unit and like at the time, this is, and I guarantee Brian for a lot of your listeners is going to be a huge pain point. Okay. For me, it was like a, I want to know. I wanted to get out. It was such a strong pain point for me. Okay. We bought our duplex under our name. Okay. So while we were living there not much changed about our budget. We were getting rent from a tenant and then I would take that rent into our general operating account. The same account that I was paying for groceries out of the same account that we were paying for our mortgage payment and our, escrowing for our real estate taxes. So it was no biggie when we had one tenant and that's fine. And then we bought another place cause we rent lathered and repeated the house hack and another place. Okay. So now. The two duplex rents coming in, and then we looked into a triplex. So I had four total rents coming in and I still just had it set up so that, was getting rants, either checks or Venmo into my normal account. And then I was paying my mortgages out of that account.

I already know where this is got one. Okay. This is going

okay. Once you get to a certain point, a few things happen. One, I started buying properties, using an LLC. Okay. Eventually I got to the point where I had two single member LLCs. All right. And we own some of our properties under one, LLC. Some of them under another LLC and some of them that were still in our name. And I was collecting rents into one central account. Okay. Through either Venmo or checks that was like the receiving account for all the rents. And then come tax time. I had to go back through. I didn't do a really good job keeping track of the bookkeeping for where all the rents were coming from and how to be out properly allocated for all the different properties. And then I moved to gosh, multi-member LLC is we converted the single members to the multi members, and now you need separate tax. Returns for multi-member LLCs. Single member LLC is, are disregarded entities. You can just put those assets on your schedule E on your personal tax return, but once they become multi-member LLC, as they need their own tax return. And now I'm bringing this money into one account and I have to figure out how to re divide it into a, for reporting purposes. Plus. The fact that all the rents were coming into one account tainted the separation of my liability from an insurance perspective, because here I'm essentially operating as a single entity. And yet some of the properties that are in my own name and the whole point of getting LLCs was to insulate me from a lawsuit. But if you get sued and they are looking at your books for the numbers and you're just operating everything. Multiple units under the same umbrella that very quickly dissolves the corporate veil for those different assets. A good attorney is going to be able to pick that apart and say, look, this is just one guy he's responsible for all the liability. And now all your assets are subject to whatever liability, occurrence happens. So that's a huge pain point for a lot of people, right? Yeah. Yeah. So look, I had to bite the bullet and I hired a, an expensive bookkeeper. Oh, look, I'll say this first. I was trying to be good about systematizing it and here's what I did. I created sub accounts or actually extra banking accounts to start putting in because I self escrow, everything. So I had to start saving for real estate taxes, one 12th every month I would put in a side account because I didn't want to have to figure out how to pay the real estate taxes when they came, do it, then just put them on your. Yeah. So I self escrow and doing that the right way, but I had all these different accounts. Okay. Because that's the only way I knew how to self Esker. I knew enough to say, I need to take the real estate escrows and remove them from my operating account. Otherwise I'll think that's money that belongs to me. When, in reality, it's not my, that shouldn't be my money. Sure. But that meant that I had literally dozens of deposit accounts that were really hard to keep track of that I was making, payments out of it because I'd have to bring it back into my operating account to write a check. It was businesses

people. Yeah. So

this is how it goes. Yeah. I guarantee you, some people, somebody listened to you is yeah, that's a super big pain in my butt to figuring it out. Separate all of it so expensive for the, in the short term. Yes. I have a CPA as a bookkeeper who helped me untangle all this spaghetti and really get it so that now I have one deposit account for each LLC. And we did a big refinance in 2020, where I did a quick claim deed. I moved all my properties into one of the two LLCs that we have, so that nothing that's in our personal name is part of the real estate, except for our. So now I have them siloed in one. I literally only have one deposit account per LLC. And then the way that I keep track of like things like security deposits, escrows for taxes and all the other stuff pertinent to my business is I use a budgeting app called you need a budget or. Oh, no, that one. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a personal budgeting app, but it's a dream for my business because it's super imposed as categories on the like, balances that are in my deposit accounts for it. So and here's why it's relevant. I'll give you an example. I'm looking at doing a renovation and I'm talking to my bookkeeper and I'm. Can I do this renovation and he's dude, you've got, $80,000 in this account and you're telling me the renovation is going to be 12,000. Go ahead. You got more than enough money. Here's the thing. I don't actually have $80,000 like that doesn't belong to me. That is like all that 80,000 certain percentage is security deposits. A certain percentage is my escrow. Those for my real estate taxes. I also like I have to budget for water bills for heat and gas at a couple of my places for capital expenditures. I don't want to be spending money that should be allocated towards like a sinking fund or capital expenditure. Yep. The 80 grand is my money, but it's not all my money. So this budgeting app am I, and my bookkeeper doesn't understand that he's really good at looking backwards at what I spent, cause that's what we'll organize together. And he knows this money was spent on whatever debt service this was spent on taxes. This was spent on repairs and maintenance. He can look backwards at my money, but he's not very good at looking forwards at where my money is supposed to go. That's on me. Yeah. So the budgeting app does a really good job of me mentally taking the money that doesn't really belong to me and shouldn't be considered for a renovation and moving it out of the way. So I can be like, all right, 17, 18 grand of this I can rock and roll with because that's money. That's not earmarked for something else.

Man, this has become a master class on freedom, financial freedom, and bookkeeping. This is

important. Yeah. And that it has. Okay. So my bookkeeper means I don't have to worry about taxes. He's reporting everything to the penny and like I hired a guy who's actually a little bit abrupt and rude. And he'll call me, he'll slap my hand and be like, why did you do that? I thought we talked about it. Don't do that. Don't pull that money out of there. I told you not to do that. And he'll you. I didn't have to be my friend. I hired somebody to slap my hand and say, don't do that. So what that means is that in March, when business taxes are due, I spent maybe 40 minutes on my business taxes this year, just kinda sending a few docs to him and making sure he was talking to my CPA. And then personal taxes. I just had my and then, we have a little bit of a secondary income from different sources. So it may, instead of what I used to do, which was bury myself in the basement for three weeks. In March. Recording receipts that I had never typed in the amounts, or, spreadsheeting at all so that I can report it on TurboTax on all my own stuff,

yeah. It's a, and I'm guilty of all of this too. That's why I'm laughing. I'm laughing with you because we're on. It's business. Like we all go through these growing pains and it's now it's even to the point where it's things happen and then I already have the account set aside for it. So right now I'm sitting at my house outside. I've got a backyard with a fence and there's a massive tree that is in the backyard. Not in my backyard, standing up, it fell in my backyard fence. Yeah. My fence is destroyed and there's a massive tree with a bunch of limbs all over my backyard. So I don't really care them. It's okay, because I'm just gonna follow a claim. I know what account that's going into. I know what account that's coming out of and insurance, blah, blah, blah. I've done that. It's the whole song and dance like been there, done that. Got the t-shirt and then got the tree fall. I've got the flood. T-shirt I've got the electrical adage. T-shirt I've got every t-shirt that you got and that's real estate and that's business. But for time's sake, I want to take you on a pivot here because you mention. Vacuuming twice. And now I can't in good faith allow you to exit the podcast without revisiting the vacuum store. Because I remember that. And for people listening and I'm wearing a bigger pocket shirt ironically, but I remember that from the bigger pockets podcast years ago, and it was a time where I was in my car. As a sales professional, traveling to, and from work every day, listening to podcasts. And I listened to all these real estate podcasts and investing podcasts. And I still remember your story about vacuum in the truck, always stood out to me and it's something that I applied in my life. And so I definitely invite you to share that story, or like a, an a condensed version of it. Any expansions that you have from.

Sure. I'll give you the thrust of it right up front. And that's this there's something you can do today. That's going to forward your goals. That's going to get you closer to your goals. We, I think we fool ourselves in building up some project and making it so large that we think we can't do it because we're looking at it as an integral. Task. The example that Brian's talking about was on the my first time on the bigger pockets podcast I talked about when I owned a truck with a loan on it and I needed to sell it because the pay the gas and the payment was just too much. I was trying to make sure I had as much spare cash flows I could get, and I had never sold a truck or any car. I had sold a car before, but I always own the car outright. When I went to go sell. So that's easy. You just go to the notary and you get the title signed over. But when you in Pennsylvania, when you don't own the vehicle outright, the state holds on to the title until you've paid off the loan. So I had a $10,000 loan. I didn't have that money to pay it off and I couldn't get the title until I paid it off and I couldn't pay it off until somebody gave me the money and no one would give me the money until I had the title to close the transaction. So it was a catch 22. And it was one that I let freeze me. I didn't take action towards getting out from this $300 per month payment. I just kinda sat there and let it freeze me. Okay. So for your listeners, you're probably there with something in your life right now where you want you desire some big next step, or maybe it's not that big, but it's big enough that you're frozen on it and you feel like you're in a catch 22 position. For me when I was in that position, I went in and this is like, why Brian stood back into the truck. I realized one day, I'm like, I need just today. I need to just vacuum my truck, go out to the driveway, plugging the shop back and vacuum it out. Cause it was messy. And the good part about that was that it was very low risk. Okay. And very low cost. It didn't cost me anything to go out and vacuum my truck. In fact, it improved my life because now I had a clean car. And then the day after that, I was like I can wash my truck and that's still doesn't cost anything. I haven't risked anything. The day after that, my wife and I took pictures. And I still didn't know how it was going to sell the truck. Cause I didn't have the 10 grand to do it. And then we posted an ad on Craigslist or maybe cars.com. Still didn't know what we were going to do because I didn't have the title. If I had a buyer, I wasn't going to be able to close with them, but I was like this is still free. So I had people coming to look at it and I was like, I guess I'll give test drives because that's free and whatever. And then finally, one of the people who looked at it was like, yeah, I want to buy it. And that's when I told. Hey, I don't have the title. You would have to pay me the money and I'd have to satisfy the loan and then we'd have to wait like a week and a half until I got it. And then we can go to the notary and the guy's I'm not doing that, which is smart, or you shouldn't do that. That's a dumb one. But but the guy was smart enough. He's like, why don't you do this? He's I'll give you 500 bucks to hold this truck that guarantees you. I'm not going to walk. And, or you keep my money and it guarantees me that you're not going to sell it to somebody else he's and then figure out how to find the other $9,500 anywhere in your life, borrow from family or whatever. And then, when you've got the title, we'll go and you can close the transaction. So I had never thought of that before. I didn't see that as a solution until this guy said it to me. So once he did, I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. I had escrows for real estate taxes and insurance premiums and like all of our cash on hand. Which before that I didn't think I could spend, but now that I had a buyer in the pipeline, I was like, all right, fine. I'll do it. So we paid off the loan, put everything on credit cards for a week. And then when I got the title, I just went and settled with that guy, took the money and then I put the money back where I had taken it out of. Okay. And I was out from under this truck. So here's the thrust of it is. I didn't know what that guy was going to come and say that to me when I went out and vacuum my truck, I didn't know that was going to be the solution, but if I hadn't vacuumed my truck, I never would've gotten to the point where that guy said that to me, I just wouldn't have been in a position to do that. I wouldn't have been ready. I wouldn't have been doing showings. So for a lot of you people out there who are looking to make whatever move is next in your life, try to figure out what are the risk-free cost-free steps that you can take right now that may put you in a position to act later, and it might be something that you can't even see right now. And you don't get to see until you're, if taken for, sometimes you don't get to see step five until you've taken steps. One through four. And it's that five makes itself open and available to you. So it's funny. That was my lesson in telling my truck. And then a lot of my real estate career has been the same stuff where I'm like I don't know how this is going to go, but I'll give it a shot. Cause it doesn't cost anything right now. Yeah.

And it's so funny. When was that

episode? Oh gosh, 20 18, 18.

Yeah, four years ago. So what are the chances that you go, not only just do the whole process, right? You vacuum the truck, you take the next actual step most important. Next step. The men's like brain internal would say, and you do all this. What are the odds that not only does that happen, but then you go on a podcast about it and then the podcasts, like that's the takeaway from the podcast is that story. Now here we are four years later. And I still specifically remember you comment on a Facebook person. I'm like, ah, it's a vacuum that,

Like Brian, this may be a key for you when you're doing your podcast here. Or any podcasts or out there, people remember stories either. They're not going to remember our brands. They're not gonna remember probably any facts or figures that we give, but if you want any hope of somebody remembering something long term, it's gotta be packaged in a story because that's how the human brain works. Jesus Christ of Nazareth. All right. You could argue one of the most influential humans ever walked the face of the earth. He spoke almost completely in parables and stories because his audience was illiterate. Okay. They didn't, they couldn't take notes. And even if they could, they didn't have pen paper that only the rich people could scribe stuff and they were agrarian as a society. So he told stories about that related to, and used images of agrarian and farming life and because of that stuck in people's minds. And so like even today, people understand like the good Samaritan. Okay. That was a parable that Jesus told Having being a fertile soil, it w that comes from an analogy that, or a parable that Jesus used. He understood perhaps brilliantly that the thing people was going to carry with them was a story that plants in their mind. And probably they won't remember a whole lot. So same thing for podcasts. If you want something to stick, put it in a story that someone's going to be like, oh yeah, I remember that dude who vacuum that, the truck. And I, I still get people every week who emailed me about that episode. Maybe they're just watching on BiggerPockets now. Yeah, because not that I'm brilliant or anything like that. I don't even own that approach to life. A lot of people have said the same thing. It's just that for me, it's a story in my life and for other people, that's a good way of remembering. Okay, what's the next free step I can take. That's going to get me closer to what my goals. And

it's so cool. It's such a cool process of baking that in and then just really looking back at your own life. Cause we all have zones of genius. We all have value to add. So something as small as that was having such an impact it's very cool. I'm a huge marketing packaging guys. So it's very cool to see how that kind of transpired to where we are now, but as we finish up. Talk about the book and buy the book because I've got the book I bought the book. Then you released it two years ago,

a year ago. End of 2020. So yeah, maybe a year and a half. Yeah, I wrote a book called house hacker's guide to the galaxy. The title is an homage to a Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and it's essentially the journey, my wife and I took the story. Okay. That we talk. It's a good read. It's a good story. There's laughter there's tears. There's a risk there's loss, there's success. And then at the end of every chapter, I just review here's the lessons that maybe are transferrable to everybody's real estate journey. And so I've had a lot of, I've been blown away by the response to the book and a lot of people are like, this is what I needed before. I'm at this point in the story, my wife and I are on chapter four in our own journey. And we've been wondering what happens after this? How do we create an LLC? Is that super complicated? I didn't write in it about managing my finances that came after the book, getting all the accounts sorted out. Maybe that's in. Versus, yeah, but it's funny cause I have no real training in it. So it was me and my wife bumbling our way through and learning very crucial and important lessons by being, willing novices. In each step of our journey. So yeah, how's, hacker's guide to the galaxy. You can get it on Amazon. I have a Kindle and a paperback version and it's just my journey stay tuned for I'm writing two other books. I got to step on the gas with those and try to get them published as well. But that's the one that you can buy right now.

Awesome. And then do you have any other resources that you want to direct people to if they want to reach out to you or.

Yeah, reach out to me. If you have a JV deal in the Southeastern United States, and you're looking for somebody at 10 31, some money into a deal like that. I think on my my website, the author page I have is Bryce stewart.net. Or you can hit me at Bryce Stewart, 79 at Gmail. That's where I take a business. Emails and stuff like that, but I'm still an investor I'm on probably at the peak of what I want to do locally. And so I'm looking to either be an LP or I would probably be at a reasonable GP and deals too. I just need to start turning those out. I know it's a weird environment right now and everybody in their brother is doing syndications, but I'm still looking for good cash flowing property properties. And I liked the Southeastern United States. Cause I think it's a good growth market and a good cashflow market. If you're buying.

I agree. That's where I buy all my stuff. So yeah, we will get you linked up. If you're looking to partner with Bryce, you have his information and. He's a house hacker. He's got the guide to the galaxy. So I don't know why you wouldn't personally know it's a man. Yeah, the whole GoBundance ecosystem too. It's just like all your answers. All your questions are answered there. Like you just.

Yeah. And that's what Brian right now. And you're on the fence. I was, I'm pulling my legs off the fence and

jumping in. Yeah, there you go. Because this is this is probably something you've been dancing with for like months and months, or maybe even a year. And then in, in the group, like we got a Facebook page, even it's funny. Like how valuable Facebook pages, you can literally just go type in the Facebook page, be like, Hey, this is what I'm looking to do. And then you'll have 50 opportunities that are private, just pop up and they'll be like, yeah, I've got this, I've got this that I'm doing right now. Be here's the IRR, here's the cash on cash and everything. I was like, oh my God, that's the best thing ever. It was just bam.

Done. Yeah, I have mine working

together 710 guys together that are all in real estate for the most part. Yeah it's a fun ride, but anyways, brother, I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Coming on. I enjoyed this conversation. We went all across the freedom spectrum. We talk book, keeping tips are taught how to vacuum your truck and and how to hit how's hack. Across the galaxy man. So I appreciate it, brother. And yeah. So this has been brass Stewart and your host Brian Lubin with the action academy podcast signing off.