Adapt & Thrive: Navigating the Changing Real Estate Markets with Anson Young

I'm back with another great episode of Raising the Flipping Bar. Today I had the pleasure of chatting with Anson Young, an incredibly knowledgeable real estate investor, agent, and author. Anson drops some serious value in this ep, from detailing his journey through 20 years of real estate, to sharing hard-won lessons from the 2008 crash. I especially loved his unique background as a semi-pro musician - who knew?! 

A few nuggets I took away: 
1. Consistency and commitment are key. Stick to what works in marketing and don't bounce around too much. 
2. Fundamentals matter most when finding deals. Rapport and win-win scenarios open doors. 
3. Mindset tools like "The Obstacle is the Way" help reframe challenges into opportunities. 

I think you'll get a ton out of Anson's transparent, authentic approach. Let me know what sticks out to you in the comments! Whether you're an investor, agent, or both, this is an episode you won't want to miss.

The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Introduction and Guest Introduction 

00:04:18 - Real Estate Investing Before the Crash 

00:06:25 - REO Experience in Real Estate 

00:09:49 - Transition to Cash Flow and Market Expansion 

00:12:52 - Balancing Investor and Agent Roles 

00:13:51 - Hybrid Approach to Marketing 

00:14:54 - Experience with Brokerages 

00:18:25 - Evolution of Real Estate Deals 

00:20:24 - Consistency in Marketing 

00:25:42 - Personal Development and Coaching 

00:27:19 - Nurturing Relationships in Real Estate 

00:27:54 - Overcoming Obstacles 

00:29:21 - Working on Your Business 

00:32:09 - Dealing with Challenging Properties 

00:38:46 - Fostering a Collaborative Community 

00:39:32 - Fostering Collaborative Networking Environments 

00:40:03 - Attracting the Right People 

00:40:25 - Connecting with Anson 

00:41:02 - Connecting with Anson (Continued) 

00:41:18 - Conclusion and Farewell 

Connect with Anson Young on LinkedIn and Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ansonyoung/
https://www.instagram.com/younganson/?hl=en

Subscribe to his Youtube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@AnsonYoung

Get his book Finding and Funding Great Deals: https://store.biggerpockets.com/products/finding-and-funding-great-deals

Connect with Derek Marlin and ELEVATION Investment Properties!
Derek on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/derekmarlin
ELEVATION’s website: https://elevationinvest.com/
ELEVATION on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevationinvestmentproperties
ELEVATION on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevationinvest/
ELEVATION on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elevationinvestmentproperties

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Raising the Flipping Bar, the go to podcast for aspiring and seasoned real estate investors. I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm the CEO of Elevation. We're a real estate investment company based right here in Denver, Colorado. We'll dive into smart investment strategies, market insights, and essential tips for scaling your real estate ventures. Whether you're making your first investment or your hundredth investment, this podcast is your blueprint for success in the ever evolving world of real estate investing. Get ready to elevate your real estate game and begin your journey with me. Welcome back to another episode of raising the flipping bar. I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm really excited to have a super seasoned investor agent and all around phenomenal person. Mr. Anson young. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm super glad you could make it. Well, we were talking before the show. I'm really excited because obviously you've got investment experience. You are a real estate agent. You're doing stuff in multiple different markets. So we're going to talk about all of that. The other cool thing is Anson is an author. Anson is a podcast host. You're doing a lot of stuff, which is really exciting. So what I would love to know, I always like to start off our shows a little differently. Cause we're going to talk a ton about real estate investing. Tell us a fun fact or tell me something interesting or unique about you that maybe you may not have shared on other podcasts or people be like, wow, that's an interesting fact. So I would love to know a fun fact or something different or crazy or interesting about Anson. Yeah, I love that. I never get asked that. Okay, good. I think that my fun fact is that I was a semi professional musician for. It didn't last very long, you know, three, four years and I've been in and out of bands since I was like 20. No way. So not a lot of people know that, but I was flipping houses and, doing fly out gigs for a friend of mine's band. That was a lot of fun, but then I had to, I had to scale back on the music cause I was renting up on real estate. What instruments do you play? I play bass and guitar. No way. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. So now we have semi professional musician and we had former pro poker player. We've got some unique folks and guests on the show. Cool. Well, thank you. What I would love to know is you've got, you're rounding out almost 20 years of experience in real estate investing. So whether you want to talk about it, In phases or just your background. I would love to give our audience kind of a snapshot of kind of some of the things you've done. Like I said, tons of experience. Give us some background on kind of what you've done before we get into what we're doing now. Yeah, for sure. So when I first started, my very first deal was a live in flip. That was down in Phoenix. I moved back to Denver. I grew up in Denver my whole life, but moved down to Phoenix for a couple of years. That's where I kind of got the real estate bug, did a live in flip. And then from there, it kind of, Just went all over the place. I worked on an REO team. Got my license and was wholesaling REOs, flipping REOs. And then we went into kind of the short sale phase of the market and we did a lot of short sale marketing. We helped a lot of homeowners in that situation. Flip those houses and then. 2016 or so, we went completely off market for our marketing. And really haven't looked back. Yeah. That's kind of what we've been doing, but we've flipped whole sailed. Whole tailed. Now we've kind of pivoted a little bit into more cash flow. Nice. When did you get your license? What year, roughly? 2007 oh, wow. Okay. So you saw it before the crash, which not a lot of people have seen that. So yeah. Tell me a little bit about that ramp up, like seeing it before, obviously maybe kind of how you weathered the storm during the crash, and then we'll talk about what we're doing now. I was too young to know what was going on. I just felt like. The sky was falling. Every single month was just worse news than the last. My friend, Chris called it catching the falling knife. So it's kind of, you know, anything that you bought the next month is going to be worth less. But there was a ton of people buying and I didn't understand at the time that it should have just bought everything. Yes. I had no idea. And so every house that I wholesale during that time or every audio that we sold. It was one of those where I look back now at the numbers and it's insane the stuff that they're selling. And the smart people who are arguably, they're all older, they knew what was happening. They probably saw the last crash in the 89 or and they were just buying everything. Those are the guys who basically did that for a few years and now they're on a peach somewhere. Yeah. Here we are. Right. Totally. Well said. I'm kind of curious if, so you were doing more agency REO business at that time or were you flipping or wholesaling through the crash as well or maybe coming out of it? Tell me a little bit about the margins on like what would have been deemed kind of a normal flip. I'm super curious. We weren't flipping that time. We started flipping in 2015. I was the guy buying rentals during the crash cause I was lucky enough to have a corporate job at the time. And said, okay, let's go all in and afford as much as we can. Yeah, talk to us a little bit maybe about what kind of what a flip margin would be a wholesale margin would be. I think that'd be interesting to compare it to today's market condition. I have to go back into my way back machine here in my brain. So I think that the margins on flips during the crash I mean, if 20 houses in that neighborhood are all just REO kind of. Trashed houses. And then there are still one or two or three nice houses that people can, buy those still sold, you know, even with high inventory and everything. Our margins were probably 25, on average. And then we, we would work to creep that up to closer to 30 to 35, but 25, we were perfectly happy with. So, you know, not knowing any better, 25 margin is, is pretty slim these days, but but back then we were totally fine with it because those houses would still sell. Even though there's a ton of inventory and days on mark, it was really long for most inventory, but nice fixed up houses that are still decently priced. I think we saw any market. Yeah, no, that's, that's well said. Well, and it's great. It's just finding whatever that margin is on the way up or the way down. I liked your analogy of following or catching the following knife. That's pretty spot on. So it's just like, yeah, how can we make those margins work and maybe. Talk to our audience a little bit about what your REO experience entailed, because it's just non existent now. So people have invested in the last three or four years. They don't even know what that is. Maybe share kind of what that was and what it might to some degree be here in the future. But I don't think it's ever going to go back to those days. No, those were, so, so yeah, I, I started off as a transaction coordinator for an REO team and then quickly kind of moved up into. I would call it partnership, but we were opening new offices at the time. A lot of relationships with our asset managers and then opening up new offices where we could. We had at the end, we had about four offices. We have one in phoenix and three in colorado. So we were kind of selling all along the front range all the way down to pueblo and canyon city And then in north phoenix was our other account Yeah, and so it was it was a very interesting time because it's all about those asset manager relationships There's a ton of horror stories out there about agents who are doing unethical things to get those accounts thankfully we weren't one of those agents. We tried to do Pretty much everything about board and yeah, it was, once you're in, you're in and we were getting probably 30, 40 assignments a month and we were selling 300, 400 houses a year. So we are having a closing a day, a decent team. We had an entire reimbursements team, which a lot of people don't understand on the agent side. How much money you're just. Right. And then you're asking the bank to pay you back. So on all of those board ups and the free keys and everything else and some of the fix up. Yeah. You're putting that out of pocket as the agent. Then you have to track it. You have to track every dollar to make sure that that bank's paying you back. So I didn't understand that going into it. I was just like, you get assignments and you sell houses. Let's go. Yeah. But I don't think a lot of people understand how unemotional those decisions were from the bank side. So typically an agent or investor. You're dealing with people and if you're low balling, you might offend somebody. If you're asking for everything, you might get people mad and then they get emotional. And then you might kill the deal. Whereas with banks, it's just numbers on a spreadsheet. They, they look at it. They say, we've been this many days on market. Here's what our backend investors metrics look like. Does it meet it or not? Are we close? Are we not? Do I have enough that I've sold this month or not? And so they just kind of make that decision or say that you need to be a little bit higher or whatever they want. Those houses gone to the banks, not the business of owning property. So, and the asset managers get paid for houses that they sell, or they have to keep a certain, quota up. And so it was an interesting time. There wasn't a lot of emotion. It was just throwing a lot of offers out there. Yep. And and then as, as agents, you know, on the REO site, we were receiving, dozens of offers every day from people like us who were just, And I think the cool thing about that is it gives you such a wide breadth of experience. Maybe tell our audience a little bit more about what you're doing today. I know you're focusing in multiple markets. Let's talk about the styles of business you're doing. And we'd love to hear about the markets as well. Yeah, for sure. I look back at my REO time and it's prepared me for what I'm doing now. When we were opening up virtual market. I down in phoenix and we would never saw one of those houses. We relied on the team on the ground, trained them to make sure that we got the information that we need to make the decisions that we needed to make. And so when it came time to look into more cashflow versus transactional real estate, which wholesaling flipping, it's basically a job, but you have to get back out there and grind after the closing and go from there. When we were looking at cashflow, we decided, Hey, we want to go somewhere where there's a little bit less competition. Somewhere where we can kind of take our a market marketing. So all the stuff that we've tested here in Denver and competed heavily and drop it into a smaller market or a different market or maybe they haven't seen some of this and take that nice six or nine month runway of, dropping in with new marketing and have less competition, chase cashflow, chase burr properties properties where we can buy a deal. Refinance our cash back out and then go on to the next one. We look at it as a leads business. We're like a leads marketing company that we just buy houses. But yeah, the markets that we're in. Some of them are just due to partnership on the ground. My favorite markets, they work numbers wise, but they're a bit big for me, but we're in Omaha and Lincoln and then Cincinnati and Columbus. Columbus. And how long have you been in those markets? Roughly, roughly two years. Okay. And then are you still doing some stuff in Denver from an investment business? And I forgot the media side here, but are you still doing any business here in Colorado? I should say doing some wholesaling. It's just. Old stuff that comes across my desk or people from the meetup who need help. Okay. And we'll still wholesale those deals. Okay. I want, I want to get back into flipping in some respect here. Yeah. But for a, for a minute there, especially right around 2020, it just got crazy, but then part of me wishes I stuck. In it. Cause it, you know, there was a lot of money to be made there, but but also insanity. Yes. Very true. Yes. There was a lot of insanity. I'm kind of glad that I skipped out on that, but I do, I love the process of just taking something that's. Terrible. Kind of like this building. Like it looked crazy at one time and then you guys put a lot of work into it. Now it's something that people really enjoy. It can get a lot of use out of it. And you're proud of it. That's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe talk a little bit about, what you're spending your time on from, let's say, using your investor hat versus maybe using your agent hat, because I think that'd be really interesting for our audience that we've got a good cross section of people that are just investors, just agents. Some people are hybrid and do both like yourself. Maybe give us an idea of kind of how you're using both of those skill sets on a daily basis. I do still have traditional buyers and sellers here and there. I don't go and market my agent retail side of my business. It's just friends, family. Right. Previous investors, things like that. And so on a day to day basis, it doesn't look too crazy. I'm usually, 80, 90 percent in the investment world and, 10 percent maybe over here, depending on what the deal flow is locally. But we do have agents on the ground in our markets that we're in. And so we do have to deal with agent to agent stuff and networking with agents, agent to agent. I feel like being able to speak the agent's language and having my license helps because, I can go to another agency, look brother, I know how it is. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Yeah. I feel your pain. On the investor side, when we do marketing, we'll, we'll do marketing as investor first, but we'll also take on listings from our marketing as well. So I think of it as a kind of a hybrid approach, like we were here to buy your house, but if the way that we can help you best, if you need full price is to list it, we'll do that. We're not just going after that one channel and blocking off, the people who just want retail leads. We paid money for that lead. Yeah. And that person likely needs help still. Okay. And so creating a win win there where, they may need to sell their house. Now my offer as an investor may not work, but my offer as an agent or my services as an agent is sometimes the thing that they need. And so we'll, we'll list, roughly 20 percent of the leads that we come in. That's good to know. Yeah. You know, they're like, yes, I need to sell, I need a solution. Their price just might be too high. The best thing for you is probably to list it. We can help you with that. Nice. Talk a little bit about, we've had actually a lot of parallels in our careers of what Elevation has done and what your company has done. From starting out at a smaller boutique investment company in your Casser real estate, and then moving over to a bigger company in exp Realty. Maybe talk a little bit about kind of some of the, the pros or the cons of hopefully maybe the successes that you've seen lately, and then now being able to orchestrate that. In other markets. I think that's something that a lot of people underestimate is you're going to have to do that and reinvent the wheel every time versus now being at EXP. Maybe talk a little bit about how that's been seamless for you. Hopefully So we're going to take a quick break and tell you about the next elevation academy. If you're looking to dive deep into real estate investing, this is definitely the event for you. Our academy features over a hundred step process to help you navigate every single thing from market analysis all the way down to every aspect of project management. So this is tailored for both beginners and seasoned investors. And our one day intensive training will equip you with the strategies and insights needed to elevate your real estate investing game. Spots are definitely limited. So click on the link below in the show notes to sign up and transform your approach to real estate investment. Okay. Let's get back to the episode. what we're talking about is Anson's experience as both an investor and an agent and going from a brokerage. That's a little bit smaller that we were both at, at your castle realty now being at EXP realty, which is a much bigger company. Very robust, lots of opportunities. Maybe talk a little bit about how that's hopefully been a benefit and especially as you go into multiple markets too. Yeah. I've been with seven brokerages in my career. So if you're out there broker chopping I feel you. So, you know, from the big, the big names, I've been with Keller Williams and Remax and then Boutique your counsel was great while it lasted. Then I went to a small local just discount company basically, just I didn't need it. Someone to park my license. They didn't bother me. And then when I decided, Hey, I'm going to do things out of state, I'm going to do things out of my market. My experience in the past was with Keller Williams. We had to be licensed and be at a market center in my market, which is another cap. And so I was looking at other options. Because I knew I didn't want to be licensed in Nebraska and then pay an extra cap or, you know, for just for MLS access, basically. I looked at other options. Exp was the best option to be able to run teams in a different market that I'm not licensed in, but have those people be licensed in that market that was innovative. Nobody else was doing that at the time. Also just that worldwide kind of support nationwide support worldwide. Just the social aspect on the backend, I can go on and in five minutes I can have 20 people in a market who are lined up to refer my listing to or a client to. And so they have a lot of nice tools to where. If you are looking out of state, if you're looking to create a team in a different area than you are, I feel like it's the best option. So for me, it was a pretty easy decision to go over there. It wasn't like I had a friend who was hitting me up for probably two years trying to get me to move over. But once I realized, Oh, this actually lines up with exactly what I need to do. And there's no other options on the table for being at a brokerage where I can have a team in a different market and not be licensed in that market. It was an easy decision. Yeah. No, that's smart. Well, it's something that we're just starting to get to know kind of what eXp has to offer. And I think they're huge on the technology side too. So I would maybe love to hear what you're thinking. I was looking back. Anson is an author and wrote the book called finding and funding great deals. It's available on bigger pockets and we'll talk about your bigger pockets experience here in a second, but. I would love to know, you know, the book has been out for a number of years now, if you were to rewrite a chapter or there's now a new topic and maybe AI and technology is a piece of that puzzle, what would be maybe a new chapter that you want to write or something that you'd rename that? Obviously things are definitely different nowadays if you were going to do a new edition or be released that book. Yeah. That's a really great question. You know, at the time there was. There wasn't any DSCR lending, it wasn't anywhere near as exciting as it is now. That's not in the book. I would add that to the funding part of the book. And as far as finding deals you know, I wrote that, it released in 2017, and most of the stuff we're still doing. I would say, there's probably some automation stuff on the backend between lead coming into your funnel. Going through your CRM and being assigned to, the right people, that might be a little bit too in depth for a book like, but there are a lot of really cool things that now we have that then we did, but the general marketing is basically the same. It's like, market, we, we do a lot of direct mail, incoming calls, set appointments, build rapport, win win scenarios. I don't think that'll change for a long time, but kind of the support and everything around it probably probably could use an update for sure. No, I think that's really important because I think that goes back to what we try to share with our audience is. You have so many different marketing channels, so many different ideas and opportunities, maybe pick one or two and go deep and be consistent. And I think your message is perfect that yeah, if you're doing similar things, because they're obviously still working seven years later, there is some, you know, as kind of coming from my sports background, like some blocking and tackling basics and fundamentals to investing. That you shouldn't get away from as long as it's working. So that's really cool. I think for our audience to really key in on that piece of the puzzle is don't do something for three months and then bail and another thing and then another thing and then keep just changing and rotating. Yeah, for sure. That, that kind of one and done marketing just never works. So be committed for eight months of a strategy. Be consistent. Just go for it. Are you finding that there are different strategies? If you're having a couple of different pieces of puzzle that maybe work better in Nebraska, say versus better than Ohio, or is it pretty similar from market to market of what you're doing? Yeah, no, that's a really good question. I thought that there might be a little bit more tweaking that needed to be done. But honestly real estate sellers don't change all that much from market to market and people still need help in certain scenarios, you know, whether it's foreclosure or death or divorce or whatever. And so a lot of the messaging and the packaging, it's all the same basically across the board. There's obviously sequences and things involved, but we haven't needed to tweak something for Ohio. It only works in, you know, it used to work in Nebraska, but doesn't work in Ohio. And so thankfully, there's a hundred or two hundred of these markets out there where the same thing will work all over the place. So the fundamentals, like you said, once you have the fundamentals down, you should be able to stamp that down into any market and run with it. Love it. And maybe another kind of follow up question would be is you're doing fantastic things in social media, in digital marketing, in personal branding. Maybe talk a little bit about your evolution of how that's helped not only grow your brand, but obviously grow your business. Some of the stuff you're doing with bigger pockets, maybe talk about that media and content side, because I think that's something that we're trying to dive deep into, obviously. And a lot of our listeners are just considering it, but to me, it's a no brainer. It's not, it's simple, but it's not easy. So maybe talk a little bit about that piece of your business. It's something that I haven't been consistent with and have, I see when I'm not consistent the results and I see when I am consistent, you know, the positive results. So right now I'm on a big push to be more consistent on all that. And so BiggerPockets has been, has been really helpful because Teaming up with them, doing media things for them since 2020 or so. Putting out videos on their main channel, putting out videos on their rookie channel. Right now we're doing about a video a month on the rookie channel. And the best thing that honestly ever happened to me was having a company that approached me and just said, when you go to BP con, can you just do some stories? And tag us. Yeah. And it forced me to be consistent. And I said, Oh man, like I need this in my life on this side is to, you either have to outsource it or you have to just sit down and do it and apply those same fundamentals of consistency and just form a strategy and run with it and be consistent with it and provide value and all of those things that you're supposed to do. It's way easier. Said that done for sure. Yes. Yes. Of course. No, that's perfect. Is there something that either. Comes easy to you and that you really enjoy, or is there something that you have to like psych yourself up to do that content where that maybe just doesn't come naturally, because it all comes across really, really well. So I'm always curious to see what works and what you're like, okay, I don't want to do this, but I kind of have to do it. I try to stay away from those scenarios. I do see some things out there that, that don't resonate with me at all. I know that they work. But I, I would feel scummy trying to do that thing or not authentic or, and I think that that's kind of in a full circle, you know, you have a certain type of video or a certain type of reel or tick tock or whatever. That does really well, everybody else kind of copies it, and then you kind of come back full circle. It always comes back to like transparency and authenticity., and I just want to live there. I don't want to go do those other things. I don't want to dance on TikTok. Me either. I am with you on that one. I don't want to do, some of the things that work. And even people like we were talking about earlier you know, kind of the Hermosy style of things. That's not me. I could probably make it but people would see right through. So I'm trying to, like, just present information. Provide value and also insert my own sarcasm or something in the middle. And so that's, that's my strategy. No, I think that's really cool. I've got a couple more questions. And the thing I like to talk about too, is we talked off camera before we started, but this podcast is really evolving through a lot of nuts and bolts, real estate investment strategies. And ideas, and that's probably 70, 75 percent of what we do, but I'm a huge proponent of personal development of business strategy. So actually off camera, we were talking about your experience with some of the Tony Robbins types of coaching and consulting. Tell me a little bit about kind of that and some of the stuff you're doing. Yeah. I went to unleash the power within very entry level, 10, 000 people in a stadium in L. A. Yeah, huge, nice, but I knew that I would be at the event for long days and I'd only be sleeping for 3, 4, 5 hours. So that was a mistake, but the event itself was, was amazing. It was exactly what it needed at the time. I came back, I talked to. kind of a business coach that I was working with at the time about it. He ended up going all in on it, which, you know, we talked about that before, but I didn't go too crazy deeper inside of that. I get a lot of mine from people who I really trust inside of. Books and, videos and just people who I really like and trust. Kind of like the Ryan holidays, the world, love it going through those books and those processes. And I think I, I got burned out on just going to events. Like I was in two masterminds and it was running kind of my own mini mastermind at the time. But I found I was flying out almost every month or every other month, and I had just pages and pages and pages of notes from every event, and I never got the time to actually start implementing those things. And so I just got way too crazy and busy, and I decided to pull back, drop out of those masterminds, still friends with a lot of those guys. Now it's time to actually implement these things and form. These personal bonds with those people. So it's one of those things where you pay 20, 000 for a mastermind, you become super great friends with 10 people. And then those 10 people are all in a room and they look at each other and they go, why do we need to pay 20 grand to hang out? Amen to that. Seriously. I agree. And so, so like a lot of those relationships we're still masterminding. But yeah, that's, that's kind of my journey inside of that. It could be better. I want to do more things now that. We've had two or three years of less travel and things like that. And so it might be time to get back out there, but yeah. Oh, I'm so with you on the Ryan holiday content. One of my favorite books ever is called the obstacle is the way by Ryan holiday. And I think that message just resonated with me so well. And it's something. I'm sure that I've got high school age kids and people are starting to graduate and I'm sure they get pissed that somebody gives them a book. We put some cash in it as a graduation present, but we give them that book, which is the obstacle is the way. And at some point, hopefully somebody pulls it out and realizes that this is such a super hard time in somebody's life or business challenge or whatever, but you might not have been able to go in that secondary direction if you didn't have that obstacle in front of you. So I'm with you. That's such, he's a great author. Yeah, that's my most gifted book. I think that that's a great thing. I have a teenage son as well, but you know, I try to just instill some things inside of there. It's how you react to things because you can't control other people's actions. But that student that you gave that book to maybe two years into college or something might pull it off their shelf and, and read it. And that's when that kind of aha moment comes for them. And so, you know, But they wouldn't have that without you giving it to them. So I think that that's, that's a great idea. Absolutely. Well, it's stealing great ideas is the name of the game, but, and what we do is we actually slide cash in the book. So if they're just fumbling around, maybe that cash will fall out or hopefully, you know, as we were broke college kids and maybe they hit something and that can become beer money for the weekend or whatever they're going to do with it. But definitely it's something that, you know, we'll see if it pays off, but I'm a huge proponent of that. So maybe I would also love to know. So another thing we try to focus on is working. I think it's a Napoleon Hill thing. I feel like back then, a lot of those ideas were very ubiquitous between multiple different authors and investors, but it's either Napoleon Hill started it, then it's Michael Gerber with the E myth, but it's working on your business and big picture strategy things versus working in your business of that, like busy to do of, Hey, I've got a super busy day. I've got four meetings to do lists, whatever else are there things that you work and do that you feel like are in the, on the business category and can you maybe share one of those? Thanks. Yeah, for sure. I'm not the best at disconnecting and going top level. I feel like Having a little bit of time each month or each week to sit down and not do like the hustle day to day answer emails like those things, but carving out a certain time each week in order to intentionally take that time and look at how things are going inside of your business and what needs to be worked on. It could be, if you have a team, obviously I'm sure team meetings are a lot of time worked on that and then you can take that and go strategize on the top level. But. I have a very small team and most of the time it's just me in my office and I don't see anybody for days. And so it can feel like a lot of it's just the busy work and the emails and the looking at pictures and talking to lenders and whatever. Without that intentional time carved out, it wouldn't get done. And so. Having that either at the beginning of the week or the beginning of the month or the end of the month, whatever you want to do it, you have to just intentionally sit down and do it. There's no other, like, it's not going to just come in the middle of the day. You're just like, I'm going to take a lunch and go think about business. Well said. It'll be like a Sunday night where, the kids are in bed everything's kind of settled down and you're preparing for the week. What did last week look like and does the next week need to be tweaked in order to. Get to where we want to go for the year. I'm with you. Those Sunday afternoons are huge for me. It's a lot easier now that there's not football on and that takes up a little bit of my time. But yeah, I feel like if I can plan on a Sunday of trying to line out the week, I feel like my weeks go so much better if I can even just spend 30 to 60 minutes just. Getting that dial for the next week. That's huge for me. Well, I want to be sensitive to your time, but I've got one last question that we always ask before we kind of wind this down and that's, we are in a crazy business, crazy things happen. So I would love for you to share with our audience, maybe some crazy story of whether it was a flip. The wholesale could be a brokerage transaction, but maybe give our audience, you know, one of the crazy things. Cause I think that, and it doesn't have to be good. It could be something that went sideways or whatever, but just maybe a crazy story so that our audience can say, Oh my gosh, whether it's good or bad, that's some of the things that can happen in real estate investing. Yeah. That's a, that's good. This could happen to you. So, we had a a property up North in Denver where we had been talking to the seller for probably a month. We mailed her, we tried to call her and finally we just went knocked on the door and could tell it was a horror situation. We could tell it was bad. And she had come from the back of the house to answer her front door. Okay. That was a probably foreshadowing. And you could, you know, judgment free zone here, but you could smell the cat. the cat pee outside the house is a brick house smell it from outside. It's pretty bad. We knew it was bad. We knew she needed help. We, we eventually started talking to her sister who helped us out and she needed to be moved into probably more of an assisted living type of facility. But so we worked with a sister really close to create. Kind of a win win scenario for her to where we can get some of the things fixed so she can stay there for a little bit and then Transition her out nice. And so what? You know once we bought the house then the real fun started because then it was I mean it was the worst house I've ever been in Wow like has not suit style. Okay. Yep. I don't know how she lived there for so long. Oh, man You know, it was, it was, it was the, the traditional tropes of dead cats. There was, you know, stuff up, you know, five feet of just trash. Yeah. Just stuff. Yep. And so it took, you know, it took 11 dumpsters. Okay. Wow. That's a good one. 11 . It took about a week and a half for our guys to clean it out, and we had to pay them a lot, a bit more. I think our, our demo crew showed up and they were just like, yeah, we, we need a premium on this one. Yes. And we were glad to pay it because Yeah. It was bad in there. Okay. Not to get too graphic, but there was there was a point where her Her toilets didn't work. There was a lot of home depot buckets that were being used as toilets. Oh gosh. Yep. Put in the basement. And and so there was a point where her sister came with her husband to clean those out because she just felt so bad. She was just like, I cannot make you guys. Oh my gosh. It's a nice sister. Human waste. Yeah. And what they did with it, I'm not sure. Yeah. Oh no. They, they loaded it up and they took it out. So we didn't even have to put it in our dumpsters. Kind of that liability on us. Yeah. But you know, once we cleaned it all out, we even had to rip out all the duct work because it was so bad and all the insulation, all the drywall had to go. And it's probably three or four layers of kills paint to kind of seal everything else up and we could rebuild from there. But but yeah, it was one of those where. the budget was blown a bit because we just didn't realize how bad it was. We weren't expecting to tear out all the duct work and the furnace and all that stuff that. Takes all that air and recirculates it, all that stuff gets in there. So, the budget was blown We still made you know, good money on that deal Okay, and we got to help her out of that situation with huge which is probably the best part So yeah, anything that we found that was worth the value. We just gave to the sister Oh, that's cool. Even though you know, they signed over all that property To us, we found silver certificates. We sound, we found gold. Wow. No way. Yeah. We found all this stuff that you want to, you know, you're like, Oh, we found all this cool stuff. No, and that's such a good takeaway. And it's something that to me, we have kind of a company philosophy of full circle value. And so that's really cool that you could help not only the homeowner, but the sister. I'm sure that was just crazy piece of mind for them. And do they ever, do you know, did they come back to see the property or did you guys just kind of part ways after that? And that the sister did come back and we, we, we've had a lot of full circle stories where, usually elderly folks that are being moved out for memory care or for things like that, but they haven't done anything to their house and since the seventies. We've fixed it up and then brought them or their family back if they want to. Yes, they don't have to, of course, but, but we get asked that a lot. I was like, Hey, can we see it when it's done? And you walk them back through it. And they're like, especially if you finished out the basement. And they're like, we could have had this the whole time. You could have. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, yeah, you could have. But that's, that's really fun too, is to take people through kind of that after. Cause some of them just know how bad their house is. Yeah. You're right. And. They're not typically proud of, you know, kind of where it's gotten to, but if they can see that after and knowing that like maybe a family is going to move into it, raise their kids there and that they're going to be proud of it, that. It's a nice full circle. I love it. I think that's something that we'd really try to promote too. And I think our audience really needs to key in on that, which is, adding that value, being a creative problem solver. And then if people come back, it's an emotional thing. You know, you're right. They've been in there for a long time. It's not just a money thing. Everybody can make money on different properties, but it's the emotional component. I think is super important. So that's cool. You guys focus on that as well. Yeah. I mean, it's a people business at the end of the day and like. You know, I went, went from the detached REO stuff to holding people's hands at the short tail to closing. You have to build rapport, you have to deal with people. So yeah, why not, why not do it at the best level that you can? As we kind of wind down, one of the things that I want to really bring up to is just how much I appreciate you being here, your time. I think a lot of times the investment community, people see everybody as competitors that technically on paper, we would be competitors. We're both flipping houses. We're wholesaling, we've got brokerage, you've got great media. We're trying to, you know, do similar things, but to me, it's all about, that relationship of how can one person help one another. So in the future, whether we're referring deals back and forth or whether we're wholesaling to one another or hosting, you know, your meetups at our Broadway collective or whatever, I think that's something that's really important to kind of let our audience know is that. We're doing the same thing, but we're really not competitors. I mean, you guys are really successful. We've never showed up at the same house or like maybe they've gotten the same piece of mail, but it just doesn't really happen. So maybe just talk a little bit about that, whether you know, you're build a great community and what that collaboration looks like in the investment game, especially in a small Denver is a big city, but it's a small town is the way I say it. It is for sure. And it is, it is about being around the right people. There was a while there where my networking was just. Trying to latch onto more successful investors or agents, take them to lunch and just kind of pick their brain and figure out like how they're making, how they're getting success. And that worked for a while until the first time I was told no. Yeah. I was like, you know, they were just very close to the vest. I'm not telling you anything that I'm doing. Like I don't need you. And I try to lead first with value. Like if there's anything that I can help you with first. I'm more than willing to help you. And so it was at that moment that I said, wait, there are people out here who don't want to help anybody. And then I would run into a few more of them here and there. So, so it's kind of about either fostering the right community or the right place for people to meet kind of like this. They're like minded people. You have a lot of real estate people in here. You guys see each other all the time, build those relationships. And I'm sure that there's deals being traded back and forth, things that are happening that are cool. For us, I created just a meetup group where. It's very casual, no selling, no speaking, show up, have some drinks, talk to cool real estate people, go home, and it's never a charge to get in. So that kind of attracts a certain type of person who's maybe more collaborative. They want to, they're there to network, they're there to provide value. They're there to kind of meet their networking goals as well. Like, Oh, I need a contractor. I need a, I need a lender. I need insurance. I need a deal. Yep. So, fostering or creating that environment for people to kind of come and meet you'll kind of attract the right people towards you. Well, actually, that's the last thing that I'd love for you to end on is how can people get ahold of you? You, you know, you talked about your meetup. I would love for you to make sure and mention, how people can connect with you, how they can consume your content, give them the, the four on one on how they can get hooked up with you. Yeah, absolutely. On Instagram, I'm at young Anson and I put. A lot of my podcast stuff there much to the detriment, I'm sure of people who know me and they're like, I'm tired of watching this, but the meetup is called Badass Real Estate Investors. The podcast is called Property Squad. And and yeah, Instagram is probably the best place if you're on BiggerPockets. I'm on there as well. And just search my name. I'll be on there, but but yeah, connect with me in either place. I'd love to connect with anybody who listens to this. Awesome. Well, Anson, thank you so much for being a guest on raising the flipping bar and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of raising the flipping bar. If you found value in our insights and stories, let's keep the conversation going, connect with me on social media, and be sure to share this episode with friends or colleagues who might benefit your feedback and reviews, help us grow and reach more listeners like you. So please, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review. Thanks again to the elevation Academy for sponsoring today's show. If you're interested in learning more, click the link in the show notes below. And remember every property. Tells a story. Every deal brings a lesson. Keep reaching for those goals and we'll catch you on the flip side.